OXFORD HISTORICAL MONOGRAPHS

editors
j. maddicott r. j. w. evans
j. harris b. ward-perkins
j. robertson r. service
p. a. slack
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 The Bismarck
Myth
Weimar Germany and the Legacy
of the Iron Chancellor

robert gerwarth

CLARENDON PRESS ◊ OXFORD

 1
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To my parents
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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My interest in Bismarck’s popular image and his mystification after 1890 goes
back many years. In this time I have received much support from others and it
is a pleasure to record my gratitude and indebtedness to them.
Various libraries and archives, listed in the bibliography, have opened their
facilities to me and offered me assistance and advice, for which I thank them. In
particular I would like to express my gratitude to Prince Ferdinand von Bis-
marck, who has kindly invited me to undertake research in the family archive in
Friedrichsruh and who granted me access to the private papers of his father, Otto
von Bismarck. I would also like to thank the following individuals and institu-
tions for permission to reproduce published and unpublished material: the
Bundesarchiv (Koblenz and Berlin), Christoph & Friends—Das Fotoarchiv,
the Otto-von-Bismarck-Stiftung, Christoph Bellin (Bildarchiv Hamburg), the
Deutsches Historisches Museum (Berlin), Klaus Kirchner (Erlangen), and the
Staatsbibliothek Berlin / Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz.
My doctoral supervisor, Hartmut Pogge von Strandmann, first taught me in
1997, then encouraged me to return to Oxford in 2000, and has since sup-
ported me in many friendly ways. This study would not be the same without
his keen interest and critical judgement.
Many other great scholars have contributed to this book’s completion in one
way or another. My former academic supervisor, Heinrich August Winkler,
first introduced me to the world of Weimar Germany and has remained a
source of inspiration ever since my undergraduate years at Berlin’s Humboldt
Universität. I am also greatly indebted to Niall Ferguson and Sir Ian Kershaw,
who examined the doctoral thesis on which this book is based. Their sugges-
tions have helped me greatly to revise the manuscript for publication.
I would also like to thank Chris Burrows, Porscha Fermanis, Ailish Johnson,
Lothar Machtan, Anna Menge, Leslie Mitchell, Anthony Nicholls, John Röhl,
Nick Stargardt, and Jonathan Wright for commenting on parts of my work in
draft and for making many inspiring suggestions. These friends and colleagues
have provided personal support and scholarly encouragement over the past
four years. It goes without saying that in the end, I alone am responsible for any
shortcomings in this study.
Two scholarship organizations, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and the
German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), provided generous financial
viii Acknowledgements
aids in 2000–1 and 2001–2 respectively. In 2002–3 I was fortunate to be the
holder of Oxford University’s Bryce Research Studentship in Modern History.
Without this financial support I could not have undertaken and concluded my
research on the Bismarck myth. Furthermore I would like to thank the British
Academy for electing me to a Postdoctoral Fellowship, the Fellows of Corpus
Christi College, Oxford, for appointing me as a Research Fellow, and the
Wiener Library for awarding this book the 2004 Fraenkel Prize in Contempo-
rary History.
Those to whom I owe most of all come last. Porscha Fermanis has lived with
this book for the last two years and I want to thank her for making countless
crucial improvements to the manuscript. My final and greatest debt of grati-
tude is to my parents. As a necessarily inadequate acknowledgement of their
support, this book is dedicated to them.
Robert Gerwarth
Oxford, June 2004
 CONTENTS

List of Illustrations x
List of Abbreviations xi

1. Introduction 1
2. Prologue: The Bismarck Myth in Wilhelmine Germany
(1890–1918) 11
3. After the Collapse 30
4. Fragmented Society—Divided Memory: Perceptions of
Bismarck in Early Weimar Germany 45
5. Fighting the ‘Enemies of the Reich’: Bismarck and the State
Crisis of 1922–1923 64
6. Bismarck as an Election Campaigner 78
7. In the Shadow of Stabilization 93
8. Towards the Abyss: Bismarck and the Dissolution of
the Weimar Republic 118
9. Epilogue: Bismarck between the ‘Seizure of Power’ and
Reunification (1933–1990) 145
10. Conclusion 171

Bibliography 178
Index 209
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

1. The Bismarck Memorial in Hamburg, 1923 (Christoph Bellin,

Bildarchiv Hamburg) xii
2. Crowds at the Berlin Bismarck Memorial outside the Reichstag during
the November Revolution, 1918 (Christoph & Friends—Das
Fotoarchiv) 31
3. ‘Patriotic gathering’ at a Bismarck Memorial in Oppeln, 1920
(Otto-von-Bismarck-Stiftung, P 1999/599) 46
4. ‘Exceptional legislation’ (Simplicissimus, XXVII (1922), 241;
Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin / Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz) 65
5. DNVP election poster, 1924 (Bundesarchiv Koblenz, Plak. 2/29/6) 79
6. DVP election poster, 1924 (Bundesarchiv Koblenz, Plak. 2/25/13) 80
7. ‘The pilot is coming on board’, 1925 (Hindenburg-Album des
Kladderadatsch, 1927, 52; Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Bildarchiv
Preußischer Kulturbesitz) 91
8. SPD demonstration to commemorate Bismarck’s anti-socialist
legislation, Der Abend, 21 October 1928; (Staatsbibliothek zu
Berlin / Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz) 115
9. Chancellor Hermann Müller humbly receives Bismarck’s
congratulations for building the ‘Cruiser A’, (Rote Fahne, 21 October
1928; Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin / Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz) 116
10. Adolf Hitler poses in front of a Bismarck portrait after his release
from Landsberg in 1924 (Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin;
Hoffmann 0121) 127
11. ‘This man leads Germany towards catastrophe’ (Klaus Kirchner,
Erlangen) 156
 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

ADAP Akten zur Deutschen Auswärtigen Politik

BA Bundesarchiv
CDU Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands (German Christian
Democratic Union)
BVP Bayerische Volkspartei (Bavarian People’s Party)
DDP Deutsche Demokratische Partei (German Democratic Party)
DNVP Deutschnationale Volkspartei (German Nationalist People’s Party)
DVP Deutsche Volkspartei (German People’s Party)
FDP Freie Demokratische Partei Deutschlands (German Free Democratic
Party)
HZ Historische Zeitschrift
KPD Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (German Communist Party)
MSPD Mehrheitssozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (German Majority
Social Democratic Party)
NKFD Nationalkomitee Freies Deutschland (National Committee of Free
Germany)
NPL Neue Politische Literatur
NSDAP Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist
German Workers’ Party)
NV Nationalversammlung, Stenographische Berichte der Verfassunggeben-
den Deutschen Nationalversammlung
PAH Preußisches Abgeordnetenhaus (Prussian Lower House)
PP Past and Present
RT Akten des Reichstages, Stenographische Berichte
SA Sturmabteilung
SPD Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (German Social Democratic
Party)
USPD Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Independent
German Social Democratic Party)
1. The Bismarck Memorial in Hamburg, 1923.
 1
Introduction

In early 1921, little more than two years after the end of the Great War and the
outbreak of the German revolution of 1918–19, the left-liberal periodical
Weltbühne devoted a two-page article to a cultural phenomenon which it
referred to as the ‘Bismarck legend’. What the author of the article, the disting-
uished journalist Richard Lewinsohn, described in his analysis was alarming:
Bismarck—dead since 1898—had become ‘a severe political danger’ for the Re-
public of Weimar. The Republic, so Lewinsohn insisted, had to emerge from
Bismarck’s shadow if it was ever to become a state in its own historical right.1
Lewinsohn was not the only democrat who perceived Bismarck’s legacy and
the way it was exploited by Weimar’s right-wing circles as a threat to the Re-
public. In his book Bismarcks Schatten, a liberal professor of jurisprudence,
Hermann Ulrich Kantorowicz, maintained that the consolidation of demo-
cracy in Germany could only emerge ‘over the rubble of the Bismarck cult’.2
The right-wing opponents of democracy provided plenty of evidence for the
validity of such arguments. In April 1919, during the negotiations for a new
constitution in the city of Weimar, the conservative periodical Tradition—a
weekly publication of the Patriotic Leagues or Vaterländische Verbände—
suggested that the ‘coup d’état’ of 1918 was a conspiracy against Bismarck’s
legacy. The Social Democrats, Left Liberals, and Centre Catholics who had
betrayed Bismarck ‘just as Peter had once denied the Saviour’ would eternally
be stigmatized as ‘wreckers of Bismarck’s creation’ and ‘blasphemers against his
holy name’.3
Less than a year later, in January 1920, one of the leaders of the monarchist
DNVP, Kuno Count Westarp, went a step further. The German Republic, he
argued, had been founded against the ‘spirit of Bismarck’ and thus had no
historical right to exist. Westarp was optimistic, however, that the democratic
‘system’ was only an episode in German history: ‘the German Republic of 9
November . . . [and] the knavery of the Treaty of Versailles of 28 June 1919, will
1
Richard Lewinsohn, ‘Die Bismarck-Legende’, Die Weltbühne, XVII (1921), 33–5.
2
Hermann U. Kantorowicz, Bismarcks Schatten (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1921), 11.
3
‘Bismarck und die Revolution’, Die Tradition, 5 Apr. 1919.
2 Introduction
prove to be a transitory period. . . . On the very foundations of that which was
created on 18 January [1871—the day of Bismarck’s Imperial Proclamation in
Versailles], Prussia and Germany will rise again.’4
Divisive and controversial statements such as these were typical of the way in
which the deeply fragmented Weimar society interpreted Bismarck’s legacy.
Conservatives who referred to Bismarck between 1918 and 1933 did so in order
to compare the increasingly despised Republic with the mythical figure of the
Iron Chancellor and the glorified days of his rule over Germany. For left-
leaning liberals and Social Democrats, on the other hand, Bismarck’s semi-
authoritarian government had interrupted the process of liberalization and
democratization which had begun with the Wars of Liberation and culmin-
ated in the revolution of 1848. After the military collapse of the kleindeutsch
Hohenzollern Empire—so ran the Republicans’ interpretation of the recent
German past—the revolutionaries of 1918 had corrected Bismarck’s historical
failure and established a more just political system: the Weimar Republic.5
The quarrel over Bismarck and his legacy was certainly older than the
Republic. Even during the Kaiserreich perceptions of the Iron Chancellor had
differed significantly. For those groups which had been stigmatized by Bis-
marck as ‘internal enemies of the Empire’—above all for the Centre Catholics,
Left Liberals, and Social Democrats—the experience of the Kulturkampf and
the anti-socialist legislation of Bismarck’s regime continued to dominate the
perception of the first Chancellor for decades. Bismarck’s critics were, how-
ever, confronted with a politically dominant majority of Germans for whom
Bismarck was the personification of the German nation, the ‘redeemer’ who
had rescued Germany from its state of disunity and had thereby fulfilled Pru-
ssia’s ‘German mission’. Bismarck himself had contributed significantly to this
interpretation. The Imperial Proclamation of 1871 in Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors
was deliberately held on 18 January, a date of particular symbolic importance:
exactly 170 years earlier Frederick I had become the first Prussian king.6
In the transition period from Kaiserreich to Republic the Bismarck myth
underwent a fundamental change of meaning and purpose. Up until 1918 the
narrative had been a constant reminder to the German people that the Empire
was the culmination of German history and that every form of criticism against

4
Kuno Count Westarp, ‘Der 18. Januar’, Die Tradition, 17 Jan. 1920.
5
On this see Daniel Bussenius, ‘Eine ungeliebte Tradition: Die Weimarer Linke und die 48er Revolution
1918–1925’, in Heinrich August Winkler (ed.), Griff nach der Deutungsmacht: Zur Geschichte der Geschichts-
politik in Deutschland (Göttingen, 2004), 90–114.
6
See Volker Ullrich, Die nervöse Großmacht: Aufstieg und Untergang des deutschen Kaiserreiches 1871–1918
(Frankfurt, 1997), 19 ff.
 Introduction 3
it was a slap in the face of Bismarck, the ‘father’ of the nation-state. After the
end of World War I, however, the myth served as a political chiffre of what the
German Reich had lost as a result of the ‘treason’ committed by the ‘internal
enemies of the Empire’; namely, its role as the leading economic and political
power on the European continent. At the same time, the myth was used to
remind the German public that their country’s former greatness was not owed
to parliamentarianism, but to the existence of a towering leader.
In the increasingly unpopular democracy of Weimar, threatened by its
internal right- and left-wing opponents, ‘the past’ in general and the Bismarck
myth in particular became a weapon in the struggle of ideologies. Throughout
the first German democracy, various conflicting socio-political groups and
milieux—monarchists, nationalists, liberals, Centrists, socialists, and Com-
munists—mined the quarry of the past in order to establish credibility and
legitimacy for their political goals in the present.
That myths, both old and new, were being created or revived in the transi-
tional period of 1918–19 was no coincidence. According to the philosopher
Ernst Cassirer, societies generally invent and reinvent political myths in times
of great political unrest and disorientation.7 And in the Republic of Weimar—
probably more than in any other period of modern German history—dis-
orientation and unrest were among the most striking characteristics of the era.
The uncompromising character of the fierce historical-political debate
which began with the downfall of the Kaiserreich distinguished the contro-
versy of the years 1918–33 from all previous and subsequent disagreements
about Bismarck. The intensity with which the participants in the public debate
insisted on the correctness of their particular interpretation of history was the
result of one expedient realization: only those who had the past on their side
could claim legitimacy for their present-day political views. And legitimacy
was desperately needed after the establishment of a political system without
precedent in German history. The pseudo-historical debate surrounding
Bismarck was therefore only a pretext for a more fundamental question: the
historical legitimacy of the Weimar Republic. Was the Republic, as the right-
wing opponents of democracy maintained, the result of a ‘stab-in-the-back’
of the ‘victorious’ German Army, executed by an unholy and anti-nationally-
minded alliance of Social Democrats, Left Liberals, and Centre Catholics? Was
it the outcome of a late revenge of the ‘internal enemies of the Reich’ against

7
Ernst Cassirer, The Myth of the State (London, 1946), 364. For similar thoughts see Hans Blumenberg,
Arbeit am Mythos (Frankfurt, 1996), 41–2 and Carl Schmitt, Political Romanticism, reprint of the 1st edn. of
1926 (Cambridge, Mass., 1986), 160.
4 Introduction
their former persecutor? Or—as the Republicans argued on the contrary—
had the constitution of 1919 brought about the fulfilment of those democratic
ideals for which the revolutionaries of 1848 had fought before their suppres-
sion by ‘reactionaries’ under the leadership of Bismarck?
The public debate inflamed by questions such as these mirrored a funda-
mental problem of Weimar’s political culture: the lack of any form of basic con-
sensus about the past, present, and future of the political community.8 The
extreme ideological fragmentation of German society translated into a civil war
of memories and historical symbols in which the individual political com-
munities fought over the past in order to give meaning to their policies for the
present and future.9
The key argument of this book is that the figure of Bismarck played a central
role as an anti-democratic myth in the highly ideological battle over the past
which raged between 1918 and 1933. It will be suggested that Weimar Germany’s
political culture, defined as the ‘set of subjective orientations to politics in a
national population, or a sub-set of the population’, can only be explained
imperfectly without consideration of the Bismarck myth.10 Throughout the
fourteen years of Weimar’s existence, ‘Bismarck’ remained a constant reminder
of past German ‘greatness’ and achievements that were permanently set against
the Republic’s perceived weakness. As such, the Bismarck myth served to
undermine the establishment of a democratic consensus, which proved to be a
vital component in the struggle for survival of Germany’s first democracy. At
the same time, this study will demonstrate how the Bismarck myth con-
tributed significantly to the rise of Hitler by popularizing and promoting two
central elements of right-wing agitation against the Republic of Weimar: anti-
parliamentarianism and the belief that only a strong charismatic leader could
solve the country’s most pressing problems efficiently.
By addressing the Bismarck myth and its impact on Weimar Germany’s
political culture, this study can be situated within the established school of

8
This has been underlined by Dietmar Schirmer, ‘Politisch-kulturelle Deutungsmuster: Vorstellungen
von der Welt der Politik in der Weimarer Republik’, in Detlef Lehnert and Klaus Megerle (eds.), Politische
Identität und nationale Gedenktage: Zur politischen Kultur in der Weimarer Republik (Opladen, 1989), 31–60.
9
Friedrich Stampfer, Vorwärts, 18 Jan. 1931, morning edition. The problem of the fragmented political
culture in Weimar Germany has been addressed in various recent works, for example in Heinrich August
Winkler, Weimar 1918–1933: Die Geschichte der ersten deutschen Demokratie, 2nd rev. edn. (Munich, 1994),
285–305. See also Hans Mommsen, The Rise and Fall of Weimar Democracy 1918–1933, trans. Elberg Foster
and Larry E. Jones (London, 1996). Finally, Detlef Lehnert and Klaus Megerle, ‘Problems of Identity and
Consensus in a Fragmented Society: The Weimar Republic’, in Dirk Berg-Schlosser and Ralf Rytlewski
(eds.), Political Culture in Germany (London, 1993), 80–95.
10
Gabriel D. Almond, ‘The Study of Political Culture’, in Berg-Schlosser and Rytlewski (eds.), Political
Culture, 13–26, here p. 15.
 Introduction 5
historiography that investigates what is best described by the German term
Geschichtspolitik—the politically motivated use of historical narratives within
the public discourse.11 The most basic common assumption of all studies that
have emerged from this school in recent years is that each age reconstructs
images of the past to suit its present purposes and needs.12 At least in this respect,
the approach owes much to the theoretical groundwork provided by the French
inter-war sociologist Maurice Halbwachs.13 Halbwachs’ work is particularly
appealing to the historians of political myth-making because of his insistence
on the way in which social milieux consciously elaborate a past which corre-
sponds to changing ideological parameters or new political contexts.14
Far from being a method pursued only by authoritarian regimes or dictator-
ships, the deployment of the past to further a more current political agenda is
also a phenomenon of pluralistic societies.15 Whereas in authoritarian societies
the state tends to dictate an official reading of the past, pluralistic societies usu-
ally witness a competition between various interpretations of history for uni-
versal acceptance. Very few movements (regardless of their ideological origin)
have ever failed to attempt a justification of their aims through often contested
historical traditions. The closer a political movement or social milieu comes to
establishing its own view of the past as universal, the closer it gets to the state of
cultural hegemony. In other words, power lies with those who have mastered
the past.16

11
See Edgar Wolfrum, ‘Geschichte als Politikum—Geschichtspolitik: Internationale Forschungen zum
19. und 20. Jahrhundert’, Neue Politische Literatur, XLI (1996), 376–401. See, too, Petra Bock and Edgar
Wolfrum (eds.), Umkämpfte Vergangenheit: Geschichtsbilder, Erinnerung und Vergangenheitspolitik im inter-
nationalen Vergleich (Göttingen, 1999). Finally, Klaus Schönhoven, Geschichtspolitik: über den öffentlichen
Umgang mit Geschichte und Erinnerung (Bonn, 2003).
12
See Bo Strath, ‘Introduction: Myth, Memory and History in the Construction of Community’,
in id. (ed.), Myth and Memory in the Construction of Community: Historical Patterns in Europe and Beyond
(Brussels, 2000), 33, and Patrick H. Hutton, History as an Art of Memory (Hanover and London, 1993), 6.
See also the voluminous work on commemorative practices presented by Pierre Nora et al. (eds.), Les Lieux
de mémoire, 3 vols. (Paris, 1984–92). Similar works have recently been published for Italy, Germany,
the Netherlands, Denmark, and Austria.
13
Maurice Halbwachs, Les Cadres sociaux de la mémoire (Paris, 1925) and id., La Mémoire collective (Paris,
1950). Although the term ‘collective memory’ has been criticized in recent years because it applies the
psychological term ‘memory’ to larger social entities, it is still widely used. For a critical assessment of the
‘collective memory’ concept see, for example, Dirk Reinhardt, ‘ “Kollektive Erinnerung” und “kollektives
Gedächtnis”: Zur Frage der übertragbarkeit individualpsychologischer Begriffe auf gesellschaftliche
Phänomene’, in Clemens Wischermann (ed.), Die Legitimität der Erinnerung und die Geschichtswissenschaft
(Stuttgart, 1996), 87–100.
14
Jan Assmann, Kultur und Gedächtnis (Frankfurt, 1988); Aleida Assmann, Erinnerungsräume: Formen
und Wandlungen des kulturellen Gedächtnisses (Munich, 1999); Henry Rousso, Vichy, un passé qui ne passe pas
(Paris, 1996); Robert Gildea, The Past in French History (New Haven and London, 1994).
15
Edgar Wolfrum, Geschichte als Waffe: Vom Kaiserreich bis zur Wiedervereinigung (Göttingen, 2001), 5–7.
16
Jacques Le Goff, Histoire et mémoire (Paris, 1985), 109; Winkler (ed.), Griff nach der Deutungsmacht, 7.
6 Introduction
In those cases where a certain interpretation of the past transcends historical
reality and becomes part of popular culture, it enters the realm of myth. Myths
are popular semiotic narratives, usually based on true historical events or
persons, which serve the purpose of fostering the self-awareness and integra-
tion of a community.17 Through mythical narratives political abstractions
and complex historical realities can be simplified and—for example in the case
of the Bismarck myth—personalized. The creation of hero figures in particular
has been a dominant feature of myth-making since ancient times, and it
became even more important with the emergence of the modern nation-state
and the related quest for suitable historical traditions on which a national com-
munity’s identity could be founded.18 In the nineteenth century, when nation-
alism emerged as the secular religion of modernity, the enthusiastic search for
mythical hero figures became a universal phenomenon.19
As early as 1840, Thomas Carlyle emphasized in his lectures on ‘heroes, hero
worship and the heroic in history’, that hero worship is the strongest and most
reliable means for stabilizing a political and social order.20 The theologian
and sociologist Ernest Renan equally maintained the importance of hero
worship for the unity of a nation in his famous 1882 address to the Sorbonne
University: ‘a heroic past, great men, fame . . . that is the social capital on
which the idea of a nation is founded.’21
While political myths are indispensable for the creation of a national ident-
ity, they are equally important for building and sustaining allegiance and
successful political mobilization within a community.22 In this respect, politi-
cal myths do not necessarily need to have an integrating effect. Particularly in
socially and ideologically fragmented societies they can become a mobilizing
factor in a politically destabilizing sense. The political culture of Weimar Ger-
many with its lack of consensus is a particularly fruitful example of how rival

17
On this definition see Andreas Dörner, Politischer Mythos und symbolische Politik: Der Hermannmythos:
Zur Entstehung des Nationalbewußtseins der Deutschen (Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1996), 43.
18
See, for example, Sebastian P. Garman, ‘Foundation Myths and Political Identities: Ancient Rome and
Anglo-Saxon England Compared’, Ph.D. thesis (London School of Economics, 1994). Also, Alexander
Demandt, Geschichte als Argument: Drei Formen politischen Zukunftsdenkens im Altertum (Konstanz, 1972).
See, too, Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Mass-Producing Traditions: Europe 1870–1914’, in id. and Terence Ranger (eds.):
The Invention of Tradition, 2nd edn. (Cambridge, 1996), 263–307; Benedict Anderson, Imagined Com-
munities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 2nd rev. edn. (London and New York, 1991).
19
On the blossoming of political myths in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe, see Monika Flacke
(ed.), Mythen der Nationen (Berlin, 1998).
20
Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (London, 1841). The German
translation of Carlyle’s book was published in three editions between 1846 and 1898.
21
Ernest Renan, ‘Das Plebiszit der Vergeßlichen: über Nationen und den Dämon des Nationalismus—
Ein Vortrag aus dem Jahre 1882’, reprinted in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 27 Mar. 1993.
22
Strath (ed.), Myth and Memory, 19–48.
 Introduction 7
groups constructed myths and challenged each other’s interpretations
of the past with the aim of either undermining or defending the credibility
of the newly founded Republic. Apart from the Bismarck myth four other
legends featured prominently in Weimar’s civil war of memories: the glorified
experience of the trenches as the birth of the Volksgemeinschaft, the ‘stab-in-
the-back’ legend of the Weimar right (which, as will be pointed out, was
closely intertwined with the Bismarck myth), the democrats’ interpretation
of the Weimar Republic as an implementation of the ideals of 1848, and the
Communist myth of the Majority Social Democrats’ ‘betrayal’ of the prole-
tarian revolution in the winter of 1918–19.
Whereas most of the myths related to the First World War have been the
object of scholarly investigations, the same cannot be said about the Bismarck
myth after 1918.23 Most studies on the subject have focused on the years before
the Weimar Republic came into being.24 All of these studies have emphasized
the Bismarck myth as an essential part of the political culture of Wilhelmine
Germany. They have established that by the turn of the century (at the very
latest) the politically and personally disputed Bismarck had been replaced
in the public debate by a heroic cult figure which embodied the value system
and political ambitions of the nationalist-minded German bourgeoisie.
Politicians, historians, theologians, teachers, writers, journalists, and artists
alike took part in this process, which found its most clearly visible expression

23
On the ‘stab-in-the-back’ legend, see in particular Friedrich Freiherr von Gärtringen, ‘ “Dolchstoß”—
Diskussion und “Dolchstoßlegende” im Wandel von vier Jahrzehnten’, in id. and Waldemar Besson (eds.),
Geschichte und Geschichtsbewußtsein (Göttingen, 1963), 122–60. See also Anneliese Thimme, Flucht in den
Mythos: Die Deutschnationale Volkspartei und die Niederlage von 1918 (Göttingen, 1969), 68 ff. On the closely
related question of war guilt, see Ulrich Heinemann, Die verdrängte Niederlage: Politische öffentlichkeit
und Kriegsschuldfrage in der Weimarer Republik (Göttingen, 1983). Also Jeffrey Verhey, The Spirit of 1914:
Militarism, Myth, and Mobilization in Germany (Cambridge, 2000). On the Communist myth of 1918–19
and its protagonists, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, see Gilbert Badia, ‘Rosa Luxemburg’, in Etienne
François and Hagen Schulze (eds.), Deutsche Erinnerungsorte, vol. II (Munich, 2001), 105–21 as well as
Manfred Scharrer, ‘Freiheit ist immer . . .’: Die Legende von Rosa & Karl (Berlin, 2002).
24
See, in particular, Lothar Machtan (ed.), Bismarck und der deutsche National-Mythos (Bremen, 1994);
Thomas Hagemann, Das Bismarck-Bild in der deutschen öffentlichkeit nach 1890: Mythen-Strukturen, Inhalte,
Ausdrucksformen des Bismarck-Kultes und das Beispiel der Verehrerpost aus den Beständen des Archivs der
Otto-von-Bismarck-Stiftung in Friedrichsruh, state exam thesis (University of Paderborn, 1999); Christoph
Studt, Das Bismarckbild in der deutschen öffentlichkeit (Friedrichsruh, 1999); Leonore Koschnik, ‘Mythos
zu Lebzeiten—Bismarck als nationale Kultfigur’, in Bismarck—Preussen, Deutschland und Europa: Eine
Ausstellung des Deutschen Historischen Museums Berlin, 26. August–25. November 1990, 3rd edn. (Berlin, 1990),
255–482. See also Hans-Günter Zmarzlik, Das Bismarckbild der Deutschen—gestern und heute (Freiburg im
Breisgau, 1965), 19; Peter-Arndt Gröppel and Karsten Weber, Heldenverehrung als politische Gefahr: Der
Bismarck-Kult des deutschen Bürgertums im 2. Reich (Grünwald, 1973). Finally, Hans-Walter Hedinger, ‘Der
Bismarckkult: Ein Umriß’, in Gunter Stephenson (ed.), Der Religionswandel in unserer Zeit im Spiegel der
Religionswissenschaften (Darmstadt, 1976), 201–15. Most recently, Jakob Hort, Bismarck in München: Formen
und Funktionen der Bismarckrezeption (1885–1934) (Frankfurt, 2004).
8 Introduction
in numerous memorials, postcards, trivial literature, and all sorts of everyday
kitsch.25
Lothar Machtan, who has edited the most comprehensive collection of
essays on the subject to date, has shown that the transformation of Bismarck
into the ‘German national myth’ or deutscher Nationalmythos was the concrete
response of large parts of the German middle classes to the evident need for
national integration.26 In this respect, the myth defined both what being
German was supposed to mean and what was to be condemned as ‘un-
German’. Consequently, as Machtan and the American historian Michael
McGuire have both emphasized, the Bismarck myth was also used as a weapon
against those perceived as ‘internal enemies of the Empire’.27 That the
Bismarck myth had both an integrating and a disintegrating effect was only
possible because the narrative was not specifically tied to one concrete
interpretation. Bismarck became a mythical projection screen, a label for very
different, sometimes even opposite, qualities and attributes.28 Politically
motivated references to the Bismarckian Era (and the way in which it was
referred to) were modified constantly to meet changing practical needs.
My own study is deeply indebted to research which has already been under-
taken on the Bismarck myth. None the less, there has as yet been no study
which takes as its general theme the ideological struggle for a universal inter-
pretation of the Reich’s founding father between the parallel political cultures
in the years after 1918.29 The immense importance of this narrative for Weimar
Germany’s political culture and its presence in almost every key political debate
between 1918 and 1933 has never been investigated systematically.
This book thus differs from the many studies which have preceded it in its
contextual emphasis. The history of the creation and transformation of the
Bismarck narrative into Germany’s ‘national myth’ before 1918 will not consti-
tute its main subject. Instead this study will highlight the myth’s function as a

25
Hans-Walter Hedinger, ‘Bismarck-Denkmäler und Bismarck-Verehrung’, in Ekkehard Mai and
Stephan Waetzold (eds.), Kunstverwaltung, Bau- und Denkmalpolitik im Kaiserreich (Berlin, 1981), 277–314.
See also Hermann Reuter, Bismarck: Spuren und Wirkungen: die Bismarcks in der Altmark, das Phänomen der
Bismarck-Türme und -Denkmäler, Bismarck’sche Kultur- und Wirkungsgeschichte (Lingen, 1996).
26
Machtan (ed.), National-Mythos, 17.
27
Michael C. Q. McGuire, ‘Bismarck in Walhalla: The Cult of Bismarck and the Politics of National
Identity in Imperial Germany 1890–1915’, Ph.D. thesis (University of Pennsylvania, 1993).
28
Rolf Parr, ‘Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! In meiner Brust!’ Strukturen und Funktionen der Mythisierung
Bismarcks 1860–1918 (Munich, 1992), 118 ff.
29
The only exception in that respect was a study on Bismarck’s perception in the Weimar Republic which
was started by Erich Wittenberg in 1969. However, only the first (methodological) volume out of three was
ever published. See Erich Wittenberg, Bismarcks politische Persönlichkeit im Bilde der Weimar-Republik: Eine
ideengeschichtliche Beleuchtung einer politischen Tradition (Lund, 1969).
 Introduction 9
weapon against the state of Weimar and its destructive influence on the
political culture of the first German democracy.
In order to evaluate the impact of the Bismarck myth on Weimar Germany’s
political culture this study is based on a wide range of sources. The ideologic-
ally motivated and competing images of Bismarck in circulation during the
Weimar Era were first examined through the eyes of major German daily news-
papers and periodicals, which have been selected here according to their
political or religious affiliation, their circulation, and the amount of relevant
information they contain with respect to the perception and instrumentaliza-
tion of Bismarck.30 Newspapers have the capacity simultaneously to mould
and reflect public opinion. Hence, newspaper reports can offer clues both on
the ways in which opinion-makers portrayed Bismarck, and the manner in
which he was perceived by the paper’s respective readership.
Of the numerous publications chosen for this analysis, the following were
pre-eminent in the period: for the Social Democrats it was the Vorwärts, which
disseminated the party headquarters’ political and historical views. In its
influence on the moderately socialist, predominantly working-class and trade
unionist milieu Vorwärts can be compared with the Communist Rote Fahne
which served the same purpose for the more radicalized workers.
With respect to the left-liberal press, Theodor Wolff ’s Berliner Tageblatt has
been selected because it maintained close contacts with the German Democra-
tic Party, the DDP. Despite their comparatively small circulation, two liberal
periodicals, Weltbühne and Hilfe, deserve consideration for their in-depth
analysis of the Bismarck myth between 1918 and 1933. Moderately nationalist
views on Bismarck were put forward in Gustav Stresemann’s Deutsche Stimmen
and in Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, a daily which was acquired by Hugo
Stinnes in 1920 and which circulated within the powerful industrial elite.
Official views of the Centre Party’s political leadership were often mirrored
in Germania, a newspaper which was published in Berlin but distributed
nationwide. Due to the regional differences within the Catholic milieu, two
other Catholic dailies, Kölnische Volkszeitung and Regensburger Anzeiger, have
been considered in this analysis. In addition, the commentaries of two Catholic
periodicals, Hochland and Historisch-Politische Blätter für das katholische
Deutschland (from 1923 onwards published as Gelbe Hefte), have been analysed.
As the confrontation of the post-war political system with the overwhelm-
ing mythical figure of Bismarck was a major preoccupation of Weimar
30
For further details on the newspapers mentioned below, see Kurt Koszyk, Deutsche Presse im 19. und 20.
Jahrhundert: Geschichte der Presse Teil II (Berlin, 1966), 127–30. With respect to the periodicals, see Heinz-
Dietrich Fischer (ed.), Deutsche Zeitschriften des 17. bis 20. Jahrhunderts (Pullach, 1973).
10 Introduction
Germany’s right-wing intellectual and journalistic engagement, the explicitly
anti-democratic press was the object of an even more detailed investigation.
Among the numerous conservative publications, Deutsche Tageszeitung seemed
to be particularly important because it was the main information source for the
influential agrarian, Protestant milieu of East Elbia. Additionally, Deutsches
Echo, a publication of the youth organization of the German National People’s
Party—the Bismarck Youth—has been chosen for its extensive references to
Bismarck. For the investigation of Bismarck’s role in the election campaigns of
1924–5 it was also necessary to look at the Korrespondenz der Deutschnationalen
Volkspartei. Taking into consideration the anti-Semitic far-right organizations
and parties, time and space has been devoted to Alldeutsche Blätter and to the
National Socialists’ Völkischer Beobachter.
The numerous speeches delivered on the occasion of Bismarck’s birthday
and the day of German unification by prominent historians and right-wing
politicians constitute a second group of relevant sources. This reading was sup-
plemented by an investigation of the edited files of the German Chancellory
(1918–33) and the bound volumes of the shorthand reports on the Reichstag
debates during the Weimar Era. The third important group of sources are the
archival party records and the private papers of leading national-liberal or
nationalist politicians such as Gustav Stresemann, Alfred Hugenberg, and
Kuno Count Westarp.
The Bismarck myth did not, however, manifest itself only in newspaper arti-
cles or political speeches. Rather, it was characterized by a great variety of
forms. Besides its dissemination by election slogans, journalistic opinion
columns, and school textbooks, the myth found expression in memorials,
political posters, the two Bismarck films of the mid-1920s, and various kinds of
Bismarck memorabilia. These memorabilia, ranging from Bismarck postcards
to Bismarck busts, testify to the ubiquity of the myth in the domestic sphere,
and can thus serve to explain its endurance and omnipresence in people’s every-
day lives.
The large variety of sources used for this analysis allows this study to suggest
that no one who went to a German school, read the newspapers, or took an
interest in Germany’s political life between 1918 and 1933 could have avoided
confrontation with the Bismarck myth at some stage of his or her life.
 2
Prologue: The Bismarck Myth in Wilhelmine
Germany (1890–1918)

Bismarck’s dismissal and the origins of his mystification

When, on 20 March 1890, Prince Otto von Bismarck was dismissed as Chan-
cellor of the German Reich and Minister President of Prussia, the German
public reacted with surprising indifference to the end of his almost fifty-year-
long career.1 To be sure, Bismarck’s departure from Berlin on 29 March was
accompanied by cheering crowds; but neither the Prussian parliament nor the
Reichstag voiced any immediate response to the dismissal of one of the most
pre-eminent figures in nineteenth-century European politics.2 The daily news-
papers, which at first uncritically reported the rumour leaked from govern-
ment circles that Bismarck’s request to resign had been accepted on grounds of
his ill-health, did not express any grief over the Chancellor’s dismissal either.
Besides the overall lack of interest there was even a certain degree of jubilation
and relief: ‘It is good fortune that we finally got rid of him’, wrote Theodor
Fontane to his friend Georg Friedländer. During his last years in office,
Bismarck ‘was really only a regent of long habit, who did what he wanted,
made everybody wait, and demanded only ever-increasing loyalty’.3
Considering these immediate reactions to Bismarck’s fall and bearing in
mind that he had never enjoyed undisputed personal popularity while in office,

1
John C. G. Röhl, Wilhelm II: Der Aufbau der Persönlichen Monarchie 1888–1900 (Munich, 2001), 351.
2
For a detailed account of the part played by Bismarck in German unification as well as for further details
on his role in late nineteenth-century German politics see, for example, Wolfgang J. Mommsen, Das Ringen
um den nationalen Staat: Die Gründung und der innere Ausbau des Deutschen Reiches unter Otto von Bismarck
1850–1890 (Berlin, 1993). With respect to the European dimension of the German unification, see Eberhard
Kolb (ed.), Europa und die Reichsgründung: Preußen-Deutschland in der Sicht der großen europäischen Mächte
1860–1880 (Munich, 1980). See also the biographical studies on Bismarck by Otto Pflanze, Bismarck and the
Development of Germany, 3 vols., 2nd edn. (Princeton, 1990). Finally, Lothar Gall, Bismarck: The White Revo-
lutionary, translated from the German by J. A. Underwood, 2 vols. (London, 1986).
3
Theodor Fontane to Georg Friedländer, 1 May 1890, in Theodor Fontane, Briefe an Georg Friedländer,
ed. Kurt Schreinert (Heidelberg, 1954), 125. On the context, see Hans-Jürgen Perry, ‘Nirgends ist ihm ganz zu
trauen’: Bismarck im Urteil Theodor Fontanes (Friedrichsruh, 2002). See also Karl Lange, Bismarcks Sturz und
die öffentliche Meinung in Deutschland und im Auslande (Berlin and Leipzig, 1927).
12 The Bismarck Myth in Wilhelmine Germany
it seems surprising, as Otto Pflanze has pointed out, that within only a couple
of years of his dismissal Otto von Bismarck was to become the most popular
German statesman of all time.4
One decisive factor contributing to the positive transformation of
Bismarck’s public image was the reversal of policy instigated by his successor,
Leo von Caprivi. The new Chancellor’s conciliatory policy towards the Centre
and the Progressive Party was regarded with dismay by Conservatives and
National Liberals alike.5 For the Conservatives, the new Chancellor’s attempt
to promote the export of industrial goods by dismantling customs barriers in
1893 also aroused their fiercest protest. Controversy over the ‘New Course’
became all the more heated when Caprivi extended his policy to agrarian
countries like Romania and Russia. In reaction, the spring of 1893 saw the
foundation of the Agrarian League or Bund der Landwirte which rapidly
expanded its membership and influence.6
In the course of their political campaign against Caprivi, the Agrarian
League consciously suppressed the memory of Bismarck as the ‘man who in the
1860s and 1870s had helped to lay the foundations for the industrialisation of
Central Europe and the rise of the industrial economy and industrial society’.7
Instead, the League focused on the ‘common-sense’ trade principles embodied
in Bismarck’s policies after his protectionist shift of policy in 1878–9. The vocif-
erous protests of the League’s members placed Caprivi and Karl Göring, who
had been appointed as state secretary of the Imperial Chancellory in 1891,
under constant pressure.8

4
Otto Pflanze, Bismarck, vol. 3: The Period of Fortification 1880–1898 (Princeton, 1990), 444.
5
John C. G. Röhl, Germany without Bismarck: The Crisis of Government in the Second Reich 1890–1900
(London, 1967), 110.
6
See George Vascik, ‘Agrarian Conservatism in Wilhelmine Germany: Diederich Hahn and the Agrari-
an League’, in Larry Eugene Jones and James Retallack (eds.), Between Reform, Reaction, and Resistance: Stud-
ies in the History of German Conservatism from 1789 to 1945 (Providence, RI, and Oxford, 1993), 229–60. See
also Hans-Jürgen Puhle, Agrarische Interessenpolitik und preußischer Konservatismus im wilhelminischen Reich
1893–1914: Ein Beitrag zur Analyse des Nationalismus in Deutschland am Beispiel des Bundes der Landwirte und
der Deutsch-Konservativen Partei (Hanover, 1966). Finally, James N. Retallack, Notables of the Right: The Con-
servative Party and Political Mobilization in Germany 1876–1918 (Boston, 1988), 100 ff.
7
Lothar Gall, ‘Die Deutschen und Bismarck’, in Ralpf Melville et al. (eds.), Deutschland und Europa in
der Neuzeit: Festschrift für Karl Otmar von Arentin zum 65. Geburtstag, 2 vols. (Stuttgart, 1988), 2. 525–36, here
p. 528.
8
Puhle, Agrarische Interessenpolitik, 87–8. The Pan-German League, too, joined in with Bismarck’s glori-
fication immediately after its foundation in 1890. See Roger Chickering, ‘We men who feel most German’: A
Cultural Study of the Pan-German League 1886–1914 (Boston, London, and Sydney, 1984), 94–7. See, too,
Roland Freisel, ‘Das Bismarckbild der Alldeutschen: Bismarck im Bewußtsein und in der Politik des
Alldeutschen Verbandes von 1890 bis 1933: Ein Beitrag zum Bismarckverständnis des deutschen Nationalis-
mus’, Ph.D. thesis (University of Würzburg, 1964), 69 ff. Finally, Richard Frankel, ‘From the Beer Halls to
the Halls of Power: The Cult of Bismarck and the Legitimization of a New German Right’, German Studies
Review, XXVI (2003), 543–60.
 The Bismarck Myth in Wilhelmine Germany 13
The allegedly obligatory political tradition represented by the Reich’s
founder was not only used against Caprivi and his government. In fact criti-
cism articulated with reference to Bismarck was directed mainly against Kaiser
Wilhelm II himself.9 An analysis of the countless letters which Bismarck
received in Friedrichsruh after his dismissal revealed an unambiguous link
between the hero worship of Bismarck and a critical attitude towards Wilhelm’s
‘personal regime’.10 It was for two reasons that Bismarck became the spearhead
of conservative opposition to the Kaiser in the years after 1890. First,
Bismarck’s rhetorical skill allowed him to forcefully articulate the fears for the
future held by many of the Kaiser’s conservative or national-liberal opponents.
Secondly, a demonstrative admiration for Bismarck left no doubt about that
person’s patriotism. Whoever spoke in Bismarck’s name could hardly be
suspected of an ‘anti-national’ political attitude, however fiercely he attacked
the Kaiser and the government.11
The Kaiser himself gave an unwitting boost to the glorification of Bismarck
when, in the summer of 1892, Wilhelm wrote a letter to Emperor Franz Joseph
of Austria persuading him not to invite Bismarck to an audience while he was
attending his son Herbert’s wedding in Vienna. Subsequently, in July, Caprivi
published a decree in the Reichsanzeiger which barred officials from having any
contact with the ex-Chancellor during his journey. The resulting storm of pub-
lic outrage focused on the injustice which Bismarck had suffered in spite of his
pre-eminent role in the foundation of the German Empire.12
Various political interests and discontent with Wilhelm’s ‘personal regime’
thus contributed to the retrospective idealization of the first Reich Chancellor
by the conservative and national-liberal elites of Wilhelmine Germany. Set
against the contemporary political world, and as his retirement from office
retreated increasingly into the distance, Bismarck’s ‘genius seemed to be all the
more apparent, his dismissal all the more tragic, the void he left behind even
more gaping’.13

9
On this see McGuire, Bismarck in Walhalla, 32–40.
10
See Werner Pöls, ‘Bismarckverehrung und Bismarcklegende als innenpolitisches Problem der Wil-
helminischen Zeit’, Jahrbuch für die Geschichte Mittel- und Ostdeutschlands, XX (1971), 183–201, here pp. 193
ff., as well as Manfred Hank, Kanzler ohne Amt: Fürst Bismarck nach seiner Entlassung 1890–1898 (Munich,
1980), 285. See, too, Heinrich Class, Wider den Strom: Vom Werden und Wachsen der nationalen Opposition im
alten Reich (Leipzig, 1932).
11
Pöls, ‘Bismarckverehrung’, 193 ff.
12
Hank, Kanzler ohne Amt, 217–52. On Bismarck’s subsequent journey through Germany, which turned
into a mass demonstration of sympathy for the old Chancellor, see Otto Gradenwitz (ed.), Akten über
Bismarcks großdeutsche Reise vom Jahre 1892 (Heidelberg, 1921).
13
Pflanze, Bismarck, 3. 445. For similar contemporary statements, see, for example, Max Bewer, Rem-
brandt und Bismarck, 10th edn. (Dresden, 1892), 38.
14 The Bismarck Myth in Wilhelmine Germany
One of the most significant manifestations of the gradual change in public
perception of the Iron Chancellor were the celebrations in honour of
Bismarck’s eightieth birthday in April 1895.14 Representatives of countless
professional groups and delegations from all parts of Germany gathered
in Friedrichsruh to pay their respects to the retired founder of the Reich.
Bismarck was granted honorary citizenship by over 450 German cities, and the
post office in Friedrichsruh was obliged to take on 23 extra workers to cope with
the flood of 9,875 telegrams, and 450,000 letters and postcards which poured
in between 25 March and 2 April 1895.15 There was no mistaking the tenor of
these congratulatory messages: addressed to the ‘Iron Chancellor’, the ‘most
German of all Germans’, or the ‘Guardian of the Reich’, they all lauded
Bismarck’s inestimable contribution to the foundation of the Reich in 1871—
an achievement that had acquired a quasi-sacred character in the writings of
academic historians, as well as in the eyes of the upper echelons of the imperial
system.16 It was evident that large parts of the public now primarily remem-
bered Bismarck as the statesman genius and the founder of the Reich rather
than as Bismarck the Prussian Minister President or the East Elbian Junker.
As early as 1873, the largely uncritical acceptance of the myth surrounding the
unification of the nation on the part of the majority of the German public had
prompted the Basel historian Jacob Burckhardt to make the bitter comment
that soon ‘the whole of world history from the time of Adam will be portrayed
as a German victory and centred on the period 1870 to 1871’.17
The letters which Bismarck received in Friedrichsruh after his enforced res-
ignation from politics not only confirmed Burckhardt’s critical assessment, but
were unambiguous proof that the cult of Bismarck’s personality from its very
beginning reflected the social and political segmentation of German society
into socio-political milieux.18 The letters indicate that admiration for

14
For press comments on Bismarck’s 80th birthday see Schulthess’ Europäischer Geschichtskalender,
XXXVI (1895), 78–9. See, too, Hedinger, ‘Bismarck-Denkmäler und Bismarck-Verehrung’, 277–314.
15
Koschnik, ‘Mythos zu Lebzeiten’, 455–8. See, too, Pöls, ‘Bismarckverehrung’, 187. The letters are col-
lected in the archive of the Otto-von-Bismarck-Stiftung (Friedrichsruh), Sammlung A (‘Kanzler’), no.
77–192. For a contemporary assessment, see Ernst Brausewetter, Fürst Bismarcks 81: Geburtstag-Vollendung
des 80. Lebensjahres: Berichte über die Ereignisse vor und an demselben (Leipzig, 1895).
16
See Elisabeth Fehrenbach, ‘Die Reichsgründung in der deutschen Geschichtsschreibung’, in Theodor
Schieder and Ernst Deuerlein (eds.), Reichsgründung 1870/71: Tatsachen, Kontroversen, Interpretationen
(Stuttgart, 1970), 259–90. On the role of the historians in the process of Bismarck’s mystification see also
Hellmut Seier, ‘Bismarck und die Anfänge des Kaiserreiches im Urteil der deutschen Historiographie vor
1914’, in Johannes Kunisch (ed.), Bismarck und seine Zeit (Berlin, 1992), 359–95.
17
Jacob Burckhardt, Briefe, ed. Max Burckhardt, 6 vols. (Stuttgart, 1960), here 5. 182–3.
18
See Wolfgang Hardtwig, ‘Bürgertum, Staatssymbolik und Staatsbewußtsein im Deutschen Kaiserreich
1871–1914’, in id., Nationalismus und Bürgerkultur in Deutschland 1500–1914: Ausgewählte Aufsätze
(Göttingen, 1994), 191–218. On the milieu-concept see Rainer M. Lepsius, ‘Parteiensystem und Sozialstruk-
 The Bismarck Myth in Wilhelmine Germany 15
Bismarck was particularly widespread among the Protestant middle classes.
Besides officers, it was artisans, teachers, professors, students, and school-
children from Protestant-dominated areas of Germany who formed a dispro-
portionate number of his correspondents.19 Whereas the social contiguity of
the correspondents is hardly a surprise, the geographical base of the corres-
pondence is a somewhat different story: the majority of the telegrams and
letters did not stem—as might be expected—from Prussia, but rather from
southern Germany (Württemberg-Hohenzollern and the Protestant regions of
Bavaria in particular).20
Not all contemporaries, however, joined in the retrospective idealization of
the man who created the German Reich and assured it a place of respect among
the great powers of Europe. Instead, what dominated the minds of certain sec-
tors of the German public was the memory of being stigmatized as ‘unpatriot-
ic’ by Bismarck in the 1870s and 1880s. A year after the victory of the German
army over the French troops at Sedan on 2 September 1870 a solemn celebra-
tion of the anniversary of the battle had been instigated on the initiative of the
Pietist pastor Friedrich von Bodelschwingh. Despite Bismarck’s dismissal and
the repeal of the anti-socialist legislation these annual celebrations remained an
occasion for virulent attacks from nationalist circles against the ‘internal ene-
mies of the Reich’, which were taken to include any persons who refused to give
their unconditional support to the political and social order of Wilhelmine
Germany.21
The accusation of ‘hostility to the Reich’ (Reichsfeindlichkeit) was a charge
Bismarck himself had found very useful when he was in office, and he had
never tired of employing it to discredit persons who attempted to stand in the
way of his political goals.22 The victims of these confrontations, the Centre
tur: Zum Problem der Demokratisierung der deutschen Gesellschaft’, in Gerhard A. Ritter (ed.), Deutsche
Parteien vor 1918 (Cologne, 1973), 56–80.
19
Hank, Kanzler ohne Amt, 45–6. Hank has equally emphasized that women were overrepresented
among Bismarck’s correspondents whereas blue-collar workers hardly ever wrote to him (ibid.).
20
After analysing the correspondence, Werner Pöls has suggested that the ratio was 3 : 2 (Southern
Germany : Prussia). See Pöls, ‘Bismarckverehrung’, 187 n. 13. Thomas Hagemann, however, without
denying the surprisingly high number of letters from southern Germany, maintained that the majority of
correspondents were Prussians. See Hagemann, Bismarck-Bild, 118.
21
On Sedan Day and scepticism on the part of the ‘internal enemies of the Reich’ regarding the annual
celebrations on 2 September, see Peter-Christian Witt, ‘Die Gründung des Deutschen Reiches von 1871 oder
dreimal Kaiserfest’, in Uwe Schultz (ed.), Das Fest: Eine Kulturgeschichte von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart
(Munich, 1988), 306–17. See also Claudia Lepp, ‘Protestanten feiern ihre Nation: Die kulturprotestantischen
Ursprünge des Sedantages’, Historisches Jahrbuch, CXVIII (1998), 201–22. Finally, Gerhard Birk, ‘Der Tag
von Sedan: Intentionen, Resonanz und Widerstand (1871–1895)’, Jahrbuch für Volkskunde und Kul-
turgeschichte, XXV (1982), 95–110. From 1896 onwards the day of the Imperial Proclamation (18 January) was
celebrated in addition to Sedan Day. See Zmarzlik, Bismarckbild, 13.
22
For the Social Democrats see, in particular, Dieter Groh and Peter Brandt, ‘Vaterlandslose Gesellen’:
16 The Bismarck Myth in Wilhelmine Germany
Party during the 1870s and the Left Liberals and Social Democrats during the
late 1870s and 1880s in particular, would not forget Bismarck’s continued
attacks against them even after his retirement from politics. On the occasion of
Bismarck’s eightieth birthday on 1 April 1895, for example, the Social Democ-
ratic press expressed its uncompromising criticism of Bismarck, who was
accused of being guilty of three wars, and was attacked as a fierce reactionary, as
well as an enemy of the working classes.23 A few weeks earlier Vorwärts had
already taken the fact that the Berlin butchers’ guild wished to elect Bismarck
an honorary member as an opportunity for bitter mockery: ‘Hopefully the old
spokesman of the policy of Blood and Iron will accept this flattering and appro-
priate honorary membership . . . ’.24
Another occasion, however, attracted far more public attention than the
honorary membership of the butchers’ guild. On 14 March 1895 the Berlin city
council refused to congratulate Bismarck officially on his eightieth birthday.25
Little more than a week later, on 23 March 1895, the Reichstag followed Berlin’s
example.26 The nationalist press was outraged by this ‘alliance of the ungrate-
ful’, as the Progressive Party, the Centre, and the Social Democrats were
labelled.27
The events around Bismarck’s birthday in 1895 revealed the fundamental
differences in the perception of Bismarck even after his dismissal. They could
not, however, conceal the fact that the process of transforming Bismarck into a
stylized hero-figure was gaining ground. From the mid-1890s onwards, con-
crete steps were taken to ensure that Bismarck’s controversial internal policies
were banished from the collective memory. In this process elementary and sec-
ondary schools were to play a central role. Generations of young people were
fed an ideologically distorted image of Bismarck, which teachers had little dif-

Sozialdemokratie und Nation 1860–1990 (Munich, 1992), 23–5. For Bismarck’s constant attacks on
Windthorst and the Centre Party see Margaret L. Anderson, Windthorst: A Political Biography (Oxford,
1981), 153 ff. See too Bismarck’s famous speech of 10 February 1872 as printed in Preußisches Abgeordneten-
haus (PAH), Stenographische Berichte, 2. 721–3.
23
See Vorwärts, 24 Mar. 1895. See, too, Paul Singer’s Reichstag speech on behalf of the SPD delegation in
RT, 23 Mar. 1895, vol. 139, 1673. See, too, Jens Müller-Koppe, ‘Die deutsche Sozialdemokratie und der
Bismarck-Mythos’, in Machtan (ed.), National-Mythos, 181–207.
24
Vorwärts, 8 Mar. 1895.
25
On this see Siegfried A. Kaehler, ‘Der 1. April 1895 und sein zeitgeschichtlicher Hintergrund’,
Nachrichten von der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen: Philologisch-Historische Klasse, III (1948),
30–41.
26
The proposal to convey official birthday wishes from the Reichstag to Bismarck was rejected by the fac-
tions of the Centre Party, the Progressive Party, the SPD, and the minority parties (Poles and Alsatians). See
RT, 23 Mar. 1872, vol. 139, 1671–6.
27
See, for example, Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 25 Mar. 1895. Equally, National-Zeitung, 24 and 26
Mar. 1895.
 The Bismarck Myth in Wilhelmine Germany 17
ficulty imposing on their intellectually unsophisticated charges. In a statement
of the Royal Prussian Ministry of Education and Ecclesiastical Affairs, the
headmaster of a Berlin grammar school, Konrad Rethwisch, voiced the opin-
ion that Bismarck’s role in German history needed to be more strongly empha-
sized in the school curriculum, since he was the embodiment of ‘what we are
called to live up to’.28 Otto Lyon, headmaster of a Realgymnasium in Dresden,
shared this view. In 1896, in the Zeitschrift für den deutschen Unterricht, a peri-
odical held in high regard by schoolteachers, he recommended Bismarck’s writ-
ings and speeches as compulsory reading material for every school, describing
him as ‘the German people’s most German son’ and the ‘incarnation of the
German character and the German spirit’.29 These plans to make the cult of
Bismarck a regular component of the school curriculum were soon put into
practice.30 While Bismarck personally exerted no direct influence on this par-
ticular development, he nevertheless devoted considerable time and effort to
cultivating his own historical image in the period following his enforced retire-
ment from politics. Amongst such efforts were his continuous attacks on the
policies of his successors and his repeated attempts to defend his own political
decisions through a number of periodicals and newspapers, among which
Maximilian Harden’s Zukunft, Hugo Jacobi’s Münchener Allgemeine Zeitung,
and Karl von Hofmann’s Hamburger Nachrichten were pre-eminent.31
Another of Bismarck’s attempts to shape his own historical image were his
memoirs, Gedanken und Erinnerungen or Thoughts and Reminiscences, which
he commenced in late 1890.32 What emerged was a self-glorifying portrait of a
politician who had managed to unify the nation in the face of enormous obsta-
cles. Yet this statesman had been ungraciously dismissed without explanation,
being the victim of conspiracies by men who were not competent enough to
lead the Reich in a time of national peril.33

28
Quoted in Wulf Wülfing, Karin Bruns, and Rolf Parr, Historische Mythologie der Deutschen 1798–1918
(Munich, 1991), 163.
29
Ibid. 156.
30
Rudolf Schridde, Zum Bismarckbild im Geschichtsunterricht: Eine historisch-didaktische Analyse
deutscher Geschichtsbücher (Düsseldorf, 1974), 14–15.
31
See Rudolf Stöber, ‘Bismarcks geheime Presseorganisation’, HZ CCLXII (1996), 423–51. The articles
which Bismarck is said to have inspired or written himself between his dismissal and his death were published
in two different collections: Johannes Penzler (ed.), Fürst Bismarck nach seiner Entlassung, 7 vols. (Leipzig,
1897–8), and Hermann Hofmann (ed.), Fürst Bismarck 1890–1898, 2 vols. (Stuttgart, 1918).
32
Otto von Bismarck, Gedanken und Erinnerungen, 3 vols. (Berlin and Stuttgart, 1898–1919). The first
two volumes of Gedanken and Erinnerungen were released in 1898. Volume 3, however, which dealt with
Bismarck’s dismissal and his relationship with Wilhelm II, was only published after the Great War.
33
For a critical analysis of the memoirs see Otto Pflanze, ‘Bismarck’s “Gedanken und Erinnerungen” ’, in
George Egerton (ed.), Political Memoir: Essays on the Politics of Memoir (London, 1994), 28–61.
18 The Bismarck Myth in Wilhelmine Germany
Bismarck did not see the publication of the first two volumes of Thoughts
and Reminiscences in 1898, since he had insisted that they should only be
released posthumously. His memoirs were to be his political testament, a cal-
culated move to bind future German decision-makers to his own political
ideals. In this respect, Thoughts and Reminiscences were astonishingly success-
ful. Bismarck’s memoirs were the best-selling German books prior to Hitler’s
Mein Kampf, and they contributed significantly to the process which would
start immediately after his death: the transformation of Bismarck into the
German ‘national myth’.

The German ‘national myth’

When Otto von Bismarck died on 30 July 1898, the commemorative articles
and obituaries which appeared in German newspapers between the end of July
and the middle of August 1898 left no room for doubt that Bismarck’s death dis-
solved all remaining boundaries between the historical figure and the stylized
myth.34 Moreover, the passing of the Iron Chancellor provided the Kaiser with
the opportunity to use the myth for his own ends.
The relationship between Otto von Bismarck and Wilhelm II had been far
from good ever since the crisis which led to Bismarck’s dismissal in 1890. In
view of Bismarck’s growing popularity, it was feared in governmental circles
that Bismarck could ‘take millions of hearts with him into his grave’ if the
Kaiser did not come to terms with Bismarck.35 Their seemingly amicable meet-
ing in Berlin in January 1894 brought no lasting reconciliation. In March 1895
Bismarck revealed to the press the existence of the 1887 Reinsurance Treaty
between Germany and Russia, and its non-renewal after his dismissal.36 The
Kaiser was furious, threatened to imprison the ‘evil old man’ in the fortress of
Spandau, and refused to send Bismarck birthday greetings on 1 April 1897.37
None the less, when Bismarck eventually died in 1898, Wilhelm did everything
in his power to exploit Bismarck’s death politically. He immediately gave orders
for a state funeral in the Berlin Cathedral, but the offer was declined by the

34
See, for example, the caricature ‘Des Helden Heimfahrt’, in Kladderadatsch, 7 Aug. 1898.
35
Knesebeck to Eulenburg on 9 December 1893, as quoted in Lothar Machtan, Bismarcks Tod und
Deutschlands Tränen: Reportage einer Tragödie (Munich, 1998), 89.
36
In reaction to the non-renewal of the Reinsurance Treaty, Kladderadatsch printed a caricature in which
Bismarck appeared as Wotan, overshadowing Caprivi who fails to uphold good bilateral relations between
Germany and Russia. See Bismarck-Album des Kladderadatsch, 1849–1898 (Berlin, 1898), 190.
37
Röhl, Wilhelm II, 961. See, too, Christopher M. Clark, Kaiser Wilhelm II (Harlow, 2000), 59.
 The Bismarck Myth in Wilhelmine Germany 19
Bismarck family with reference to the last will of the deceased, who wanted to
be buried in Friedrichsruh.38
It was only after Bismarck’s death in July 1898 that the memory of the dis-
agreements between Wilhelm II and Bismarck started to fade. The death of the
Iron Chancellor opened the way for the incorporation of the Bismarck myth
into the official rhetoric. The Deutscher Reichs- und Preußischer Staatsanzeiger,
for example, immediately declared that ‘the fatherland has lost its greatest son’.
Yet only his mortal frame had passed away since the name Bismarck would
remain ‘a symbol and a prophecy for all time’.39
Bismarck’s death had a similar effect on some of the ‘internal enemies of the
Empire’. Only three years after the Centre Party’s faction in the Reichstag had
voted against a goodwill address on Bismarck’s eightieth birthday in 1895, the
Centre MP Peter Spahn represented the Reichstag at the memorial service in
Friedrichsruh. Three weeks later, a leading Centre politician, Adolf Gröber,
explicitly honoured Bismarck as a ‘great statesman’ at the 1898 Katholikentag in
the city of Krefeld.40
While the Centre increasingly ‘normalized’ its attitude towards Bismarck,
the obituary of the Social Democratic Hamburger Echo renewed its criticism of
the Iron Chancellor. Under the headline Mortuum flagellare (castigation of the
dead) the paper refused to acknowledge any positive aspect of Bismarck’s work.
Bismarck, the Hamburger Echo claimed, had always had Prussia’s best interests
at heart, but never those of Germany. Bismarck’s only concern had been ‘to
secure Prussia’s overriding importance and leading position within and over
Germany’.41 The SPD’s discontent with the Kaiserreich was revealed in most of
the Social Democratic comments on Bismarck’s death. And indeed, there was
a socialist counter-myth to the nationalists’ Bismarck legend: the myth of the
coming revolution, the expectation of the great Kladderadatsch and the foun-
dation of the Zukunftsstaat.42
38
The Kaiser’s memorial service in the Berlin Cathedral was held in the absence of the Bismarck family. On
this and another memorial service, held in the Kroll Opera House, and organized by the non-governmental
Berlin Bismarck-Committee, see Machtan, Bismarcks Tod, 210–15. Also, Wilhelm Kahl, Bismarck lebt:
Gedächtnisrede bei der allgemeinen Trauerfeier Berlin am 7. August 1898 (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1898).
39
Deutscher Reichs- und Preußischer Staatsanzeiger as quoted in Arthur Rehbein, Bismarck im Sachsenwald
(Berlin, 1925), 101–2. The poet Ernst von Wildenbruch expressed similar sentiments at the passing of the
founder of the Reich (‘Keep the Bismarck in you alive!’). See Ernst von Wildenbruch, ‘Unser Bismarck’, in
Letzte Gedichte (Berlin, 1908), 43.
40
See Rudolf Morsey, Bismarck und die deutschen Katholiken (Friedrichsruh, 2000), 34–5.
41
Hamburger Echo, 2 Aug. 1898. Cf. too the critical comments in Vorwärts, 2 Aug. 1898.
42
See Reinhart Kosellek, ‘Revolution, Rebellion, Aufruhr, Bürgerkrieg’, in Otto Brunner et al. (eds.),
Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexikon der politisch-sozialen Sprache, vol. 5 (Stuttgart, 1984),
689–788, here pp. 721 ff. Also, Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, vol. 3: Von der ‘Deutschen
Doppelrevolution’ bis zum Beginn des Ersten Weltkrieges 1849–1914 (Munich, 1995), 799.
20 The Bismarck Myth in Wilhelmine Germany
The progressive-liberal MP Ludwig Bamberger criticized the dead Chancel-
lor from a different perspective. In his review of the first volume of Thoughts
and Reminiscences, published in 1898, Bamberger supplemented his praise ‘for
the great things he [Bismarck] had done to raise his nation’ with the allegation
that the Iron Chancellor was at the same time responsible for the increasing
brutalization of political standards. In his memoirs Bismarck had revealed a
‘highly dubious’ political style: ‘If a book like this, which is designed to be
devoured by the young and in which the words “humanity” and “civilization”
are treated on many pages with nothing but unconditional mockery or as hol-
low phrases, then the fear does not seem unfounded that the questionable ideal
of soldierly Schneidigkeit with all its excesses will become dominant in the
national character.’43
Bamberger’s comment was the first of its kind to reveal the truly political
nature of the Bismarck myth. Whether he was seen as patron of an imperialist
Weltpolitik—something Bismarck had in fact repeatedly criticized during the
last two years of his life—or the embodiment of supposed ‘Teutonic’ virtues
such as will-power, loyalty, honesty, and perseverance, ‘Bismarck’ served to fos-
ter a national identity and to define what being a ‘patriotic German’ meant.
The fact that it was Bismarck who became the icon of the German bourgeoisie
had its basis in his crucial role in the foundation of the Reich in 1871. Nobody
else seemed better suited to national self-affirmation, no one was more appro-
priate to spur the Germans to defend his Empire against imagined and real
internal and foreign enemies, than the towering figure of the so-called Reichs-
schmied. In this sense the Bismarck myth can be understood as the response of
conservative and national-liberal circles to the manifest popular need for a
political hero-figure.44 Their belief in the almost metaphysical character of the
German Reich, and in an authoritarian, non-democratic form of state peculiar
to it, was all comprehended and given individual expression in the person of
Bismarck.45 To declare oneself a ‘Bismarck-German’ became an affirmative
political gesture, a profession of faith in the existing state.
A closely related phenomenon was the way in which the myth was used
against all those ‘internal enemies of the Reich’ who might dare to call into
question Germany’s claims to world power status. Here, the Bismarck myth
served as the vehicle of an integral (and at the same time exclusive) nationalism

43
Ludwig Bamberger, Bismarck posthumus: Sonderabdruck aus der Wochenschrift ‘Die Nation’ (Berlin,
1899), 5.
44
See, for example, Theodor Schieder, Das Deutsche Kaiserreich von 1871 als Nationalstaat, 2nd edn.
(Göttingen, 1991), 81–96.
45
Hedinger, ‘Bismarck-Denkmäler und Bismarck-Verehrung’, 289.
 The Bismarck Myth in Wilhelmine Germany 21
which weighed oppressively upon the political culture of Wilhelmine
Germany. Writing retrospectively in 1935, the liberal ex-diplomat Harry Count
Kessler noted that at the turn of the century the inclination of the majority of
the German middle classes to become ‘Bismarckian’ and to ostracize socially
any critic of ‘his’ state had created a ‘lethal atmosphere’ to which ‘every inde-
pendent political character fell victim’.46
Among the most forceful contemporary critics of this development was the
progressive-liberal Reichstag MP Friedrich Naumann. In August 1899 he
protested against the seemingly arbitrary political exploitation of the figure of
the Reichsgründer: ‘There is no connection between the [Bismarck] legend and
history: imaginative minds have picked out from his life what suits them,
rearranged it, and cloaked the whole thing in dazzling lies. In part this process
is natural, but the other half is a conscious effort on the part of certain interest-
ed circles. . . . Thus, if the Kaiser attempts to support industrialisation with
trade agreements, canal- and shipbuilding, and social reform, in the process of
winning over the united left to his cause, then the monster figure of the Junker
Bismarck arises from East-Elbia, the peasant founder of the state, the man who
was for cavalry and infantry but not for colonies and fleets, the creator of anti-
socialist legislation, the father of customs barriers for grain.’47
However, Naumann’s article did not reflect the convictions of the broader
political and social elite. In the years following Bismarck’s death, the cult in
homage of the Reichsgründer found expression in a vast outpouring of post-
cards and written ephemera, as well as in the naming of countless Bismarck
streets and Bismarck schools all over Germany.48 Equally important for the
political culture of Wilhelmine Germany was a movement which gathered
momentum soon after the Chancellor’s death and which involved the con-
struction of an ever-growing number of Bismarck memorials.49 This move-
ment, the most tangible manifestation of the German establishment’s cult
surrounding the Iron Chancellor, had reached almost obsessive proportions by
the beginning of the twentieth century and constituted a classic example of the

46
Harry, Graf Kessler, Gesichter und Zeiten: Erinnerungen (Berlin, 1962), 178 ff.
47
Friedrich Naumann, ‘Die Bismarcklegende’, Die Hilfe, V (1899), 6 Aug. 1899, 1–2.
48
See Konrad Breitenborn, Bismarck: Kult und Kitsch um den Reichsgründer (Frankfurt, 1990). See also
Elisabeth von Hagenow, Politik und Bild: Die Postkarte als Medium der Propaganda (Hamburg, 1994), 29 and
45. A ‘Bismarck museum’ housing an assembly of cult-objects had already been opened in September 1891 in
Schönhausen. See Aide Grousilliers, Das Bismarck-Museum in Wort und Bild: Ein Denkmal deutscher
Dankbarkeit (Berlin, 1899). For a more recent assessment, see Konrad Breitenborn, ‘Das Bismarck-Museum
in Schönhausen’, Museumskunde, LVI (1991), 167–74.
49
On this see Wolfgang Hardtwig, ‘Der bezweifelte Patriotismus—nationales Bewußtsein und Denkmal
1786 bis 1933’, Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, XLIV (1993), 773–85.
22 The Bismarck Myth in Wilhelmine Germany
Bismarck myth’s penetration of the public sphere.50 Between 1898 and 1914
alone, 500 Bismarck memorials and statues were commissioned in Germany,
Bohemia, and Austria, of which at least half were completed.51 Even in the
German colonies, tribute was paid to the Reichsgründer : monuments were con-
structed in Darussalam, Tanga, Buea, Muanza, and Samoa; a Bismarck Tower
was erected in Cape Nightingale (Cameroon), and Bismarck’s name was given
to a range of mountains in New Guinea while the nearby islands were named
the Bismarck Archipelago.52 Reproductions of lithographic prints and photo-
graphs of these Bismarck monuments were distributed in thousands, thereby
penetrating everyday life in Wilhelmine Germany.53
Bismarck memorials served as places of political pilgrimage for the ever-
growing number of Bismarck-devotees. The most significant of these memori-
als were the neo-Baroque statue erected in front of the Berlin Reichstag in 1901
and the Rolandesque figure of the Iron Chancellor unveiled in Hamburg in
1906.54 The enormous Hamburg Bismarck monument in particular was a trib-
ute to the imperial Zeitgeist, a ‘gigantic symbol of the new German spirit which
spreads its pinions over the seas, and which is destined to be a world power and
a world culture’.55
Besides these and other monuments, so-called Bismarck columns were erect-
ed all over Germany. Immediately after Bismarck’s death, the Deutsche Studen-
tenschaft (German Students’ Association) publicly announced its intention to
construct memorial columns in the Iron Chancellor’s honour: ‘As in bygone
times the Saxons and Normans erected unpretentious rock pillars over the bod-
ies of their fallen warriors, and placed beacons at the top, so we wish to honour
our Bismarck by erecting stately granite beacons on all the high places of our
fatherland, where one can view the masterly German countryside. . . . The
massive stones will bear no name, but every child will know their meaning.’56

50
Wolfgang Hardtwig, ‘Erinnerung, Wissenschaft, Mythos: Nationale Geschichtsbilder und politische
Symbole in der Reichsgründungszeit und im Kaiserreich’, in id., Geschichtskultur und Wissenschaft (Munich,
1990), 224–63. For a contemporary analysis, see Arthur Mennell and Bruno Garlepp, Bismarck—Denkmal
für das deutsche Volk (Chicago, 1895).
51
See Volker Plagemann, ‘Bismarck-Denkmäler’, in Hans-Ernst Mittig and Volker Plagemann (eds.),
Denkmäler im 19. Jahrhundert: Deutung und Kritik (Munich, 1972), 217–52 (text) and 417–42 (pictures).
52
Ibid.
53
See Günter Kloss and Sieglinde Seele, Bismarck-Türme and Bismarck-Säulen: Eine Bestandsaufnahme
(Petersberg, 1997).
54
On the Hamburg Bismarck memorial see Karen Lang, ‘The Hamburg Bismarck Monument as “Light-
house of National Thought” ’, in Wessel Reinink and Jeroen Stumpel (eds.), Memory and Oblivion
(Dordrecht, 1999), 567–79.
55
Hedinger, ‘Bismarck-Denkmäler und Bismarck-Verehrung’, 287.
56
‘Aufruf der Deutschen Studentenschaft vom 3. Dezember 1898’, as quoted in Zmarzlik, Bismarckbild,
11. On the Bismarck towers and Bismarck columns see Kloss and Seele, Bismarck-Türme.
 The Bismarck Myth in Wilhelmine Germany 23
All these Bismarck monuments and columns had one thing in common:
they were expressions in stone of ‘the elevation of Bismarck to a national sym-
bol as protector and founder of the community’.57 So that no doubt should
remain as to which Bismarck was to be memorialized, only certain quotations
were added to the pedestal, the most common of which was the part-sentence:
‘We Germans fear God, but nothing else in the world’. The second half of this
famous Bismarck quotation, ‘and it is fear of God that makes us love and cher-
ish peace’, was never to be found on any of the memorials.58
The most conspicuous promoters of these monuments were some 300
Bismarck societies spread over the whole of Germany, with a membership
totalling around 30,000. Their ranks were recruited first and foremost from the
upper-middle and professional classes, the peasantry and the working classes
being scarcely represented.59 The executive board of the largest Bismarck
society, the Rhineland-based League for the Erection of a Bismarck National
Monument (founded in the spring of 1908), was dominated by prominent
politicians from the ‘Bülow Bloc’. Apart from Chancellor Prince Bernhard von
Bülow as chairman (followed by Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg in 1909),
Ernst Bassermann, Johannes Kaempf, and Ernst von Heydebrand und der Lasa
were all members of the League.60
The social elite equally warmed to the League’s project of raising a monu-
mental Bismarck memorial near the city of Bingen (Rhineland). As well as
Walther Rathenau, heir to the AEG empire and later Foreign Minister of the
Weimar Republic, thirty-seven of the sixty-eight richest industrial families of
the Rhineland were represented in the League in 1910. Of the 346 members of
the Prussian Upper House sixty-five were members of this organization. The
membership lists of 1910 indicate that the idea of a Bismarck National Monu-
ment gained most support in the cities: more than two-thirds of the commit-
tee members came from communities with more than 20,000 inhabitants;
more than 40 per cent from cities with over 100,000 inhabitants. From a polit-
ical perspective the supporters of the National Liberals and of the conservative
parties dominated the executive committee of the League with 146 and 103
members respectively. Although the Progressive Liberals were still quite strong-

57
Thomas Nipperdey, ‘Nationalidee und Nationaldenkmal in Deutschland im 19. Jahrhundert’, HZ
CCVI (1968), 529–85, here p. 581.
58
RT, 6 Feb. 1888, vol. 102, 733.
59
See Hedinger, ‘Bismarck-Kult’, 202.
60
See, in particular, Michael Dorrmann, ‘Das Bismarck-Nationaldenkmal am Rhein: Ein Beitrag zur
Geschichtskultur des Deutschen Reiches’, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, XLIV (1996), 1061–87. On
the ‘Bülow-Bloc’ see Katharine A. Lerman, The Chancellor as Courtier: Bernhard von Bülow and the Gover-
nance of Germany 1900–1909 (Cambridge, 1990), 167–247.
24 The Bismarck Myth in Wilhelmine Germany
ly represented with forty-six members, there were only fourteen Centrists
(among them the young Konrad Adenauer), and not a single Social Democrat
on the League’s executive committee.61
Despite the support of some of the most powerful men in Wilhelmine
Germany, the Bismarck National Monument at Bingerbrück was never to be
built. Before the League’s planning phase was concluded, the First World War
broke out and the construction works were postponed. However, the Bismarck
memorials did not lose their importance when hostilities broke out in 1914. For
the first religious service, which followed the Kaiser’s order for a general mobi-
lization in Germany, was held at the foot of the Bismarck memorial in Berlin.62

Bismarck and the Great War

When Germany went to war, the ‘spirit of 1914’ was quick to appropriate the
Bismarck myth. In the German newspapers of late summer 1914, Bismarck’s
wars of unification, above all the Franco-Prussian war of 1870–1, were given
exemplary character for the approaching conflict with the French Erbfeind.
Whereas the war against Napoleon III was interpreted as a ‘struggle for exter-
nal unification’, the forthcoming conflict would become a war to heal the
internal rifts within German society.63
Bourgeois intellectuals rejoiced in the idea that the nation was internally
united as it entered the ‘defensive’ struggle, which had been ‘forced upon’
Germany and celebrated the political truce of 1914 as the beginning of
Germany’s national regeneration. The distinguished Munich historian Erich
Marcks, for example, declared that the prime war aim was to defend
‘Bismarck’s heritage’. Germany, since 1871 the envy of other European states for
its might and strength, had seized the sword which Bismarck had forged.64

61
On this as well as on the other statistics quoted in the text see Dorrmann, ‘Bismarck-
Nationaldenkmal’, 1070, and id., ‘ “Wenn Bismarck wiederkäme”: Kunst, Ideologie und Rathenaus Engage-
ment für ein Bismarck-National-Denkmal’, in Hans Wilderotter (ed.), Die Extreme berühren sich: Walther
Rathenau, 1867–1922 (Berlin, 1993), 99–108. For Walther Rathenau’s work on the Committee, see his diary
entries of 21 Jan. 1911, 11 Feb. 1911, 24 June 1911, 20 and 21 Nov. 1911, 4 Dec. 1911, 22 Jan. 1912, and 14 Feb. 1912
in Hartmut Pogge von Strandmann (ed.), Walther Rathenau: Industrialist, Banker, Intellectual and Politician:
Notes and Diaries 1907–1922, 2nd edn. (Oxford, 1988). See also Alfred Lichtwark and Walther Rathenau, Der
rheinische Bismarck (Berlin, 1912).
62
See Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 4 Aug. 1914.
63
See Johannes Burkhardt, ‘Kriegsgrund Geschichte? 1870, 1813, 1756—historische Argumente und Ori-
entierungen bei Ausbruch des Ersten Weltkrieges’, in id. et al. (eds.), Lange und kurze Wege in den ersten
Weltkrieg: Vier Augsburger Beiträge zur Kriegsursachenforschung (Munich, 1996), 9–86.
64
Erich Marcks, ‘Bismarck und unser Krieg’, Süddeutsche Monatshefte, XI (1914), 780–7. Other leading
historians made similar pronouncements at that time. For the role German historians played in 1914 see
 The Bismarck Myth in Wilhelmine Germany 25
The fact that military success failed to materialize did not put an end to the
exploitation of Bismarck as a mobilizing force in the Great War. The hun-
dredth anniversary of Bismarck’s birth on 1 April 1915 was marked by innu-
merable popular publications, picture books, and commemorative articles in
homage to Bismarck as patron saint of the German troops.65 The central com-
memorative celebration in 1915 was held outside the Reichstag in Berlin. It was
attended by Chancellor von Bethmann Hollweg and Crown Prince Wilhelm
of Prussia as well as by representatives of virtually all important military and
civil institutions.66 Even the SPD, which temporarily lost the stigma as the
party of vaterlandslose Gesellen or ‘unpatriotic fellows’ with its approval of the
war credits, did not voice any criticism of the event.67
Wilhelm II was thus able to speak with some degree of truth of a ‘spirit of
concord’ which had materialized on Bismarck’s birthday. The Kaiser hoped
that this spirit would ‘outlast the war and influence the internal development
of the Reich positively after the well-won peace’. If so, he continued, ‘we will
have won a national existence in which the German people can develop freely
and strongly. Then, finally will that proud building be completed for which
Bismarck once laid the foundations.’68
For many Germans, ‘the free development of the German people’ referred to
by the Kaiser included the annexation of new territories and, in particular, the
Anschluß of Austria. The concrete experience of the Austro-German arms
fraternity led to demands from an increasing number of intellectuals for a
revision of the ‘limitations’ to Germany’s borders. The reversal of Bismarck’s

Hartmut Pogge von Strandmann, ‘The Role of British and German Historians in Mobilizing Public Opin-
ion in 1914’, in Benedikt Stuchtey and Peter Wende (eds.), British and German Historiography 1750–1950
(Oxford, 2000), 335–71. The broader historical context is discussed in detail in Jost Dülffer and Karl Holl
(eds.), Bereit zum Krieg: Kriegsmentalität im wilhelminischen Deutschland 1890–1914 (Göttingen, 1986), 9–19.
Also Wolfgang J. Mommsen, ‘The Spirit of 1914 and the Ideology of a German “Sonderweg” ’, in id., Impe-
rial Germany 1867–1918: Politics, Culture and Society in an Authoritarian State, trans. Richard Deveson
(London and New York, 1995), 205–16.
65
See Egmont Zechlin, ‘Der Inbegriff des germanischen Menschen: Das Bismarck-Bild 1915: Eine
Mischung aus Sage und Mythos’, Die Zeit, 2 Apr. 1965. The following texts are only a selection of the mass
of new publications marking the hundredth anniversary of Bismarck’s birth: Arnold Striebitz, Der Eiserne
Kanzler: Ein Lebensbild für das deutsche Volk (Leipzig, 1915). Noteworthy is Horst Kohl (ed.), Mit Bismarck
daheim und im Felde: Kennworte aus seinen Briefen und Reden (Berlin, 1915), which went into a record print
run of 150,000 copies. Finally, Gottlob Egelhaaf, Bismarck und der Weltkrieg (Halle, 1915).
66
A comprehensive contemporary account of the central commemorative celebration at the Berlin
Bismarck memorial can be found in Berliner Allgemeine Zeitung, 2 Apr. 1915. For the Bismarck-celebration of
the Pan-German League in Friedrichsruh on 1 April 1915, see Alldeutsche Blätter, 10 Apr. 1915.
67
See, for example, Vorwärts, 1 Apr. 1915. Whether this was an expression of a changed attitude towards
the German nation-state or a result of wartime censorship cannot be said with certainty. On the context see
Dieter Groh, Negative Integration und revolutionärer Attentismus: Die deutsche Sozialdemokratie am Vorabend
des ersten Weltkrieges (Frankfurt, 1973).
68
Wilhelm II as quoted in Schulthess, LVI (1915), 156.
26 The Bismarck Myth in Wilhelmine Germany
kleindeutsch concept of the nation was already being prophesied at the end of
1914 in an article by the Catholic historian Martin Spahn: ‘Through the can-
nons’ smoke’, he proclaimed, ‘glimmer the borders of a seventy-million-strong
Reich—an ideal which inspired the Germans in the eighteenth century and in
the Wars of Liberation, and even fifty years ago the großdeutsch Party—the bor-
ders of a Central European Reich of the German nation. What seemed from
1866 until a few weeks ago an undisputable fact, that the path of historical
development of the old Reich had been finally abandoned and a border
between Germany and Austria irrevocably fixed, has paled away like an image
in a dream. Suddenly the two parts which had been forced apart have grown
together again.’69
Similar sentiments were voiced by Friedrich Naumann. In his program-
matic book Mitteleuropa, which first appeared in 1915, Naumann called on his
fellow countrymen to adopt a ‘new historical consciousness’. In his view
Bismarck’s kleindeutsch solution had been a historical necessity in its time, but
was no longer an appropriate national ideal after 1914.70 Interestingly, the
vision of a Central European Empire, which exercised such attraction for
Naumann and many others at the time, was seen as a continuity of, rather than
a contradiction to, Bismarck’s concept of the Reich. In an article in 1915,
Naumann expressed his unreserved affirmation of the founder of the klein-
deutsch Reich: ‘Today all of the parties that he overcame agree on a political
truce in order to protect his Reich. For his Reich has become everyone’s Reich
. . . He is no longer a figure of contention for us but a national possession.
He is not the representative of a party but the foremost of all Germans.’ For
Naumann, the real goal of the Great War, to surmount the borders of the
current German Empire, was something Bismarck himself had pre-empted
with his dual alliance between Germany and Austria in 1879.71
This passage is most revealing in light of Naumann’s critical stance in 1899
regarding early efforts to exploit Bismarck politically. Naumann was now pre-
pared to invoke the Iron Chancellor in support of his own political and mili-
tary aims, suggesting the extent to which Bismarck had become a political tool

69
Martin Spahn, ‘An den Pforten des Weltkrieges’, Hochland, XII (1914/15), 14–29, here p. 18. Similarly,
Adolf Kapp, ‘Der großdeutsche Gedanke einst und jetzt’, Kriegshefte der Süddeutschen Monatshefte (1914/15),
46–51.
70
Friedrich Naumann, Mitteleuropa (Berlin, 1915), 33. Of all political books published since the 1890s,
Mitteleuropa was the greatest publishing success after Bismarck’s Gedanken und Erinnerungen: 100,000
copies were sold within the first year after the first edition came out. Two popular editions followed in July
1916 and October 1917. See Theodor Heuss, Friedrich Naumann: Der Mann, das Werk, die Zeit, 3rd rev. edn.
(Munich and Hamburg, 1968), 363.
71
Friedrich Naumann, ‘Wer war Bismarck?’, Die Hilfe, XXI (1915), 185–8, here p. 187.
 The Bismarck Myth in Wilhelmine Germany 27
by this time. Yet the unanimity which Naumann and others thought Bismarck
could evoke in the German people was to prove a temporary phenomenon.
Bismarck remained beyond criticism only as long as the great majority of
Germans were convinced of an ultimate victory. When this belief faded, the
latent political and social tensions within the Reich rapidly developed into an
acute political crisis. In July 1917 the Majority Social Democrats, the Centre,
the Progressive People’s Party, and the National Liberals formed the Inter-Party
Committee or Interfraktioneller Ausschuß, which called for the negotiation of a
peace agreement without ‘forced cession of territories, and political, economic
or financial violations’. It was now, in the July crisis of 1917, that criticism
of Bismarck was once again publicly voiced. In an essay on the necessity of a
constitutional reform published in October 1917, for example, the sociologist
Max Weber heavily criticized Bismarck for not having given the parliament any
political power.72
In May 1918 Weber articulated his criticism even more clearly: ‘The current
situation of our parliament is a result of the long rule of Prince Bismarck in
Germany and of the attitude which the nation has adopted towards him since
the last decade of his Chancellorship.’73 ‘Bismarck’s legacy’ would be ‘a nation
without any political will of its own, a nation accustomed to the idea that the
great statesmen at its helm would make all the political decisions’.74 According
to Weber, it was the ‘Bismarck legend’ which was responsible for this develop-
ment.75 With great perspicacity, Weber illuminated the double standards of the
German middle classes’ attitude towards ‘their’ Bismarck. At the time of Bis-
marck’s dismissal the conservatives and national liberals had not commented
on the event with a single word: ‘Which of the large parties that had followed
him up to this point even demanded an account of the grounds for his dis-
missal? None of them even stirred themselves, but rather turned their faces to
the new leading light. . . . Only when it began to concern their own material
interests, above all in tax matters, a few years after Bismarck’s dismissal, did
they begin to refer to Bismarck as their model, and since then they have played
the role of loyal defenders of his traditions.’76
Weber’s analysis was influenced by recent political developments. In the
final phase of the Great War those who held out for a victorious and ann-
exationist peace claimed that they were the true defenders of Bismarck’s

72
Max Weber, ‘Bismarcks Erbe in der Reichsverfassung’ (Oct. 1917), in id., Gesammelte politische
Schriften, ed. Johannes Winckelmann, 2nd edn. (Tübingen, 1958), 229–32, here p. 230.
73
Max Weber, ‘Die Erbschaft Bismarcks’ (May 1918), in id., Gesammelte politische Schriften, 299–308, here
p. 299.
74
Ibid. 308. 75
Ibid. 299. 76
Ibid. 300–1.
28 The Bismarck Myth in Wilhelmine Germany
legacy. Opposed to any territorial surrender, these circles founded the
German Fatherland Party on Sedan Day 1917, a party which was originally sup-
posed to be launched in Friedrichsruh and named the ‘Bismarck Party’.77 The
Fatherland Party, which was financed by contributions from heavy industry,
the Agrarian League, and other influential interest groups of the political right,
soon became the largest mass organization in Imperial Germany with a mem-
bership of around 1.2 million.78 Its propaganda during the last months of the
war fostered the illusion of an ultimate victory, in which a large number of
Germans believed up until the last moment. The news of the German armistice
offer to President Wilson by the newly appointed Chancellor Prince Max von
Baden on 3 October 1918 therefore unleashed a sense of profound shock
throughout the German public. The military leadership denied any responsi-
bility for the desperate situation in which Germany found itself. Instead, Hin-
denburg and Ludendorff claimed that the army threatened to collapse because
the Home Front no longer stood behind it. On 1 October 1917, General
Ludendorff told his commanders that a new government should be made up of
those parties ‘whom we have to thank for bringing us to this pass. We shall
therefore see these gentlemen come into the Ministry. They must make the
peace that has now to be concluded. They must now eat the soup which they
have dished up.’79 The executive committee of the Pan-German League, too,
knew whom to blame for the defeat. It was not the Western Allies that had
caused the German collapse, but the ‘internal enemies of the Reich’. As an
immediate reaction to the October reforms and the first refusals in the German
Navy to obey orders, the Pan-German League’s executive committee called an
assembly on 3 November 1918 at the Bismarck memorial in Berlin, so that ‘the
better Germany’ could have the opportunity to give vent to its patriotic feelings
‘at the feet of the Reichsgründer’.80 In so doing the Pan-Germans started a tra-
dition of oppositional gatherings at Bismarck memorials all over Germany,
suggesting that the fundamental transformation of the Bismarck myth into a

77
See Dirk Stegmann, Die Erben Bismarcks: Parteien und Verbände in der Spätphase des Wilhelminischen
Deutschlands (Cologne and Berlin, 1970), 499 nn. 333 and 334. The name ‘Bismarck Party’ had been suggest-
ed by Wolfgang Kapp, who had been the chairman of the Königsberg Bismarck Society since 1909. On this
see Heinz Hagenlücke, Deutsche Vaterlandspartei: Die nationale Rechte am Ende des Kaiserreiches (Düsseldorf,
1997), 118.
78
Cf. Abraham J. Peck, Radicals and Reactionaries: The Crisis of Conservatism in Wilhelmine Germany
(Washington, DC, 1978), 203–35.
79
See Ursachen und Folgen: Vom deutschen Zusammenbruch 1918 und 1945 bis zur staatlichen Neuordnung
Deutschlands in der Gegenwart, ed. Herbert Michaelis, Ernst Schräpler, and Günter Scheel, vol. 2: Der mili-
tärische Zusammenbruch und das Ende des Kaiserreiches (Berlin, 1958), 323.
80
‘Am Berliner Bismarck-Denkmal’, Alldeutsche Blätter, 9 Nov. 1918.
 The Bismarck Myth in Wilhelmine Germany 29
destabilizing narrative directed against the coming democratic state had
emerged even before the founding of the Republic.81
In the face of the imminent military defeat of the German Empire,
Bismarck, who only a few years earlier had been celebrated as ‘the unifier of the
nation’, became the ‘battle standard’ of those who were to form the right-wing
opposition against the Republic after 1918.82 This process was hastened by the
revolution which began in early November 1918 and which soon led to the
collapse of the Kaiserreich, in which the Bismarck myth was rooted. Military
defeat and the revolution served to catalyse and reinforce the simmering
contrasting ideologies within German society that would determine rivalling
Bismarck images in the fourteen years to come.
81
See, for example, the telegram sent to Paul von Hindenburg, in which the local unit of the DNVP in
Danzig informs the ‘hero of Tannenberg’ about a ‘Bismarck service’ in April 1919 (telegram in Deutsches His-
torisches Museum, Berlin, Do 99/503). See, too, Otto-von-Bismarck-Stiftung, P 1999/599.
82
See Studt, Bismarckbild, 13.
 3
After the Collapse

A farewell to Bismarck’s Kleindeutschland ? Post-war

Germany and the struggle for the großdeutsch Republic
On 18 January 1919 the Allied Peace Conference convened in Versailles to
decide the fate of the defeated German Empire.1 Both the date of the confer-
ence’s opening and its location were highly symbolic. Exactly forty-eight years
earlier, on 18 January 1871, the German princes had attended the Imperial
Proclamation by Otto von Bismarck in Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors. It was the
same room in which the German delegation led by Hermann Müller (MSPD)
and Johannes Bell (Centre) would sign the peace accords in late June 1919.2
France had been haunted by the loss of Alsace-Lorraine since its defeat in the
Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1.3 Now, after the German defeat, the time had
come to restore France’s greatness and to revise the results of 1871. Only three
weeks after the German government had concluded an armistice with Marshal
Foch on 11 November 1918, a secret memorandum drafted by the French
Foreign Ministry proposed massive reductions in the territories of the Reich,
possibly even its dissolution, as the precondition for a new international
order. France’s long-term security interests could only be guaranteed, so the key
passage declared, by the ‘destruction of Bismarck’s work’.4
The German public was not aware of such plans being developed in the
Quai d’Orsay. Indeed, in the first weeks following the signing of the armistice
on 11 November 1918, few Germans concerned themselves with any threat of

1
Manfred F. Boemeke, Gerald D. Feldman, and Elisabeth Glaser (eds.), The Treaty of Versailles: A
Reassessment after 75 Years (Cambridge, 1998). See, too, Alma Luckau, The German Delegation at the Paris
Peace Conference (New York, 1971).
2
See Richard M. Watt, The Kings Depart: The Tragedy of Germany: Versailles and the German Revolution
(London, 1968), 9–10.
3
On this see Sally Marks, ‘Smoke and Mirrors: In Smoke-Filled Rooms and the Galerie des Glaces’, in
Boemeke et al. (eds.), Treaty of Versailles, 337–70, here pp. 347–9. On Versailles’ general symbolic importance
see Édouard Pommier, ‘Versailles: The Image of the Sovereign’, in Nora and Kritzman (eds.), Realms of
Memory, vol. 3: Symbolism, 293–324.
4
Memorandum of the French Foreign Ministry of 25 October 1918 as quoted in Klaus Hildebrand, Das
vergangene Reich: Deutsche Außenpolitik von Bismarck bis Hitler 1871–1945 (Stuttgart, 1995), 390.
 After the Collapse 31

2. Crowds at the Berlin Bismarck Memorial outside the Reichstag during the November
Revolution, 1918.

the Reich’s dissolution or major territorial losses. Instead, they engaged in

wishful thinking in the ‘dreamland of the armistice period’.5 Unrealistic as it
may seem retrospectively, there was a widely entertained hope in the winter of
1918–19 that the German Reich would be able to compensate for military defeat
and the foreseeable loss of Alsace-Lorraine by the incorporation of German-
Austria, the rump state left behind by the disintegration of the Habsburg
Empire.6 The Anschluß debate in Germany was set in motion with a declara-
tion issued by the provisional National Assembly in Vienna. On 12 November
1918 the Assembly proclaimed that German-Austria was a ‘constituent part of
the German Republic’.7
The German revolutionary government, the Council of People’s Represen-
tatives, was at first reluctant to react to the Austrian plea for Anschluß.
5
Ernst Troeltsch, Spectatorbriefe: Aufsätze über die Revolution und die Weltpolitik 1918/22 (Tübingen,
1924), 69.
6
Stanley Suval, The Anschluß Question in Germany and Austria in the Weimar Era: A Study of Nationalism
in Germany and Austria 1918–1932 (Baltimore and London, 1974).
7
See ‘Gesetz über die Staats- und Regierungsform Deutsch-Österreichs’, in Ernst R. Huber, Deutsche
Verfassungsgeschichte seit 1789, vol. 5: Weltkrieg, Revolution und Reichserneuerung 1914–1919 (Stuttgart, 1978),
1175. See also Otto Bauer, Die österreichische Revolution (Vienna, 1923), 143.
32 After the Collapse
Internally they were sceptical as to whether Germany could ‘place a fait accom-
pli before the Peace Conference’ in ‘the light of the overall international situa-
tion’.8 None the less, there can be no doubt that the six members of the
revolutionary government—Friedrich Ebert, Philipp Scheidemann, and Otto
Landsberg from the MSPD (Majority Social Democratic Party), and Hugo
Haase, Emil Barth, and Wilhelm Dittmann from the USPD (Independent
Social Democratic Party)—were all equally in favour of Anschluß.9
German hopes for Anschluß predominantly derived from US President
Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points which envisaged a ‘peace of understand-
ing’ based on the right of national self-determination and international co-
operation.10 In total misapprehension of political realities, the majority of
Germans blithely assumed up until the spring of 1919 that these principles
would be the guiding ideas at the Versailles Peace Conference.
Hopes for a ‘peace of understanding’ accorded with the generally positive, if
at times over-optimistic, mood which initially prevailed in post-war Germany.
At least until the revolution radicalized in January 1919, the idea of establishing
a new political order enjoyed broad social support.11 For what the chief editor
of the liberal Berliner Tageblatt, Theodor Wolff, described as ‘the greatest of all
revolutions’ on 10 November 1919 seemed not only to ensure a just peace, but
also to guarantee a ‘solution to the großdeutsch problem which now confronts
us’.12 Particularly during the first few weeks after the armistice, the collapse of
Bismarck’s state was widely perceived as a precondition for the establishment
of the großdeutsch Reich. ‘We stand here proud and upright, and on the grave
of the old Reich we plant our hopes for the Greater Germany’, an editorial in
Hilfe declared in late autumn 1918. ‘Unlike our fathers in 1871,’ the author of
the article, Wilhelm Heile, continued ‘we can build our house anew from its
very foundations.’13
Interestingly enough, the renaissance of the großdeutsch idea was also sup-
ported enthusiastically by German historians. Ever since the days of Johann

8
On the resolution of the Council of People’s Representatives see Die Regierung der Volksbeauftragten
1918/19, ed. Erich Matthias and Susanne Miller, 2 vols. (Düsseldorf, 1969), here vol. 1, meeting of 15
November 1918, 45.
9
See Susanne Miller, ‘Das Ringen um “die einzige großdeutsche Republik”: Die Sozialdemokratie in
Österreich und im Deutschen Reich zur Anschlußfrage 1918/19’, Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, XI (1971), 1–68.
10
On Wilson’s Fourteen Points, see Thomas J. Knock, Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World
Order (New York, 1992), 142–7.
11
See Eberhard Kolb, The Weimar Republic, translated from the German by P. S. Falla (London, 1988),
9 ff.
12
Quotations from Berliner Tageblatt, 10 Nov. 1918, morning edition, and from Max Weber, ‘Deutsch-
lands künftige Staatsform’ (Nov. 1918), in id., Gesammelte politische Schriften, 436–71, here p. 441.
13
Wilhelm Heile, ‘Der deutsche Neubau’, Die Hilfe, XXIV (1918), 559–60.
 After the Collapse 33
Gustav Droysen and Heinrich von Sybel, leading German historians had pre-
pared the intellectual ground for Bismarck’s kleindeutsch solution and had
greeted it almost unanimously as the fulfilment of German national history on
its implementation in 1871. Prusso-German history was portrayed by them as a
‘necessary process of development which led from Luther and the Reformation
via the Great Elector and Frederick the Great to the Prussian reform era, and
then found its crowning glory in the work of Bismarck’.14
After 1918, however, there was a broad consensus within the scholarly
community that this image of history was outdated. According to Hermann
Oncken, a national-liberal ‘Republican by reason’, the dissolution of the
multi-ethnic Empire of Austria-Hungary had made a unification of the Reich
and the German-speaking parts of Austria both possible and necessary. In the
current political situation, Oncken maintained, there was one guiding foreign
policy goal which the German Republic should strive for: ‘the return to
the großdeutsch idea. For us this is the result of the world crisis . . . Greater
Germany has now become possible, because the Austrian monarchy no longer
exists, and it has become necessary, because German-Austria cannot survive on
its own. Not only has the theoretical justification of the kleindeutsch idea of
1848/1866 become redundant. The kleindeutsch Reich, too, which has existed
from 1871 up to 1918 has lost its legitimacy. The kleindeutsch concept . . . there-
fore has to give way to the großdeutsch idea.’15 To Oncken and others, the
Austro-German arms fraternity of 1914–18 had made it abundantly clear that
the destinies of the two German-speaking states in the centre of Europe were
inevitably intertwined. Thus they deserved to be united in one nation-state.
Oncken consequently argued that the lost war and the collapse of the Empire
had fulfilled a ‘historical purpose’; namely, to bring about the demand for
Anschluß as the ‘richest fruit’ of the military defeat of the Kaiserreich.16
Oncken’s colleague Friedrich Meinecke argued along similar lines. He
accused the Kaiserreich’s historiography of having idealized Bismarck’s solu-
tion to the German question: ‘It was as though the paths of German history
had led inevitably to his [Bismarck’s] way, everything that preceded being
viewed as a necessary step to the fulfilment which came in 1871.’17 Leading his-
torians of the early Kaiserreich had played a decisive role in this ‘canonization

14
Fehrenbach, ‘Reichsgründung’, 261.
15
Hermann Oncken, ‘Die Wiedergeburt der großdeutschen Idee’, in id., Nation und Geschichte: Reden
und Aufsätze 1919–1935 (Berlin, 1935), 45–70, quotation on p. 61. (The article was first published in Österrei-
chische Rundschau, LXIII (1920), 97–114.) 16
Ibid., 64.
17
Friedrich Meinecke, ‘Der nationale Gedanke im alten und neuen Deutschland’, in id., Nach der Revo-
lution: Geschichtliche Betrachtungen über unsere Lage (Munich and Berlin, 1919), 47–71, here p. 62.
34 After the Collapse
of the process of national development’.18 Relentless efforts had been under-
taken ‘to prove that all previous attempts to solve the German question were
somehow faulty or unviable or unworkable or utopian when measured against
the matchless solution which Bismarck came up with’.19
The propensity to historicize Bismarck’s kleindeutsch concept of the nation-
state was by no means limited to those who—whether from some inner con-
viction or, as in Oncken’s and Meinecke’s case, on grounds of ‘reason’—took a
positive view of the changed political situation in Germany. The Pan-German
League, for example, left no doubt as to their negative attitude to the revolu-
tionary overthrow of the state. Nevertheless, the League’s leadership felt that
the time had arrived to overcome the kleindeutsch ‘limitations’ of the German
nation-state and to take a further step in fulfilment of their ‘kleindeutsch-
großdeutsch-alldeutsch’ programme.20
The broad public consensus on the question of a großdeutsch extension of the
Reich found expression in the emergence of various associations of mixed
political complexion such as the Austro-German People’s League.21 The
leadership of this League reflected the political diversity of the supporters
of Anschluß in 1918–19: its first president was the Social Democrat Paul Löbe,
supported by a German Nationalist, Otto Hoetzsch, as vice-president. The
German-Austrian ambassador to Berlin, Ludo Hartmann, could thus rely on
the support of all parties when in early February 1919 he called for a clear
statement of commitment to a Greater Germany, thereby emphasizing that he
regarded Bismarck’s kleindeutsch solution as ‘insufficient’.22
Regardless of the broad consensus on the issue, no other party supported the
idea of Anschluß more enthusiastically than the MSPD. On the occasion of
the opening of the German National Constituent Assembly in February 1919,
the leader of the Majority Social Democrats, Friedrich Ebert, called upon the
Assembly to ‘authorize the forthcoming government to enter into negotiations
at the earliest opportunity with the German-Austrian Free State with a view to
a permanent union’. The Republic would thereby return to the großdeutsch tra-
ditions of the first half of the nineteenth century and would reunite ‘the bond

18 19
Friedrich Meinecke, ‘Der nationale Gedanke im alten und neuen Deutschland’. Ibid.
20
Heinrich Claß, ‘Der großdeutsche Gedanke’, Alldeutsche Blätter, 9 Nov. 1918. Claß had argued
along similar lines in Wenn ich der Kaiser wär: Politische Wahrheiten und Notwendigkeiten, 5th edn. (Leipzig,
1914), 9.
21
See Suval, Anschluss Question, 9 ff. See also ‘Österreichisch-deutscher Volksbund’, in Dieter Fricke et al.
(eds.), Lexikon zur Parteiengeschichte: Die bürgerlichen und kleinbürgerlichen Parteien und Verbände in
Deutschland (1789–1945), 4 vols. (Leipzig, 1983–6), here 3. 566–8. On the overall public opinion in the Reich
see, for example, Duane P. Myers, Germany and the Question of Austrian Anschluss 1918–1922 (New Haven,
1968). 22
Berliner Tageblatt, 4 Feb. 1919, morning edition.
 After the Collapse 35
violently sundered in 1866 [the year of the battle of Königgrätz, when the
German question was decided in favour of the kleindeutsch solution]’. Ac-
cording to Ebert, it was the task of the National Assembly to surmount the
‘narrowness’ of Bismarck’s Reich.23
There were several reasons why Ebert and many other representatives of the
new political regime were pushing for Anschluß in the spring of 1919. First of
all, Anschluß would ‘prove’ that the Republic was capable of achieving a
more ‘comprehensive’ solution to the German question than the one which
Bismarck himself had been able to offer.24 Secondly, a commitment to the
Anschluß movement enabled the parties who had come to power unexpectedly
in October 1918 to demonstrate the Republic’s attachment to the historical
traditions of the German past. Bismarck’s kleindeutsch solution to the German
question and the political system based on the 1871 constitution was repre-
sented to the public as a ‘false path’ to which the Republic could proclaim itself
the ‘correction’.25 During the constitutional debates at Weimar, the MSPD and
the DDP tried repeatedly to disassociate themselves from Bismarck’s Reich. As
early as November 1918, Max Weber, who was involved in the drafting of the
new constitution, wrote that the essence of this task was ‘to find something else
to put in the place of what Bismarck had created’.26 This ‘something’ needed to
be presented as historically legitimate if the Republic was not to be perceived as
a form of government which had only come into existence as a by-product of
military defeat. In early 1919, the ‘father’ of the Weimar Constitution, Hugo
Preuß, consequently presented his constitutional draft as an ‘up-dated form’ of
the ideals of the 1848–9 Paulskirche parliament.27 These ideals included both
the principles of liberal democracy and the quest for a großdeutsch fatherland.
Hence, his constitutional draft also provided the legal grounds for a
großdeutsch enlargement—the Anschluß of Austria. In Article 2, paragraph 1 of
the Weimar Constitution, it was stated that new provinces could be included
into the Reich if this was the wish of the population of the province in question.

23
NV, 6 Feb. 1919, vol. 326, 2.
24
Stanley Suval, ‘Overcoming Kleindeutschland: The Politics of Historical Mythmaking in the Weimar
Republic’, Central European History, II (1969), 312–30, here p. 321.
25
See the speech by the liberal Foreign Minister Ulrich von Brockdorff-Rantzau in NV, 14 Feb. 1919,
vol. 326, 69.
26
Weber, ‘Deutschlands künftige Staatsform’, quotations on pp. 437, 444, 446–7, 437. Similar views are
presented by Erich Kaufmann, ‘Grundfragen der künftigen Reichsverfassung (1919)’, in id., Gesammelte
Schriften, ed. Albert Hilger von Scherpenberg (Göttingen, 1960), 1. 253–96. For Weber’s influence on the
constitutional draft, see Wolfgang J. Mommsen, Max Weber and German Politics 1890–1920 (Chicago and
London, 1984), 332–89.
27
NV, 24 Feb. 1919, vol. 326, 292. Equally, Ebert, NV, 6 Feb. 1919, vol. 326, 3. Preuß’s draft of the consti-
tution is printed in Deutscher Reichs- und Preußischer Staatsanzeiger, 20 Jan. 1919.
36 After the Collapse
Additionally, in Article 61, paragraph 2, German-Austria was admitted to the
Reichsrat with consultative status until it eventually became part of the Reich.28
All of these constitutional provisions for Anschluß were made obsolete in the
beginning of May 1919 when the peace treaty accords were presented to the
German delegation at Versailles.29 In the peace settlement the victorious pow-
ers made it very clear that they were not going to countenance any territorial
expansion of the Reich. Article 80 of the Versailles Treaty in fact explicitly pro-
vided against Anschluß, declaring that the independence of Austria ‘shall be
inalienable, except with the consent of the Council of the League of Nations’.30
The German public was generally indignant at the Allied Powers’ interdic-
tion of Anschluß.31 For the German Majority Social Democrats, however, this
diplomatic defeat was particularly disastrous. Ebert and other leading Social
Democrats had repeatedly accused the Kaiserreich of being kleindeutsch and
thus ‘unfinished’ or ‘incomplete’. As late as 18 March 1919 Vorwärts had
exclaimed: ‘Bismarck’s kleindeutsch Empire has staggered into the catastrophe
of the World War. The großdeutsch idea of 1848, however, which aimed at the
incorporation of all Germans including the German Austrians . . . will be ful-
filled in our days under the black, red, and golden banner, the revolutionary
flag of 1848.’32 The decisive rejection of Anschluß by the Allied Powers thus
exposed a political flank, which right-wing propaganda knew how to exploit.
The conservative weekly Tradition had already denounced Social Democratic
plans for a peaceful revision of the kleindeutsch borders as unrealistic in the
beginning of April 1919: ‘If Empires could be founded on words and eager
German hearts alone, then the idealists of the Frankfurt Paulskirche would
have presented us with a greater German fatherland from the Belt to the
Adriatic seventy years ago.’33 After the Allies’ ban on Anschluß, the editor of
Kreuzzeitung and later chairman of the German Nationalist Party, Kuno von
Westarp, saw this assessment confirmed. He remarked that the ‘fathers of the
[Weimar] constitution have not succeeded with their plan of achieving a

28
See Die Verfassung des Deutschen Reiches vom 11. August 1919, ed. Gerhard Anschütz, 2nd edn. (Berlin,
1921), 30 (art. 2) and 119–20 (art. 61).
29
See Fritz Klein, ‘Between Compiègne and Versailles: The Germans on the Way from a Misunderstood
Defeat to an Unwanted Peace’, in Boemeke et al. (eds.), Treaty of Versailles, 203–20.
30
Treaty of Peace between the Allied and Associated Powers and Germany (London, 1925), 51. The words used
here are almost identical with those of Article 88 of the Treaty of St Germain. See Der Staatsvertrag von St
Germain (Vienna, 1919), 58.
31
For the reactions of the German public see Alfred D. Low, The Anschluss Movement 1918–19 and the
Paris Peace Conference (Philadelphia, 1974), 375 ff. More generally, Wolfgang J. Mommsen, ‘Der Vertrag von
Versailles: Eine Bilanz’, in Gerd Krumeich (ed.), Versailles 1919—Ziele—Wirkung—Wahrnehmung (Essen,
2001), 351–60.
32
Vorwärts, 18 Mar. 1919. 33
Die Tradition, I (1919), 19–20.
 After the Collapse 37
großdeutsch Germany, for which they regarded themselves as so superior to
Bismarck at the opening of the [constitutional] negotiations’.34
The relief which lay behind Westarp’s words was only too comprehensible:
with the failed attempt to create a großdeutsch Republic the democratic left
had lost one of its strongest and most popular arguments against Bismarck’s
Smaller German Reich of 1871. The MSPD was well aware of this dilemma and
proved to be particularly reluctant to concede that its großdeutsch ambitions
had foundered. On 22 June 1919, when the National Assembly, after long and
heated debates, finally agreed to the signing of the Versailles Peace Treaty, Paul
Löbe assured the plenum that the Republic would continue to fight ‘not for
Bismarck’s Greater Prussia but for Großdeutschland, for the unity of all those,
no matter where—on the Danube or the Etsch, at the mouth of the Weser,
Elbe, Oder, or Vistula—who had learnt the German tongue from the lips of
German mothers’.35
Following the Allied ban on Anschluß, however, the MSPD’s promise of a
großdeutsch Republic lacked something vital: credibility. The notion of tran-
scending the Reich’s kleindeutsch boundaries—initially a Republican project to
stabilize the new political regime—could therefore increasingly be employed
by the nationalist right in its struggle to overcome Germany’s first democracy.
In the following years, right-wing revisionism included the revision of both
Versailles: the kleindeutsch solution of 1871 and the peace settlement of 1919.
Blame for the failure to create a Greater German Reich was not attributed to
Bismarck. He had solved the German question in the only possible way at the
time. The Republic, on the other hand, suddenly found itself accused of having
failed to seize the opportunity of Anschluß when it allegedly had been avail-
able.36 The Republic’s diplomatic defeat in Versailles was thus a victory for the
right-wing opponents of Weimar democracy. For, paradoxical as it may seem,
the Weimar right could now present itself as großdeutsch and ‘Bismarckian’ at
the same time.

Bismarck and the foundation of the Weimar Republic

In January 1919, the recently founded conservative DNVP began its campaign
for the National Assembly elections with a poster introducing Otto von

34
Count Westarp in Kreuzzeitung (7 Sept. 1919), printed in Kuno Graf von Westarp, Konservative Politik
im Übergang vom Kaiserreich zur Weimarer Republik, ed. Friedrich Freiherr von Gaertringen (Düsseldorf,
2001), 272.
35
NV, 22 June 1919, vol. 327, 1117. 36
See, for example, Die Tradition II (1920), 897–901.
38 After the Collapse
Bismarck as the figurehead of nationalist opposition against the Republic: ‘In
order not to lose confidence in Germany’s future’, ran the caption to the poster,
‘we must take heart from our past’.37
Bismarck’s political instrumentalization after the military collapse of ‘his’
Reich, the subsequent revolution, and the renaissance of the großdeutsch idea
would have been difficult to foresee only a few weeks earlier. In the immediate
aftermath of the Kaiser’s abdication on 9 November 1918, even the most
uncompromising right-wing opponents to democracy had made little refer-
ence to Bismarck. Partly this was due to the fact that up until 1918 conservatives
and nationalists had interpreted the World War as some sort of Darwinian
struggle in which two rivalling constitutional forms—the French constitution
of 1789 and Bismarck’s constitution of 1871—would compete against each
other until the superior form emerged victorious.38 This and the political over-
throw of ‘their’ state put conservative circles very much on the defensive. It was
thought amongst right-wing circles that any attempt to demand a return to
Bismarck’s constitution would lack both credibility and public approval at a
time when democracy still enjoyed considerable support among the German
population.39
Only when this support gradually diminished did the Bismarck myth re-
emerge as a political weapon. The radicalization of the revolution in early
January 1919 was one aspect which contributed significantly to this develop-
ment. Its occasion was the dismissal of Emil Eichhorn from his post of Police
President in Berlin on 4 January 1919. Eichhorn, a left-wing Independent
Social Democrat, refused to resign. His party, the USPD, joined with the re-
cently founded German Communist Party (KPD) in calling for mass demon-
strations to protest against Eichhorn’s dismissal. The fighting which broke
out in the course of these demonstrations was later to become known as the
‘Spartacist uprising’. Within only a few days the uprising was crushed violent-
ly by volunteer Freikorps units formed with the permission of Ebert’s Defence
Minister, Gustav Noske.40 It was a Pyrrhic victory. The revolution, first sup-
ported or at least tolerated by a vast majority of Germans, lost its innocence.
The radical left, whose leaders Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were
murdered by Freikorps soldiers on 19 January 1919, accused Noske and Ebert of
collaboration with reactionary forces.41 For the German middle classes, on the

37
Machtan (ed.), National-Mythos, 35.
38
See, for example, Erich Kaufmann, Bismarcks Erbe in der Reichsverfassung (Berlin, 1917), 145 ff.
39
Christian F. Trippe, Konservative Verfassungspolitik 1918–1923: Die DNVP als Opposition in Reich und
Ländern (Düsseldorf, 1995), 45. 40
See in further detail, Watt, The Kings Depart, 254 ff.
41
Cf. Eric Waldman, The Spartacist Uprising of 1919 and the Crisis of the German Socialist Movement: A
 After the Collapse 39
other hand, the revolution had shown its true, ugly face. Their traditional
aversion to socialism and republicanism asserted itself and contributed to the
emergence of Bismarck as a right-wing propaganda device against the Repub-
lic. For the bourgeois right, 9 November, the day of the proclamation of the
Republic, became synonymous with defeat, ‘unspeakable shame’, and chaos.42
Bismarck, in contrast, appeared in public speeches and articles as a warrant of
stability and order, the symbol of Germany’s former might.43 At a time ‘when
all low and mean instincts concealed in the human breast have been let loose
among our people’, ‘nationally’-minded circles felt that only a ‘new Bismarck’
would be able to put an end to the revolution and restore German ‘greatness’.44
The signing of the Versailles Treaty on 28 June 1919 also helped to create a
political climate in which anti-democratic and anti-western propaganda fell on
fruitful ground. The lost war and the establishment of an ‘un-German’ demo-
cratic form of government was portrayed by right-wing organizations as a
direct consequence of the November revolutionaries’ ‘stab-in-the-back’ of
the otherwise victorious German army. The ‘stab-in-the-back’ legend of the
German High Command went hand in hand with the Bismarck myth. The
weekly journal of the Patriotic Leagues, for example, suggested that the ‘coup
d’état’ of 1918 had been planned and carried out by those political groups which
Bismarck himself had stigmatized as the ‘internal enemies of the Reich’.45
The Centre Party, the Social Democrats, and the Left Liberals, which formed a
coalition government from October 1918 onwards, had committed treason
against the spirit of Bismarck by signing the armistice. As ‘wreckers of
Bismarck’s creation’ and ‘blasphemers against his holy name’ they were the
ones to blame for Germany’s current misery.46
The constitutional debates in Weimar confirmed that the Bismarck myth
had been quickly adapted to the altered political situation. Right-wing
politicians invoked Bismarck’s name whenever they expressed their dissatis-
faction with the draft constitution which Hugo Preuß had put forward on 20
January 1919. In February 1919, the chairman of the German People’s Party
(DVP) delegation, Rudolf Heinze, and his DNVP colleague Count

Study of the Relation of Political Theory and Party Practice (Milwaukee, 1958), 199–200. See, too, Heinrich
August Winkler, ‘Die Revolution von 1918/19 und das Problem der Kontinuität in der deutschen
Geschichte’, HZ CCL (1990), 303–19.
42
Alfred Jacobsen at a meeting of the Pan-German League in Friedrichsruh, as quoted in Hamburger
Nachrichten, 2 Apr. 1919, morning edition.
43
See, for example, the Pan-German League’s Bamberg Declaration (1919), in Landesarchiv Berlin,
Zeitgeschichtliche Sammlung, 243/161.
44
Dietrich Schäfer, ‘Zu Bismarcks 105. Geburtstag’, Neue Preußische Zeitung, 1 Apr. 1920.
45
Die Tradition, I (1919), 19–20. 46
Ibid.
40 After the Collapse
Posadowsky-Wehner, insisted that Preuß’s draft was unacceptable because it
departed too far from Bismarck’s constitution. Heinze emphasized that under
Bismarck’s constitution, the nation had ‘reached the finest flowering which the
German people have ever achieved since the time of their entry into world
history’.47
Bismarck also appeared in the National Assembly’s highly emotive debate on
the future name of the state. Had the new state departed so far from Bismarck’s
Reich in constitutional terms as to justify changing its name from ‘German
Reich’ to ‘German Republic’?48 The parties’ fundamentally different ideologi-
cally motivated viewpoints on this issue quickly became apparent when the
subject was raised during the second reading of the constitutional draft in July
1919. In presenting his party’s position to the plenum, Oskar Cohn of the
USPD underlined that Bismarck’s Reich was ‘past and gone’. Cohn justified his
approval of the name change by referring to Bismarck’s Reich as a ‘historically
accidental creation’ and ‘in world evolutionary terms a transitory phenome-
non’. In any case, ‘Bismarck’s creation’ was something which the National
Assembly would ‘consciously have to turn away from’.49
By contrast, Hugo Preuß speaking for the DDP emphasized that his party’s
aim was first and foremost to fashion for Germany a new constitution based on
liberal principles, but that there was no conflict between this and the retention
of the name ‘Reich’ for the state. Indeed, it was important that the old name be
retained, to emphasize that the body politic was still Bismarck’s nation-state.50
The DDP, which had emerged from the January elections as the strongest
bourgeois party, knew that it owed its success largely to the fact that a substan-
tial number of former national-liberal voters had defected to the DDP in order
to counterweight the influence of the workers’ parties. For the DDP it thus
became important to balance the process of inner renewal and to avoid radical
breaks—even on a symbolic level—with the pre-revolutionary past.51
The members of the two bourgeois right-wing parties (DVP and DNVP)
naturally made even more allusions to Bismarck in the context of the National
Assembly’s debate about Germany’s future constitution. Clemens von

47
NV, 28 Feb. 1919, vol. 326, 396. 48
See Huber, Verfassungsgeschichte, 5. 1192.
49
NV, 2 July 1919, vol. 327, 1209. The protocol records ‘vivid heckling’ from the deputies of the DVP and
the DNVP during Cohn’s speech.
50
NV, 2 July 1919, vol. 327, 1212. Similar sentiments were voiced by his colleague Bruno Ablaß. See NV,
2 July 1919, vol. 327, 1213.
51
Jürgen C. Hess, ‘Das ganze Deutschland soll es sein’: Demokratischer Nationalismus in der Weimarer
Republik am Beispiel der Deutschen Demokratischen Partei (Stuttgart, 1978), 23–75. The DDP received 18.5%
of the votes in the general elections of January 1919. See Jürgen Falter et al. (eds.), Wahlen und Abstimmungen
in der Weimarer Republik: Materialien zum Wahlverhalten 1919–1933 (Munich, 1986), 46.
 After the Collapse 41
Delbrück, a former state secretary in the Imperial Ministry of the Interior and
now a member of the DNVP delegation, argued that the name-change
proposal would constitute a fundamental ‘break with Bismarck’s creation’.52
Referring to Cohn’s statement, Delbrück emphasized that Bismarck’s founda-
tion of the Reich had been ‘neither an aberration nor a product of chance’
but an achievement whose significance ‘history has fully endorsed and will
continue to do so’.53
The name-change debate was symptomatic of the clash of different histori-
cal traditions in the National Assembly. Between February and July 1919 the
German public witnessed the opening battles of the fierce civil war of histori-
cal traditions and symbols that would continue to rage in Weimar’s politically
fragmented society until the collapse of the Republic in 1933. That the debate
was conducted with such acrimony was hardly surprising. In its symbolic
dimension the name-change debate touched on a central problem facing the
new political system: how much of the old to retain, how much to create anew?
Quite similar in this respect was the argument over the colours of the nation-
al flag which was also subject to heated disputes both in the National Assembly
and among the political public.54 As opposed to the name-change debate, how-
ever, a majority of the delegates of DDP and Centre were here prepared to draw
a line of demarcation between Bismarck’s Reich and the Republic.55
Those principally opposed to adopting black, red, and gold as the new
national colours were the DVP and the DNVP. As late as November 1918
prominent representatives of the political right such as the chairman of the
Pan-German League, Heinrich Claß, and the editor of Deutsche Tageszeitung,
Reinhold Wulle, had still supported the adoption of these colours as an
‘emblem’ of the ideal of Anschluß.56 In the National Assembly, however, there
was little detectable enthusiasm left for black, red, and gold amongst the right-
wing parties. Instead, the DNVP proposed a motion to keep the colours of
‘Bismarck’s Reich’, a motion which was supported by the DVP and by a minor-
ity within the Centre and the DDP.57

52
NV, 2 July 1919, vol. 327, 1213. 53
Ibid., 1216.
54
See Wolfgang Ribbe, ‘Flaggenstreit und Heiliger Hain: Bemerkungen zur nationalen Symbolik in der
Weimarer Republik’, in Dietrich Kurze (ed.), Aus Theorie und Praxis: Festschrift für Hans Herzfeld zum 80.
Geburtstag (Berlin and New York, 1972), 175–88. For a contemporary view see Egmont Zechlin, Schwarz Rot
Gold und Schwarz Weiß Rot: Geschichte und Gegenwart (Berlin, 1926). See, too, Elisabeth Fehrenbach, ‘Über
die Bedeutung der politischen Symbole im Nationalstaat’, HZ CCXIII (1971), 296–357, here pp. 351–2.
55
On the position of the Centre Party during the constitutional debates see Rudolf Morsey, Die deutsche
Zentrumspartei 1917–1923 (Düsseldorf, 1966), 196–245.
56
Alldeutsche Blätter, 9 Nov. 1918. Reinhold Wulle’s article is printed in Deutsche Tageszeitung, 14 Nov.
1918, morning edition.
57
On this see Anschütz, Verfassung des Deutschen Reiches, 31–2.
42 After the Collapse
Speaking on behalf of the DVP, Wilhelm Kahl maintained that keeping
the black, white, and red flag was nothing less than a question of ‘national
honour’, a ‘matter of patriotic concern’.58 The DNVP delegate Wilhelm
Laverrenz was in full accord on this point when, with a tacit allusion to the
results of the revolution and the Versailles Peace Conference, he referred to the
old flag as a ‘sacred national treasure’ that had to be preserved in the light of
Germany’s recent national decline. He warned that the members of the
Assembly should not contemplate abandoning it ‘in these days of cruellest
humiliation and wretched impotence’, unless they wished to abandon ‘the last
visible symbol which recalls the erstwhile greatness of the Fatherland’, a
symbol of the ‘dawn’ of Bismarck’s national unification.59
Convinced by this argument, the DNVP delegates announced their ‘fiercest
opposition’ to what they denounced as the historical obliviousness of the left:
‘You will never erase the memory of this great period’, Clemens von Delbrück
admonished his political opponents in the plenum, ‘and we will do our utmost,
to keep the memory of that time alive in this country’.60
In the eyes of the Majority Social Democrats, on the other hand, the consti-
tutional break with Bismarck’s Reich and the call for a new national flag dis-
tinct from that of the old state were self-evidently connected. The Social
Democratic Minister of the Interior, Eduard David, noted that the ‘new
Germany’ stood in need of a symbol which would prove to the world that the
Reich had experienced an inner renewal. The black, white, and red colours
would hardly serve this purpose since they would be associated with Bismarck’s
Prussian militarism.61
In contrast to the debate over the new name for the state, the parliamentary
vote on the national flag dispute resulted in the adoption of a compromise solu-
tion, which was negotiated by the delegates Max Quarck (MSPD) and Adolf
Gröber (Centre Party). According to this compromise the new national colours
would be black, red, and gold. The merchant flag, however, would be black,
white, and red with a smaller black, red, and golden flag in the upper corner.
Although this compromise was adopted by the National Assembly with 211
against 89 votes, the infamous ‘Article 3’ was to become a permanent subject of
dispute.62 More than any other clause of the Weimar Constitution, ‘Article 3’
58
NV, 2 July 1919, vol. 327, 1227–8. 59
Ibid., 1229–30. 60
Ibid., 1218.
61
Ibid., 1125–6. For a similar statement given by Hugo Preuß in the National Assembly, see NV, 24 Feb.
1919, vol. 326, 285. See, too, Alois Friedel, Deutsche Staatssymbole: Herkunft und Bedeutung der politischen
Symbolik in Deutschland (Frankfurt and Bonn, 1968), 33.
62
NV, 3 July 1919, vol. 327, 1245–6. Only two years later the controversy over Article 3 burst out anew and
eventually brought about the downfall of the Luther government in 1926. Worth comparing is the parlia-
mentary debate on 27 June 1921: RT, 27 June 1921, vol. 350, particularly pp. 4168 ff.
 After the Collapse 43
mirrored the Assembly’s indecisiveness with respect to the symbolic represen-
tation of the newly founded German Republic.
The promulgation of the constitution on 11 August 1919 did not usher in a
period of inner consolidation for the Weimar Republic. Quite the opposite was
true: those who had failed in their efforts to achieve a more profound transfor-
mation of the state and its socio-economic foundations came to regard the
Republic as at best a modest improvement on what they considered to be the
semi-absolutist nature of Bismarck’s Reich. The radical left refused to acknow-
ledge any genuine progressive elements in the Weimar constitution. In their
eyes, there was no escaping the fact that Bismarck’s authoritarian and privilege-
ridden state had survived the war because of the MSPD’s renunciation of a
more radical social and economic revolution.
The political right—the supporters of the monarchist order and the advo-
cates of a new but equally non-democratic and authoritarian form of govern-
ment—also held the Weimar Constitution in odium. Whereas the extreme left
was convinced of the ‘class treason’ of the Social Democrats, the radical right
accused the SPD of having committed treason against the nation. In this con-
text Bismarck and his constitution of 1871 served as a reference point for right-
wing polemics against the Weimar Constitution. When, for example, in 1926
the construction of a national constitutional memorial in Weimar was under
discussion, the former national-liberal, then German Nationalist Reichstag
MP Gottfried Traub recommended commissioning a sculpture which would
portray ‘the Jew Preuß’ stabbing Bismarck in the back.63
Not all of the efforts to convey the superiority of Bismarck’s constitution to
that of the Weimar Republic took a similarly polemical form. Otto Westphal,
for example, based his criticism of the Weimar ‘system’ on the notion that the
‘ideas of 1871’ underlying Bismarck’s constitution represented a Hegelian con-
cept of the state which had corresponded with the German national character.
The Republic, on the other hand, had adopted the ‘ideas of 1789’ and therefore
the ‘un-German’ constitution of the victors.64 To Westphal and others, one of
the most striking advantages of Bismarck’s constitution appeared to be the
restricted influence of parties on national politics. Whereas in the Republic
ideological and material considerations dominated over the nation’s interest,
Bismarck’s constitution had been based on the belief in a national leader figure,
who guided the destiny of the country with a ‘strong hand’.65

63
Eiserne Blätter, IX (1927), 581.
64
Otto Westphal, Feinde Bismarcks: Geistige Grundlagen der deutschen Opposition 1848–1918 (Munich and
Berlin, 1930), 143–7. A contrasting, rather pro-Republican view is presented in Carl Görler, Die Weimarer
Verfassung im Verhältnis zu ihrem Frankfurter Vorbild und zum Werke Bismarcks (Annaberg, 1927), 28.
44 After the Collapse
Comments such as these suggest that the National Assembly had failed to
convince many Germans that the establishment of a parliamentary democracy
was historically legitimate. Moreover, it had failed to create an emotional bond
between the Republican state and its citizens. Certainly this was a difficult task
to achieve in the context of the lost war and the final outcome of the Versailles
negotiations. But Weimar’s severe crisis of legitimacy had internal as well as
external causes. The inglorious revolution of 1848, which the Republicans
chose as their historical reference point to counter the Bismarck myth, was a
tradition only held in high regard by a minority of Germans. In the eyes of most
Germans, the 1848 revolution had been a disastrous failure, a failure that had
proven once and for all that parliaments were incapable of successful political
decision-making. Additionally, as Peter Gay has argued, the Republic tried to
distinguish itself from the Kaiserreich through sobriety and the absence of
pomp which were considered to be democratic virtues. Thus, ‘by its very
essence, the Republic was a calculated affront to the heroes and clichés that
every child knew, many politicians invoked, and, it turned out, most Germans
cherished. In the battle of historical symbols the Republicans were at a dis-
advantage from the start: compared to Bismarck . . . at once superhuman and
picturesque, the models available to Weimar were pallid and uninspiring.’66
This is not to suggest that the Republicans neglected or even under-
estimated the power of the Bismarck myth. They never did. Throughout the
fourteen years of the first German democracy the Republican parties would
fight the Bismarck myth vigorously. However, they failed to create a widely
cherished Republican counter-myth, a counter-myth that was desperately
needed if the Republicans wanted to emerge victoriously from the battle over
Germany’s mythical past.
65
See, for example, Feier der 50. Wiederkehr des Tages der Reichsgründung am 18. Januar 1921 an der
Technischen Hochschule Darmstadt (Darmstadt, 1921), 7.
66
Peter Gay, Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider, 4th edn. (London, 1992), 91.
 4
Fragmented Society—Divided Memory:
Perceptions of Bismarck in Early
Weimar Germany

In search of the ‘guiding star of patriotic edification’:

Bismarck in Weimar historiography
The constitutional controversies in Weimar’s National Theatre and the accom-
panying public debates left no room for doubt that the Bismarck myth had sur-
vived both the transformation of the political system after 1918 and the
renaissance of the großdeutsch idea. The immediate post-war controversies
also indicated how fundamentally the narrative had changed its character.
Whereas the Bismarck myth had served to stabilize the political system
between 1898 and 1918, it fulfilled quite the opposite task after the collapse of
the Kaiserreich, when it became a weapon to be employed against the
Republic of Weimar by its right-wing opponents.
As in 1914, it was historians who, in their capacity as professional interpreters
of the past, played a leading role in the adaptation of the Bismarck myth to
meet current political requirements. Coming from conservative or at least
national-liberal political backgrounds, the majority of Weimar historians pro-
vided ‘evidence’ for the superior character of Bismarck’s state while criticizing
the Republic for its deficiencies.1 In a commemorative address before members
of the Friedrich-Wilhelm University in Berlin on Reich Foundation Day 1921,
the highly respected historian of Eastern Europe, Otto Hoetzsch, for example,
denounced contemporary ‘fragmentation, party animus, and the destruction
and disintegration of all spiritual and material values’. At the same time he
invoked the memory of Bismarck as a historical reminder to the living to act
‘patriotically’ in both the present and future:

1
On general political tendencies within Weimar historiography, see Bernd Faulenbach, ‘Nach der
Niederlage: Zeitgeschichtliche Fragen und apologetische Tendenzen in der Historiographie der Weimarer
Zeit’, in Peter Schöttler (ed.), Geschichte als Legitimationswissenschaft 1918–1945 (Frankfurt, 1997), 31–51.
46 Fragmented Society —Divided Memory

3. A postcard of 1920 depicting a ‘patriotic gathering’ at a Bismarck

Memorial in Oppeln.

These [memories] demand our faith in people and Fatherland, to toil for Fatherland
and State, to creative endeavour, in the hope that the spiritual and moral forces in our
nation may give birth to the leaders whose lack we so desperately feel, and whom we,
or those who come after us, will be prepared to follow to a new height, the height of a
strong and creative German state, in which all members of our people are embraced
and in which our obligations to mankind can be fulfilled . . .2

In Hoetzsch’s view, blame for the ‘national decline’ since 1918 lay not with
those who had held political responsibility in the Kaiserreich but with the par-
2
See Otto Hoetzsch’s address in Reichsgründungsfeier der Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin
(Berlin, 1921), 6–30, here p. 30.
 Fragmented Society —Divided Memory 47
ties who had pressed for constitutional reform during the Great War and who
had come together to form the Weimar Coalition after the November revolu-
tion. Hoetzsch’s polemic was directed first and foremost against the Centre
Party and the Social Democrats, whose ‘unpatriotic attitude’ or ‘vaterlandslose
Gesinnung’ he traced back to Bismarck’s times. Ever since 1871, the concept of
the nation had been rejected by ‘the party of political Catholicism . . . and the
rising Social Democrats’.3 The democratic system which both parties sup-
ported prevented Germany’s inner consolidation, and the Reich’s rise to great-
ness and renewed world importance.4
Hoetzsch’s statements cannot be dismissed as the isolated comments of an
academic outsider. In fact they were typical of the views of the conservative or
national-liberal majority of German scholars, who took a critical stance when
assessing the republican present while at the same time glorifying the days of
Bismarck’s rule.5 Even the Bismarck biographer Max Lenz, who had protested
against the politicization of history-writing in the days of the Kaiserreich, now
freely vented his aversion to the democratic system when he declared that
Bismarck’s Reich had been handed over to its internal enemies as a result of the
reforms of October 1918.6 According to Lenz, Bismarck’s state had not col-
lapsed because of its army’s weakness. Instead, ‘cowardice, treachery, and lust
for power of fanatic demagogues’ had ruined Bismarck’s ‘glorious Reich’. It was
the duty of scholars, he maintained, to remind the people of these ‘true reasons’
for the loss of the war: ‘Always to keep it in mind, and constantly to speak about
it—this has to be our motto.’7
No one could have agreed more with this ‘motto’ than Erich Marcks, who
described Bismarck’s time in office as the ‘proud zenith’ of Germany’s past, in
direct contrast to the sombre tones of his portrayal of the post-revolutionary
present.8 Marcks was deeply opposed to the Weimar Republic and its underly-
ing political values. In works like Die Versklavung des deutschen Volkes (1921) he
3
Ibid. 15 and 17.
4
Ibid. See, too, Erich Schaeder, Reich und Volk: Festrede zur Feier der Reichsgründung, Schlesische
Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität (Breslau, 1921), 10.
5
Cf. Bernd Faulenbach, ‘Deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft zwischen Kaiserreich und NS-Diktatur’, in
id. (ed.), Geschichtswissenschaft in Deutschland: Traditionelle Positionen und gegenwärtige Aufgaben (Munich,
1974), 66–85.
6
Max Lenz, ‘Partei oder Vaterland?’, in id., Wille, Macht und Schicksal, 3rd edn. (Munich and Berlin,
1922), 165–6.
7
Max Lenz, ‘Knechtschaft: Rede gehalten in Hamburg am 18. Januar 1921’, in id., Wille, Macht und
Schicksal, 172–83, quotations on pp. 177 and 174. For similar views see Dietrich Schäfer, Das Reich als Repub-
lik: Deutschland und Preußen (Berlin, 1919), 13, and id., ‘Bismarck’, Jung-Bismarck-Berlin, 1 Apr. 1922.
8
Erich Marcks, ‘Tiefpunkte des deutschen Schicksals in der Neuzeit: Vortrag vor den deutschen Vereinen
in Stockholm zur Feier des 18. Januar 1924’, in id., Geschichte und Gegenwart: Fünf historisch-politische Reden
(Stuttgart, Berlin, and Leipzig, 1925), 81–107, here p. 86.
48 Fragmented Society —Divided Memory
ruthlessly criticized parliamentarianism and the mediocre politicians it
created. For Marcks, the memory of Bismarck was a permanent ‘source of
strength’ in an age without moral values.9 Views such as these made him a
popular speaker at right-leaning commemorative celebrations, and may well
have been a significant factor in securing his appointment in the mid-1920s as
historical adviser for the Bismarck film project, which was heavily criticized by
republican circles because of its explicitly anti-democratic tendencies.
No other historian influenced the image of Bismarck in the 1920s and early
1930s more than Marcks, whose hagiographic biography Otto von Bismarck—
ein Lebensbild was published in twenty-eight editions between 1915 and 1935.10
Marcks, who had met Bismarck personally in 1893 and who was granted access
to the family archives after 1898, was also the driving force behind the
‘Friedrichsruh edition’ of Bismarck’s works.11
The ‘Friedrichsruh edition’, published in nineteen volumes between 1924
and 1935, was designed, according to the editors, to become ‘a monument for
the Reich’s founder erected by Germany at the time of her greatest humilia-
tion’.12 Such aspirations could hardly fail to influence the selection process of
documents that were to be published in the ‘Friedrichsruh edition’. Out of the
six volumes dedicated to Bismarck’s ‘political writings’, five focused on the
eight years between his appointment as Prussian Minister President and the
Imperial Proclamation at Versailles. Only one volume was devoted to docu-
ments dating from Bismarck’s twenty-year-long rule as German Chancellor—
including the years of the anti-socialist legislation and the Kulturkampf.13
Despite (or perhaps because) of the transformation of the political system in
1918–19, historiography in the period continued to portray Bismarck as a
leader-figure whose foreign policy achievements largely overshadowed the
memory of his repressive and eventually unsuccessful policies against the
socialist movement and political Catholicism. Even the minority of those
historians who became ‘Republicans by reason’ made no effort to dispute this

9
Ibid. See, too, Erich Marcks, Das Deutsche Reich von 1871 bis 1921, 6th rev. edn. (Leipzig, 1922), 441.
10
In addition to his publication successes, Marcks received the highest honours for his works. He was a
fellow of the Prussian Academy of Arts and Sciences, became President of the Historical Commission of the
Bavarian Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1923, and was for some time the editor of Historische Zeitschrift.
See Jens Nordalm, Historismus und moderne Welt: Erich Marcks, 1861–1938, in der deutschen Geschichtswis-
senschaft (Berlin, 2003).
11
Otto von Bismarck, Die gesammelten Werke, Friedrichsruher Ausgabe, 19 vols. (Berlin, 1924–35).
12
Introduction to the first volume of the Friedrichsruh edition (1924). The introduction was written by
the editors: Erich Marcks, Friedrich Meinecke, and Hermann Oncken.
13
The ‘New Friedrichsruh Edition’ (2004– ), on the other hand, focuses on documents written between
1871 and 1898. See Otto von Bismarck, Gesammelte Werke, Neue Friedrichsruher Ausgabe (Paderborn,
Munich, Vienna, and Zurich, 2004– ).
 Fragmented Society —Divided Memory 49
glorified view of Bismarck. In Hermann Oncken’s writings, too, Bismarck
appeared as a national Messiah, for ‘he alone knew the path which would lead
the whole people out of the desert, and he alone was the man to walk this path,
the “Zwingherr der Deutschheit”, who Fichte had once prophesied’.14
The reverential attitude towards Bismarck among leading German histori-
ans of the day should not be interpreted purely as a reactionary intellectual
stance to the new political system. The military collapse of 1918 was widely per-
ceived as a loss of ‘all values in the historical-political sphere’.15 The attempt ‘to
use the authority of the past in the face of a threatening present and a gloomy
future’ became a central motif of national-conservative historians after 1918.16
The ‘shock to German historical consciousness’ drove scholars in search of ‘the
exemplary, a guiding star of patriotic edification’ and this they found in
Bismarck.17 In 1922, Johannes Haller, one of the period’s leading medievalists,
published his book Epochen der deutschen Geschichte with which he wished to
contribute to the search for ‘historical meaning’. His foreword ended with an
appraisal of the ‘glorious time’ of Bismarck’s unification of Germany, a period
of ‘fulfilment and happiness’. In Haller’s opinion, the memory of Bismarck,
the ‘redeemer of the nation’, was invaluable for shaping Germany’s future.18
Bismarck nostalgia thus had its origins in a commonly expressed yearning for a
government which could both unite the nation, currently divided by the pre-
vailing conflicts of party interests, and restore Germany to the position of
power and influence that it had formerly enjoyed when the Iron Chancellor
was at the helm.
There was yet another reason why Bismarck occupied such a dominant posi-
tion in historical writing: the vast majority of historians clung to the paradigm
of the primacy of foreign policy.19 For most historians it was still the Great Pow-
ers and their statesmen who were the decisive actors upon which all political
action depended.20 Only academic outsiders such as the enfant terrible of
14
Hermann Oncken, Lassalle: Eine politische Biographie, 3rd edn. (Stuttgart and Berlin, 1920), 382.
15
Maximilian von Hagen, Das Bismarckbild in der Literatur der Gegenwart (Berlin, 1929), 1.
16
Hans Herzfeld, ‘Staat und Nation in der deutschen Geschichtsschreibung der Weimarer Zeit’, in
Veritas-Iustitia-Libertas. Festschrift zur 200-Jahrfeier der Columbia-University New York, überreicht von der
Freien Universität Berlin und der Deutschen Hochschule für Politik (Berlin, 1954), 129–43, here p. 134.
17
See the introductory remarks in Hans Rothfels (ed.), Bismarck und der Staat: Ausgewählte Dokumente,
2nd edn. (Stuttgart, 1953), p. ix.
18
Johannes Haller, Epochen der deutschen Geschichte (Stuttgart, 1922), foreword (not paginated). In the
foreword to the 1943 edition of Epochen der deutschen Geschichte Haller exclaimed that his ‘hopes and beliefs’
as articulated in 1922, had ‘become reality’.
19
See Faulenbach, ‘Deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft’, 66–85.
20
Evidently, there was a focus on foreign policy in the source publications of the Weimar Republic. See,
in particular, Die große Politik der europäischen Kabinette 1871 bis 1890: Sammlung der diplomatischen Akten
des Auswärtigen Amtes, ed. Johannes Lepsius, Albrecht Mendelssohn Bartholdy, and Friedrich Thimme, 40
50 Fragmented Society —Divided Memory
Weimar historiography, Eckart Kehr, unsuccessfully questioned the primacy of
foreign policy.21
Bismarck’s foreign policy and the abandonment of his diplomatic strategies
after 1890 were among the most frequently investigated topics in Weimar his-
toriography.22 The period between 1871 and 1914 was divided in historical writ-
ings into a Bismarckian Era and a post-Bismarck period, which were generally
contrasted with each other. Bismarck’s fall from power and the establishment
of Wilhelm’s ‘personal regime’ were evaluated as the central reasons for Ger-
many’s decline.23 Bismarck was not held responsible for the outbreak of the
Great War and certainly not for the German defeat of 1918.24 Instead, it was
commonly believed that the ‘complicated’ alliance system which Bismarck had
established was never properly understood by his successors. The source publi-
cations of the 1920s seemed to confirm ‘Bismarck’s political genius’ for ‘all
times’.25 Werner Näf, for example, followed a broad academic consensus when
he stated that ‘the whole [system of alliances] was based on his [Bismarck’s] per-
sonality, and could not be held together without those imponderables of
geniality and trust, which he incorporated. What he nurtured was alliance pol-
itics of the greatest complexity.’ Bismarck’s foreign policy ideas had been so
complex that only he, ‘the consummate master of diplomacy, could grasp
them’.26
Scholars who dared to challenge the dominant image of Bismarck met with
hostile criticism from colleagues and professional ostracism. It was well known
amongst Weimar historians that any attempt ‘to take a critical stance on
Bismarck’s work’ was deemed to indicate a ‘lack of national spirit’ and could
even end an academic career.27 When, for example, Johannes Ziekursch

vols. (Berlin, 1922–7); Lothar von Schweinitz, Denkwürdigkeiten des Botschafters General von Schweinitz
(Berlin, 1927); Eliza von Moltke (ed.), Erinnerungen, Briefe, Dokumente: Helmuth von Moltke 1877–1916
(Stuttgart, 1922).
21
See Eckart Kehr, Der Primat der Innenpolitik: Economic Interest, Militarism, and Foreign Policy: Essays
on German History, translated from German into English by Grete Heinz (Berkeley, 1977).
22
For a detailed overview of the extensive literature on Bismarck’s foreign policy see Maximilian von
Hagen, Bismarckbild, 64 ff. and the addenda by the same author in Zeitschrift für Politik, XIX (1929), 539 ff.;
XXII (1932), 369 ff. and 466 ff.; XXVIII (1938), 197 ff., 241 ff., 404 ff.
23
See, for example, Wilhelm Schüßler, Bismarcks Sturz (Berlin and Leipzig, 1921) and Wilhelm Momm-
sen, Bismarcks Sturz und die Parteien (Berlin, 1924), 44 ff. and 66 ff. Otto Gradenwitz, Bismarcks letzter
Kampf 1888–1898 (Berlin, 1924). On the broader context, see Gisela Brude-Firnau, Die literarische Deutung
Kaiser Wilhelms II zwischen 1889 und 1989 (Heidelberg, 1997).
24
See, for example, Deutsche Rundschau, CLXXXVII (1921), 359 ff.
25
Hagen, Bismarckbild, 2.
26
Werner Näf, Bismarcks Außenpolitik 1871–1890 (St Gallen, 1925), 76.
27
See Walter Goetz, ‘Die deutsche Geschichtsschreibung der Gegenwart’, in id., Historiker in meiner
Zeit: Gesammelte Aufsätze (Cologne and Graz, 1957), 415–24, quotation on p. 420.
 Fragmented Society —Divided Memory 51
suggested that Bismarck had founded the Reich ‘against the spirit of the time’
(an argument first put forward by Friedrich Nietzsche) and that it therefore had
‘contained within it the seeds of its own destruction’, critics competed to write
the most negative reviews of his book.28 Nevertheless, Ziekursch refused to
abandon his view that there were clear structural faults inherent to Bismarck’s
constitution from the start. They were responsible at least in part, he suggested,
for the Reich’s collapse in 1918.29
Ziekursch differed from the majority of German historians in his belief that
the constitution of 1871 had been a rejection of the democratic principles of the
Paulskirche parliament of 1848–9. In his view, the ‘false development’ of
domestic policy after 1871 was rooted in the Prussian constitutional conflict, in
which the competing ideas of ‘a monarchical form of government with an over-
lay of pseudo-constitutionalism administered by the Junkers with the help of
the army and the civil service’ on the one hand, and a ‘parliamentary govern-
ment in the hands of the higher bureaucracy’ on the other, had fatally been
decided in favour of the former.30
It was not without significance that such arguments were largely marginal-
ized in Weimar’s scholarly discourse and that historians generally failed to
assess Bismarck’s historical role critically. Throughout the Weimar era institu-
tions of higher education instead proved to be strongholds of the Bismarck
cult.31 This had ramifications in the wider community. Through their lectures
and writings some of the most respected German scholars ensured that the
Bismarck myth acquired the halo of intellectual credibility, which in turn
conferred respectability on the pseudo-historical arguments employed by
right-wing circles in their attacks upon the Republic.

Bismarck and the Weimar right

Despite the many ideological and programmatic differences between the
highly heterogeneous right-wing movements in Germany’s first democracy,
the Weimar right found its common battle standard against the Republic

28
See Karl-Georg Faber, ‘Johannes Ziekursch’, in Hans-Ulrich Wehler (ed.), Deutsche Historiker, vol. 3
(Göttingen, 1972), 109–23.
29
Johannes Ziekursch, ‘Bismarcks Innenpolitik’, Der Eiserne Steg, III (1926), 47–57.
30
Johannes Ziekursch, Politische Geschichte des neuen deutschen Kaiserreiches, vol. 1: Die Reichsgründung
(Frankfurt, 1925), 69.
31
See Konrad H. Jarausch, Deutsche Studenten 1800–1970 (Frankfurt, 1984), 124. Also Hans P. Bleuel and
Ernst Klinnert, Deutsche Studenten auf dem Weg ins Dritte Reich: Ideologien-Programme-Aktionen 1918–1933
(Gütersloh, 1967), 8–9.
52 Fragmented Society —Divided Memory
within a couple of months after the collapse of the Kaiserreich: Bismarck.32 No
other historical reference point was used more often in public debate to criti-
cize the 1919 Constitution, the Versailles Treaty, and the Republic’s supposed
lack of historical legitimacy. The Weimar right may have been deeply divided,
but adoration for the ‘glorious days’ of the Iron Chancellor and the exemplary
character of Bismarck’s charismatic leadership was shared by all right-wing par-
ties and movements.
It was commonly asserted in right-wing circles that in the Republic
party politics had triumphed over ‘national interest’. Under a charismatic,
‘Bismarckian’ type of leader, on the other hand, the pettiness of political
disunity would come to an end.33 In nationalist circles the hope for a ‘new
Bismarck’ who would overcome the ‘squabbling of the parties’ remained com-
mon currency throughout the fourteen years of the Weimar Republic.34
Contemporary popular literature reinforced such views. In 1921, the writer
Otto Autenrieth achieved a commercial success with his novel Bismarck der
Zweite: Der Roman der deutschen Zukunft (The Second Bismarck: A Novel about
Germany’s Future), in which the protagonist, Otto von Fels, discovers that ‘he
is destined by providence to become the saviour of Germany and the world,
Bismarck the Second’.35 By suggesting that the prospects for Germany’s future
were dependent upon the emergence of a new Bismarck, Autenrieth’s novel was
very much in line with the dominant narratives in Weimar historiography,
which contrasted the Bismarckian era with the ‘leaderless’ Republic.
Against the background of such interpretations of Bismarck by leading
German historians, it was not surprising that the conservative daily Deutsche
Tageszeitung referred to results of ‘scholarly research’ when on 18 January 1921 it
sharply contrasted the Republic with the ‘sublime period’ of Bismarck’s reign.36
Under Bismarck, ‘the dreams of every generation and every party for the last
century had been brought to fulfilment’. The revolution of 1918–19 had ef-
fected a rupture with this ‘glorious’ past. As opposed to Bismarck’s unification
of the German nation, which had been the result of a ‘social movement and
32
On the highly heterogeneous Weimar right see in particular Kurt Sontheimer, Antidemokratisches
Denken in der Weimarer Republik: Die politischen Ideen des deutschen Nationalismus zwischen 1918 und 1933,
4th edn. (Munich, 1994), 26. On the nationalist-conservative DNVP as the largest party of the anti-
Republican right before the rise of National Socialism see Werner Liebe, Die Deutschnationale Volkspartei
1918–1924 (Düsseldorf, 1966), 51–9. 33
Sontheimer, Antidemokratisches Denken, 180–233.
34
On this see Klaus Schreiner, ‘ “Wann kommt der Retter Deutschlands?” Formen und Funktionen von
politischem Messianismus in der Weimarer Republik’, Saeculum, XLIX (1998), 107–60. See, for example,
Count Westarp’s speech at a DNVP convention to celebrate Bismarck’s birthday in 1927, quoted in Der Tag,
1 Apr. 1927.
35
Otto Autenrieth, Bismarck der Zweite: Der Roman der deutschen Zukunft (Munich, 1921), 190.
36
So, for example, Deutschen Tageszeitung, 18 Jan. 1921, morning edition.
 Fragmented Society —Divided Memory 53
transformation that proceeded from deep within the German people’, the
November revolution had been a ‘politically coloured and cleverly constructed
mutiny’.37
Deutsche Tageszeitung and other nationalist or völkisch papers also adopted
the historiographical view that it had been the moment of Bismarck’s dismissal
which marked the beginning of the Reich’s downfall. Here, ‘the tragic blame’
lay with both Wilhelm II and the German people themselves: ‘A ruler, a people,
a country on whom such guilt weighs’ are doomed to misfortune, ‘unless they
recognize their fault and return to the basic principles and examples of state-
craft set by that statesmanlike hero who was dismissed and driven into the
wilderness against all the laws of decency and morality’.38
In the eyes of the vast majority of Germans, Wilhelm II’s rule had been a dis-
astrous failure.39 Even the monarchists within the DNVP and the ‘Stahlhelm’
hardly ever referred to Wilhelm II in their demands for a restoration of
the Hohenzollern dynasty.40 Instead it was Bismarck who was employed by
German monarchists to illustrate the past glory of the Kaiserreich.41 The pub-
lication of the third volume of Bismarck’s Thoughts and Reminiscences in 1919
constituted a temporary blow to these attempts, but only a year later, during
the Kapp-Lüttwitz putsch, Bismarck reappeared as a figurehead of the
monarchists’ anti-republican propaganda.42 At least for the DNVP, the

37
Quotations from Deutsche Tageszeitung, 17 Jan. 1921, evening edition; Deutsche Tageszeitung, 9
Nov. 1921, morning edition. Similarly, though with stronger critical emphasis on Bismarck’s successors,
‘Bismarck’, Die Tradition, 1 Apr. 1922.
38
Heinrich Claß, ‘Bismarcks Schatten’, Alldeutsche Blätter, 27 Mar. 1920. This view was not limited to the
far right. In the national-liberal press, too, Wilhelm II and Bismarck’s successors were blamed for the decline
of the German Reich. See the anonymous article ‘Wenn Bismarck wiederkäme . . .’, Deutsche Stimmen,
XXXI (1919), 27–9. See also Max Lohan, ‘Bismarcks Sturz im Lichte der Gegenwart’, Deutsche Stimmen,
XXXII (1920), 231–9.
39
The critical literature on Wilhelm II published after 1918 is too numerous to be listed here in detail. See,
for example, Erich Le Mang, Die persönliche Schuld Wilhelms II: ein zeitgemäßer Rückblick (Dresden, 1919);
Emil Neyen, Wilhem II: Sein Werk: 450 Milliarden neuer Schulden und 21 fliehende Könige (Berlin, 1919);
Walther Rathenau, Der Kaiser (Berlin, 1919); Edgar von Schmidt-Pauli, Der Kaiser: das wahre Gesicht
Wilhelms II. (Berlin, 1928). For a detailed analysis of critical attitudes towards Wilhelm II within the German
aristocracy, see Stephan Malinowski, Vom König zum Führer: Sozialer Niedergang und politische
Radikalisierung im deutschen Adel zwischen Kaiserreich und NS-Staat (Berlin, 2003), 249–53.
40
On monarchism in Weimar, particularly between 1920 and 1923, see Walter H. Kaufmann, Monar-
chism in the Weimar Republic (New York, 1953).
41
The best example of the monarchists’ employment of Bismarck is the fact that the DNVP’s youth
organization was named ‘Bismarck Youth’.
42
The DNVP deeply regretted the publication of the last volume of Thoughts and Reminiscences. In their
view, Bismarck’s criticism of Wilhelm II would strengthen anti-monarchism. See Westarp papers, political
correspondence, in BA (Berlin), N2329. During the monarchist Kapp-Lüttwitz putsch of 1920 a leaflet was
distributed which juxtaposed Wilhelm I, Bismarck, and Hindenburg against Ebert, Bauer, and Noske. See
Johannes Erger, Der Kapp-Lüttwitz-Putsch: Ein Beitrag zur deutschen Innenpolitik 1919/20 (Düsseldorf,
1967), 90.
54 Fragmented Society —Divided Memory
popular catchphrase ‘Back to Bismarck’ meant nothing less than a return to the
political system of the Kaiserreich.
For the völkisch right, on the other hand, the slogan ‘Back to Bismarck’
implied more than merely a call for the restoration of the pre-war political sta-
tus quo. According to Heinrich Claß, for example, the period of Bismarck’s
government represented only the highest point of national development to
date, ‘the starting-point of Germany’s great future’. The task facing the present
generation was to ‘build on’ Bismarck’s Kleindeutschland, for ‘once a people
stops struggling for more, it is already beginning to give itself up’.43
Neo-conservative intellectuals such as Arthur Moeller van den Bruck,
Oswald Spengler, and Hans Freyer equally rejected a return to the morally
‘decadent’ bourgeois culture of Wilhelmine Germany. Yet they were full of
praise for Bismarck, whose Wars of Unification were interpreted as a period of
moral purification.44
Similar, although not identical, emphasis was given to representations of
Bismarck by leading politicians of the National Socialist German Workers’
Party (NSDAP). The Nazi Party had arisen out of the German Workers’ Party
in 1920, and while at first only one among many völkisch and anti-Semitic
splinter groups, it soon surpassed its right-wing competitors with a unique rad-
icalism. Upon the ‘ruins of that proud Reich which Bismarck’s genius had cre-
ated’, Völkischer Beobachter declared in early 1921, a new state embracing all
members of the German people would have to be created. With frightening
clarity the author—none other than Adolf Hitler himself—explained how this
inwardly renewed and outwardly expanded Reich would be governed. While
under Bismarck ‘risible means’ had been used to combat ‘parties which were
hostile to the state’, Hitler promised that in future times ‘parasites, exploiters,
and agitators’ would be ‘rounded up to the last man’.45
Although he was critical of Bismarck’s ‘moderate’ domestic policies, Hitler
emphasized the importance of this ‘great man’ for the nationalist movement in
the Weimar Republic. The name of Bismarck, Hitler suggested, had to remind
the German people in a time of national distress that there were good reasons
‘to be proud to call oneself a German’.46 Hitler’s references to the founder of the

43
Heinrich Claß, ‘Zum achtzehnten Januar’, Alldeutsche Blätter, 22 Jan. 1921.
44
Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, Das Dritte Reich, ed. Hans Schwarz, 3rd edn. (Hamburg, 1931), 231;
Oswald Spengler, Preußentum und Sozialismus (Munich, 1920), 6; Hans Freyer, Das politische Semester: Ein
Vorschlag zur Universitätsreform (Jena, 1933). See, too, Wolfgang Hardtwig, ‘Der Bismarck-Mythos: Gestalt
und Funktionen zwischen politischer Öffentlichkeit und Wissenschaft’, in id., Hochkultur des bürgerlichen
Zeitalters: Ausgewählte Aufsätze (Göttingen, forthcoming).
45
Völkischer Beobachter, 20 Jan. 1921. 46
Ibid.
 Fragmented Society —Divided Memory 55
Reich had much the same purpose as the idealizing tendencies in conservative
circles: Bismarck’s rule was to act as a positive template—a period of national
dignity and greatness—against which the unpalatable features of Weimar
Germany could be set. In comparison to the Bismarckian Era, the Republic
was no more than a transitional period, a momentary nadir in history, which it
was the self-appointed duty of the Weimar right to surmount.

Catholic and liberal perceptions of Bismarck

On 18 January 1921, Regensburger Anzeiger recommended that Catholic
Germany should recall with profound ‘gratitude’ Bismarck’s unification of
Germany as ‘the moment of birth of an unhoped-for and unparalleled
cultural and economic rise for the German nation’.47
This view, propagated by a paper affiliated with the Centre’s Bavarian sister
party, the BVP, was echoed elsewhere in the Catholic press. Germania, for
example, proclaimed that the Kaiserreich—‘the crowning achievement of
Bismarck’s statesmanlike policies’—had been ‘the fulfilment of a thousand
years of German history’.48 At the same time, Germania described the current
Centre Party as ‘a party with genuine German sentiments’, for it was—in its
own revealing words—‘in heart and mind fully and completely aware of the
significance of 18 January 1871’.49
Both articles were evidence of a high degree of continuity in Catholic
Germany’s attitude towards Bismarck, despite the revolution of 1918–19. Ever
since Bismarck’s death in 1898, political Catholicism in Germany had adopted
an increasingly positive stance towards its former arch-enemy, the Chancellor
of the Kulturkampf legislation. To a certain extent, the Centre Party’s worship
of Bismarck as an unrivalled German statesman was and had always been an
attempt to take the wind out of the sails of those who sought to condemn
political Catholicism as ‘unpatriotic and untrustworthy’.
The Centre Party’s attempts to prove its ‘national trustworthiness’ by prais-
ing Bismarck’s work were not always approved by German Catholics. In 1922,
the Catholic historian Franz Xaver Hoermann, for example, warned that the
tendency to emphasize the success of Bismarck’s foreign policy at the cost of
underplaying his failures in domestic policies presented a severe danger to

47
Regensburger Anzeiger, 17 Jan. 1921, evening edition.
48
Germania, 18 Jan. 1921.
49
Ibid. Likewise, Kölnische Volkszeitung, 17 Jan. 1921, evening edition.
56 Fragmented Society —Divided Memory
democracy. A selective assessment of the Reich’s founder encouraged those call-
ing for a ‘new Bismarck’, a man who would ‘once again raise Germany to the
height of 1870–71’.50
Hoermann was correct in identifying hopes for a restoration of ‘former
greatness’ as one of the dominant motifs in the middle classes’ attitude towards
Bismarck. This was also true for national-liberal circles. Almost all of the news-
papers which supported the DVP stressed the role of the National Liberal Party
in bringing about the Reich’s unification.51 They also credited the National
Liberals with responsibility for the economic upturn in the years immediately
after the Empire’s foundation, an economic boom which national-liberal
papers contrasted sharply with the continuing inflation of the post-war years.52
Newspapers associated with the DVP identified two major reasons for
Germany’s current political misery: first, the Allies’ peace conditions imposed
on the defeated Reich, and, secondly, the widespread inclination of the
Germans to neglect the historical models of their ‘great’ past, a past in which
Bismarck’s role had been pre-eminent. This historical neglect, Paul Oswald
suggested in Deutsche Stimmen, was a result of the left’s cunning strategy to ban
Bismarck from public consciousness and to attempt instead to establish tradi-
tions more ‘suitable’ for their own political goals: ‘The memory of him
[Bismarck] poses an obstacle to the full victory of the democratic idea . . .’.53
All Germans had to understand, however, that historical oblivion with respect
to Bismarck was ‘an indication of the low level of our national feelings and
thoughts’ and that ‘to fight the memory of Bismarck means nothing less than
to erode the basis of our national unity and to deprive us of the last thing we
have left nowadays’.54
However strong the critique of the contemporary state of German society
and the economy may have been, the national-liberal elites were none the less
notably restrained in their criticism of the government. The fact that the DVP
was represented in the government coalition since the general elections of 1920
certainly contributed to this stance. The DNVP, which had attacked the DVP
for entering the government coalition, was reminded that a revision of the ‘sec-

50
Franz X. Hoermann, ‘Die Etappen und das Schlussresultat der Bismarckschen Politik’, Historisch-
Politische Blätter für das katholische Deutschland, CLXX (1922), 655–66, here p. 656; id., Großdeutschlands
vierhundertjähriger Niedergang zum Kleindeutschland: Die erste Ursache des heutigen politischen Zusammen-
bruchs (Regensburg, 1924).
51
Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 18 Jan. 1921, morning edition.
52
See, for example, Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 17 Jan. 1921, morning edition.
53
Paul Ostwald, ‘Bismarck oder Stein?’, Deutsche Stimmen, XXXIV (1922), 222–4, here p. 222.
54
Quotations from Paul Ostwald, ‘Ist Bismarcks Werk ein Irrtum?’, Deutsche Stimmen, XXXII (1920),
483–6, here p. 486, and id., ‘Bismarck oder Stein?’, 224.
 Fragmented Society —Divided Memory 57
ond Versailles’ of 1919 was only to be achieved if the Germans stood together as
they had done in the days of Bismarck.55
It was this very unity which the German Vice-Chancellor Rudolf Heinze
emphasized in a public address in Munich on 17 January 1921. Heinze remind-
ed his audience that the nation had to return to ‘internal unity’ in order to sur-
mount the oppressive conditions of the peace accords imposed by the Western
Allies. Heinze heavily criticized the Peace Settlement by pointing out the dif-
ference between the ‘first and the second Versailles’. Bismarck’s conditions in
the Frankfurt Peace Treaty of 1871 were ‘harmless’ in comparison to the Ver-
sailles Treaty and France’s attempts to ruin the German Reich politically and
economically.56
What was missing in the Vice-Chancellor’s speech (and, in fact, in any of the
DVP’s commemorative articles around 18 January 1921) was a clear and
unequivocal commitment to the Republic. Commentary emanating from the
left-liberal milieu, on the other hand, discussed the memory of Bismarck in an
unmistakable spirit of support for parliamentary democracy and of opposition
to the constitutional monarchy that Bismarck had established. In an editorial
for the Berliner Tageblatt, Theodor Wolff made it clear that he interpreted the
countless articles on Bismarck in the conservative press from 1918 onwards as a
‘call to action’ on the part of the right against the Republic. With respect to the
forthcoming Reich Foundation Day of 1921, Wolff expressed the fear that this
day would provide right-wing teachers with the opportunity to impose their
reactionary ideas in schools and universities, the very places where future deci-
sion makers were moulded intellectually.57 This insight should not, however,
lead the right to conclude that the democratic forces were about to capitulate
in the struggle over the past. Rather, the government and the democratic par-
ties had to stress their commitment to Republican ideals ‘at every opportunity,
in clearly stated words and with clearly visible actions’ until the ‘German youth
recognizes in them the seeds of a new greatness, and the chorus of doubters and
critics no longer attracts support or enjoys credibility’.58
Wolff was not the only left-liberal intellectual who called for a de-
politicization of the public debate revolving around Bismarck. The liberal-
democratic jurisprudence professor Hermann Ulrich Kantorowicz also argued
that a rational reconsideration of the nationalist interpretation of the past was
a matter of fundamental importance for the Republic. In an article, which soon

55
Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 17 Jan. 1921, morning edition.
56
Rudolf Heinze’s speech is printed in part in Berliner Tageblatt, 17 Jan. 1921, evening edition.
57
Berliner Tageblatt, 17 Jan. 1921, evening edition. See also Frankfurter Zeitung, 18 Jan. 1921, evening
edition. 58
Berliner Tageblatt, 17 Jan. 1921, evening edition.
58 Fragmented Society —Divided Memory
afterwards was published as a pamphlet entitled Bismarcks Schatten,
Kantorowicz warned his readers not to underestimate the effects of the right’s
constant employment of the founder of the Reich as a political weapon against
the Republic. Bismarck, who according to Kantorowicz had changed the polit-
ical and ethical value system of the bourgeoisie in an entirely negative sense,
was the embodiment of the authoritarian state. ‘As long as Bismarck’s shadow
falls over it,’ Kantorowicz concluded, ‘the young tree of German democracy
can never thrive.’59
Kantorowicz’s statements caused a huge scandal in his home town of
Freiburg. Only three days after his article had appeared on 16 November 1921,
an anonymous response was published in the German Nationalists’ Breisgauer
Zeitung. It was revealed a couple of weeks later that the author was a colleague
of Kantorowicz, the famous Freiburg historian Georg von Below. In his article,
Below accused Kantorowicz of attempting ‘to erase all memory of Bismarck
within Germany’.60
Despite Below’s attacks, Kantorowicz remained a sharp critic of the
Bismarck myth. In 1927 he wrote in an English journal: ‘It is a very general mis-
take, common among my fellow countrymen, and shared by many foreigners,
to consider Bismarck the founder of German unity. He did the contrary: by
stigmatising Catholics, socialists and democrats as enemies of the Fatherland,
unworthy of having any share in power, he split up the people into a mass of
parties, each distrusting and hating the other, and made political life the dismal
thing it is still in my country.’61
The liberal labour expert Heinz Potthoff arrived at similar conclusions. In
an attempt to counteract the mythologization of Bismarck’s image, he claimed
that the Iron Chancellor was largely responsible for contemporary social con-
flicts. By branding certain social and political groups ‘enemies of the Reich’,
Bismarck had created an atmosphere of enmity and mistrust in Germany.62
Potthoff abhorred the fact that the ‘poisonous accusation’ of being ‘anti-
national’ had reappeared in the political debate after 1918. Bearing in mind the
precarious stability of the political, economic, and social order, the term
‘national’, he suggested, should not be applied to those pursuing party political

59
Kantorowicz, Bismarcks Schatten, 5. The book was based on the article ‘Bismarcks Schatten,
Anmerkungen zu Robert Riemanns “Schwarzrotgold” ’ which was published on 13 November 1921 in the
Sunday edition of the Social Democratic Basler Anzeiger.
60
See Karlheinz Muscheler, Hermann Ulrich Kantorowicz: Eine Biographie (Berlin, 1984), particularly 59
ff. Also Donald L. Niewyk, The Jews in Weimar Germany (Manchester, 1980), 64.
61
Hermann U. Kantorowicz: ‘The German Constitution in Theory and Practice’, Economia, VII (1927),
37 ff., here p. 40. 62
Heinz Potthoff, ‘National!’, Die Hilfe, XXVI (1920), 23–4.
 Fragmented Society —Divided Memory 59
interests but to those willing to accept political responsibility in the demo-
cratic state of Weimar.63
In their attempts to deconstruct the Bismarck myth, Potthoff and
Kontorowicz could count on the support of some popular novelists such as
Emil Ludwig, who in 1924 staged a critical theatre play on Bismarck in
Potsdam. This was followed in 1926 by the publication of his popular bio-
graphy on the Iron Chancellor.64 While nationalist papers started a witch-hunt
against Ludwig, democrats such as Rudolf Olden praised the biography as a
book ‘with a politically educational effect . . . a highly useful contribution to
the stabilization of the German Republic.’65
Left liberals were, however, not merely concerned to deconstruct the
Bismarck myth but, together with the Social Democrats, also strove to establish
their own democratic tradition, in which the Wars of Liberation, the Prussian
reform era, and the March revolution of 1848 had a central significance.66 A
concrete manifestation of the democratic left’s attempt to create and institu-
tionalize a Republican tradition of its own were the annual commemoration
ceremonies on Constitution Day to celebrate the signing of the Weimar
Constitution on 11 August 1919. The organization of these celebrations, which
had begun in 1921 during Joseph Wirth’s Centre-Left coalition government,
was one of the central tasks of Edwin Redslob, who had been appointed as
Reichskunstwart in 1920.67 The Reichskunstwart, subordinate to the Ministry of
the Interior, was responsible for every form of state representation including the
organization of the national commemoration festivals on 9 November.68 How-
ever, these events were only of emotional relevance to a small minority of Social
Democrats and Left Liberals. It was widely perceived that 9 November was
anything but a glorious, identity-forging foundational event which inspired
romantic notions. ‘Though November 1918 meant the end of the war,’ Sebastian
Haffner wrote in his memoirs, ‘it recalls no sense of joy, only a bad mood, defeat,

63
Ibid. See, too, Emil Ludwig, ‘Bismarck—nach dem Zusammenbruch’, Die Weltbühne, XVII (1921),
697–700. Finally, Eugen Ehrlich, Bismarck und der Weltkrieg (Zurich, 1920), 31.
64
Emil Ludwig, Bismarck: Triologie eines Kämpfers (Potsdam, 1924). Kaiser Wilhelm II subsequently filed
a lawsuit against Ludwig which Wilhelm lost. See Christoph Gradmann, Historische Belletristik: Populäre his-
torische Biographien in der Weimarer Republik (Frankfurt and New York, 1993), 96 n. 61. Ludwig’s Bismarck
biography was published as Bismarck: Geschichte eines Kämpfers (Berlin, 1926).
65
Rudolf Olden, ‘Emil Ludwigs Bismarck’, Berliner Tageblatt, 5 Dec. 1926.
66
See, for example, Berliner Tageblatt, 18 Jan. 1921, morning edition.
67
See the autobiography by Edwin Redslob, Von Weimar nach Europa: Erlebtes und Durchdachtes (Berlin,
1972).
68
Annegret Heffen, Der Reichskunstwart—Kunstpolitik in den Jahren 1920–1933: Zu den Bemühungen um
eine offizielle Reichskunstpolitik in der Weimarer Republik (Essen, 1986).
60 Fragmented Society —Divided Memory
anxiety, senseless gunfights, confusion and bad weather.’69 A comment printed
in Kölnische Volkszeitung was even more pointed in this respect: ‘There will be
no paintings of the likes of Werner’s Imperial Proclamation to announce the
birth of the new Germany; it will simply be good when the memory of those
dark, grey, ugly November days is erased once and for all . . . !’70
Most democrats were well aware of the political disadvantage deriving from
the Republic’s association with military defeat and revolution. For this reason
they were concerned to defuse the divisive quarrel about the past which was
having an obviously destabilizing effect on contemporary politics. Wilhelm
Heile, for example, writing in the magazine Hilfe, warned his readers on Reich
Foundation Day in 1921 not to focus their attention on disputed historical and
political symbols but to work first and foremost for a consensus which tran-
scended party interests.71
Yet it soon enough became evident that Heile’s appeal had fallen on
deaf ears. This fact did not escape the notice of the editor of Hilfe, the liberal
Reichstag MP Gertrud Bäumer. She admitted that her magazine’s conciliatory
efforts during the celebrations of the fiftieth anniversary of the Reich’s founda-
tion had ultimately failed. The way in which the political leaders of the right
had used the celebrations to stir up enmity against their political opponents
and the Republican state was, according to Bäumer, ‘the strongest and perhaps
most notable symptom that we have lost the heritage of 1871, namely unity’.72

Bismarck and the divided left

In focusing on the right’s instrumentalization of Bismarck against the Repub-
lic, Gertrud Bäumer had overlooked a crucial element of Weimar’s battle over
the past: the ideological divisions within German society did not follow a sim-
ple left–right scheme. Instead, the left was itself caught up in a fierce intellec-
tual battle over the legacy of the past.
Certainly, the spokesmen of the politically divided working-class movement
were united in adopting a critical tone in their allusions to Bismarck.73 Never-
69
Sebastian Haffner, Defying Hitler: A Memoir, translated from German into English by Oliver Pretzel
(London, 2000), 19. 70
Kölnische Volkszeitung, 19 Jan. 1924, 1st morning edition.
71
Wilhelm Heile, ‘Zum 18. Januar’, Die Hilfe, XXVII (1921), 18–19.
72
Gertrud Bäumer, ‘Rückblick auf die Feiern der Reichsgründung’, Die Hilfe, XXVII (1921), 33.
73
On the divided labour movement of the early Weimar Republic see Heinrich August Winkler, Von der
Revolution zur Stabilisierung: Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung in der Weimarer Republik 1918–1924, 2nd rev.
edn. (Berlin and Bonn, 1990), particularly 243–82. For critical contemporary assessments of Bismarck by the
socialist and Communist press see, for example, Vorwärts, 19 Jan. 1921, morning edition, and Rote Fahne, 19
Jan. 1921, morning edition.
 Fragmented Society —Divided Memory 61
theless, it would be rash to assume that this resulted in some form of a ‘united
proletarian front’ against the exploitation of Bismarck by right-wing circles. In
contrast to the Communists’ propaganda, the moderate socialist press always
linked their attacks on Bismarck with a clear support of the Republic and its
constitutional values. The revolution of 1918 and the achievements of the
National Constituent Assembly were represented by the SPD as a return to the
liberal-democratic tradition which had been suppressed by Bismarck.74
The distinguished Social Democratic journalist Richard Lewinsohn in an
article for Weltbühne sought to explain to his readers why he regarded the foun-
dation of Bismarck’s Reich as nothing but a ‘princes’ business’. He noted that
the ‘German tribes were united long before Bismarck began his campaign for
unity. Already after the Wars of Liberation and particularly since 1848 they had
wanted the unification.’ Bismarck’s Reich was not the one for which the March
revolutionaries had struggled. Rather it was an ‘accumulation of violence
directed within and without’. The aim of the Republic, in contrast, was to be
an ‘institution of peace and law’.75
The Social Democratic argument that the November revolution represent-
ed a break (in a positive sense) with Bismarck’s legacy was sharply contested by
the spokesmen of the radicalized socialist subculture. In clear opposition to the
Social Democrats, leading Communists were keen to stress that the recent
revolution had done little to alter the political and economic circumstances of
the workers.76 The central message disseminated by the Communist leadership
was that the Majority Social Democrats bore full responsibility for this, having
‘betrayed’ the interests of the workers by their ‘treason’ during the revolution-
ary winter of 1918–19. On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Reich’s
foundation, the KPD party newspaper, Rote Fahne, concerned itself only
briefly with the right’s celebrations or their content. The paper was much more
interested in a brief (and politically uncompromising) public address issued by
President Ebert and Chancellor Konstantin Fehrenbach on the occasion of
Reich Foundation Day 1921.77 From the Communist paper’s point of view, it
was ‘unbelievable’ that a self-proclaimed working-class party leader such as
Ebert could publish a ‘proof ’ of his devotion to the old Reich, thereby

74
See, for example, Vorwärts, 18 Jan. 1921, morning edition.
75
Richard Lewinsohn, ‘Die Bismarck-Legende’, Die Weltbühne, XVII (1921), 33–5, here p. 35. The SPD’s
ambition to deconstruct the Bismarck cult manifested itself in numerous acts of highly symbolic impor-
tance. In Munich, for example, the SPD-led local government removed the Bismarck bust from the town
hall in June 1919 and ordered that there would be no further state-sponsored celebrations at the Bismarck
memorial at Lake Starnberg. See Hort, Bismarck in München, 113–14.
76
Rote Fahne, 18 Jan. 1921, morning edition.
77
The address is printed in Schulthess, LXII (1921), 10.
62 Fragmented Society —Divided Memory
idealizing the Imperial Proclamation of Versailles.78 ‘The proletariat’, Rote
Fahne maintained, had by contrast no reason ‘to shed a single tear’ for
Bismarck’s Reich: ‘It was not its Reich, it was its prison.’79
Given that these polemics took place only a few weeks before the elections
for the Prussian Lower House on 20 February 1921, it is likely that the Com-
munists’ strident tone was part of their campaign tactics. However, there can be
no doubt that this reading of the recent past was one of the most important
identity-forging legends nurtured in the Communist milieu. It manifested
itself in the creation of the KPD’s own lieux de mémoire in which the graveyard
in the Berlin district of Friedrichsfelde featured prominently. Among the most
famous Communists buried here were Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht,
Leo Jogiches, who was shot dead in March 1919 in the Berlin-Moabit prison,
and the socialist historian Franz Mehring, who had died in the same year. The
KPD provided the financial resources for a monument on the Friedrichsfelde
cemetery to commemorate those who had been killed in the revolution of
1918–19. On 13 June 1926, after more than two years of construction works, the
monument designed by the Bauhaus architect Mies van der Rohe was eventu-
ally completed.80 Even before the erection of the monument, in fact ever since
1920, left-wing radicals organized annual commemoration marches which
ended on the Friedrichsfelde graveyard. The idea that Ebert, Scheidemann,
and Noske had prevented a ‘genuine revolution’ in 1918–19 by forging an
alliance with the ‘bourgeois reaction’ played a key role in the speeches held on
these occasions. It was repeated constantly because this legend fulfilled exactly
the same purpose for the KPD as the Bismarck myth did for the right: it served
to unite the party’s followers and to define them against the ‘system’.81
This myth of victimhood, which played an essential role in the political
self-affirmation of the German Communists, was repeatedly linked to the
memory of Bismarck. When, for example, Reichstag President Paul Löbe
(SPD) stated in a short address to the plenum on 19 January 1921 that
Bismarck’s unification of Germany had been the fulfilment of ‘the decades-
long desire of progressively-minded spirits in our country’, the leader of the
KPD, Paul Levi, immediately asked permission to address the house.82 Levi

78
Rote Fahne, 18 Jan. 1921, evening edition.
79
Rote Fahne, 18 Jan. 1921, morning edition.
80
Rote Fahne, 14 June 1926, morning edition.
81
Rote Fahne, 17 Jan. 1921, evening edition. On the Communist heroes of this legend, Rosa Luxemburg
and Karl Liebknecht, see Scharrer Legende von Rosa & Karl.
82
RT, 19 Jan. 1921, vol. 346, 1887–8.
 Fragmented Society —Divided Memory 63
scarcely waited to reach the podium before bursting into ‘vehement protest
against the exploitation of a historical event as a demonstration of support
for imperialist rationalization and the present bourgeois class system embodied
in Ebert’s Republic, namely that fifty years earlier the king of Prussia received
the imperial crown from the hands of the German princelings’. The KPD and
the workers it spoke for, he insisted, remained convinced that ‘the window-
dressing the Reich underwent after the November revolution . . . has in no way
altered its basic character’.83
In spite of its common historical roots and shared experience of persecution
under the Iron Chancellor, the ideologically divided German working class
was unable to overcome its internal political differences even on the subject of
Bismarck, the ‘father’ of the anti-socialist legislation. The Social Democrats
were the political party most willing to support the Republic, employing
arguments to counteract the Bismarck myth in ways which drew them close to
the intellectuals of the liberal left. Leading representatives of the radicalized
workers’ movement, on the other hand, accused the SPD of having betrayed
the revolution. Instead of establishing a proletarian dictatorship in 1918–19, the
KPD suggested, the MSPD had avoided a radical break with Bismarck’s Reich.
To say that the working class lacked consensus about the past, present, and
future of the political community is to underline a conclusion which can be
applied generally to the whole of Weimar society. This lack of consensus
and the ‘inner rejection of the peace’ by sectors of the German population
prevented the easing of political tensions after the revolution.84 It created a
political climate in which the most determined enemies of the Republic would
stop at nothing, not even at assassinating political opponents. Between 1918
and 1922 alone, 22 politically motivated assassinations were committed
by left-wing radicals and 354 by right-wing extremists.85 The most prominent
victim of this violent development was murdered in 1922: Foreign Minister
Walther Rathenau.
83
Ibid. 1888.
84
Quotation from Mommsen, Weimar Democracy, 89.
85
See Gay, Weimar Culture, 21.
 5
Fighting the ‘Enemies of the Reich’: Bismarck
and the State Crisis of 1922–1923

Bismarck and the Law for the Protection of the Republic

On the morning of 24 June 1922, the German Foreign Minister Walther
Rathenau was shot dead on his way to the Wilhelmstraße by members of the
militant nationalist ‘Organisation Consul’.1 The German public was up in arms
about yet another terrorist act by this radical right-wing organization, from
whose ranks had already come the assassins of the former Reich Finance
Minister Matthias Erzberger.2 Spontaneous strikes in numerous large industrial
workplaces all over Germany were as much an expression of the public outrage
as the various large-scale demonstrations, at which hundreds of thousands of
people (in Berlin more than a million) gave voice to their consternation.3
The pressure of public opinion and the severity of the crime caused Presi-
dent Ebert to promulgate, at the cabinet’s request, an emergency decree for the
protection of the Republic two days after the attack. As a result of this emer-
gency decree it became possible to ban anti-republican organizations as long as
there was reasonable suspicion of anti-constitutional intent.4 The cabinet, led
by the Centre politician Joseph Wirth, soon agreed that the Reich President’s
emergency decree must be converted into a long-term ‘Law for the Protection
of the Republic’.5 In early July 1922, a suitable draft was presented to the
Reichstag.
Apart from the problem of achieving consensus on the proposed constitu-
tional amendments, the central question during the bill’s first reading was how
a political climate could have emerged in which leading Republicans had to

1
See Martin Sabrow, Der Rathenaumord: Rekonstruktion einer Verschwörung gegen die Republik von
Weimar (Frankfurt, 1999).
2
See, for example, Rote Fahne, 24 June 1922, evening edition; Vorwärts, 24 June 1922, evening edition;
Germania, 25 June 1922; Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 24 June 1922, evening edition.
3
See Schulthess, LXIII (1922), 80–1. 4
Ibid. 79–80.
5
Akten der Reichskanzlei, Das Kabinett Wirth II, 26. Oktober bis 22. November 1922, ed. Ingrid Schulze-
Bidlingmaier (Boppard, 1973), cabinet meetings of 25 June 1922 (pp. 896–901) and 26 June 1922 (pp. 901–6).
 Fighting the ‘Enemies of the Reich’ 65

4. ‘Exceptional legislation’—a front-page caricature in Simplicissimus draws an

analogy between Bismarck’s anti-socialist legislation (1878) and the Law for the
Protection of the Republic (1922).

fear for their lives. Gustav Stresemann, whose DVP was crucial for the attain-
ment of the necessary two-thirds majority for passing the bill, protested
against the ‘injustice of wanting to make those, who are today leading
figures in the Republic, responsible for the dire situation and poverty in
which the German people find themselves’. In the same speech, Stresemann
clearly ascribed the rapid deterioration of the political climate to the ‘struggle
over the past’, which had also, he suggested, contributed to the murder of
66 Fighting the ‘Enemies of the Reich’
Rathenau.6 The ‘tumultuous agreement’ with which his audience greeted
Stresemann’s speech confirmed that the threat to the state’s internal stability
from the battle over the past was acknowledged by the majority of political
decision makers.7
By rejecting the USPD’s demand to incorporate in the law a ‘proscription of
the monarchist assassins’ flag [black, white, and red]’, Stresemann at the same
time lent force to his conviction that a republican mind-set could not be dic-
tated ‘from above’.8 The DVP leader emphasized instead the importance of
arriving at a basic socio-political consensus that was impossible to achieve by
legislation alone. He suggested that the various historical traditions used by
representatives of all parties to legitimize their positions were not as opposed as
was commonly imagined. Stresemann exemplified his view by referring to the
ongoing controversy over the national flag. He claimed to honour, now as
before, the old black, white, and red flag of the Reich as the ‘symbol of a nation
which achieved unity and greatness after a long struggle’. He also insisted,
however, that the same was true for the ‘historical traditions associated with
black, red, and gold’. After all, German patriots had already fought for the idea
of national unity in the Wars of Liberation and in the years 1848–9 before
Bismarck succeeded with his ‘policy of Blood and Iron’.9
Wilhelm Kahl, another member of the DVP Reichstag delegation, sup-
ported Stresemann’s views and expressed his desire for an end to the historical-
political trench warfare. Unlike Stresemann, however, he resolutely protested
against the tendency of left-wing publicists and politicians ‘to class whole par-
ties as murderous and to hold them responsible for a certain assassination’.
Kahl insisted that such accusations had resulted in the ‘poisoning’ of peaceful
political coexistence, as manifested in the left’s ‘merciless’ attacks upon the
right’s annual celebrations of 18 January, in which the Weimar left had deeply
wounded ‘our feelings of piety, remembrance, and thankfulness’.10
None the less, the DVP was prepared in principle to support the Law for the
Protection of the Republic.11 The German Nationalists consequently found

6
RT, 5 July 1922, vol. 356, 8307. The attempt to mediate between rivalling historical traditions promoted
by the right and the democratic left is a recurrent pattern in Stresemann’s writings and speeches. See
Gustav Stresemann, Bismarck und wir (Berlin, 1916), 4–6 as well as his article ‘Das alte und das neue
Deutschland’, published in March 1925 in the French magazine L’Europe nouvelle. The article is reprinted in
Gustav Stresemann, Vermächtnis: Der Nachlaß in drei Bänden, ed. Henry Bernard, here vol. 2: Locarno und
Genf (Berlin, 1932), 327–32. 7
RT, 5 July 1922, vol. 356, 8310–11.
8
For Rosenfeld’s speech see RT, 5 July 1922, vol. 356, 8307. For Stresemann’s speech see RT, 5 July 1922,
vol. 356, 8309.
9
Ibid. 10
RT, 11 July 1922, vol. 356, 8426–7.
11
See, too, the speech of Rudolf Heinze, leader of the DVP’s Reichstag delegation, in RT, 25 June 1922,
vol. 356, 8059. Also Ernst R. Huber, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte seit 1789, vol. 7: Ausbau, Schutz und Unter-
gang der Weimarer Republik (Stuttgart, 1984), 255 ff.
 Fighting the ‘Enemies of the Reich’ 67
themselves in an isolated position. The DNVP leadership was aware of the
extent to which their situation had deteriorated since 24 June. As the public
protests demonstrated, the assassination of Rathenau had stabilized rather than
weakened the Republic. The DNVP suddenly found itself politically ostra-
cized and stigmatized as the new ‘internal enemy of the Reich’.12
In these circumstances the party leadership reacted with a defensive strategy.
Members of the DNVP publicly claimed that the Law for the Protection of
the Republic was a form of enslavement of opinion unambiguously directed
against the right, by which freedom of speech would be stifled. A restriction of
the freedom of speech, the nationalist MP Walther Graef pointed out, was
totally unacceptable, especially as the German people were in the middle of a
‘vicious conflict of ideologies’ in which public controversy over the past, pres-
ent, and future of the Reich had to be conducted with all possible clarity. Graef
then attacked the Centre on the basis that in the 1870s political Catholicism had
objected to similarly unjust treatment under Bismarck. Germania in particular,
he claimed, had criticized Bismarck’s government on many occasions. Hence,
the (Catholic) Chancellor should not react so ‘sensitively’ if the German
Nationalists’ press decided to enforce the same right in a similar situation.13
The strategic approach of anti-democratic right-wing opposition to the Law
for the Protection of the Republic was thus made clear: the DNVP, forced by
Rathenau’s murder into uncomfortable proximity with fanatical terrorists,
tried to represent itself as the victim of legal exclusion by those parties which
Bismarck had ‘identified’ as ‘patriotically unreliable’. Accused of preparing the
intellectual ground for Rathenau’s murder, the DNVP rejected the Law for the
Protection of the Republic as a means to stifle legitimate parliamentary oppo-
sition. Some commentators even suggested that if the law (which, in analogy to
the anti-socialist legislation of the 1870s, was referred to as the ‘Nationalist Law’
in right-wing circles) came into effect, then a similar strengthening of the ‘vic-
tims’ would result as had occurred during Bismarck’s struggle against political
Catholicism and Social Democracy.14
Graef ’s speech, and the all too transparent intention behind his words,
caused the Social Democratic Minister of Justice, Gustav Radbruch, to pillory
the devious behaviour of the German Nationalists. After making defamatory
speeches against democratic politicians, the DNVP deputies dared to declare
themselves victims of a policy of exclusion.15 Radbruch strongly opposed any
12
See Chancellor Wirth’s famous speech in RT, 25 June 1922, vol. 355, 8058. For the violent attacks against
DNVP offices in different German cities see Schulthess, LXIII (1922), 78.
13
RT, 11 July 1922, vol. 356, 8414.
14
See Hans Weberstedt, ‘Am Grabe Bismarcks’, Die Tradition, 29 July 1922. See, too, the caricature
‘Exceptional Legislation’ printed in Simplicissimus, XXVII (1922), 241.
15
RT, 11 July 1922, vol. 356, 8416–17.
68 Fighting the ‘Enemies of the Reich’
comparison between the Law for the Protection of the Republic and Bismarck’s
exceptional legislation of the 1870s and 1880s; while Bismarck’s legislation had
been explicitly directed against specific political views, the planned legislation
merely aimed to protect the current constitutional system.16
Johannes Bell supported these statements and rejected the DNVP’s criticism
on behalf of the Centre Party. In contrast to the Kulturkampf legislation,
which had targeted a religious minority, the Law for the Protection of the
Republic would ‘equally apply to all citizens’. According to Bell, had it been
otherwise, the Centre would never have stood in support of the Law’s accep-
tance. After all, political Catholicism had for too long ‘suffered from the pres-
sure of unbearable exceptional legislation’. Bell insisted that the experience
of the Kulturkampf had been so traumatic for the Centre Party that it would
never support any unjust legislation.17
It is hardly surprising that the DNVP’s attempts to draw a parallel between
the current measures for the protection of the Republic and Bismarck’s anti-
socialist and Kulturkampf legislation aroused such strong reactions among
representatives of both the SPD and the Centre Party. Whenever Centrist or
Social Democratic spokesmen referred to Bismarck’s domestic policy it was
made clear that no future legislation which put political convictions on trial
would ever gain their approval.18 More than half a century after Bismarck’s
creation of the German Empire, the memory of the ‘internal foundation of the
Reich’ touched a raw nerve in the collective memory of the socialist and Catholic
population. It was precisely on this ‘weakness’ that the anti-democratic political
right preyed. None the less, the DNVP failed to prevent the passing of the bill.
The DDP Reichstag delegate Walther Schücking acknowledged the nationalist
opposition’s right to well-founded criticism of the government and warned
parliament against a return to those ‘old-fashioned Prussian methods’ through
which Bismarck had finally brought about the ‘largest bankruptcy’ which ‘any
state has ever suffered in world history’. But Schücking made it clear that the
draft legislation under consideration was fully reconcilable with the democratic
principles of the Weimar constitution. As opposed to Bismarck’s illiberal and
ideologically motivated legislation, the Republic had created a thoroughly
justifiable piece of legislation to counteract the enemies of democracy.19
16
Ibid. See also the speech of the Social Democratic Reich Minister of the Interior Adolf Köster, who
declared that the Law for the Protection of the Republic was ‘no second Socialist Law’. RT, 5 July 1922, vol.
356, 8289. 17
RT, 5 July 1922, vol. 356, 8293. For similar comments, see Germania, 12 July 1922.
18
See, for example, the 1921 review of the 3rd volume of Bismarck’s Gedanken und Erinnerungen in
Historisch-Politische Blätter für das katholische Deutschland, CLXX (1922), 62–4. See, too, Paul Kamp-
ffmeyer, ‘Bismarck und die Sozialistengesetze’, Sozialistische Monatshefte, LXVII (1928), 747–52.
19
RT, 11 July 1922, vol. 356, 8430–1.
 Fighting the ‘Enemies of the Reich’ 69
Schücking considered it vital to impart these ‘insights’ about Bismarck to
the younger generation in view of the lack of democratic convictions in broad
spheres of society. The ‘task of the future’ was to provide the young with a
history written ‘from the viewpoint of the German people’ and not to hold on
to the nationalist myths ‘which we have learnt in the Prussian primary schools
and in the Royal Prussian grammar schools’.20
On 18 July 1922, the Law for the Protection of the Republic was passed in the
Reichstag with a comfortable two-thirds majority, although the deputies of
DNVP, KPD, and BVP voted solidly against it.21 The law provided against fur-
ther insults to the Republican flag and physical attacks on representatives of the
Republic by establishing more severe punishment for crimes against the con-
stitution and by creating a central Court of Justice for the Protection of the
Republic in Leipzig. Both in its theory and in its practice, the Law for the Pro-
tection of the Republic did not justify a comparison with Bismarck’s excep-
tional legislation of the 1870s and 1880s. Whereas the former aimed at the
reduction of radical agitation through legally justifiable means supported by
two-thirds of the Reichstag deputies, the latter had sacrificed constitutional
principles in favour of political calculation.22
Despite the DNVP’s defeat in the parliamentary vote of 18 July 1922, the
Law for the Protection of the Republic gave the Weimar right no real cause for
concern. First, the law was restricted to a five-year period. Moreover, the inde-
pendent justice apparatus which had remained largely unchanged since the
days of the Kaiserreich, made sure that the Law for the Protection of the
Republic was predominantly used against left-wing offenders. Criminal acts
against the Republic committed by the right, however, were all too often treat-
ed with indulgence.23

Bismarck and the Battle of the Ruhr

The threat to Weimar’s domestic political peace represented by the assassina-
tion of Walther Rathenau was followed just a few months later by a new chal-
lenge. This time it was not posed by internal enemies of democracy, but rather

20
Ibid. 8434. 21
RT, 18 July 1922, vol. 356, 8737–9.
22
On Bismarck’s exceptional legislation see Wolfgang Sauer, ‘Das Problem des deutschen National-
staates’, in Hans-Ulrich Wehler (ed.), Moderne deutsche Sozialgeschichte (Cologne, 1966), 407–36. See, too,
Anderson, Windthorst, 165 ff.
23
See Gotthard Jasper, Der Schutz der Republik: Studien zur staatlichen Sicherung der Demokratie in der
Weimarer Republik 1922–1930 (Tübingen, 1963), 196 ff. See, too, Christoph Gusy, Weimar—die wehrlose
Republik? Verfassungsschutzrecht und Verfassungsschutz in der Weimarer Republik (Tübingen, 1991), 134 ff.
70 Fighting the ‘Enemies of the Reich’
by the French government led by Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré. On 9
January 1923 the Allied reparations commission declared (against the will of the
British representative) that Germany had deliberately defaulted on its required
coal deliveries for 1922. This was the pretext for the occupation of the Ruhr
region by French and Belgian troops two days later. Massive protests, often
combined with strong verbal attacks on the French ‘arch-enemy’, immediately
broke out in Germany.24
Wilhelm Cuno, formerly director of HAPAG and Chancellor of a bourgeois
minority cabinet since November 1922, had predicted such a response imme-
diately after the publication of the reparations commission’s report: ‘If it comes
to sanctions and the use of force’, he prophesied, ‘then the next consequence
will be a strong wave of nationalist feeling’. In this event, he argued, every effort
should be made ‘to make this wave of feeling useful for the state, not to let it run
uncontrolled, or ally itself with the swastika or the red, white, and black ban-
ners, but to ensure that it serves the purposes of unity and reconciliation with-
in the German people’.25
The call for internal unity was also raised in the Reichstag, which met in
Berlin for an extraordinary sitting on the day after the occupation of the Ruhr.
Here, too, it seemed as if the French military actions would reconcile internal
tensions, at least superficially.26 Since the occupation of the Ruhr was seen as an
act of French aggression threatening the very existence of the Reich, a broad
consensus emerged in the German public.27
The emergence of a ‘political truce’ was hailed by many contemporaries. At
Berlin’s Friedrich-Wilhelm University, for example, the representative of the
student body declared that the Germans had found their own way ‘back to the
national thought and thus to a national strength of mind’. Just as in Bismarck’s
time, the nation was now ‘united and strong’ in resistance against the external
threat.28 The Tübingen historian Wilhelm Weber also considered it apposite to

24
See Mommsen, Weimar Democracy, 128–46. For contemporary reactions see, too, Paul Wentzke,
Ruhrkampf: Einbruch und Abwehr im rheinisch-westfälischen Industriegebiet, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1930–2). Also,
Heinrich Claß, ‘Um die deutsche Freiheit’, Alldeutsche Blätter, 20 Mar. 1923.
25
AdR, Das Kabinett Cuno, 22. November 1922 bis 12. August 1923, ed. Karl-Heinz Harbeck (Boppard,
1968), cabinet meeting of 9 January 1923, 122–9, quotation on pp. 122–3, n. 3. See, too, the shortened version
of the public address issued by President Ebert and the Cuno government on 11 January in Schulthess, LXIV
(1923), 8–9. 26
For more on the Reichstag debate, see RT, 13 Jan. 1923, vol. 357, 9423 ff.
27
Quotations from Deutsche Tageszeitung, 19 Jan. 1923, evening edition; Berliner Tageblatt, 28 Jan. 1923,
morning edition. Objections to the ‘National Front of Unity’ or nationale Einheitsfront were raised, for
example, in Vorwärts, 13 Jan. 1923, evening edition.
28
Gerhard Hoef ’s speech in Reichsgründerfeier der Friedrich-Wilhelms Universität zu Berlin, gehalten in
der neuen Aula am 18. Januar 1923 (Berlin, 1923), 13–14. See also the address of Emil W. Mayer in Feier der
Reichsgründung, veranstaltet am 18. Januar von der Universität Giessen (Giessen, 1923), 3–5.
 Fighting the ‘Enemies of the Reich’ 71
call upon the ‘spirit of 1870–71’. Weber suggested that France had won a
Pyrrhic victory in the Treaty of Versailles. Her military action in the Ruhr
would facilitate Germany’s rebirth as an internally united nation. In accor-
dance with its ‘divine purpose’ the German Reich would once again take its
place among the great powers. Then, the Germans would follow Bismarck’s
dictum, and ‘fear God but nothing else in the world!’29
Although the actions of Poincaré’s government were unanimously con-
demned by the German public, the means of carrying out the struggle against
French aggression remained controversial. The majority of German politicians
considered passive resistance to be the best reaction to Poincaré’s policy of ‘pro-
ductive mortgages’, but conservative circles in particular regretted the govern-
ment’s lack of ‘resolution to defend the territorial unity of those regions of the
Reich which were handed down to us by the Reichsgründer, cost what it may’.30
Deutsche Tageszeitung suggested that Germany had accepted the loss of Alsace-
Lorraine, spoils of the war of 1870–1, far too readily. ‘Encouraged’ by this lack
of ‘active, stubborn resistance’, the ‘arch-enemy in the West has not given up its
hope to further destroy the unity of the Reich. The setback in the Ruhr repre-
sents a concerted effort to carry out this plan belatedly. . . . Only if we pass this
ordeal by fire can we once again be worthy of our fathers.’31 As nationalist cir-
cles attempted to revive the memory of the German victory of 1871 and the
‘spirit of 1914’, Bismarck was represented in armour, sword in hand, on the
front cover of a right-wing magazine.32
By contrast, Rudolf Pannwitz, a journalist committed to the republican
cause, called for calm and moderation. In an article for Weltbühne, published
in early February 1923, Pannwitz asked what Bismarck would do if he saw his
‘well built, badly defended house in ruins’. As ‘a realist’, Pannwitz suggested,
‘he would not respond . . . according to the principles which others than him
have made into Bismarck’s tradition and Bismarck’s system . . .’. According
to Pannwitz, Bismarck would have accepted the lost war and paid the due
reparations.33
That Bismarck could be invoked to justify two thoroughly different solu-
tions to the current crisis may seem surprising in light of the political trench

29
Wihelm Weber, Vom vergangenen und vom zukünftigen Deutschen: Eine Gedächtnisrede zur Reichsgrün-
dung für die Stuttgarter und Hohenheimer Studenten (Tübingen, 1923), quotations on pp. 1, 10, and 12.
30
Commentaries approving the policy of passive resistance can be found, for example, in Berliner
Tageblatt, 23 Jan. 1923, morning edition. In contrast see Deutsche Tageszeitung, 18 Jan. 1923, evening edition.
31
Ibid. See also Deutsche Tageszeitung, 5 Mar. 1923, evening edition.
32
See the illustration ‘Bismarck, hilf!’ (‘Help, Bismarck!’), Jung-Bismarck-Berlin, Apr. 1923.
33
Rudolf Pannwitz, ‘Was würde Bismarck tun?’, Die Weltbühne, XIX (1923), 208.
72 Fighting the ‘Enemies of the Reich’
warfare of the previous years. It was the perceived threat to German territorial
integrity that stimulated a search for suitable historical comparisons and les-
sons to be learnt from the past. As early as autumn 1922, Walter Goetz had indi-
cated that Franco-German relations in Bismarck’s days were of ‘highly
significant current interest’ not just for right-wing anti-democrats, but also for
those forces loyal to the Republic. Especially after 2 September 1870, the date
of the German victory over the main French army at Sedan, ‘the same ques-
tions, difficulties and sufferings’ were ‘present in different forms’. Then
German troops had stood on French soil, now the opposite was true. Unlike
Poincaré, however, Bismarck had not been full of the ‘desire for destruction’.
While the Reich’s founder had never interfered with French sovereignty, France
had used its position of power ‘methodically for unjust ends’ since the end of
the Great War.34
Vorwärts came to a similar assessment in January 1923 when comparing
Bismarck’s actions during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1 with Poincaré’s
present policy. The most important conclusion drawn by Vorwärts was that
Bismarck had not immediately resorted to military sanctions when the French
had fallen behind on their reparations payments. Poincaré, on the other hand,
was not prepared to make comparable concessions because his aim was the
destruction of the German Reich. The Social Democratic paper nevertheless
estimated France’s chances of success as low. It predicted that Poincaré would
achieve through his policy of violence precisely what Bismarck had tried to
avoid, namely the internal unity of his opponent. If Bismarck had encouraged
French ideas of revenge by his annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, then Poincaré
would make the same mistake in the current situation. He would ‘create a
mood among the German people for which the German government can take
no responsibility’.35 Bismarck’s French campaign thus also offered a historical
point of comparison for the forces loyal to the Republic. This reference point
was deliberately employed in order to demonstrate the injustice of Poincaré’s
actions and to ‘prove’ the lack of historical precedent for France’s actions
against Germany. Liberals as well as Social Democrats thereby positively repre-
sented an era in German history which they had previously criticized. The tem-
porary about-face in their attitude to Bismarck appeared to them to be justified
by the changed political context.

34
Walter Goetz, ‘Die deutsche Außenpolitik von 1871–1890’, Die Hilfe, XXVIII (1922), 317–19, quotation
on p. 318. For a similar assessment see the book published by Goetz’s colleague, Hans Herzfeld, Deutschland
und das geschlagene Frankreich 1871–1873: Friedensschluß, Kriegsentschädigung, Besatzungszeit (Berlin, 1924).
35
Vorwärts, 16 Jan. 1923, morning edition. Similarly, Germania, 18 Jan. 1923.
 Fighting the ‘Enemies of the Reich’ 73
However, a political climate in which even the left drew on Bismarck in jus-
tifying its political ambitions did not last long. The ‘National Front of Unity’
increasingly tottered under the effects of the hyperinflation resulting from pas-
sive resistance, and right-wing criticism of Cuno’s policies was again for-
mulated with reference to Bismarck. Heinrich Claß, for example, felt obliged
to remind Chancellor Cuno in mid-July 1923 that Bismarck, in contrast to the
current leadership, would never have tolerated French occupation of German
soil. Instead, Claß asserted, Bismarck would have opposed the French with a
policy of ‘Blood and Iron’ and taken up the ‘struggle with all possible strength’
to ‘make Germany free’.36 In July 1923, Völkischer Beobachter, too, regretted the
‘lack of political instinct’ and ‘national will’ on the part of the Cuno govern-
ment. What Germany desperately needed, what ‘the sad present avidly hopes
for’, was a leader of Bismarckian proportions who would take ‘firm hold of the
rudder’.37
Gustav Stresemann, who took over the Chancellorship on 13 August 1923 as
head of a Grand Coalition government, was certainly not the leader Völkischer
Beobachter had hoped for. In the eyes of the German right, Stresemann had
abandoned his nationalist beliefs by entering into a coalition government with
the SPD, thereby stabilizing ‘the hated system of defeat and weakness epito-
mized by the term Weimar’.38 Stresemann’s policies during his hundred days in
office reinforced their criticism. When the policy of passive resistance against
the French became financially unbearable and the long-cherished hope
for Great Britain’s diplomatic intervention finally proved to be unfounded,
Stresemann put an end to the Battle of the Ruhr on 26 September 1923.39
This decision—inevitable as it was in practical terms—met with considerable
opposition from nationalist circles.40 Stresemann countered the nationalists’
criticism by emphasizing that his decision was in line with Bismarck’s flexible
foreign policy. After he had criticized the DNVP’s putative loyalty to principle
as inappropriate to Germany’s current international position, he stressed that
the man who puts his principles foremost should lay his wreath at the foot, not of
Bismarck’s statue, but of that of Eugen Richter [leader of the Progressive Liberal Party
and one of Bismarck’s most determined opponents in the Reichstag]. It is only politi-
cal philistines who perpetually hold fast to principles. . . . Bismarck had the capacity of
looking facts in the face and of taking account of circumstances. We were maintaining

36
Heinrich Claß, ‘Nach fünfundzwanzig Jahren’, Alldeutsche Blätter, 20 July 1923.
37
Völkischer Beobachter, 31 July 1923. 38
Mommsen, Weimar Democracy, 154.
39
Schulthess, LXIV (1923), 177–8.
40
See, for example, the Reichstag speech by the völkisch politician Albrecht von Graefe, RT, 28 Sept. 1923,
vol. 361, 11929. See, too, the response in Berliner Tageblatt, 28 Sept. 1923, morning edition.
74 Fighting the ‘Enemies of the Reich’
at that time a comparatively steady rate of progress, whereas now we are living in a
revolutionary period. . . . We are finding out how hard it is for a defenceless nation to
carry out foreign policy. We can have nothing to do with the pacifists who are proud of
this state of affairs. Unlike them, we feel bitterly the disgrace of having disarmament
imposed upon us. However, just as we believe in Bismarck’s theory of practical politics,
we must ask those who claim to be followers of Bismarck to deal in practical politics
and not drift into a policy of illusions. We had to abandon our struggle in the Ruhr, and
have proved our willingness to make reparations to the limit of our capacity.41

Statements of this sort were highly characteristic of Stresemann, who propa-

gated an image of Bismarck which deviated significantly from that of the
nationalist right. Stresemann, who had studied history and economics in
Berlin, often drew on the knowledge he had acquired as an undergraduate in
the course of his political career.42 Despite his annexationist convictions during
the First World War, Stresemann had advocated a strengthening of parliamen-
tary power within the Imperial Constitution, a position he had justified by
referring to Bismarck. In a Reichstag debate of October 1916 he admitted that
‘Bismarck’s personality had been a great impediment to German parliamentary
development’. The restriction of parliamentary power had not mattered as
long as Bismarck, the genius politician, was at the helm. After Bismarck’s dis-
missal in 1890, however, the powerless parliament had been unable to mitigate
the policies of Bismarck’s less talented successors. Stresemann insisted that in
1892 Bismarck himself had advocated a strengthening of parliament’s rights:
‘Without a Reichstag which can maintain a constant majority, which is capa-
ble of fulfilling the duties of a people’s assembly, of criticizing the government,
controlling, warning, moderating, which is capable of realizing the equili-
brium that our constitution wished to create between government and the peo-
ple’s representatives—without such a Reichstag I fear for the endurance and
solidity of our national institutions.’43
After the German defeat and the revolution of 1918, Stresemann founded the
German People’s Party, whose deputies in Weimar’s National Assembly voted
against the new constitution. Stresemann himself was decidedly against revo-
lution and revolt, and made no secret in the early years of the Weimar Repub-

41
‘Through Toil and Sacrifice to Freedom’, speech delivered at the convention of the German People’s
Party in Hanover, 30 March 1924, in Gustav Stresemann, Essays and Speeches on Various Subjects, with an
introduction by Rochus von Rheinbaben (London, 1930), 209–10.
42
In 1897 Stresemann had attended a series of forty-two lectures on nineteenth-century German history
by the Bismarck expert Max Lenz. Stresemann’s shorthand notes can be found in Politisches Archiv des
Auswärtigen Amtes, Stresemann papers, vol. 362.
43
Bismarck as quoted by Stresemann in RT, vol. 308, 26 Oct. 1916. See, too, Gustav Stresemann, ‘Zu
Bismarcks Gedächtnis’, in id., Vermächtnis, vol. 3: Von Thoiry bis zum Ausklang, 282–9.
 Fighting the ‘Enemies of the Reich’ 75
lic of his enduring monarchist convictions and his attachment to the former
glory of Imperial Germany. Even during and immediately after the Kapp-
Lüttwitz putsch of 1920, Stresemann took an ambiguous position. At a
meeting of the DVP’s executive committee on 28 March 1920 Stresemann pro-
claimed that ‘the ideal of our lives lies in ruins’ as a consequence of the military
defeat and the revolution of 1918–19. He reminded his audience that in
September 1866 the National Liberal Party had granted Bismarck indemnity
after the Prussian constitutional conflict (1862–6), even though he had violat-
ed the legislation for approving budgets as laid down in the Prussian Constitu-
tion. The purpose (in this case Bismarck’s creation of the German Reich) had
justified the unlawful means. Stresemann continued: ‘I am of the opinion we
must be clear about one thing: there is no parallel with the events of 13 March
[1920; the day the Kapp putsch began], but if our lord God and fate send us
another man who will once again, without observing all of Weimar’s laws,
create a great Germany, then our party will give him that same indemnity that
the statesmen of the National Liberal Party once granted Bismarck.’44
Nevertheless, as Jonathan Wright has argued, the Kapp putsch made it clear
to Stresemann that any attempt to restore the monarchy was bound to end in
civil war.45 It was Stresemann’s pragmatic approach to the Republic which
brought the former implacable enemy of socialism to the conclusion that it was
necessary to bridge the gulf between his own party and the SPD, the two par-
ties representing the conflicting social and economic interests of industry and
the working class. At the DVP’s Stuttgart party conference in 1921, Stresemann
suggested the DVP should return to the government coalition. In reply to the
reproach that in order to do so the DVP would have to make concessions to the
Centre and the SPD, Stresemann again referred to Bismarck: ‘I ask you to go
back in German history, to consider the greatest statesman the world had in the
nineteenth century, Bismarck. Were his politics anything other than the poli-
tics of compromise? . . . Was this policy of the achievable not a hundred times
more national-minded and forward-looking than the policies of those who felt
the necessity to attack it?’46
Stresemann’s willingness to co-operate with the Weimar coalition parties
after 1920 was never forgiven by the nationalist opposition. His 1923 decision
44
Stresemann at the DVP’s executive committee meeting of 28 March 1920, as quoted in Eberhard Kolb
and Ludwig Richter (eds.), Nationalliberalismus in der Weimarer Republik: Die Führungsgremien der
Deutschen Volkspartei, 2 vols. (Düsseldorf, 1999), here 1. 285. The records testify to ‘long, rapturous praise and
applause’.
45
See Jonathan Wright, Gustav Stresemann: Weimar’s Greatest Statesman (Oxford, 2002), 150 ff.
46
Gustav Stresemann’s speech at the DVP’s party conference in Stuttgart on 1 December 1921, in id.,
Schriften, ed. Arnold Harttung (Berlin, 1976), 222 ff., here p. 228.
76 Fighting the ‘Enemies of the Reich’
to abandon the policy of passive resistance in the Ruhr was hardly designed to
improve relations between the Chancellor and his right-wing critics. Rhetori-
cal attacks were not the only problems Stresemann’s government had to deal
with in the late autumn of 1923. Immediately after the abandonment of passive
resistance the Bavarian state government declared a state of emergency and
transferred all power to Gustav von Kahr, previously the Minister President of
Bavaria. This clear breach of the constitution by the Bavarian state government
was only the most recent climax in the long smouldering conflict between the
Reich and the southern German state which had become, since the Kapp
putsch of 1920, an ‘Eldorado’ for right-wing political extremism.47
Bavaria’s provocative actions, matched just hours later by Friedrich Ebert’s
declaration of a state of emergency in the Reich, spawned a tumult of angry
protest in the democratic press. The liberal historian Walter Goetz described
the Bavarian government’s action as ‘pure madness’ and as an attempt ‘to
destroy Bismarck’s work by criminal negligence’. The fathers of those who were
responsible for this policy would in all certainty ‘never have dreamt that the
nation’s deep longing for unity would be reversed just fifty years later in a con-
flict over the competence of the federal state, and that in this way Bavaria
would thus work for the German arch-enemy [France] against Germany’.48
Even if Goetz’s accusation that Kahr would ‘once again drive Germany into
the misery of the old system of loosely linked small states’ was slightly far-
fetched, he was correct about one thing: the political situation for the Repub-
lic was more serious than it had ever been before. Germany stood on the brink
of a civil war, and attacks against the democratic ‘system’ were perpetrated
not just from the political right, but also from the left. However, neither the
‘German October’ nor Hitler’s attempted coup of 9 November 1923 were to
bring about the end of the Weimar Republic.49 Even the fall of Stresemann’s
government on 23 November 1923 could not alter the fact that Germany’s
future seemed far less grim in the second half of November 1923 than it had
only a few weeks earlier. The attempted putsches of the right and the left had
failed, their organizers were discredited in the medium term, and hyperinfla-
tion had been eliminated.
Weimar had therefore survived the post-war crisis which began in 1919 and
culminated in 1923. The Republic proved capable of withstanding the threats
to democracy from the left and the right. The Kapp putsch of 1920 was impres-

47
Kolb, Weimar Republic, 38. For details of the constitutional problems involved in this step see Huber,
Verfassungsgeschichte, 7, 364–5.
48
Walter Goetz, ‘Bayern und die Reichsgründung’, Die Hilfe, XXIX (1923), 368–9.
49
On the ‘German October’ and the Hitler putsch see Winkler, Weimar, 223–43.
 Fighting the ‘Enemies of the Reich’ 77
sively fended off by a general strike and rapidly collapsed.50 Three years later,
following the French occupation of the Ruhr and hyperinflation, the ability of
the Republic to weather these storms seemed to augur well for the future. The
endurance of this stability would, however, largely depend on the Republic’s
ability to instil a belief in democratic principles in the people’s minds. In this
respect, as Hermann Ulrich Kantorowitz put it in 1921, the path which the sup-
porters of the Republic would have to tread to consolidate democracy could
only lead ‘over the rubble of the Bismarck cult’.51
50
On the Kapp-Lüttwitz putsch and the subsequent general strike see Erwin Könnemann (ed.), Der
Kapp-Lüttwitz-Ludendorff-Putsch (Berlin, 1996).
51
Kantorowicz, Bismarcks Schatten, 11.
 6
Bismarck as an Election Campaigner

‘You must vote thus, or you are voting for the wrong party!’
Bismarck and the Reichstag elections of 1924
The Reichstag elections of 4 May 1924 ended ignominiously for the ‘Weimar
coalition’ parties. The Republican powers suffered their worst result prior to
the disastrous elections of 1932; together they received merely 36.9 per cent of
the valid vote. Only the Centre Party was able to consolidate its result of June
1920. The DDP, on the other hand, fell from 8.3 per cent to 5.3 per cent. The
worst blow was struck against the Social Democrats, reunited with the USPD’s
‘right’ wing since 1922, whose share of the Reichstag mandates went down from
171 to 100 seats.1
The prime beneficiary of this huge loss of support for the moderate socialist
left was the KPD, who could attribute the increase in their mandate from 17 to
62 seats largely to the fact that they had been able to attract the support of the
majority of former USPD voters. Apart from the KPD, the radical right, too,
could regard itself as an election victor: with a share of 19.5 per cent of the vote,
the DNVP became the second strongest party in the Reich. Its right-wing
splinter party, the völkisch Freedom Party or Freiheitspartei, which had allied
itself with the National Socialists, registered 6.5 per cent—barely 3 per cent less
than the moderate nationalist DVP, whose result was 4.7 per cent worse than in
the June elections of 1920.2
The central object of contention during the spring election campaign of
1924 following the dissolution of the Reichstag on 13 March 1924 had been the
1
On the election results see Falter, Wahlen, 69. See, too, Elfi Bendikat and Detlef Lehnert,
‘ “Schwarzweißrot gegen Schwarzrotgold”: Identifikation und Abgrenzung parteipolitischer Teilkulturen
im Reichstagswahlkampf des Frühjahres 1924’, in Detlef Lehnert and Klaus Megerle (eds.), Politische
Teilkulturen zwischen Integration und Polarisierung: Zur politischen Kultur in der Weimarer Republik
(Opladen, 1990), 102–42.
2
After having formed an alliance with the ten MPs of the Farmers’ League, the DNVP, being the largest
parliamentary group, had the right to appoint the president of the Reichstag. For a detailed analysis of
the election results, including the shift in voting patterns, see Heinrich August Winkler, Der Schein der
Normalität: Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung in der Weimarer Republik 1924–1930, 2nd rev. edn. (Berlin and
Bonn, 1988), 177–88.
 Bismarck as an Election Campaigner 79

5. ‘Compare them, German voter! Vote for black, white, and red! Vote for the German
Nationalists!’ Philipp Scheidemann, ‘a mouthpiece of the black, red, and yellow Germany’, is
juxtaposed to Bismarck, the ‘statesman of the black, white, and red Germany’. DNVP election
poster, 1924.

Dawes Plan. After Stresemann’s government had called for a review of German
solvency on the basis of Article 234 of the Treaty of Versailles in October 1923,
the allied commission of experts, led by the American banker Charles Dawes,
came to the alarming conclusion that the German annuities could not be rec-
onciled with the country’s industrial productivity. The report, presented on 9
April, provided for a temporary settlement of the reparations question. After a
four-year recovery phase, the annuities were to be gradually raised to the sum
of 2.5 billion marks in gold as set down in the London payment plan.3
3
See Kolb, Weimar Republic, 58–61.
80 Bismarck as an Election Campaigner

6. ‘Bismarck on 11.8.1867: “Politics is the art of the possible!” Vote for the German People’s
Party!’ DVP election poster, 1924.

The Dawes Plan, which included the promise of an international loan of 800
million marks to revive Germany’s economy, was a considerable success for
German diplomacy and its aim to achieve a gradual revision of the Versailles
peace treaty. It certainly compared favourably with the results of the London
conference of 1921. Nevertheless, the nationalist opposition was up in arms
about the Dawes commission’s suggestions. First, the DNVP protested against
the fact that the duration of payments had not been fixed. Secondly, they
objected to the proposal to establish allied control of two central German insti-
tutions, the Reichsbank and the Reichsbahn. Karl Helfferich, the DNVP’s
expert for financial issues, had as early as 6 March evoked ‘the danger of a new
and even worse Versailles’ in the Reichstag and thereby established his party’s
position in the forthcoming campaign.4

4
RT, 6 Mar. 1924, vol. 361, 12620. See, too, Liebe, Deutschnationale Volkspartei, 76–7.
 Bismarck as an Election Campaigner 81
The DNVP’s criticism of the Dawes Plan was strengthened by repeated
references to Bismarck, just as their criticism of the Versailles Treaty had
been a few years earlier.5 Bismarck, or so Oskar Hergt claimed at the German
Nationalists’ party conference in Hamburg before the Dawes Plan’s pub-
lication, would never have agreed to a new ‘enslavement’ as embodied in the
Dawes commission’s proposals.6
The DNVP’s party conference in Hamburg, which was held on Bismarck’s
birthday, left no doubt that the nationalist right was determined to instrumen-
talize the Iron Chancellor in their forthcoming election campaign. Besides the
larger-than-life bust of Bismarck behind the lectern, this intent was reflected in
the conference’s motto: ‘spirit of our Bismarck—show us the way’.7 The aim of
the DNVP, as the Reichstag MP Max Wallraf proclaimed to the thunderous
applause of the party delegates, was to re-establish the political system created
by Bismarck in 1871.8
The speech of the conservative MP Wilhelm Laverrenz struck exactly the
same chord. Above all, he raised the phrase ‘Back to Bismarck’ to the status of
a leitmotif for the German Nationalists.9 It was only logical that the DNVP
offered Bismarck’s grandson, who was also called Otto, the opportunity to
stand for the party in the forthcoming general elections in the Weser-Ems
constituency. Otto von Bismarck Jr. accepted the candidature for a Reichstag
mandate without hesitation.10
The tone and substance of the DNVP’s conference speeches were reflected
pictorially in the campaign posters portraying the Reich’s founding father,
which adorned the streets of German towns and cities from the beginning of
April 1924 onwards. One of these posters communicated to the observer
the basic contents of the Bismarck myth in a very tangible way: a black, red,
and gold railway track and a black, white, and red track were depicted with
Bismarck as signalman at their junction to ensure that the rapidly approaching
train, symbolizing Germany, would choose the ‘right’ way in both senses of the
word. The intended message was unambiguous: to protect what they had
inherited from Bismarck, the German electorate would have to vote for the

5
See, for example, Regensburger Anzeiger, 9 Nov. 1920, morning edition.
6
Hergt’s speech is printed in Deutsche Tageszeitung, 1 Apr. 1924, morning edition.
7
Korrespondenz der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei, 31 Mar. 1924. The liberal press ridiculed the German
Nationalists’ cult of the past. See, for example, the article ‘Die Primadonnen im völkischen Flitterröckchen’,
Berliner Tageblatt, 2 Apr. 1924, evening edition.
8
Korrespondenz der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei, 2 Apr. 1924.
9
Laverrenz’s speech, as quoted in Neue Preußische Zeitung, 31 Mar. 1924.
10
See Rehbein: Bismarck, 116. See, too, Otto-von-Bismarck-Stiftung, Friedrichsruh, J 24. In both
Reichstag elections of 1924, Otto von Bismarck Jr. won this constituency for the DNVP.
82 Bismarck as an Election Campaigner
DNVP. A vote for the ‘Weimar coalition’ parties, on the other hand, was noth-
ing less than treachery against the German nation embodied by Bismarck.11
In order to distinguish Bismarck (and implicitly the German Nationalists)
from the ‘incapability’ of republican politicians, another pictorial motif was
introduced: against Bismarck, ‘the statesman of the black, white, and red Ger-
many’, Philipp Scheidemann was disparaged as ‘a mouthpiece of the black, red,
and yellow Germany’. The juxtaposed portraits of the German bourgeoisie’s
most highly respected politician, and one of the chief hate figures for the politi-
cal right since the end of the Great War, were completed by the exhortation:
‘Compare them, German voter!’12 This poster was regarded as such a success by
leading DNVP officials that it was used in the subsequent general election
campaigns as well.
The strategic use of Bismarck as patron saint of the DNVP’s election cam-
paign found unanimous support within the party. Kuno Count Westarp effec-
tively stated in an article for the Neue Preußische Zeitung (of which he was
the editor), that no other historical figure was as well suited as Bismarck to
promote the aims of the DNVP. He demanded that it should become part of
the public consciousness that future governments could ‘in no way ignore
Prusso-German history and Bismarck’s life’s work’ without being penalized
for so doing by the electorate.13 Westarp received intellectual support from the
historian Dietrich Schäfer, who in the same newspaper promoted a new
‘Bismarckian mentality’. This he defined as a power of will and creativity which
‘was able to found the German Reich and which will raise it again from its
contemporary humiliation’.14
A vote for the DNVP on 4 May 1924 was thus presented to the electorate
as an opportunity to return to the path which Bismarck had paved. In the
German Nationalists’ election manifesto, which was released in late March, the
party promised a ‘return to the basis of the German constitution as created by
Bismarck’.15 In order to win over Catholic voters, the DNVP’s party newspaper
also emphasized that the party leadership was striving for a return to the ‘moral
foundations’ of Bismarck’s Reich, but that a ‘renewal of the Kulturkampf ’
would be regarded as a ‘great misfortune’.16

11
See the following posters: ‘Wählt Liste 5: Deutschnational’, BA (Koblenz), Plak. 2/29/84, and ‘Wählt
Deutschnational’, BA (Koblenz), Plak. 2/29/11. On the general importance of political posters in Weimar’s
election campaigns see Rainer Schoch, ‘Das politische Plakat der Weimarer Republik: Voraussetzungen und
Entwicklungstendenzen’, in id. (ed.), Politische Plakate der Weimarer Republik 1918–1933 (Darmstadt, 1980),
6–13. 12
‘Deutscher Wähler vergleiche!’, BA (Koblenz), Plak. 2/29/6.
13
Neue Preußische Zeitung, 31 Mar. 1924, ‘Bismarck-Beilage’. 14
Ibid.
15
The DNVP’s election manifesto, Deutsche Tageszeitung, 23 Mar. 1924, Sunday edition.
16
Korrespondenz der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei, 28 Apr. 1924. The DNVP had its own committee for
 Bismarck as an Election Campaigner 83
The scale of the mobilizing references to the Iron Chancellor as a symbol of
German Nationalists’ policies during the election campaign of spring 1924 was
without precedent, although the enlistment of Bismarck as a campaign weapon
by the party was not previously unknown. As early as 1919, during the election
campaign for the National Assembly, the DNVP had lobbied for votes using
the likeness of the Reich’s founder.17
When the DNVP used images of Bismarck in 1924, it could therefore rely on
certain symbolic associations, the dissemination of which had been developed
in many ways over the years. In January 1924, for example, the Deutsche
Tageszeitung had praised Bismarck’s Germany, a return to which, it was sug-
gested, was imperative if the country wished to rise to continental dominance.
The memory of Bismarck should serve to make every patriotically minded
political force duty-bound to emulate him. The experiences of the crisis year
1923 had ‘proven’ once again that Germany could not survive ‘without the
restoration of its freedom and honour, without a renewal of the old Prussian
spirit, discipline and without duties or a constitution which is true to its
national identity’. This ‘profession of faith’ was to be ‘transmitted to our Ger-
man people in their flesh and blood. That is only possible by turning away from
all internationalist thoughts and non-German ways . . . If this renewal of our
national spirit succeeds, then the German nation will one day break the chains
which today keep it fettered, outside and in. Then it will rise again to new free-
dom and strength.’18
This message was repeatedly conveyed to the electorate by the German
Nationalists and it met with various reactions from other political parties. The
democratic left objected to the right’s continuous attempts to use the past as a
weapon against Weimar by emphasizing that the Republic was deeply rooted
in the liberal-democratic tradition of 1848. The DDP, for example, campaigned
with posters depicting the Paulskirche parliamentarian Ludwig Uhland.19 The
German People’s Party, however, attempted to establish itself as the actual
‘Bismarck Party’ against its false conservative competitors.20 In this struggle
for Bismarck’s heritage, the DVP politicians’ references to Bismarck differed

German Nationalist Catholics, the ‘Reichsausschuß deutschnationaler Katholiken’. The Committee repeat-
edly emphasized that Bismarck had only fought against the ‘ultramontane’ tendencies within political
Catholicism, not against Catholicism itself. See the file ‘Reichsausschuß der Katholiken’, in Archiv für
Christlich-Demokratische Politik, Centre Party papers, VI-051/A668 (press clippings). See, too, BA (Berlin),
R 8005/467-480.
17
Machtan (ed.), National-Mythos, 35.
18
Deutsche Tageszeitung, 18 Jan. 1924, morning edition.
19
See Lothar Gall (ed.), Aufbruch zur Freiheit (Frankfurt, 1998), 270.
20
Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 29 Apr. 1924, morning edition.
84 Bismarck as an Election Campaigner
significantly from those of the DNVP. Although the DVP’s election manifesto
stressed the necessity of preserving ‘Bismarck’s inheritance’, its rhetorical flour-
ishes remained free of anti-republican phraseology.21
The DVP’s attempts to enlist support through capitalizing on Bismarck did
not, however, meet with great success. Despite the successful stabilization of
the currency after the crisis year of 1923, the electorate was yet still more recep-
tive to the kind of radical slogans formulated by the DNVP with reference to
Bismarck. Stresemann’s political aims found less support as many DVP voters
transferred their allegiance to the German Nationalists.22
The coalition negotiations after the general elections of 4 May were tortu-
ous. The German Nationalists’ press never tired of reminding the DVP (which
had presented itself so ‘enthusiastically’ as a Bismarckian party) that Bismarck
would have regarded it as imperative ‘to fight Social Democracy with united
forces’.23 None of the moderate parties, however, was willing to participate in a
government under the DNVP candidate for Chancellor, and former Admiral
of the Fleet, Alfred von Tirpitz, as long as the conservative right stuck to the
central tenet of their election manifesto: the rejection of the Dawes Plan.
The only practicable solution to this dilemma was the reconstitution of the
bourgeois minority cabinet under Wilhelm Marx. At the beginning of June,
Ebert finally gave him the authority to form a government. The lack of a par-
liamentary majority was, however, an unresolved problem, and, once the
Dawes legislation had been passed with the support of part of the DNVP’s
delegation, the path appeared clear for a Bürgerblock cabinet. Stresemann in
particular wanted to draw the DNVP into a share of governmental responsi-
bility to prevent it from reaping further electoral rewards by nationalist
agitation.24 The DDP and parts of the Centre Party, however, refused to form
a coalition with the DNVP. Consequently, Ebert had to dissolve the Reichstag
and call for new general elections on 7 December.25
In the following weeks, Stresemann appealed to all constitutional parties to
unite behind a foreign policy of Realpolitik—a term he adopted from Bis-
marck. This he defined, contrary to the political ideas linked with the name of
Bismarck on the Weimar right, as a policy free of the illusions of both the right

21
Bendikat and Lehnert, ‘Schwarzweißrot gegen Schwarzrotgold’, 112.
22
Hagen Schulze, Weimar: Deutschland 1917–1933, 4th rev. edn. (Berlin, 1994), 288.
23
Korrespondenz der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei, 16 May 1924.
24
The hope for a stabilization of the Republic through an integration of the DNVP in the govern-
ment was central for Stresemann between 1923 and 1929. See Larry E. Jones, ‘Stabilisierung von Rechts:
Gustav Stresemann und das Streben nach politischer Stabilität 1923–1929’, in Karl H. Pohl (ed.), Politiker
und Bürger: Gustav Stresemann und seine Zeit (Göttingen, 2002), 162–93.
25
Further details in Winkler, Weimar, 267–8.
 Bismarck as an Election Campaigner 85
and left, a policy ‘which is conscious of the limitations of our power and which
seeks understanding and peace’.26 The foreign policy goals of the DVP were
presented as a continuation of Bismarck’s political ideas under changed condi-
tions. Bismarck, just like Stresemann, it was suggested, would have pursued a
policy leading to European stability and lasting peace.27
The German Nationalists’ party leadership, on the other hand, continued to
follow their successful strategies developed during the previous general elec-
tions. The DNVP’s poster campaign, which had many similarities with their
enlistment of Bismarck in the spring, was as much a part of this continuity as
their consistently aggressive criticism of Stresemann’s foreign policy.28 The
president of the dissolved Reichstag, Max Wallraf, for example, reminded a
gathering in Munich of Bismarck’s statement about the German people, who
feared God but nothing else in the world. The motto of Stresemann’s foreign
policy, however, seemed to be: ‘We Germans do not fear God, but we do fear
everything else in the world!’29 Despite the resignation of Oskar Hergt as party
leader, the DNVP, now under the temporary leadership of the prominent
Protestant layman Friedrich Winckler, renewed its claim to the ‘glorious
colours’ black, white, and red and emphasized the importance of the elections
as the ‘day of the great struggle against black, red, and gold’.30
The idea that a German Nationalist election victory would equate to a
‘breakthrough of patriotic consciousness’, as the DNVP maintained in their
campaign, was a point of view not shared outside the conservative camp. Franz
Mischler, a member of the paramilitary republican Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-
Gold, for example, underlined the contrast between the allegedly kleindeutsch
German nationalism of the DNVP and the großdeutsch patriotism of the dem-
ocratic parties.31 The SPD’s success in the second general election of 1924 and

26
Speech to the DVP party conference, 14 Nov. 1924, BA (Berlin), R 45, II/29, published as Gustav
Stresemann, Nationale Realpolitik: Rede des Reichsaußenministers Dr. Stresemann auf dem 6. Parteitag
der Deutschen Volkspartei in Dortmund am 14. November 1924 (Berlin, 1924). Already in 1916, Stresemann
had emphasized similar ideas. See Stresemann: Bismarck und wir, 10–11.
27
See Roland Thimme, Stresemann und die Deutsche Volkspartei 1923–1925 (Lübeck and Hamburg, 1961),
55–7; ‘Bismarck am 11.8.1867: Politik ist die Kunst des Möglichen! Wählt Deutsche Volkspartei!’, BA
(Koblenz), Plak. 2/25/13.
28
On one of the DNVP’s posters for the second Reichstag elections of 1924, Bismarck points to the
DNVP’s list on the ballot-paper and says: ‘Put your cross in this circle. You must vote thus, or you are voting
for the wrong party!’ See BA (Koblenz), Plak. 2/29/56.
29
Wallraf, as quoted in Korrespondenz der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei, 26 Nov. 1924.
30
Quotations from Deutsche Tageszeitung, 21 Oct. 1924, evening edition, and the DNVP election mani-
festo as printed in Deutsche Tageszeitung, 29 Oct. 1924, morning edition.
31
See Karl Rohe, Das Reichsbanner Schwarz Rot Gold: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte und Struktur der po-
litischen Kampfverbände zur Zeit der Weimarer Republik (Düsseldorf, 1966), 233. See also Hubertus von
Löwenstein, The Tragedy of a Nation: Germany 1918–1934 (London, 1934), particularly 210–25.
86 Bismarck as an Election Campaigner
the equally remarkable loss of votes for the radical parties was not, however, pri-
marily a result of the Reichsbanner’s campaign. The de-radicalization of the
German electorate had been brought about by the evident upswing of the
German economy as a result of an influx of foreign credits.32
Although the advance of the DNVP had been ‘stopped in its tracks’, as the
Vorwärts declared with relief a few days later, the election results of 7 Decem-
ber made two forms of government possible: either a Grand Coalition of par-
ties from the SPD to the DVP or a right-wing Bürgerblock.33 After the
negotiations initiated by Wilhelm Marx to include the SPD had failed due to
the DVP’s resistance, Ebert gave the task of forming a government to the inde-
pendent former Finance Minister, Hans Luther. On 19 January Luther was able
to present his centre-right Bürgerblock cabinet to the Reichstag. It was the first
government of the Weimar Republic to include both allegedly ‘Bismarckian’
parties—the DVP and the German Nationalists.

The making of a ‘new Bismarck’: The Hindenburg elections

of 1925
With the involvement of the DNVP in Luther’s cabinet, criticism of the gov-
ernment by the conservative nationalist press was temporarily silenced and
directed instead even more strongly against the Social Democratic head of
state, President Friedrich Ebert. During the so-called ‘Barmat scandal’ and the
trial for libel of Erwin Rothardt, a nationalist journalist who had publicly
accused the President of high treason during the November revolution, Ebert
was exposed to great hostility from the right.34
Ebert’s early death on 28 February 1925, which resulted from the delay of sur-
gery during the Rothardt trial, necessitated early elections for the country’s
highest political office. As none of the candidates achieved the necessary major-
ity in the first round of voting on 29 March, the representatives of the SPD,
DDP, and the Centre appointed Wilhelm Marx as their common candidate for
the second round.35 Given that the ‘Weimar Coalition’ parties enjoyed the sup-

32
Falter, Wahlen, 70. 33
Vorwärts, 9 Dec. 1924, morning edition.
34
See Wolfgang Birkenfeld, ‘Der Rufmord am Reichspräsidenten: Zu Grenzformen des politischen
Kampfes gegen die frühe Weimarer Republik 1919–1925’, Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, V (1965), 453–500.
35
Although with 38% of the overall vote the common candidate of the DNVP and the DVP, Karl Jarres,
far exceeded his Republican rivals’ share of the vote (Braun 29%, Marx 14.5%, and Hellpach 5.8%), his
chances of defeating a common candidate of the ‘Weimar Coalition’ parties were more than doubtful. On
the election result, see Falter, Wahlen, 76.
 Bismarck as an Election Campaigner 87
port of the majority of the electorate, a victory of the so-called Volksblock
seemed almost certain. It took several days for the right-wing parties to respond
to the Volksblock’s challenge and to agree that only one candidate would be able
to defeat Marx: the former Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg.36
Hindenburg, in retirement since the end of the Great War, only allowed his
candidacy to go forward after being urged to do so by his old friend von Tirpitz.
Although he made no secret of his continued commitment to monarchism,
Hindenburg enjoyed considerable respect even outside conservative circles.37
His reputation as the ‘victor of Tannenberg’ outshone the catastrophic scale of
the defeat in the Great War, for which he in fact shared a good deal of respon-
sibility, and guaranteed him the sympathy of many of those who had not voted
for Jarres in the first round of the presidential elections. That Hindenburg had
attended Bismarck’s Imperial Proclamation in Versailles as a young officer was
also useful because it served to confirm the status conferred on him by the
nationalist right as a ‘symbol of faith in the history of Prussia and Germany’.38
The representatives of the democratic left could not deny that the nomina-
tion of Hindenburg would make it more difficult for their own candidate Marx
to win the forthcoming elections. Ernst Feder, a highly analytical observer of
contemporary events, reminded his political companions that in Hindenburg
the so-called Reichsblock had found a candidate to be taken even more serious-
ly than Jarres because the majority of the population would see in him a ‘new
Bismarck’. The task of all democrats would therefore be to clarify the blurred
distinction between myth and reality in relation to Hindenburg. To this end
Feder emphasized that Bismarck had been three years younger when he retired
in 1890 than Hindenburg would be were he to reach office.39
The fact that Feder referred to Bismarck in his article was far from coinci-
dental. Feder’s analysis was largely based on his experiences during the first
round of the presidential elections. When Jarres had agreed to stand for the
presidency, conservative papers had promoted him as a ‘Bismarckian type of
leader’40 who, if elected, would ‘make use of the lessons of history for the
present and future of our people’.41 Indeed, in the first public speech of his
36
Stresemann at first objected to Hindenburg’s candidacy, but feared correctly that to withdraw from the
Reichsblock would also endanger the stability of Luther’s coalition government. See Thimme, Stresemann,
133–8. See, too, Noel D. Cary, ‘The Making of the Reich President 1925: German Conservatism and the
Nomination of Paul von Hindenburg’, Central European History, XXIII (1990), 179–204.
37
Andreas Dorpalen, Hindenburg and the Weimar Republic (Princeton, 1964), 44 ff.
38
Kuno Graf Westarp in Neue Preußischen Zeitung, 15 Apr. 1925.
39
Berliner Tageblatt, 8 Apr. 1925, evening edition. 40
Deutsche Tageszeitung, 29 Mar. 1925.
41
Hamburger Nachrichten, 22 Mar. 1925, morning edition. On the nomination of Jarres as the Reichs-
block’s candidate for presidency, see Manfred Dörr, ‘Die deutsch-nationale Volkspartei 1925 bis 1928’, Ph.D.
thesis (Marburg, 1964), 120–1. See also Korrespondenz der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei, 13–17 Mar. 1925.
88 Bismarck as an Election Campaigner
campaign on 22 March 1925, Jarres pointed out his credibility as a ‘Bismarck-
ian’ politician by reminding his audience of his visit to Hamburg and
Friedrichsruh on the occasion of Bismarck’s eightieth birthday on 1 April
1895.42 Further, the presidential candidate suggested that Bismarck’s dismissal
was the ‘origin of our national misery’ and had led the Germans directly to the
‘second Versailles’ of 1919. Jarres’ speech, given at the foot of the gigantic Bis-
marck memorial in Hamburg, culminated in the words: ‘If we want to lead our
people towards a new future’ then ‘we need to go back to Bismarck’. His audi-
ence greeted these words with endless applause.43
If Jarres had been only the promoter of ‘Bismarckian ideals’, Hindenburg
was to become their embodiment in the second round of voting. Indeed, the
Reichsblock’s campaign was dominated by an attempt to convert the hope for a
‘saviour’ into votes and to project, on an ever-increasing scale, ‘Bismarckian
qualities’ onto Hindenburg.44 This process had begun during the Great War
when postcards portrayed the ‘two icons of Germanness’, Hindenburg and
Bismarck, side-by-side.45 The mythological connection between Bismarck and
his ‘successor’ Hindenburg was thus already established and the election cam-
paigners of 1925 were well aware of its political appeal.
Once more Field Marshal von Hindenburg appeared on the Reichsblock’s
non-programmatic posters as a leader who had proved his ability to convert
dangerous developments into positive outcomes at the Battle of Tannenberg.
Hindenburg was represented as the epitome of the Reich’s dutiful servant. The
parallels to the Bismarck posters of the previous year—equally based on
nostalgia, and the cult of loyalty and leadership—were difficult to ignore.
Hindenburg’s campaign manager, Gerhard Schulze-Pfaelzer, did not, in
retrospect, attempt to conceal that he had created a stylized hero figure with
Bismarckian character traits for the race against Marx. His strategy was based
on the conviction that the ‘German national character’ demanded ‘patriarchal
models’ and would associate more readily with a personality to whom ‘mystical
powers of salvation were ascribed’.46

42
Jarres as quoted in Hamburger Nachrichten, 23 Mar. 1925, evening edition.
43
Ibid. See, too, the photograph of Jarres’ campaign rally at the Hamburg Bismarck memorial, printed
in Rehbein, Bismarck, 119.
44
See, for example, the campaign poster with the caption ‘The Saviour’. The poster is printed in Schoch,
Politische Plakate, 111. For evidence that Hindenburg was attributed with Bismarckian qualities since the
Battle of Tannenberg, see Wülfing et al., Historische Mythologie, particularly 197–209. See also the poem
‘Zwei Pfeiler der Deutschheit’ as printed in Paul Lindenberg (ed.), Hindenburg-Denkmal für das deutsche
Volk (Berlin, 1923), 400.
45
See Hagenow, Politik und Bild, 28–9.
46
Gerhard Schulze-Pfälzer, Von Spa nach Weimar: Die Geschichte der deutschen Zeitenwende (Leipzig and
Zurich, 1929), quotations on pp. 32 and 34.
 Bismarck as an Election Campaigner 89
Under the pressure of the campaign the Weltbühne felt obliged to take a posi-
tion on Hindenburg’s ‘Bismarckian traits’. In an anonymous article published
in early April it stated that Hindenburg was in no way ‘as inspired and ardent a
genius as Bismarck’. To honour him as a ‘representative of the good old times’,
when ‘Bismarck had still directed the fate of the Reich’, was conceivable. To
promote the two completely different characters as equal, however, was the
result of a ‘horrifying lack of political instinct, simple human decorousness and
logical consistency’.47
The Volksblock’s campaign strategists attempted to distinguish themselves
from the Reichsblock’s Bismarck cult by highlighting the liberal tradition of
the 1848 revolution upon which the Republic had been founded. One of the
Volksblock’s posters therefore suggested: ‘What our ancestors thought in ’48,
their grandchildren have realized! Who wants to betray the banner [an allusion
to the black, red, and golden flag in the poster] which Grimm and Uhland
unfurled?’48
Nevertheless, individual publicists attempted to instrumentalize Bismarck
for the republican cause. Germania, for example, protested against the Reichs-
block’s attempts to hijack Bismarck for their candidate’s own ends. The paper
represented the Iron Chancellor as a level-headed statesman who, in the third
volume of his Thoughts and Reminiscences, had emphatically warned against a
national political leadership comprising of generals on the basis that the world
of politics was not ‘a battlefield’. The Centrist newspaper deemed this alone
sufficient ground to militate against the candidacy of the political novice
Hindenburg. If Bismarck had been alive, the article concluded, he would
have voted for Marx.49
When Hindenburg prevailed on 26 April 1925 by only 900,000 votes over
his opponent Marx, the degree of disappointment in the republican camp was
only matched by the triumph displayed by the right.50 While prominent liber-
als like the ex-diplomat Harry Count Kessler saw in Hindenburg’s victory the
approach of ‘one of the darkest chapters in German history’, spontaneous gath-
erings of Hindenburg’s supporters took place at Bismarck memorials all over
Germany to celebrate the Reichsblock’s triumph.51 Right-wing papers such as
47
‘Hindenburg’, Die Weltbühne, XXI (1925), 535–9, quotations on pp. 535 and 539.
48
Gall, Aufbruch zur Freiheit, 270.
49
‘Bismarck rät: Wählt Marx!’, Germania, 25 Apr. 1925. See, too, the similar comment by Carl Sonnen-
schein, ‘Vor der Entscheidung’, in Archiv für Christlich-Demokratische Politik, VI-051 (Centre Party, press
clippings), no. A 166. 50
Falter, Wahlen, 77.
51
Harry Count Kessler’s diary entry of 26 Apr. 1925, in Harry Graf Kessler, Tagebücher 1918 bis 1937, ed.
Wolfgang Pfeiffer-Belli (Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1996), 461. See, too, Peter Fritzsche, ‘Presidential Victory
and Popular Festivity in Weimar Germany: Hindenburg’s 1925 Election’, Central European History, XXIII
(1990), 205–24.
90 Bismarck as an Election Campaigner
Alldeutsche Blätter expressed the expectation that Hindenburg would lead the
German people to the same ‘glorious heights of moral purity’ it had experi-
enced under Bismarck’s rule.52
There were several reasons for Hindenburg’s election victory. The KPD’s
decision to keep Ernst Thälmann in the race although he was bound to lose
carries as much weight as the BVP’s recommendation to vote against the Centre
politician Marx and for the North German Protestant Hindenburg. What was
central to Hindenburg’s victory, however, was the desire amongst the German
public for a strong Bismarck-like leadership which could put an end to the diver-
gent party interests and bring Germany to new prosperity and world standing.53
Considerations of this nature led many who had refrained from voting in the
first round to vote for the Reichsblock’s candidate in the second round.54 This was
precisely what the liberal Frankfurter Zeitung assumed in its analysis of 27 April
1925: ‘The feverish fantasies of the impoverished, lower classes, their national
consciousness deeply wounded, have woven a romantic wreath around the gen-
eral’s head without being aware that they owe their personal and national
impoverishment to that very system whose representative they honour in the
general. Romantic yearning for lost honour and influence: that is what led these
un-political classes to the ballot box and Hindenburg to victory.’55
However unsatisfactory Wilhelm Marx’s narrow defeat may have been
for the democrats, Hindenburg’s victory at the same time provided a respite
from right-wing-hostility. In the mood of ‘national triumph’ even the exe-
cutive committee of the Pan-German League, barely unsurpassed in its anti-
democratic radicalism until this point, declared itself willing to follow
Hindenburg under the black, red, and golden banner: in association with him
the colours would once again recall ‘the deep yearning for German unity and
freedom, which . . . the true German democrats of ’48, in contrast to today’s,
carried in their hearts, and who finally, under Bismarck’s strong creative genius,
saw their deepest desires realised under the black, white, and red banner’.56
Comments of this type were generally linked to the hope for a tangible
change of policy.57 As Noel D. Cary has argued, it was the Reichsblock’s ultimate

52
‘Heil Hindenburg’, Alldeutsche Blätter, 2 May 1925. See, too, Jürgen Falter, ‘The Two Hindenburg Elec-
tions of 1925 and 1932: A Total Reversal of Voter Coalitions’, Central European History, XXIII (1990), 225–41.
53
See the caricature of Kladderadatsch, ‘The pilot is coming on board (1925)’, as printed in Wolfgang
Hofmann (ed.), Hindenburg-Album des Kladderadatsch (Berlin, 1927), 52. It draws an analogy with the
famous Bismarck caricature of Punch (‘Dropping the Pilot’) of 29 Mar. 1890.
54
For an analysis of the election see Winkler, Schein der Normalität, 229–45.
55
Frankfurter Zeitung, 27 Apr. 1925, morning edition.
56
‘Heil Hindenburg’, Alldeutsche Blätter, 2 May 1925.
57
See, for example, General Graf von der Goltz, ‘Was nun?’, Die Tradition, VII (1925), 145–9.
 Bismarck as an Election Campaigner 91

7. ‘The pilot is coming on board’: a caricature in Kladderadatsch (1925) shows

the newly elected President Paul von Hindenburg entering the Deutschland, a
reference to the Punch caricature ‘Dropping the pilot’, published in 1890 after
Bismarck’s dismissal.

objective to install a Reich President ‘with the political shrewdness of a

Bismarck, who, like the Iron Chancellor, would use his office to confound the
parliament and refashion the Weimar state from above’.58 However, even if
the radical change which Hindenburg’s supporters hoped for did not occur, the

58
Noel D. Cary, ‘Making of the Reich President’, 180.
92 Bismarck as an Election Campaigner
Reichsblock’s election victory marked a caesura in the history of the first
German democracy. With Hindenburg’s triumph in the 1925 presidential elec-
tions began a ‘quiet constitutional change’—Weimar’s transformation into a
‘conservative Republic’.59 This also meant that the conservative and nationalist
supporters of the Bismarck cult could now rely on a like-minded figure at the
very heart of the republican system.
In Weimar’s battle over the past, Ebert had been a frequent promoter of the
‘tradition of 1848’. In 1923, on the occasion of a commemoration celebration in
the Frankfurt Paulskirche to honour the revolutionaries of 1848, Ebert had
praised the ‘spirit of unity, freedom, and justice’ which had prevailed during
the 1848 revolution and which would be the guiding principle of the constitu-
tion of 1919. This spirit, so Ebert concluded, ‘shall lead us into a brighter
future’.60 With Ebert’s death and Hindenburg’s election victory, future
commemoration celebrations of the 1848 revolution could no longer count
on the support of the head of state. Instead, Hindenburg was only too prepared
to enhance with his personal patronage the status of projects such as the
Bismarck films of 1925 and 1927, and the intended construction of a Bismarck
National Monument.
The political framework created in 1918–19 continued to exist after 1925, but
with Hindenburg’s election victory the advantage in Weimar’s battle over the
past had shifted in favour of those who hoped to destabilize the Republic by
active recourse to the Bismarck myth.
59
Winkler, Schein der Normalität, 244.
60
Ebert’s speech in the Frankfurt Paulskirche as quoted in Schulthess, LXIV (1923), 103–4. See, too, Dieter
Rebentisch, Friedrich Ebert und die Paulskirche: Die Weimarer Demokratie und die 75-Jahrfeier der 1848er
Revolution (Heidelberg, 1998). Finally, Bussenius: ‘48er Revolution’, 90–114.
 7
In the Shadow of Stabilization

‘Let us take him as our guide today’:

Bismarck and Stresemann
The year 1925 did not only enter history books on account of the Hindenburg
elections. A second event in this year equally warrants historical consideration:
the signing of the Locarno Treaties on 26 October 1925.1
From the beginning, the atmosphere of the negotiations at Locarno differed
significantly from the spirit of post-war hostility at Versailles. In the main treaty
(the so-called security pact), Germany, France, and Belgium agreed to refrain
from using force to alter the existing western German border. Britain and Italy
guaranteed this agreement and pledged to come to the aid of the attacked
country, be it France or Germany. With respect to the eastern German border,
however, the Luther government was not prepared to go beyond the conclu-
sion of arbitration treaties with Poland and Czechoslovakia, which were not
internationally guaranteed and thus only of symbolic significance.2
As far as Germany’s accession to the League of Nations was concerned
(which was a condition of the treaties’ ratification), the German delegation at
Locarno was also able to chalk up a major success. The Allies guaranteed an
interpretation of the ‘intervention article’ 16 of the League of Nations’ consti-
tution that went a long way towards meeting German interests. According to
this interpretation, the Reich was only duty bound to co-operate with League
sanctions in proportion to its military and geographical situation. Germany
did not therefore have to fear that it would be forced to support economic
sanctions against the Soviet Union, or even, in case of a new Russo-Polish war,
permit French troops to cross German territory against its will.

1
For a detailed account of the Locarno negotiations see Jon Jacobson, Locarno Diplomacy: Germany and
the West 1925–1929 (Princeton, 1972). See, too, Edward D. Keeton, Briand’s Locarno Policy: French Economics,
Politics and Diplomacy 1925–1929 (New York and London, 1987). Finally, Peter Urbanitsch, ‘Großbritannien
und die Verträge von Locarno’, Ph.D. thesis (Vienna, 1968).
2
See the cabinet meeting of 2 October 1925, in Akten der Reichskanzlei: Die Kabinette Luther I und II, 15.
Januar 1925 bis 17. Mai 1926, ed. Karl-Heinz Minuth, 2 vols. (Boppard, 1977) here 1. 665 n. 24.
94 In the Shadow of Stabilization
All in all the diplomatic achievements of October 1925 signified the fulfil-
ment of one of Germany’s short-term post-war aims. Its influence on the world
political stage had been increased to the extent that, despite continuing limita-
tions on its sovereignty, it could once again deal with the European great
powers on an equal footing. At the same time, Germany did not rule out the
possibility of a peaceful revision of its eastern border.
Gustav Stresemann, Foreign Minister and therefore responsible for the suc-
cess of the negotiations, had good grounds to assume that the Locarno Treaties
would find approval from the parties across the political spectrum.3 Instead,
however, the centre-right coalition under Chancellor Luther foundered as a
direct consequence of the question of Locarno’s ratification. Stresemann must
indeed have been surprised when on 22 October the Korrespondenz der
Deutschnationalen Volkspartei published an article denying all of the treaties’
advantages, which it had acknowledged only three days before.4
The conservatives’ abrupt change of policy, which finally led to the DNVP’s
withdrawal from the centre-right coalition government on 25 October, was the
result of a power struggle within the party, in the course of which the DNVP’s
radical or völkisch wing had put increasing pressure on the moderate leader-
ship.5 One figure who had worked particularly hard to bring about this situa-
tion was the spokesman of the party’s radical right wing, Alfred Hugenberg.6
With the help of his newspaper empire, Hugenberg succeeded in mobilizing the
party’s regional committees, the DNVP’s central committee, and the majority
of the Reichstag delegation against the more moderate party leadership.7
The DNVP’s criticism of the Locarno settlement crystallized around three
major issues: the arbitration pact, which Germany concluded with Poland,
Germany’s membership of the League of Nations, and the consequences of
both for German relations with the Soviet Union. To abandon the ‘Eastern
option’ by joining the League was seen by many contemporaries as a limitation

3
On 19 October, even the Korrespondenz der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei praised the accomplishments
of the negotiators, as did the DNVP’s ministers in the cabinet on the day of Luther’s and Stresemann’s return
from Locarno. See Korrespondenz der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei, 19 Oct. 1925. See also the cabinet meet-
ing of 19 October, in Kabinette Luther I und II, 2. 786–9. On Stresemann’s Locarno policy see, in particular,
Jonathan D. Wright, ‘Stresemann and Locarno’, Contemporary European History, IV (1995), 109–31.
4
Korrespondenz der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei, 22 Oct. 1925.
5
See the detailed account of Grathwol, Stresemann and the DNVP, 135 ff. as well as Schulthess, LXVI
(1925), 154. See also Dörr, Deutschnationale Volkspartei, 178. Finally, see the resolution of the party leadership
of 29 October 1925 as published in Korrespondenz der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei, 30 Oct. 1925.
6
On Hugenberg see John A. Leopold, Alfred Hugenberg: The Radical Nationalist Campaign against the
Weimar Republic (New Haven and London, 1977).
7
See Heidrun Holzbach, Das ‘System Hugenberg’: Die Organisation bürgerlicher Sammlungspolitik vor
dem Aufstieg der NSDAP (Stuttgart, 1981), 180 ff.
 In the Shadow of Stabilization 95
to Germany’s freedom of action in foreign policy. Moreover it was portrayed as
the repetition of a mistake already made after Bismarck’s fall in 1890: the non-
renewal of the Reinsurance Treaty.8
Behind the demands for a return to Bismarck’s ‘pro-Russian foreign policy’
were a number of different motives. For the electro-technical industry, namely
for AEG and Siemens, the wish to strengthen economic links with Russia was
predominant.9 Others, like the influential chief of the Army’s High Com-
mand, General Hans von Seeckt, were primarily interested in military co-
operation. As early as June 1920, during the interventionist war in the Soviet
Union, Seeckt had taken a strongly pro-Russian position in a policy paper on
relations between the Weimar Republic and the Soviet Union prepared for
President Ebert. Despite his well-known anti-Communist convictions, Seeckt
advised that political, economic, and military links between the two countries
should be strengthened.10 Seeckt suggested that the government should once
again ‘be guided by the principles of Bismarck’s policies’.11
Against this background, it is not surprising that Gustav Stresemann felt the
need to refer to Bismarck in his broadcast address to the German people in
November 1925, in which he justified his policy of reconciliation. He empha-
sized that the Locarno agreement was a fundamental breakthrough in the
process of the revision of the post-war international system since it provided for
British protection of the German Western border against a French invasion:
The very fact that England, who has hitherto been the ally of France, should solemnly
undertake to protect Germany with all her land and sea forces against an attack on the

8
See, for example, Otto Hoetzsch, ‘Die deutsch-russischen Beziehungen von 1871–1914’, in Politisches
Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes, Berlin: Akten des Parlamentarischen Untersuchungsausschusses für die Schuldfra-
gen des Weltkrieges, vol. 12. On Hoetzsch and his work see Gerd Voigt, Otto Hoetzsch 1876–1946: Wissenschaft
und Politik im Leben eines deutschen Historikers (East Berlin, 1978), 199–200. Others who argued similarly to
Hoetzsch were Gerhard Ritter, Die Legende von der verschmähten englisch-deutschen Freundschaft 1898–1901
(Freiburg, 1921); Hans Rothfels, ‘Zur Geschichte des Rückversicherungsvertrages’, Preußische Jahrbücher,
CLXXXVII (1922), 265–92; Gustav Roloff, Die Bilanz des Krieges: Ursprung, Kampf, Ergebnis (Königstein im
Taunus, 1921).
9
On the AEG’s and Siemens’ position see Hartmut Pogge von Strandmann, ‘Rapallo—Strategy in Pre-
ventive Diplomacy: New Sources and New Interpretations’, in Volker R. Berghahn and Martin Kitchen
(eds.), Germany in the Age of Total War: Essays in Honour of Francis Carsten (London and Totowa, NJ, 1981),
123–46. 10
Otto Geßler, Reichswehrpolitik in der Weimarer Zeit (Stuttgart, 1958), 186.
11
In accordance with this, Seeckt welcomed the conclusion of the German–Soviet Trade Agreement
of May 1921 as well as the Treaty of Rapallo and the Berlin Treaty of 1926 as first steps to a return to a
‘Bismarckian foreign policy’. See Hans von Seeckt, Aus seinem Leben 1918–1936 (Leipzig, 1941), 305. See also
Graf Westarp’s Reichstag speech during the Locarno debate, in RT, 23 Nov. 1925, vol. 388, 4496. Similar
viewpoints were articulated in Neue Preußische Zeitung, 5 Nov. 1925. A more detailed assessment (albeit
from a Communist viewpoint) is to be found in Sigrid Wegner-Korfes, Otto von Bismarck und Rußland: Des
Reichskanzlers Rußlandpolitik und sein realpolitisches Erbe in der Interpretation bürgerlicher Politiker 1918–1945
(Berlin, 1990), 193–203.
96 In the Shadow of Stabilization
part of the French, is a matter of the very greatest political importance. This was admit-
ted by no less a person than Prince Bismarck. One passage, indeed, in the instructions
given by him to Prince Hatzfeldt [Prince Paul von Hatzfeldt, German ambassador to
the Court of St James, 1895–1901] in January 1888 sounds almost prophetic: ‘It is not
a question of preponderance of strength in the event of war, but of preventing war.
Neither France nor Russia will disturb the peace if they have official information that
they will inevitably and immediately be opposed by England. I consider that if it
becomes known that England is protected from a French invasion by her alliance with
Germany and Germany against a French invasion by her alliance with England, peace
in Europe will be assured so long as the alliance exists. I believe that such an alliance
would be greeted all over Europe with feelings of relief and reassurance.’12

Stresemann’s attempt to portray the politics of Locarno as a continuation of

Bismarck’s policy reached its height in the following words: ‘Let me remind
anyone who is sceptical as to the moral value of such an agreement [Locarno]
that the phrase about “imponderable factors in politics which no statesman can
afford to disregard” was uttered by the most matter-of-fact politician the world
has ever seen; I mean Otto von Bismarck. Let us therefore take him as our guide
today.’13
Stresemann’s speech demonstrated the Foreign Minister’s political acumen.
He countered the right’s attempt to use the Reich’s founder in their protests
against Locarno by invoking Bismarck as the spiritual inspiration for his own
foreign policy. Reaction from the right was quick to emerge. As early as 4
November, one day after Stresemann’s broadcast, Neue Preußische Zeitung
protested ‘against what happened yesterday, namely the introduction of
Bismarck as justification for a policy which is based on a completely different
premiss. When Bismarck wrote to Prince Hatzfeldt in 1888 about the security
of France and Germany under England’s guarantee, he did not need to utter
the renunciation of something that would have been politically and socially
unacceptable. He would never have accepted conditions that were to
Germany’s detriment. Stresemann should not overplay the comparison with
Bismarck. The Locarno policy gives little cause to do so.’14

12
‘The Treaty of Locarno’ (Broadcast Address, 3 Nov. 1925), in Stresemann, Essays and Speeches, 232–9,
here pp. 234–5.
13
Ibid. 235. Stresemann regularly used the radio, a medium which was a success right from the start of
transmission at the end of 1923. The audience figures rose exponentially from this time on: from barely
10,000 listeners on 1 April 1924 to 780,000 on 1 April 1925, 1.6 million on 1 April 1927, 2.8 million on 1 April
1929, and 3.7 million on 1 April 1931. One year later every fourth German household had a radio. Figures are
according to Kolb, Weimar Republic, 94.
14
Neue Preußische Zeitung, 4 Nov. 1925. See, too, Ernst Niekisch, Grundfragen deutscher Außenpolitik
(Berlin, 1925), 9–10.
 In the Shadow of Stabilization 97
The right clearly recognized that Stresemann was again, just as in the 1924
elections, trying to strike against the DNVP with the help of the Bismarck
myth. By popularizing an alternative Bismarck image (that of the ‘matter-of-
fact statesman’), Stresemann was hoping to deprive the nationalist opposition
of one of their strongest weapons in both foreign and domestic policy debates.
He was supported in this aim not just by the DVP-allied Rheinisch-Westfälische
Zeitung, which promoted Bismarck as a ‘politician of the peace’,15 but also and
above all by the periodical Deutsche Stimmen. In an article of September 1925,
the Prussian Landtag MP Albrecht Graf von Stolberg-Wernigerode (DVP)
railed against the ‘wrong views’ being spread about Bismarck: ‘Those who
today call loudest for a new Bismarck believe that he would handle foreign pol-
icy with cuirassier boots, break the Treaty of Versailles and avoid any step that
does not lead directly to his aim.’ This interpretation of the Iron Chancellor
was, however, ‘false’ in all regards because Bismarck ‘showed himself to be a
political maestro’ of ‘moderation’.16
In the months that followed, Stolberg-Wernigerode became Stresemann’s
most articulate and active supporter in the struggle for the ‘correct’ interpreta-
tion of Bismarck within the bourgeois camp.17 In his 1926 book Zurück zu
Bismarck, Stolberg-Wernigerode strongly criticized the nationalist opposition’s
claim that with the Treaties of Locarno the government had given up any
chance of winning back those territories lost in 1919.18 The DNVP’s political
style, Stolberg-Wernigerode claimed, was entirely confrontational, but
‘Bismarck’s politics have taught us that attack is not a suitable weapon for a
statesman. If one has the power to wage war with good hope of success,
then, according to Bismarck’s example, the matter must be handled such that
the enemy attacks. Then he is morally guilty, he becomes isolated and loses the
war. Where in the Treaties of Locarno does it say, however, that we may not
defend ourselves if we are attacked?’19
The aim of all ‘patriotically minded’ circles—‘to restore Germany to a stand-
ing that reflects her cultural and economic importance’—was not to be
achieved through the power politics and striving for prestige victories
which the German Nationalists mistakenly thought Bismarck embodied.20

15
Rheinisch-Westfälische Zeitung, 1 Apr. 1926, morning edition.
16
Albrecht Graf zu Stolberg-Wernigerode, ‘Der liberale Bismarck’, Deutsche Stimmen, XXXVII (1925),
357–64.
17
See, for example, Albrecht Graf zu Stolberg-Wernigerode, ‘Was sagt Bismarck den Deutschnationalen
über Locarno’, Deutsche Stimmen, XXXVII (1925), 465–70.
18
Albrecht Graf zu Stolberg-Wernigerode, Zurück zu Bismarck (Berlin, 1926), 7.
19
Ibid. 20
Ibid. 12.
98 In the Shadow of Stabilization
Stolberg-Wernigerode pointed out that this position was more akin to the mis-
takes made by Bismarck’s successors in the 1890s, mistakes which had led Ger-
many directly into international isolation and into the First World War.21 Only
a well-balanced, non-aggressive foreign policy—similar to that conducted by
Bismarck when Germany stood at the height of its power—was suitable to re-
establish the political influence that Germany had possessed under the Iron
Chancellor.22
For that very reason, Stolberg-Wernigerode insisted, it would ‘funda-
mentally’ contradict ‘Bismarck’s principles if the opposition fights the
Locarno-policy’. Stresemann’s foreign policy was an attempt ‘to manoeuvre
along Bismarckian lines under current conditions and according to our power
position today. While it is presumptuous to say that the diplomacy of Locarno
can be compared to Bismarck’s alliance politics, one thing can be maintained
with certainty: what the opposition demands with respect to Locarno is the
direct opposite of anything Bismarck would have done.’23
Stolberg-Wernigerode’s efforts to characterize the German Nationalists’
criticism of Locarno as a betrayal of Bismarck’s Realpolitik were taken up by
Stresemann. In a speech to the League of German Students on 6 July 1926, Stre-
semann maintained that he was misunderstood by his domestic political rivals
just as Bismarck had been. The future would show, however, that his path was
the correct one. Just like Bismarck had said in the Prussian parliament after
Königgrätz, he too would be able to say: ‘I do not take it amiss that you denied
your support for my foreign policy. You could not have known that which I
hoped to achieve . . .’.24
But what did the German Foreign Minister hope to achieve with his negoti-
ations at Locarno, or with his foreign policy in general? Did he remain, as he
had been in the First World War, a nationalist pursuing the goal of expanding
Bismarck’s Reich, or had he gone beyond his wartime position to a conception
of Germany as a powerful but ready-to-compromise member of the European
concert of powers?25

21
Albrecht Graf zu Stolberg-Wernigerode, ‘Außenpolitik im Sinne Bismarcks’, Deutsche Stimmen, XL
(1928), 328–31, here p. 329.
22
Stolberg-Wernigerode, Zurück zu Bismarck, 12. 23
Ibid. 13.
24
Stresemann, Vermächtnis, vol. 2: Locarno und Genf, 336. Stresemann often described his own situation
in Bismarck’s words. See, for example, his diary entry of 27 March 1925, in Stresemann, Vermächtnis, vol. 2:
Locarno und Genf, 303–4. There is also an undated collection of Bismarck quotations, which the Foreign
Minister used in his speeches. See the collection ‘Zitate von Bismarck über Politik und Staatskunst’, in
Stresemann papers, Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes, HI 67543 ff.
25
Both viewpoints have found advocates. Stresemann’s early biographers emphasized the way in which
he had outgrown his wartime nationalism to become a man of peace and an architect of Franco-German rec-
 In the Shadow of Stabilization 99
Evidence suggests that the truth may lie somewhere in the middle. There is
little doubt that Stresemann’s ultimate goal was the peaceful restoration of
Germany as a Great Power. He himself declared this to the Central Committee
of his party.26 Although Stresemann accepted the loss of Alsace-Lorraine, and
became increasingly sceptical about the possibility of the Anschluß of Austria
and the re-acquisition of colonies, he certainly advocated the return of Danzig
and the ‘Corridor’ as well as a revision of the border with Poland in Upper
Silesia.27 An important, if not the decisive, motivation in concluding the
Locarno Treaties and initiating a policy of reconciliation with France was
Stresemann’s expectation that it would have such favourable effects as an early
evacuation of the Rhineland, a chance to recover Eupen Malmédy from
Belgium, a possible earlier date for the Saar plebiscite, a further easing of repa-
rations, and an accelerated liquidation of Allied military control in Germany.28
It would be wrong, therefore, to evaluate Stresemann’s foreign policy as a
selfless sacrifice of German goals for the sake of closer ties with the other Euro-
pean states. Stresemann’s last major speech of 9 September 1929, at the autumn
conference of the League of Nations, was very clear on this matter. Just like his
French colleague Briand, Stresemann criticized the economic ‘Balkanization’
of Europe and demanded a European currency and European stamps. While
he was pressing for an economically united Europe, he dismissed any idea of a
political federation. The nation state, as created by Bismarck, remained the
alpha and omega of Stresemann’s politics. Stresemann—like all European
statesman of his time—did pursue a nationalist foreign policy. In German
terms after 1919 this meant a revisionist policy. He desired to see Germany
restored to her former greatness and once more asserting her ‘natural’ position
in the concert of European powers.
The apparent contradiction between the annexationist of the First World
War and the moderate Foreign Minister of the German Republic is thus not as

onciliation. See, for example, Rudolf Olden, Gustav Stresemann (Berlin, 1929). Also, Antonia Vallentin,
Gustav Stresemann: Vom Werden einer Staatsidee (Leipzig, 1929). The ‘Stresemann myth’ which these books
helped to establish was challenged in 1957 by Anneliese Thimme, who argued that he should be seen as a
politician pursuing strictly national goals rather than as a European statesman. See Anneliese Thimme,
Gustav Stresemann: Eine politische Biographie zur Geschichte der Weimarer Republik (Hanover and
Frankfurt, 1957). One of Stresemann’s most recent biographers, Christian Baechler, has again argued that he
had grown beyond his crude nationalist wartime beliefs. Instead, he had become an advocate of a well-
balanced European concert of powers. See Christian Baechler, Gustave Stresemann (1878–1929): De
l’imperialisme à la sécurité collective (Strasbourg, 1996). Similarly, Wright, Weimar’s Greatest Statesman.
26
DVP Central Committee meeting on 1 October 1926, in Eberhard Kolb and Ludwig Richter (eds.),
Nationalliberalismus in der Weimarer Republik: Die Führungsgremien der Deutschen Volkspartei, 2 vols.
(Düsseldorf, 1999), here vol. 2: 1926–1933, 665.
27
Wright, Weimar’s Greatest Statesman, 359 ff. 28
Ibid.
100 In the Shadow of Stabilization
fundamental as has often been suggested. The ‘conversion of the nationalist
Saul to the pan-European Paul’, as Hagen Schulze put it, never took place.
Bismarck’s Reich and its freedom of action in foreign affairs were always central
in Stresemann’s political thinking.29 Stresemann realized, however, that a
nationalist foreign policy could not be successful if it directly challenged the
governments of the victorious powers. This was precisely why he based his
policy on an objective appreciation of the constellation of forces in Europe and
‘pursued his revisionist policy as an international policy of reconciliation’.30
Stresemann’s understanding of the restrictions on German foreign policy
permitted him to become the foremost representative of a policy of peaceful
co-operation with the West. He was an enlightened representative of a German
Großmachtpolitik. As such he became the promoter of a moderate image of
Bismarck, a Bismarck who would have supported Stresemann’s own foreign
policy. A Foreign Minister who instead ‘wished to restore everything from
sheer passionate feeling, would bring us into conflict with all other powers. It
would be good to write a book about . . . Bismarck, in which it was revealed
how he made the most careful use of power when he was at the height of his
own power, and how he overcame those who could not get enough of it in 1866
and 1870. He wanted to preserve peace in Europe. That would be a better image
of him than that which legend conjures . . .’.31 Stresemann thus portrayed
himself as being in line with Bismarck’s foreign policy when he rejected all
speculations about winning back Danzig, Western Prussia, and Upper Silesia
by force.32 He repeatedly and publicly emphasized that a revision of the condi-
tions of the Treaty of Versailles could only take place successfully through the
principle of moderation, the ‘main attribute of Bismarck’s politics’.33
The view that a policy of peaceful co-operation with the West was without
any realistic alternative was shared by most Reichstag delegates. Supported by
the remaining coalition partners, the DVP, the Centre, and the BVP, as well as
by the SPD and the DDP, the Locarno accords and the authorization for entry

29
Schulze, Weimar, 275.
30
Karl D. Erdmann, ‘Gustav Stresemann: Sein Bild in der Geschichte’, HZ CCXXVII (1978), 599–616.
31
Speech in Stuttgart, 18 April 1926, in Stresemann, Vermächtnis, 2. 503–4, here p. 504. See also
Stresemann’s similar comments at the 1 October 1926 session of the DVP’s Central Committee, during
which he alluded to Stolberg-Wernigerode’s book. Cf. Kolb and Richter (eds.), Nationalliberalismus, 2. 665.
32
On this see Karl D. Erdmann, Gustav Stresemann: The Revision of Versailles and the Weimar Parlia-
mentary System, Speech Delivered at the German Historical Institute, London (London and Ashford, 1980), 14.
Stresemann confirmed his non-aggressive approach to revisionism by joining the Briand-Kellogg pact in 1928.
33
Speech in Munich, 18 January 1926, in Stresemann papers, H 160950–2. The meeting at which
Stresemann spoke was held under the motto ‘Bismarck’s spirit—our model!’ See the report in Deutsche
Allgemeine Zeitung, 18 Jan. 1926, morning edition. Attention to the speech was also paid in the Regensburger
Anzeiger, 19 Jan. 1926, morning edition.
 In the Shadow of Stabilization 101
into the League of Nations were passed by a comfortable majority of 291 votes
against 174.34
The immediate crisis concerning foreign policy was therefore over and on 1
December 1925 Luther and Stresemann signed the Locarno accords in London.
However, the domestic crisis provoked by the agreement remained. The loss of
the DNVP’s support over the issue of the Locarno Treaties left the governing
coalition without a dependable majority in the Reichstag. Moreover, the SPD’s
vote in favour of the Locarno Treaties had not been a vote of confidence in the
Luther cabinet. On the contrary, it had been achieved only after repeated assur-
ances that Luther would resign once the treaties had been ratified.35 In keeping
with these assurances, the cabinet submitted its resignation to President
Hindenburg on 5 December 1925, after the return of Stresemann and Luther
from the signing of the Locarno Pact in London.36 Once the DDP and Centre
had failed in their attempt to form a great coalition government, the President
called upon Luther once again to set up a Bürgerblock cabinet on 13 January
1926. The second coalition government under Luther only existed for a few
months. In early May 1926 Luther countersigned a decree which had been
issued by Hindenburg. This decreed that all German embassies, legations, and
consulates outside Europe, in addition to designated ones within Europe, were
to fly the colours of the old Empire as well as the new flag. The government
thereby strayed into the realm of symbolic politics—something more likely to
arouse passions than rational responses. In the resulting furore that broke out
among the old partners of the Weimar coalition at this insult to the republican
standard, Luther’s cabinet fell.37
On 17 May 1926 Luther’s government was followed by another minority
government led by his predecessor Wilhelm Marx. The new cabinet’s foreign
policy was backed by the SPD, as was evident in the public discussion over the
Berlin Treaty, which was signed on 24 April 1926 by Gustav Stresemann and the
Soviet ambassador to Berlin, Nikolaj Krestinskij.38 The signatories agreed to
maintain neutrality in the case of the other being attacked by a third power.
They also agreed not to enter into alliances that might impose economic sanc-
tions on the other party to the treaty. Germany de facto promised not to take
part in any League of Nations’ sanctions against Moscow. Furthermore, the

34
The German Nationalists voted solidly against the proposals. See RT, 27 Nov. 1925, vol. 388, 4655.
35
Klaus E. Riesberg, ‘Die SPD in der Locarno-Krise Oktober / November 1925’, Vierteljahreshefte für
Zeitgeschichte, XXX (1982), 130–61.
36
Schulthess, LXVI (1925), 188–9.
37
Schulthess, LXVII (1926), 93–9. See, too, Ribbe, ‘Flaggenstreit’, 175–88.
38
The Berlin Treaty is printed in ADAP 1918–1945, B series: 1925–33 (Göttingen, 1967), here vol. II, 402–3.
102 In the Shadow of Stabilization
treaty provided for an extension of the friendly political and economic ties
between the two countries based on the Rapallo Pact of April 1922.39
The German–Soviet settlement served to allay Russian fears that Germany
had moved into an anti-Soviet camp by concluding the Locarno Treaties. From
a German perspective, it assisted in maintaining Germany’s diplomatic flexi-
bility and preventing a Franco-Soviet rapprochement.40 Politically, Germany
was now integrated into the system of the western states. In military terms,
however, she had neither opted for the partners of the security pact nor for the
Soviet Union. In relation to domestic politics, the agreement, labelled by the
press a ‘Reinsurance Treaty’ in analogy to the Russo-German agreement of
1887, served to weaken the DNVP’s allegation that the ‘western bias’ after
Locarno was a deviation from Bismarck’s path. In a radio address of 1 May 1926
Stresemann emphasized that the Berlin Treaty was directed at the same goal as
Bismarck’s foreign policy, namely to ‘uphold peace and friendship’ between the
Reich and Russia.41 Privately, however, Stresemann was sceptical of the agree-
ment with Moscow. In mid-June 1925 he noted in his diary: ‘We are faced today
with very similar decisions [to those faced by Bismarck prior to the conclusion
of the Russo-German Reinsurance Treaty] and if the Russia of today were the
Russia of those days, the decision would be very simple. But to ally oneself
with communist Russia is akin to going to bed with the murderer of one’s own
people.’42
During the negotiation of the Berlin Treaty, the Soviet government had tried
to persuade Stresemann to go one step beyond Rapallo and to enter into a
formal alliance with the object of reducing Poland to her ethnographical
boundaries on both sides. Stresemann resisted this temptation, but conceded
Germany’s neutrality in the event of a Soviet–Polish conflict. However,
German neutrality was limited to the improbable event of Poland being the
aggressor against the Soviet Union; the obligation to remain neutral was
invalidated if Poland were the victim of Soviet aggression.43
Even if the Berlin Treaty did not fulfil the over-optimistic expectations with
which it was greeted in Moscow and in influential circles in Germany, it did
meet with universal approval in the Reichstag. The almost unanimous ratifica-

39
On Rapallo see Peter Krüger, ‘A Rainy Day, April 16 1922: The Rapallo Treaty and Cloudy Perspectives
for German Foreign Policy’, in Carole Fink, Axel Frohn, and Jürgen Heideking (eds.), Genoa, Rapallo, and
European Reconstruction in 1922 (Washington, DC, 1991), 49–64.
40
See Martin Walsdorff, Westorientierung und Ostpolitik: Stresemanns Rußlandpolitik in der Locarno-ära
(Bremen, 1971), 151–6. See also Edward H. Carr, German–Soviet Relations between the Two World Wars
1919–1939 (Baltimore, 1951).
41
Stresemann, Vermächtnis, 2. 540. 42
Stresemann papers, diary entry of 11 June 1925.
43
Walsdorff, Westorientierung, 29.
 In the Shadow of Stabilization 103
tion of the Treaty by the Reichstag on 10 June 1926 was a moment of triumph
for Stresemann.44 At a stroke he had invalidated the right’s accusation of diplo-
matic bias towards the West. The Berlin Treaty was proof, so Stolberg-
Wernigerode wrote, ‘that there was never any bias towards the West. Only
those who judged without knowing the full facts could say such a thing.’
Stolberg-Wernigerode also countered the demands for a closer alliance with
Russia, as had been envisaged in the Reinsurance Treaty, by raising the question
as to ‘whether Russia is as much a calculable factor as it was in Bismarck’s time.
This can rightly be denied. It was a mistake of the post-Bismarck era that
the alliance with Russia ended. However, it would also not correspond to
Bismarck’s thinking if we now relied on Russia alone. Still situated in the
centre of Europe and surrounded by many enemies we tread Bismarck’s path,
trying to secure ourselves on all sides. Not Locarno or the Berlin Treaty, but
Locarno and the Berlin Treaty—that is the solution.’45
The leadership of the German Nationalist opposition, whom Stolberg-
Wernigerode was attacking in his article, was indeed put in a difficult position
by the Berlin Treaty. Stresemann had fulfilled one of their central foreign poli-
cy demands. The DNVP’s expert on Eastern Europe, Otto Hoetzsch, even
went personally to the Foreign Office to inform Stresemann that it was ‘fully
justifiable . . . to refer to Bismarck’ in the context of the Russian–German
‘Reinsurance Treaty’.46 Yet, at the same time, the Hugenberg wing of the
DNVP was anything but ready to publicly acknowledge Stresemann’s foreign
policy success as such. Hugenberg’s newspapers continued their witch hunt
against the Foreign Minister. Under pressure from within his party, Count
Westarp publicly declared that the Russo-German neutrality agreement would
not change the attitude of the DNVP to Stresemann’s foreign policy in gener-
al. Even if the treaty meant that ‘Germany’s freedom of action with regard to
Article 16’ was restored, ‘perhaps one reason for our resistance to the League of
Nations policies of Herr Luther and Herr Stresemann does no longer exist, but
it is in no way the only reason’.47
In November 1926, the Pan-German League went one step further. In
an open letter to the German Foreign Minister the nationalist group denied
Stresemann’s right to use the name ‘Bismarck’ in support of his foreign policy.

44
RT, 10 June 1926, vol. 390, 7437–8.
45
Stolberg-Wernigerode, Zurück zu Bismarck, 14.
46
See Stresemann’s diary entry, in Vermächtnis, 2. 537. Within the cabinet too, the DNVP ministers
endorsed Stresemann’s policy without objections. See Akten der Reichskanzlei: Die Kabinette Marx III und
IV, vol. 2, 779 (cabinet meeting of 9 June 1927).
47
Westarp on 25 April 1925, as quoted in Korrespondenz der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei, 27 Apr. 1926.
104 In the Shadow of Stabilization
Only ‘a strange Bismarck’, the League claimed, would have supported any of
Stresemann’s policies.48
Relations between the nationalist right and Stresemann’s party had not
always been as difficult as they were during and after the conclusion of the
Locarno Treaties. In the summer of 1925, still under the influence of a co-
operative effort during Hindenburg’s presidential election campaign, both
the DVP and the DNVP had commonly supported a bill which sought to
realize a project of high symbolic importance: the establishment of 18 January
(the day of the 1871 Imperial Proclamation by Bismarck) as a national holiday.49

Movies, monuments, and mass rallies: Bismarck in the

‘Golden Twenties’
The debate over a universally acceptable date for a national holiday was as old
as the Republic itself. Since 1919 the issue had repeatedly led to emotionally
charged political debates.50 When in June 1925, the Luther government pre-
sented to the Reichstag a bill to establish Reich Foundation Day (18 January)
as a national holiday, emotions again ran high. The former Minister of the
Interior, Wilhelm Sollmann (SPD), immediately suggested that 18 January
would never be accepted as a national holiday by the majority of people,
but rather would be seen as a ‘greatly enlarged German Nationalists’ holiday’.
His criticism, which was accompanied by loud cheering from the SPD faction,
was directed against the ‘character’ of Bismarck’s state, a state unable to satisfy
the needs of the working classes.51
The assessment that 18 January was an inappropriate date for a national hol-
iday was shared by the DDP. Theodor Heuss dismissed the bill as an attempt to
start ‘a new fight’ in the public arena. Heuss also warned DVP delegates, who
were supporting the German Nationalists’ legislative draft, against the ‘danger-
ous romanticism of seeing that which is past only in its transfiguration. It is
only the poor guy who seeks in the past recipes for the future, or who uses it as
a crutch in a present for which he is not adapted.’52
Obviously, Heuss’s interpretation of the bourgeois Bismarck-nostalgia did
not meet with enthusiasm from the right. In their replies DVP and DNVP

48
Alldeutsche Blätter, 13 Nov. 1926. 49
RT, vol. 398, document no. 359.
50
See Fritz Schellack, Nationalfeiertage in Deutschland von 1871–1945 (Frankfurt, 1990), 133–273.
51
RT, 12 June 1925, vol. 385, 2220.
52
RT, 15 June 1925, vol. 385, 2304. See, too, the speech of Ludwig Bergsträßer (DDP), in RT, 15 June 1925,
vol. 385, 2326.
 In the Shadow of Stabilization 105
MPs accused the left of a ‘gross underestimation’ of the importance of German
history, a history that ‘did not only begin on 9 November 1918 or 11 August 1919
or with the publication of the Communist Manifesto’.53 Furthermore, the
opponents of the bill were accused of underestimating public affections for
the traditions of Bismarck’s Reich; the day on which Bismarck had founded the
Reich was ‘a holy day for millions of Germans’, or so the German Nationalist
MP Emil Berndt suggested.54
The majority of Reichstag deputies thought otherwise: the DNVP’s bill pro-
posal was defeated by 193 votes to 138.55 The public quarrel over Bismarck’s lega-
cy, which reached its first peak after the Hindenburg election campaign in the
debate over a universally acceptable national holiday, none the less survived the
parliamentary defeat of the DVP and DNVP. Public celebrations on 18 January
and 1 April (Bismarck’s birthday) retained their central roles in the festive
culture of the Weimar right.56
Commemoration ceremonies in honour of the Iron Chancellor were prefer-
ably held wherever a large Bismarck memorial provided a suitable setting for
party rallies and public speeches. Hamburg became one of the centres of the
Bismarck cult for that very reason; the Roland-like Bismarck statue promi-
nently standing above the harbour provided an ideal background for all sorts of
commemoration marches and speeches. From 1925 onwards the Patriotic
Leagues, for example, organized annual torchlight processions on 1 April from
Hamburg-Eilenau to the Bismarck monument in St Pauli.57 Up to 30,000 men
and women participated in these annual events.58 After 1927 the Hamburg
‘Bismarck marches’ were increasingly overshadowed by violent confrontations
between Bismarckians and Communist protesters.59
Bismarck celebrations on 1 April were, however, by no means limited to
Hamburg. Organized by the German People’s Party, the German Nationalist
People’s Party, or by extra-parliamentary societies such as the Pan-German
League, the Stahlhelm, and the Kyffhäuser League, public commemoration
events took place wherever there was a Bismarck monument. In nearly all cases,
rhetorical praise of the Bismarck era was supplemented by the defamation of
the allegedly politically and morally corrupt Republic.

53
Siegfried von Kardorff ’s speech (DVP), RT, 12 June 1925, vol. 385, 2240–1.
54
RT, 12 June 1925, vol. 385, 2224–5. 55
RT, 15 June 1925, vol. 385, 2361.
56
See Robert Gerwarth, ‘Republik und Reichsgründung: Bismarcks kleindeutsche Lösung im Mei-
nungsstreit der ersten deutschen Demokratie 1918–1933’, in Winkler (ed.), Griff nach der Deutungsmacht,
115–33. 57
Hamburger Nachrichten, 31 Mar. 1925, morning edition.
58
See, for example, Hamburger Nachrichten, 1 Apr. 1926.
59
See, for example, Hamburger Nachrichten, 1 Apr. 1927, evening edition.
106 In the Shadow of Stabilization
But the Bismarck myth did not merely survive in the celebratory oratory of
long-established groups and organizations. Nor was it a phenomenon restrict-
ed to the older generation. ‘Bismarck’, so wrote the liberal nationalist Wilhelm
Spieckernagel in 1926, ‘has become the yardstick of everything political. Today
. . . more than ever.’60 The generation gap between old and young nationalists
during the Weimar period was, however, reflected in the fact that the younger
generation applied Bismarck’s yardstick not just to the present, but also to the
later period of Wilhelmine Germany: ‘The generation of 1890–1914 denied his
work,’ Spieckernagel explained. ‘With a few notable exceptions, the German
bourgeoisie could not muster the courage to oppose the New Course and is
therefore jointly culpable for the waste of Bismarck’s legacy.’61
It was the stated aim of the German Nationalists’ Party Youth, the last of the
political youth organizations of an established Reichstag party to come into
being, to restore Bismarck’s legacy in the minds of the younger generation and
make it serviceable in the present and future.62 It was only in 1922, during a
meeting in Hanover, that the DNVP decided to unify the as yet unco-
ordinated local youth groups into a single organization under the leadership
of Wilhelm Kube. The organization would promote an ideal image through
the adoption of the name ‘Bismarck’.63 Patronage of the youth organization
was accepted by Bismarck’s grandson Otto, who gave permission to use his
surname for the nationalist cause in ‘such a way as seems of best advantage
to you’.64
The Bismarck Youth recruited young men and women between the ages of
14 and 25. It first gained a foothold in the cities and industrial regions, and final-
ly spread into the rural areas of eastern Germany. The best regions for recruit-
ing proved to be those areas with a largely Protestant population: Berlin, Lower
Saxony, and Magdeburg, Hesse and Thuringia, Pomerania, Hamburg, and

60
Wilhelm Spieckernagel, ‘Zum Geburtstag des Reichsgründers’, Deutsche Stimmen, XXXVIII (1926),
149–52, here p. 149. 61
Ibid. 149–50.
62
The German Nationalists decided to establish a DNVP youth organization at the 1920 party confer-
ence in Hanover. See BA (Berlin), R 8005/53, 332–4. On Weimar’s political youth organizations in general see
Elizabeth Domansky, ‘Politische Dimensionen von Jugendprotest und Generationenkonflikt in der
Zwischenkriegszeit in Deutschland’, in Dieter Dowe (ed.), Jugendprotest und Generationenkonflikt in Europa
im 20. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1986), here p. 128. See, too, Wolfgang R. Krabbe (ed.), Politische Jugend in
der Weimarer Republik (Bochum, 1993).
63
See Westarp Papers, political correspondence, BA (Berlin), N2329/262. See, too, Gisbert J. Gemein,
‘Die DNVP in Düsseldorf ’, Ph.D. thesis (Cologne, 1969), 127–8. Also: Reinhard Behrens, ‘Die Deutschna-
tionalen in Hamburg 1918–1933’, Ph.D. thesis (Hamburg, 1973), 106. Finally, Hertha Siemering (ed.), Die
deutschen Jugendverbände (Berlin, 1923), 212–13.
64
Jung-Bismarck Berlin, 1 Oct. 1921, 1.
 In the Shadow of Stabilization 107
Württemberg.65 By 1928 the Bismarck Youth had roughly 42,000 members,
organized in more than 800 local groups all over Germany. This made it the
second largest youth organization after the Socialist Workers’ Youth (SAJ).66
The ‘Bismarck Youth’ was dominated by members from the bourgeoisie and
the nobility. The largest regional Bismarck Youth organization, the Bismarck
League Berlin, founded in 1920, was a rare exception in this case: more than
80 per cent of the 6,000 members (in 1922) came from a working-class
background.67
In 1922 Hermann Otto Sieveking, a 32-year-old former combat officer and
son of a wealthy Hamburg merchant, took over as chairman of the Bismarck
Youth. Under his leadership, the organization gained an increasingly military
structure. Local leaders were ordered to ensure that leisure activities became
more paramilitary, including regular physical exercises. Sieveking was success-
ful in uniting his organization and in transforming it into a paramilitary force
for ‘national restoration’.68
To strengthen their corporate identity, the Bismarck Youth held annual
national youth meetings in different cities. The gatherings at Erlangen (1922),
Goslar (1923), Braunschweig (1924), Bielefeld (1925), Stettin (1926), and Siegen
(1927) were followed in 1928 by a convention in Friedrichsruh, which had a
particular importance for the organization as it was the burial place of Otto
von Bismarck.69
This Seventh Nationalist Youth Meeting had been scheduled by the
Bismarck Youth leadership for the end of July 1928 in honour of the thirtieth
anniversary of their icon’s death. The party leadership intended the meeting to
demonstrate its youth organization’s strength. This was particularly important
because the Reichstag elections of 20 May 1928, for which the Bismarck Youth
had heavily campaigned, had ended with a catastrophe for the DNVP. Their
share of the vote fell from 20.5 per cent to 14.2 per cent, and the parliamentary
faction lost 30 seats, reducing it to 73 members.70
In an article for the Bismarck Youth’s periodical, Deutsches Echo, Sieveking
did not deny the fact that his organization had failed to attract sufficient

65
See Wolfgang Krabbe, Die gescheiterte Zukunft der Ersten Republik: Jugendorganisationen bürgerlicher
Parteien im Weimarer Staat 1918–1933 (Opladen, 1995), 171–96.
66
Figures according to Hamburger Nachrichten, 28 July 1928.
67
Cf. Das junge Deutschland, XVI (1922), 197.
68
See Behrens, ‘Die Deutschnationalen’, 103, 107, and 110.
69
See the propaganda poster announcing the Friedrichsruh meeting in German Historical Museum,
Berlin, 1987/292.3.
70
On the election results see Falter, Wahlen, 71.
108 In the Shadow of Stabilization
numbers of young people during the election campaign. There was, however,
no thought of resignation. Instead, the Bismarck Youth would have to redou-
ble its efforts to attract young people to the German Nationalists’ cause.71 The
Bismarck Youth’s national meeting in Friedrichsruh was to be attended by
Prince Oskar of Prussia and Field Marshal von Mackensen, and would mark
the beginning of this increased effort at youth mobilization.72
Sieveking claimed that the event would show its ideological opponents ‘that
there is still a German youth which knows how to act on behalf of the Kaiser
and the Reich in the spirit of the Reich’s founder. We shall show the world that
we are prepared to fight for the idea of monarchism and for a Volksgemeinschaft
in agreement with our völkisch and conservative world views.’73
For Sieveking and his followers the re-establishment of the Hohenzollern
monarchy in a future ‘Third Reich’ was the political basis of the organization’s
efforts.74 According to Deutsches Echo the forthcoming ‘Third Reich’ to which
the Bismarck Youth aspired would once again be a great power on the world
stage. Domestically, this Reich was to become a classless and ethnically homo-
geneous Volksgemeinschaft.75 In the meantime, the members of the Bismarck
Youth wished to fight the ‘boundless parliamentarianism’ of the Weimar
Republic ‘to the extreme [bis aufs Messer]’, although a coup d’état no longer
seemed a viable option after the experiences of the failed Kapp and Hitler
putsches.76
In order to achieve their political aims and to promote a nationalist fervour
among the organization’s followers, the Bismarck Youth leadership established
a programme of ‘moral training’ and ‘political education’. This included the

71
Hermann O. Sieveking, ‘Wir und das Wahlergebnis’, Deutsches Echo, IV (1928), 124–5.
72
The attendance figures for this gathering vary considerably. The non-aligned Zwiespruch puts the num-
ber at just 520 in its critical report. See Der Zwiespruch, X (1928), 133. Deutsches Echo, however, refuted these
figures in a comprehensive report at the beginning of September. See Deutsches Echo, IV (1928), 197–213. See
also the reports in Hamburger Nachrichten and Der Tag, which spoke of 3,000 participants: Hamburger
Nachrichten, 29 July 1928, morning edition; Der Tag, 29 July 1928, Sunday edition.
73
Sieveking’s opening speech at the Nationalist Youth Meeting in 1928 as quoted in Deutsches Echo, IV
(1928), 128. Even Kaiser Wilhelm II sent a telegram to Sieveking. On this and the speeches of von Mackensen
and Count Westarp see ibid. 195.
74
Deutsches Echo, IV (1928), 197–213. The restoration of the Hohenzollern monarchy was one of the main
goals of the ‘Bismarck Youth’ from the very beginning and remained so under Sieveking. See for example the
correspondence of 6 Jan. 1920 between Kurd Viebig, then president of the German Nationalists’ Youth
League, and Count Westarp in Westarp Papers, political correspondence, BA (Berlin) N23291/45, 20. See
also Sieveking’s article in Deutsches Echo, II (1926), 198. Finally, Korrespondenz der DNVP, 23 Jan. 1925.
75
Wolfgang R. Krabbe, ‘Die Bismarckjugend der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei’, German Studies
Review, XVII (1994), 9–32.
76
Deutsches Echo, I (1925), 312; II (1926), 158; IV (1928), 125. See, too, Lewis Hertzmann, DNVP: Right-
Wing Opposition in the Weimar Republic 1918–1924 (Lincoln, Neb., 1963).
 In the Shadow of Stabilization 109
reading of books on Bismarck’s rule for both the youth groups of 14–18-year-
olds and the activist groups or Wehrgruppen of 19–25-year-olds.77 ‘History’, as
the Bismarck Youth’s members were told by Deutsches Echo, was the ‘source,
from which our vital, hope-giving power flows’. To study the key events of the
‘great national past’ was like a ‘reviving bath for the German soul’ tortured by
the present state of Germany’s weakness. Additionally, ‘excursions to the places
of the unsurpassable, admirable and unforgettable deeds of our fathers and
forefathers’ were organized for the members of the Bismarck Youth.78 Among
these places of ‘historical importance’ were the various Bismarck monuments
spread all over Germany.
Bismarck monuments were, of course, not just places of pilgrimage for
young German nationalists, but also popular excursion destinations for the
population at large.79 For the majority of the conservative and national-liberal
bourgeoisie the monuments gave expression to their wish for a return to former
greatness. Furthermore, they were considered to be sites of national contem-
plation which needed to be preserved and increased in number. The largest of
Weimar’s numerous pressure groups for the construction of further Bismarck
memorials was the League for the Erection of a Bismarck National Monument,
which was revived in 1925 by several influential industrialists and politicians.80
In the short term the League had to restrain its activities because of funding
limitations and the continuing occupation of the left bank of the Rhine. This
meant that no exact date could be set for the completion of the monument.
Consequently the League confined itself momentarily to spreading ‘Bismarck’s
thinking’, which the League’s first chairman, Max Wallraff, defined as a patri-
otic belief in the Reich’s resurrection.81
In order to emphasize the national character of the project, Bismarck
societies, which had ceased to exist during the war, were re-founded all over
Germany. ‘Bismarck’s thinking’ was to achieve a breakthrough not just in
Prussia, but in the whole of Germany. The Third German Bismarck Day on 14
September 1929 was held in the Munich Odeon and attended by prominent
Bavarians to allow its proponents to demonstrate ‘that the German South is not

77
See Behrens, ‘Die Deutschnationalen’, 104 (for Hamburg) and Gemein, ‘DNVP’, 130 (for
Düsseldorf ).
78
Willy-Oskar Mundt, ‘Geschichtsrückblick als Quelle der Kraft’, Deutsches Echo, III (1927), 115–16.
79
See the vast collection of 1920s postcards depicting Bismarck monuments in the archive of the
Otto-von-Bismarck-Stiftung (P 1999).
80
See Dorrmann, ‘Bismarck-Nationaldenkmal’, 1083–4. See, too, Hauptstaatsarchiv NRW, Düsseldorf,
file ‘Verein zur Errichtung eines Bismarck-Nationaldenkmals (BND) e.V.’, RW 2/4, p. 3.
81
Cf. Max Wallraf in the League’s privately sponsored Bismarck-Blatt, Dec. 1928, p. 1.
110 In the Shadow of Stabilization
going to let itself be outdone in its joyful and proud memory of Bismarck by
the North and the West’.82
As the Munich example indicates, the Bismarck societies enjoyed the support
of highly influential contemporaries. Apart from the Bavarian Minister Presi-
dent Heinrich Held, the mayor of Munich Karl Scharnagel, the president of the
chamber of commerce Joseph Pschorr, the neo-conservative publicist Oswald
Spengler, and the historian Karl Alexander von Müller, were all members of the
Munich Bismarck Society.83 In 1931, this society was able to celebrate the erec-
tion of a new Bismarck monument in the Bavarian capital. Designed by Fritz
Brehm and financed by the Rhineland industrialist Paul Reusch, the seven-
metre-high stone monument was erected next to the German Museum.84 Apart
from encouraging the construction of further Bismarck monuments, the
Bismarck societies organized annual celebrations on 1 April as well as lectures
about the Iron Chancellor. All these events had the same basic aim: to contrast
Bismarck’s ‘greatness’ with the perceived weakness of the Weimar Republic.
A two-part film about Bismarck, which had been planned since 1923, served
the same purpose.85 However, it manifested a completely different approach to
the communication of its mythic content. Technical advances and the huge
increase in the number of cinemas since the First World War facilitated the dis-
semination of particular images of history to an ever-growing audience.86 In
the mid-1920s roughly two million Germans went to the cinema on a daily
basis. The number of cinemas increased from around 2,300 in 1918 to more
than 5,000 in 1930. Historical films were particularly popular, as the enormous
successes of Fritz Lang’s Die Nibelungen (1924) and Anton von Czerépy’s
Friedericus Rex (1922–3) demonstrate.87
The Bismarck film project had been initiated by a company under the chair-
manship of Otto von Bismarck Jr. Other members of the company’s board
included Friedrich Wilhelm von Loebell and two prominent heavy industrial-
ists, Fritz Thyssen and Emil Kirdorf.88 The film, which enjoyed the personal

82
Münchener Neueste Nachrichten, 13 Sept. 1929.
83
Hauptstaatsarchiv Düsseldorf, file ‘Verein zur Errichtung eines BND e.V.’, here vol. 33 I.
84
See Hort, Bismarck in München, 164–94. See also Gavriel D. Rosenfeld, Munich and Memory:
Architecture, Monuments and the Legacy of the Third Reich (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 2000), 113–14.
85
See Maja Lobinski-Demedts, ‘Bismarck im Film’, in Machtan (ed.), National-Mythos, 156–79. See, too,
Robert A. Rosenstone, Revising History—Film and the Construction of a New Past (Princeton, 1995), 182.
86
See Gerhard Schoenberger, ‘Das Preußenbild im deutschen Film: Geschichte und Ideologie’, in Axel
Marquardt and Heinz Rathsack (eds.), Preußen im Film (Hamburg, 1981), 9–38, here p. 29.
87
See, in particular, Helmut Regel, ‘Die Friedericus-Filme der Weimarer Republik’, in Marquardt
and Rathsack (eds.), Preussen im Film, 124–34, here p. 71. Also, Siegfried Kracauer, Von Caligari zu Hitler
(Frankfurt, 1984), 124. See, too, Katherine Roper, ‘Friedericus Films in Weimar Society: Potsdamismus in a
Democracy’, German Studies Review, XXVI (2003), 493–514. 88
BA (Berlin), Filmarchiv, no. 1615.
 In the Shadow of Stabilization 111
support of President von Hindenburg, certainly did not intend to show the
historical Bismarck with all his strengths and weaknesses. Instead it aimed
to propagate ‘national values’ with which the domestic political conflicts
of the 1870s and 1880s should in no way interfere: ‘The plot must end with the
founding of the Reich in 1871. The following internal struggles and his
[Bismarck’s] departure would only awaken difficult memories which would
divide rather than unify [the Germans] and be counterproductive for its
patriotic purpose.’89
It was obvious what this ‘patriotic purpose’ was. The Bismarck films should
serve to sharpen the cinema-goers’ awareness of the ‘current political power-
lessness’, to ‘shake up the spirits of our people . . . and make them conscious of
what they have lost’.90 The lavishly illustrated book which accompanied the
film spoke openly of these aims. It also explained why film was chosen as a
medium. Its editor, Ludwig Ziehen, maintained that ‘newspaper articles and
speeches . . . are certainly useful and necessary’ in order to anchor Bismarck in
the German collective memory. Film, however, ‘is more effective for the mass-
es, because it portrays the deeds and successes of the past more vividly’.91
The ‘masses’ ’ need for a Bismarck film was the subject of a fierce political
debate. In June 1925 the project, still in its embryonic form, met with strong
criticism from Social Democratic politicians. Among others the chairman of
the Berlin SPD, Franz Künstler, suggested that the film, or ‘historical docu-
ment’ as he sarcastically coined it, was threatening to become ‘the worst form
of historical manipulation’.92
Dismissive statements such as this fell on deaf ears among the conservatives.
The guests at the première in the Berlin Primus-Palast on 23 December 1925,
most of them notable figures from society and politics, were, according to the
journal Der Film, ‘delighted’ by the film.93 When ‘the old Kaiser, Moltke,
Bismarck etc. appeared’, Reichsbote reported, there was ‘tumultuous applause,
which finally ended in the audience’s standing up and singing of the German
national anthem’.94
Both the ideological subtext of the film and its reception by its first audience
explain why the project was so strongly criticized in left-wing circles.95 ‘One

89
Quoted from a confidential document of the ‘Bismarck Film Company’. The document was discov-
ered by Vorwärts, which printed it just one day before the 1926 celebrations of the 55th anniversary of the
Reich’s founding. See Vorwärts, 17 Jan. 1926, Sunday edition.
90
Ludwig Ziehen, Bismarck: Geleitbuch zum Bismarck-Film (Berlin, 1926), foreword (not paginated).
91
Ibid. 92
RT, 16 June 1925, vol. 386, 2359. 93
Der Film, 24 Dec. 1925.
94
Der Reichsbote, 22 Dec. 1925, as quoted in Lobinski-Demedts, ‘Bismarck im Film’, 165.
95
Lothar Machtan, ‘Der inszenierte Mythos: Bismarck im Film’, in Jost Dülffer and Hans Hübner (eds.),
Otto von Bismarck: Person—Politik—Mythos (Berlin, 1993), 247–58, quotation on p. 258.
112 In the Shadow of Stabilization
should recognize and be particularly critical about the political intentions
behind the production of such a heroic Bismarck film,’ Rote Fahne warned its
readers on 22 December 1925.96 The film, which showed episodes of Bismarck’s
life from his youth in the period immediately after the Napoleonic Wars to his
time at the Bundestag in Frankfurt, was nothing more than a ‘demonstration
in “honour” of the Hohenzollerns’ bloodhound, the forger of dispatches
and grim enemy of the working classes, Otto von Bismarck’. From a political
point of view, the film encouraged the belief in ‘the absolute mastery of the
individual’.97
Despite such criticism, the Reich’s film classification board classed the film
as ‘educational for the nation [volksbildend]’. A little more than a year later, on
7 January 1927, ‘Bismarck, part 2’ was promoted as the second great cinematic
event of the year after Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.98 The ‘film of Germany’s greatest
era’—so ran its subtitle—portrayed Bismarck’s life and times from his installa-
tion as Prussia’s Minister President, the Wars of Unification and the Imperial
Proclamation at Versailles, to the triumphal return of German troops through
the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. The reaction of the audience at the première
yet again confirmed that the film aroused happy nostalgic feelings: ‘There were
storms of applause at every scene,’ Deutsche Zeitung informed its readers. ‘This
film is what every German wants and needs.’ The Primus-Palast, one of the
largest cinemas in Berlin, reported that the film was the greatest success since
its foundation: ‘record sales for every showing’. The Kammer-Lichtspiele in
Dresden telegraphed to report the same phenomenon: ‘all shows sold out’.99
Public enthusiasm for the Bismarck films obliged the left-wing press to take
issue with their historical authenticity. Berliner Tageblatt objected to the one-
sided portrayal of the Reich’s founder. It suggested the Bismarck films only
served the interests of those who backed the film and were in no way a just rep-
resentation of Bismarck’s historical personality. The directors had not only
skipped the ‘Bismarck of domestic politics’, the ‘Junker, a man of patriarchal
force, who did not understand the socio-political developments of the
century’—but had also tried to exorcize the ‘spirit of Locarno’ with the ‘spirit
of Sedan’.100
Although the method of dissemination had changed with the myth’s trans-
fer onto the big screen, its anti-republican content remained unaltered.
Whether the film suggested that Bismarck’s solution to the German question
was the inevitable result of German history since the Wars of Liberation, or
96
Rote Fahne, 22 Dec. 1925. 97
Ibid. Similarly, Vorwärts, 25 Dec. 1925, morning edition.
98
BA (Berlin), Filmarchiv, no. 1615. 99
Quotations from Der Film, 15 Jan. 1927.
100
Berliner Tageblatt, 8 Jan. 1927, evening edition.
 In the Shadow of Stabilization 113
whether the people were reminded in memorial celebrations of the ‘proud
flight of the German eagle’, which had ‘set course for the sun’ under Bismarck
but whose ‘pinions were now broken’, the effect was the same: the metaphor-
rich mystification of the Iron Chancellor served to emphasize the contrast
between the ‘great days of Bismarck’ and the sombre republican present.101
Despite the stabilization of the Reich’s foreign and domestic situation after
1923, the interpretations of Bismarck remained virtually unchanged. This was
true both for the images held up by the bourgeois camp and for the criticism of
them by left-wing publicists. When Ernst Feder ridiculed the backwards-
looking ‘flight from reality’ of conservative-nationalist politicians and publi-
cists, and Vorwärts protested against the right-wing ‘monopolization’ of the
celebrations of the Reich’s founding, they both used arguments which had been
repeatedly invoked in various contexts since 1918.102
The attitude of leading democrats to Bismarck’s controversial domestic poli-
cies can be analysed with a similar result. Just as during the debate on the Law
for the Protection of the Republic in 1922, so the fiftieth anniversary of the
promulgation of Bismarck’s anti-socialist legislation became an opportunity to
hold up the Republic’s liberal spirit and to juxtapose it with Bismarck’s repres-
sive measures in the 1870s and 1880s.103
The high point of the anniversary year was a mass demonstration in Berlin
on 21 October 1928 in commemoration of the first anti-socialist law, which had
been passed in the Reichstag on 18 October 1878. The demonstration was
organized by the SPD, which had become the strongest political party once
again following the Reichstag elections of 1928. Almost 100,000 people gath-
ered in the Lustgarten near the old Hohenzollern palace to decry Bismarck as
the repressor of the masses, and to celebrate their victory over his discrimina-
tory legislation. ‘Bismarck is dead,’ went the slogan on one of the banners, ‘but
Social Democracy is alive!’104
Friedrich Stampfer, editor-in-chief of Vorwärts, dedicated the entire front
page of his paper to the anniversary. He characterized Bismarck’s attempt ‘to
strangle one of the greatest intellectual movements in the history of mankind

101
Speech of the Dean of Berlin’s Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, Prof. Dr Pompeckj, in Reichsgrün-
dungsfeier der Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin am 18. Januar 1926 (Berlin, 1926), 28–30.
102
Quotations from Berliner Tageblatt, 16 Jan. 1926, morning edition, and Vorwärts, 10 Aug. 1926,
evening edition.
103
Müller-Koppe, ‘Sozialdemokratie’, 180–207. A typical commentary is Paul Kampffmeyer’s radio
broadcast, subsequently printed as ‘Aus der Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung: Das Sozialistengesetz’,
Vorwärts, 20 Oct. 1928, morning edition.
104
Vorwärts, 19 Oct. 1928. A detailed account of the events can be found in Vorwärts, 22 Oct. 1928,
morning edition.
114 In the Shadow of Stabilization
with snares of legal paragraphs’ as a complete failure, as manifested by the
SPD’s success in the most recent Reichstag elections of 1928.105
The SPD’s landslide electoral success of 1928 had indeed contributed signifi-
cantly to the increase in self-confidence among the supporters of the Republic.
The Grand Coalition government under Hermann Müller displayed its
optimism for the Republic’s future on Constitution Day (11 August) 1929. In
Berlin popular celebrations were organized and sponsored by the national gov-
ernment. Free classical concerts were offered to the public, sports events took
place in the Berlin park of Hasenheide, and fireworks and flight shows over the
city were designed to entertain the masses.106 The celebrations on 11 August
were considered by the democratic press to be indicative of the consolidation
of democracy. Berliner Tageblatt, for example, reported a torchlight procession
in Berlin, in which more than 100,000 people participated on 11 August 1928:
‘Here walks . . . the people: married couples with their kids, young men with
girls in their arms, men and women of all social spheres and professions . . .
Whoever has seen this has not only witnessed an organized torchlight march
but the celebrations and the democratic confession of a whole people.’107
The self-assuredness of this event as well as the SPD’s celebrations on 21
October 1928 were deliberate provocations to which the Weimar right reacted
immediately. The SPD’s criticism of Bismarck, ‘the founder of German social
policy’, was described as ‘wild propaganda’ from a party whose only interest
seemed to lie in exacerbating class hatred.108 Der Tag, which hardly seemed to be
surprised by the ‘witch-hunt against the Reich’s founder’, emphasized the legiti-
macy of Bismarck’s efforts to destroy the SPD. He had realized that ‘their spirit
of urban Untermenschentum ruined the youngest, strongest, and most num-
erous part of our nation and thus threatened the Reich with destruction’.109
The radical left, too, criticized the Social Democratic demonstration
strongly, albeit on completely different grounds. The KPD organized a count-
er-demonstration on 21 October 1928, where it promoted the view that it was
the Communist Party, not the Weimar SPD, which could rightfully claim to
represent those who had suffered under Bismarck’s legislation. The ‘bour-
geoisified’ SPD, on the other hand, would have adopted the methods of the
police state during the revolution of 1918–19, methods against which their
predecessors in the workers’ movement had fought vigorously.110

105
Vorwärts, 21 Oct. 1928, Sunday edition. 106
Berliner Tageblatt, 12 Aug. 1928, morning edition.
107
Berliner Tageblatt, 13 Aug. 1928. 108
Neue Preußische Zeitung, 22 Oct. 1928.
109
Der Tag, 21 Oct. 1928, Sunday edition.
110
See the front-page article, ‘Vor fünfzig Jahren und heute! Nur die KPD verteidigt die Traditionen der
proletarischen Vorkämpfer aus der Zeit des Sozialistengesetzes’, Rote Fahne, 18 Oct. 1928.
 In the Shadow of Stabilization 115

8. SPD demonstration in Berlin’s Lustgarten to commemorate the 50th anniversary of

Bismarck’s anti-socialist legislation, 21 October 1928.
116 In the Shadow of Stabilization

9. Chancellor Hermann Müller (SPD) humbly receives Bismarck’s congratulations for building
the ‘Cruiser A’: a caricature in Rote Fahne (21 October 1928) designed to illustrate the SPD’s
betrayal of socialist values.

Behind the KPD’s attack on the SPD was the quarrel over the construction
of the Cruiser ‘A’, which had been approved by Marx’s bourgeois government
before the 1928 general elections. The Cruiser ‘A’ had been immensely impor-
tant for the left-wing parties during the Reichstag election campaign of 1928.
The KPD, under Ernst Thälmann’s leadership, demanded free meals for chil-
dren at primary school instead of a new warship. The SPD had also cam-
paigned with the slogan ‘Children’s meals, not warships’. Consequently
disapproval in the party, and above all in the KPD, was great when it became
apparent that the new SPD-led coalition government was forging ahead with
the cruiser’s construction.111 This provided a useful slogan for the KPD. ‘No
class conscious worker demonstrates with the cruiser-SPD!’ ran the combative
headlines in Rote Fahne on the day before the demonstrations of 21 October.112

111
See Winkler, Schein der Normalität, 541 ff. 112
Rote Fahne, 20 Oct. 1928.
 In the Shadow of Stabilization 117
The anniversary of Bismarck’s anti-socialist legislation was thus only a pre-
text for rhetorical attacks against the government by the KPD. Slogans like
‘From Bismarck to Müller. From police sabre to armoured car! The system of
suppressors remains, the methods have just been modified’ or ‘Bloodhound
Noske, Bismarck’s pupil’ soon revealed the KPD’s true target.113 The events on
and around 21 October 1928 were further proof that the political chasm between
the Social Democrats and the Communists was no less than that between the
democratic left and the political right. Beneath the level of high politics, where
there had been a certain degree of stabilization since 1923, fundamental differ-
ences of ideology remained. The consequence of this was the absence of any
basis on which a democratic consensus could be established, such a consensus
being a vital prerequisite for a true socio-political stabilization. It was not as if
the need for an identity-forging democratic myth to bind the Germans to their
state was not clearly acknowledged. ‘The Republic needs a foundation myth,’
Frankfurter Zeitung announced in 1929 when it suggested making Constitution
Day, 11 August, Germany’s national holiday.114 This proposal was backed by
many Republicans, who made a great effort to free 11 August from its glamour-
less image. Friedrich Stampfer, for example, argued in Vorwärts that the Weimar
Constitution ‘has given the German people the opportunity to continue its
existence in a nation-state after the hopeless collapse of the old state’.115 Reichs-
banner seconded: ‘We have seen the greatest collapse in German history and we
have wandered through the darkest years of our existence. The Republic has
prevented the downfall of the Reich. The Republic has dealt with a decade of
bitter distress. . . . The Republic has saved Germany; it will lead her and the
German people to freedom and to new heights.’116
However, efforts to make Constitution Day the German national holiday
always failed in the face of nationalist and Communist opposition. Even in the
phase of ‘relative stability’ (‘relative’ when set against the stormy beginning and
end of the Weimar Republic) a basic lack of consensus remained the most char-
acteristic feature of Weimar Germany’s political culture. The Republic was
consequently ill-prepared when in 1929 storm clouds gathered over Weimar
Germany. Two quite different events in particular created an atmosphere in
which the key elements of the Bismarck myth—anti-parliamentarianism and
the belief in the necessity of heroic leadership—were to gain a sudden explosive
relevance. The first of these was the plebiscite over the Young Plan; the second
was the world economic depression.

113
Rote Fahne, 21 and 23 Oct. 1928. 114
Frankfurter Zeitung, 10 Aug. 1929.
115
Vorwärts, 11 Aug. 1929. 116
Reichsbanner, 10 Aug. 1929.
 8
Towards the Abyss: Bismarck and the
Dissolution of the Weimar Republic

Years of radicalization: Bismarck between the Young Plan

and the sixtieth anniversary of the Reich’s foundation
On 2 October 1929, the nationalist periodical Deutsches Echo confronted its
readers with a full-page announcement demanding support for the plebiscite
against the Young Plan:1
The nationalist front has entered into the decisive struggle for German freedom.
Under the disastrous leadership of this government and the short-sighted parole to
reduce the burden for this generation, serf-like tributes will be weighed down upon the
German youth and unborn generations. This irresponsible gamble with the future of
the German people is precisely what the newly created nationalist front hopes to pre-
vent by putting the Law against the Enslavement of the German People to a national
referendum. The struggle for the German referendum is of central importance for the
German youth. It is the self-evident task of every Bismarckian to canvass beyond his
own circle in order to ensure the success of the referendum. It is a matter of saving for
the German future that part of Bismarck’s Empire and Bismarck’s spirit which has been
rescued from the criminal revolution!2

The campaign for the so-called ‘Freedom Law’, which drew on the pretext
of preserving and restoring the Bismarckian inheritance, roused the public to a
hitherto unknown pitch of emotion in late 1929.3 The campaigners’ attempt to

1
The Young Plan of May 1929 replaced the Dawes Plan of 1924. It fixed the final sum of German repara-
tion payments at 112 billion Goldmarks, and, for the first time, established a concrete duration of the pay-
ment thereof. Even though the Young Plan was favourable in comparison to the Dawes Plan, the German
right vigorously rejected the idea of having to pay instalments to the Allies for another sixty years. On the
Young Plan, see in particular Philipp Heyde, Das Ende der Reparationen: Deutschland, Frankreich und der
Youngplan 1929–1932 (Paderborn, 1998).
2
Deutsches Echo, 2 Oct. 1929.
3
Paragraphs 1 and 2 of the ‘Freedom Law’ were directed against the ‘war guilt lie’ and asked the
government to annul the appropriate articles of the Versailles Treaty. Paragraph 3 rejected the acceptance of
any new burdens and duties vis-à-vis external powers. The height of demagoguery, however, was paragraph
4 (included on Hugenberg’s insistence), which threatened the Chancellor, ministers and plenipotentiaries,
 Towards the Abyss 119
mobilize every form of anti-democratic resentment naturally included the
invocation of Bismarck; no other mythical figure was able to condense and
illustrate the key elements of right-wing oppositional ideology more forcefully
than the Iron Chancellor. And no other ‘hero’ of German history was more
present in the German collective memory. As Max Wallraf pointed out in a
speech held at the Third German Bismarck Day in Munich on 14 September
1929, the Iron Chancellor was omnipresent in German politics: ‘Each and
every day his impressive figure stands above the chaos and the distress of our
time.’4
That Bismarck was instrumentalized in a campaign against the reparation
policies of the Republic was in itself hardly surprising. More importantly, how-
ever, the anti-Young Plan campaign strongly contributed to the radicalization
of the public discourse on Bismarck. Although the plebiscite was ultimately
defeated on 22 December 1929 with only 13 per cent of the electorate voting in
favour of it, the campaign greatly agitated the public and widened the ideologi-
cal gaps which had always been reflected in the various attitudes towards the
Iron Chancellor. In the heated atmosphere created by the fiercest anti-
republican campaign Weimar had ever witnessed, the Bismarck myth acquired
a far more explosive topicality as a weapon against the ‘system’ than had been
the case during the previous years of relative stabilization.
Even more decisive for the rapid deterioration of the political climate in
Weimar Germany were the effects of the world economic crisis.5 On 24 Octo-
ber 1929, Wall Street’s ‘Black Friday’, the share prices on the New York Stock
Exchange dropped dramatically and continued to do so over the following
days. The economic effects of ‘Black Friday’ quickly reached the other side of
the Atlantic and they hit Germany particularly hard. The country’s economy
was heavily dependent upon short-term foreign loans, especially from the
United States. In the light of the financial crisis these loans were now being
withdrawn.6 The number of unemployed—which was already comparatively
high during the earlier years of the Weimar Republic—rose sharply from the

who signed agreements such as the Young Plan, with long jail terms. On this see the detailed account of right-
wing agitation against the Young Plan by Volker Berghahn, ‘Das Volksbegehren gegen den Young-Plan und
die Ursprünge des Präsidialregimes 1928–1930’, in Dirk Stegmann et al. (eds.), Industrielle Gesellschaft und
politisches System: Beiträge zur politischen Sozialgeschichte: Festschrift für Fritz Fischer zum siebzigsten Geburts-
tag (Bonn, 1978), 431–46, here p. 446.
4
Wallraf as quoted in Münchener Neueste Nachrichten, 13 Sept. 1929.
5
On this see Jürgen Falter, ‘Unemployment and the Radicalization of the German Electorate 1928–33’,
in Peter Stachura (ed.), Unemployment and the Great Depression in Weimar Germany (London, 1986),
187–207.
6
See Harold James, ‘Economic Reasons for the Collapse of the Weimar Republic’, in Ian Kershaw (ed.),
Weimar: Why did German Democracy fail? (London, 1990), 30–57.
120 Towards the Abyss
end of 1929: from 1.3 million in September 1929 to 3.2 million (4.5 million
including short-term unemployment) in January 1930.7
If the direct economic effects of the world economic crisis were harsh for
Germany, the psychological consequences were no less disastrous. Feelings of
insecurity extended far beyond those who were immediately affected econom-
ically. The prevalent doomsday atmosphere allowed the enemies of the Repub-
lic successfully to unleash their uninhibited agitation against Weimar by
portraying the crisis as a consequence of the democratic ‘system’. As a result of
the economic and political crisis after 1929 mistrust of the multi-party state and
the parliamentary system in general infiltrated wide sections of the popula-
tion.8 In a situation in which more and more people considered the parliamen-
tary system bankrupt it proved to be relatively easy for the right-wing enemies
of democracy to mobilize latent resentments towards public institutions and
the ruling parties. Again it was Bismarck who was used to illustrate and popu-
larize anti-parliamentary sentiments. The economist Edgar Salin, for example,
accused the Republic in 1930 of being incapable of settling Germany’s eco-
nomic problems. He suggested that the political and economic strength of the
Reich during the first years of its existence had stemmed from the ‘unpreten-
tious, awe-inspiring person of the old Kaiser and the towering, heroic figure of
the Iron Chancellor’.9
The executive committee of the League for the Erection of a Bismarck
National Monument argued along similar lines. In early 1930 the committee
publicly demanded—in the name of Bismarck—that the German people
should overcome the ‘petty discord of the parliament’ and restore the ‘unity of
the people, of the nation, and of the Empire’.10 With the onset of the depres-
sion, the League gave up all claims to political neutrality. After the death of
Gustav Stresemann in 1929 (Stresemann had been a member of the League’s
executive committee), the League increasingly transformed itself into a plat-
form to promote anti-republican ideas. The organization was now exclusively
run by dedicated anti-democrats such as Friedrich von Berg (chairman of the
German Nobility’s Council), Prince Otto von Bismarck Jr., the former Field
Marshal von Mackensen, the Stahlhelm leader Franz Seldte, Fritz Thyssen, and
Hermann Otto Sieveking.11 In early 1930 these men felt that times had never
7
In September 1931, the number of unemployed rose to 4.3 million, then to 5.1 million in September
1932. At the beginning of 1933, 6 million Germans were unemployed, in comparison to 12 million employed.
On these figures, see Kolb, Weimar Republic, 106.
8
On this see Schulze, Weimar, 321.
9
Edgar Salin, Die deutschen Tribute: Zwölf Reden (Berlin, 1930), 10–11 and 50–1.
10
Bismarck-Blatt, May 1930, 1.
11
See the list of board members published in Bismarck-Blatt, July 1931, 4.
 Towards the Abyss 121
been more favourable to their ultimate objective of replacing the Republic with
a political regime based on the ideas underlying Bismarck’s constitution of
1871. Even though the idea of overcoming parliamentary democracy in favour
of a more authoritarian political system had been an essential component of
the Bismarck myth ever since 1918, the narrative gained force in the context of
the parliamentary crisis which would lead to the dissolution of the grand coali-
tion government under Hermann Müller on 27 March 1930.12 Only hours after
Chancellor Müller had submitted the resignation of his cabinet, Hindenburg
entrusted the conservative Centre MP and highly decorated former combat
officer Heinrich Brüning with the task of forming a new government. The next
day Brüning and Hindenburg agreed to form the first ‘presidential cabinet’, a
government which was largely independent of parliament and had its basis in
the emergency powers defined in Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution.13
Yet, despite the emergency rights available to the Brüning government, the
Chancellor and his aides had little cause for optimism. The economic situation
they were facing was devastating. Brüning’s stringent deflationary policies
designed to convince the Western Allies of Germany’s willingness to pay repa-
rations (despite her inability to do so) led to soaring levels of unemployment
and ever-growing dissatisfaction within the population.14 After the September
1930 general elections, Brüning was additionally confronted with a hostile
Reichstag, in which the two most radical parties, the NSDAP and the KPD,
were strongly represented.15
In the parliament’s opening session on 17 October 1930, Gregor Strasser, one
of the 107 National Socialists in the newly elected Reichstag, emphasized that
his party’s success was a result of the Nazis’ irreconcilable opposition to the
Republic. He accused the Weimar ‘system’ of having transformed Bismarck’s
‘proud’ Reich within only twelve years into a state in which ‘corruption and
crime’ were the most conspicuous characteristics.16

12
Schulthess, LXXI (1930), 91. On the fall of the Müller government see Winkler, Weimar, 366–71.
13
See William L. Patch, Heinrich Brüning and the Dissolution of the Weimar Republic (Cambridge,
1998), 72.
14
On Brüning’s economic policy see Harold James, The German Slump: Politics and Economics 1924–1936
(Oxford, 1986). On the so-called ‘Borchardt controversy’ about Brüning’s handling of the economic depres-
sion see Jürgen Baron von Kruedener (ed.), Economic Crisis and Political Collapse: The Weimar Republic
1924–1933 (New York, Oxford, and Munich, 1990). See, too, Knut Borchardt, Wachstum, Krisen, Hand-
lungsspielräume der Wirtschaftspolitik (Göttingen, 1982).
15
The National Socialists had managed to increase their votes from just over 800,000 in May 1928 to 6.4
million in 1930. The Communists, too, benefited considerably from the depression, though not as dramati-
cally as the Nazis: the KPD increased their votes from 10.6% to 13.1% and their Reichstag seats from 54 to 77.
All the other parties lost votes. Cf. Falter, Wahlen, 72.
16
Strasser in RT, vol. 444, 17 Oct. 1930, 56–64, quotation on p. 57.
122 Towards the Abyss
In view of such accusations, it was necessary for the Brüning government to
introduce measures to improve its public image. In order to convince the
German voters of the ‘patriotic’ character of the government’s policies, a cere-
mony was held on 18 January 1931 commemorating the sixtieth anniversary of
Bismarck’s founding of the Reich. In November 1930, the Reichswehr Minister
Wilhelm Groener had advocated an ‘especially festive’ commemoration cere-
mony to mark the anniversary. Given the precarious economic situation,
Groener argued in a letter to Chancellor Brüning, it was essential that ‘the
Reich government seizes every opportunity to remind the German people of
the heroic deeds in its national history’.17
Immediately after the government’s intention to celebrate the sixtieth
anniversary of Bismarck’s unification of Germany in the Reichstag had become
publicly known, critical voices were to be heard from the democratic left. The
head of the Prussian government, Otto Braun, believed that the sole purpose of
the ceremony was to ‘hold high the memory of the glorious Kaiserreich’.18
Braun’s assessment was somewhat misleading—the 1931 Reichstag com-
memoration ceremony in honour of the Reich’s founding had little to do with
any restorative ideas. There can be no doubt that Brüning wanted to transform
the Weimar system by reducing parliamentary input with respect to budgetary
affairs. However, there is little evidence for his later assertion in 1970, that the
peaceful reintroduction of the monarchy founded on a broad popular support
was the focal point of his policies as Chancellor.19 Instead, as the Minister of the
Interior, Joseph Wirth, noted in a cabinet meeting, it was the intention of
the government to foil foreseeable monarchist and nationalist celebrations of
the Reich’s founding with a central festive act organized by the state—in
fact the largest celebration of Bismarck’s unification of Germany in the history
of the Weimar Republic—and thereby to claim the legacy of the Iron Chan-
cellor for itself.20 In accordance with this goal, the Minister of the Interior
ordered flags to be raised on all public buildings for 18 January 1931.21 In

17
See Groener’s letter to Brüning, 5 Nov. 1930, in BA (Berlin), R 43 I , no. 567, p. 159. On Groener see
Johannes Hürter,Wilhelm Groener: Reichswehrminister am Ende der Weimarer Republik (1928–1932) (Munich,
1993).
18
See Otto Braun’s confidential letter of 18 September to the Prussian Ministry of the Interior, BA
(Berlin), R 43 I, no. 712, pp. 181 and 182.
19
See Heinrich Brüning, Memoiren 1918–1934 (Stuttgart, 1970), 453–54. See, too, Andreas Rödder, ‘Dich-
tung und Wahrheit: Der Quellenwert von Heinrich Brünings Memoiren und seine Kanzlerschaft’, HZ
CCLXV (1997), 77–116.
20
Cabinet minutes of 17 December 1930, in Akten der Reichskanzlei: Die Kabinette Brüning I und II, vol.
I: 30. März 1930 bis 10. Oktober 1931, ed. Tilman Koops (Boppard, 1982), 743–5.
21
See ‘Rundschreiben des Reichsinnenministers an alle Behörden des Reiches’, 6 Jan. 1931, in BA
(Berlin), R 43 I, no. 567, p. 183.
 Towards the Abyss 123
addition, wreaths were laid at the sarcophagus of Bismarck in Friedrichsruh by
order of the Reich cabinet.22
The ceremony in the Reichstag emphasized the importance of commemo-
rating the founding of the Reich at a time of national peril.23 According to the
most senior parliamentarian in the Reichstag, Wilhelm Kahl (DVP), the mem-
ory of 18 January 1871 reminded every German of their obligation to take cur-
rent political decisions ‘in the spirit of our past’.24 This appeal was endorsed by
Chancellor Brüning, who added that the historical ‘apogee’ of 1871 should
remind the nation in these dire days to follow the path to German renewal. The
current government would ‘not lose faith in a better German future, and will
devote all its strength to fulfil its role as the augmenter of the blessings of peace
for the German Reich in the fields of national well-being, freedom, and moral
fortitude in accordance with the proclamation of 1871. For this goal, for the
Reich and its people, we are prepared to sacrifice all our energy. Therefore, in
remembrance of our great Chancellor Bismarck, we give testimony in the call:
long live our beloved fatherland!’25
Brüning’s speech was motivated by his intention to appropriate Germany’s
‘glorious’ past for the cabinet’s own political ends. Measured against this aim
the commemoration ceremony of 18 January 1931 was clearly a ‘failure’, as the
conservative Kreuzzeitung pointed out the next day.26 Instead, the event pro-
vided a welcome opportunity for the KPD and NSDAP to hone their profiles
as radical opponents of the Weimar Republic. Both parties had turned down
the Reich President’s invitation to attend the commemoration ceremony in the
Reichstag, although their reasons could hardly have been more different.
The KPD wanted to display through its absence the ‘indifference’ with which
the working people regarded the ‘squabbling’ amongst the middle-class parties
over Bismarck’s legacy.27 At the same time, the KPD took the SPD’s partici-
pation in the ceremonies as a reason to once more indulge in the polemic
against the Social Democratic leadership. The SPD’s ability to feel ‘enthusiasm’

22
By means of a press release the Reich government ensured that this became known to a wider public.
See BA (Berlin), R 43 I, no. 567, p. 192.
23
Ibid., p. 188.
24
Kahl as quoted in Schulthess, LXXII (1931), 17–18. Kahl had given a similar speech in 1898 at a memori-
al service for Bismarck in the Berlin Kroll Opera. See Wilhelm Kahl, Bismarck lebt: Gedächtnisrede bei der all-
gemeinen Trauerfeier in Berlin am 7. August 1898 (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1898).
25
See Brüning’s speech in BA (Berlin), R 43 I, no. 567, pp. 193–4 as well as the comments in Germania, 19
Jan. 1931, evening edition.
26
Kreuzzeitung, 19 Jan. 1931, evening edition. On the numerous (non-state-sponsored) celebrations
organized by right-wing oppositional groups (Kyffhäuser League, Stahlhelm, Patriotic Leagues, etc.), see the
report of ‘Wolff ’s Telegraphisches Büro’, in BA (Berlin), R 43 I, no. 567, pp. 197–205.
27
Rote Fahne, 20 Jan. 1931.
124 Towards the Abyss
for the old Prussian colours of black, white, and red (with which the plenary
chamber of the Reichstag had been decorated for the commemoration cere-
mony) demonstrated the extent to which they had forgotten their roots, the
struggle against ‘Chancellor Bismarck and the socialist laws’. Instead, their par-
ticipation in the commemoration ceremony provided further evidence that the
SPD had entered an ‘alliance’ with the middle-class ‘fascists’.28 In the eyes of the
KPD, this view was confirmed by the SPD’s decision to tolerate the Brüning
government.29
The vitriolic tone displayed by Rote Fahne indicated once again how deep
the divide between the moderate and radical left had become since the summer
of 1928, when the Sixth World Congress of the Communist International in
Moscow had set the course for a more uncompromising left-wing policy.
According to the new dogma established in Moscow, the Social Democrats
and their ideology of class co-operation were the main enemy of the working
classes in the revolutionary civil war.30
The NSDAP, on the other hand, declared that their absence from the com-
memoration ceremony was an expression of their protest against the political
instrumentalization of the Reich’s founder by politicians who had committed
‘treason’ against Bismarck’s legacy.31 The National Socialists’ position was part-
ly a result of a meeting between Hitler and Brüning on 5 October 1930 which
had revealed their fundamental political differences. When Hitler demanded
an immediate moratorium on reparations and at least three cabinet posts in
return for parliamentary support of Brüning’s policies, the Chancellor refused
immediately.32 Consequently, the Nazis’ rhetorical attacks against the cabinet,
often formulated with reference to Bismarck, became noticeably more aggres-
sive. Deutsche Zeitung, for example, credited a National Socialist student leader
with the words that the German people’s current path ‘through the hell
of Weimar’ would ultimately lead to salvation, and thus to the ‘Third Reich’.
Bismarck would thereby serve as a guiding star: ‘He is with us on our way into
the Third Reich of the Germans: Bismarck!’33

28
Rote Fahne, 20 Jan. 1931.
29
On this see Rainer Schaefer, SPD in der Ära Brüning: Tolerierung oder Mobilisierung? Handlungsspiel-
räume und Strategien sozialdemokratischer Politik 1930–1932 (Frankfurt, 1990), 65–72.
30
Secondary literature on the radicalization of the KPD after 1928 is extensive. See, for example, Her-
mann Weber, Die Wandlung des deutschen Kommunismus: Die Stalinisierung der KPD in der Weimarer Repub-
lik, 2 vols. (Frankfurt, 1969), here 1. 195–9. See, too, Winkler, Schein der Normalität, 661 ff. On Thälmann’s
view of the SPD as ‘social fascists’, Eve Rosenhaft, Beating the Fascists? The German Communists and Political
Violence 1929–1933 (Cambridge, 1983), 72.
31
Völkischer Beobachter, 20 Jan. 1931. Equally, Der Angriff, 19 Jan. 1931.
32
Brüning, Memoiren, 192 ff.
33
Deutsche Zeitung, 18 Jan. 1931, morning edition.
 Towards the Abyss 125
The NSDAP, however, was not the only right-wing organization which
stood in firm opposition to the Brüning cabinet. The DNVP and its youth
organization (which from 1 April 1929 was named ‘Bismarck League’ rather
than ‘Bismarck Youth’) also dedicated themselves explicitly to the fight against
Brüning’s policies.34 The Bismarck League’s leader, Hermann Otto Sieveking,
accused the government of continuing the ‘traditional politics of enslavement
and Erfüllung [policy of unconditional fulfilment of the reparations and disar-
mament clauses of the Treaty of Versailles]’.35 There was a certain logic in this
accusation: Brüning’s policy was indeed comparable to the measures Joseph
Wirth had already taken in 1921–2 in order to convince the Western Allies of
Germany’s willingness to pay reparations despite her inability to do so. Both
Wirth and Brüning chose this path in order to bring about a revision of the
Versailles Treaty system. To Sieveking and others who promoted a confronta-
tional (and allegedly ‘Bismarckian’) ‘foreign policy of strength’, this approach
seemed fundamentally misguided. Bitterly disappointed by the Chancellor’s
foreign policy, Sieveking declared that a ‘national renewal’ was impossible
under Brüning. The consequence to be derived from this ‘insight’ was clear and
simple: the system of Weimar and Versailles, which was already reeling in its
‘death throes’, had to be ‘swept away’.36
The Stahlhelm leader Franz Seldte also felt that the time had come for deci-
sive political change. According to Seldte, who used the occasion of the sixtieth
anniversary of the Reich’s foundation for a speech in Magdeburg (which was
subsequently published in nationalist papers as an ‘appeal’ to the German peo-
ple), it was imperative to overcome the ‘un-German Zwischenreich’ as embod-
ied in the Weimar Republic. The end of Weimar was no longer a distant ideal:
‘The Stahlhelm regards this as certain: there is a vision of the coming state and
a plan to build it. Our select class of leaders is prepared and there is an iron will
of the new German state to attack . . .’.37

34
For the name change of the ‘Bismarck Youth’ into ‘Bismarck League’ see Deutsches Echo, V (1929), 94.
35
Deutsches Echo, VII (1931), 147–9.
36
Ibid. Sieveking himself never got to experience the end of the Weimar Republic which he had demand-
ed. On 4 September 1931 he died of blood poisoning at the age of 40. See Deutsches Echo, VII (1931), 194 ff.
His successor was the 47-year-old Herbert von Bismarck. On this, see Deutsches Echo, VII (1931), 220. For a
broader evaluation of radicalization within the German youth after 1929/1930 see Larry E. Jones, ‘Genera-
tional Conflict and the Problems of Political Mobilization in the Weimar Republic’, in id. and James
Retallack (eds.), Elections, Mass Politics, and Social Change in Modern Germany (Washington, DC, and Cam-
bridge, 1992), 347–69. See, too, Irmtraud Götz von Olenhausen, ‘Die Krise der jungen Generation und der
Aufstieg des Nationalsozialismus: Eine Analyse der Jugendorganisationen der Weimarer Zeit’, Jahrbuch des
Archivs der Deutschen Jugendbewegung, XII (1980), 53–82.
37
See, for example, Deutsche Tageszeitung, 18 Jan. 1931, Sunday edition. On Seldte see Volker R. Berghahn,
Der Stahlhelm: Bund der Frontsoldaten 1918–1935 (Düsseldorf, 1966), 69 ff.
126 Towards the Abyss
Seldte’s speech on Reich Foundation Day 1931 expressed a key demand of
right-wing agitation: the Republic should be replaced by a non-democratic,
authoritarian regime—the ‘Third Reich’.38 In terms of content, Seldte’s speech
offered little new, even though it served to emphasize the inseparable connec-
tion between anti-democratic sentiments and the Bismarck myth. However,
the open threat of a coup d’état by the chairman of the largest German veterans’
organization during a commemoration service revealed the new radical
quality of the Bismarck myth. While it had always been a political weapon to
delegitimize the Republic, the Bismarck myth had not yet explicitly been
linked to concrete plans to overthrow the state of Weimar.
The new political explosiveness of the Bismarck myth alarmed democratic
circles. Germania, for example, a paper which was no stranger to polemic and
threatening gestures from the right, reacted indignantly to Seldte’s speech. It
emphasized that Bismarck’s unification of the Reich was regarded by German
Catholics as a pivotal event in German history. Hostility towards the Republic,
however, which was all too often associated with ceremonies commemorating
Bismarck’s achievements, was not shared by political Catholicism: ‘This Reich
in which we live today is not a Zwischenreich, and indeed not—as the
Stahlhelm declares in its abusive publication—an “un-German Zwischenreich”
which should be replaced by a mythical “Third Reich”.’ It had ‘unfortunately
become fashionable in certain circles’ to ‘contrast in a negative light’ the
Republic with Bismarck’s Reich. Although there were obvious differences
‘between then and now’, for example, differences ‘between prosperity and
poverty, between power and impotence . . . there is no difference with respect
to our determination to deploy all forces for the benefit of our Reich and our
national future, now as then’.39
Germania’s forceful rejection of Seldte’s speech was designed to counter the
Bismarckians’ fierce agitation against the Republic on 18 January 1931. In the
light of the economic depression and subsequent political radicalization, how-
ever, it is reasonable to assume that very few people were willing to ‘deploy all
forces for the benefit of the Reich’ as long as this Reich was a Republic.
Germany was in the middle of a major crisis and the inability of Weimar

38
The ‘idea of the Reich’ experienced a remarkable renaissance in the political rhetoric of the early 1930s.
It combined romantic notions of a glorious past with anti-democratic, anti-Western, and anti-Communist
sentiments. See Lothar Kettenacker, ‘Der Mythos vom Reich’, in Karl H. Bohrer (ed.), Mythos und Moderne:
Begriff und Bild einer Rekonstruktion (Frankfurt, 1983), 261–89. Also Herfried Münkler, ‘Das Reich als poli-
tische Macht und politischer Mythos’, in id., Reich-Nation-Europa: Modelle politischer Ordnung (Weinheim,
1996), 11–59. For Catholic concepts of the ‘Reich’ see Klaus Breuning, Die Vision des Reiches: Deutscher
Katholizismus zwischen Demokratie und Diktatur 1929–1934 (Munich, 1969).
39
Germania, 18 Jan. 1931, morning edition. See, too, Vorwärts, 18 Jan. 1931, morning edition.
 Towards the Abyss 127

10. Hitler poses in front of a Bismarck portrait after his release from
Landsberg in 1924.

democracy to solve this crisis encouraged the Bismarckians in their belief that
the ‘decisive phase of the struggle’ against the Republic had begun.40 This
assumption proved to be correct and Bismarck was to play a key role in the final
act of Weimar Germany’s history. More and more Germans were longing for a
‘new Bismarck’ in the face of the political and economic situation after 1929.
And no one exploited the desire for a Bismarck-like ‘redeemer’ with the same
demagogic skill as the leader of the largest right-wing opposition party, Adolf

40
Bismarck-Blatt, July 1930, 52.
128 Towards the Abyss
Hitler. His ability to use the Bismarck myth as a propaganda device would
prove to be one of the conditioning factors in his rise to power.

Bismarck, Hitler, and the rise of National Socialism

In February 1939, six years after his ‘seizure of power’ and the dissolution of the
Weimar Republic, the German Chancellor Adolf Hitler attended the launch-
ing of the battleship Bismarck. In his speech in Hamburg harbour, the Führer
explained his reasons for naming Europe’s largest battleship after the founder
of the Reich: ‘Of all men who can lay claim to having paved the way to the new
Reich [meaning the ‘Third Reich’], one figure stands in awe-inspiring solitude:
Bismarck.’41
Hitler’s claim was entirely tenable to the extent that the Führer did not refer
to the historical personality of the first Reich Chancellor but to the Bismarck
myth. Apart from Frederick the Great, the Iron Chancellor was the historical
figure invoked most often in Hitler’s speeches in order to lend support to the
Führer’s position.42 Hitler’s political references to Bismarck (for which there is
evidence from the early 1920s) served a number of purposes, the most impor-
tant of which was to emphasize the overriding role of leader figures in
Germany’s past, present, and future.
It has often been pointed out that after 1925 the NSDAP differed from all
other political movements and parties in the Weimar Republic in that it sub-
mitted completely to the will of its ‘charismatic leader’.43 It was therefore the
only party whose inner organizational structure reflected the public demand
for strong leadership.44 However, the Führer principle had not always been the
focal point of the party’s ideology and organization. In the early years of the
National Socialist movement—and even, as Albrecht Tyrell has argued, up
until 1923—Hitler publicly described himself as the ‘drummer’ of the national
cause, rather than as the predestined leader of the German people.45 Neverthe-
less, there are indications that Hitler understood the strong public desire for
charismatic leadership in the years before his failed putsch of 1923 and that to

41
Hamburger Tageblatt, 14 Feb. 1939, evening edition.
42
On the role of Frederick II in Hitler’s world-view and Nazi propaganda, see Konrad Barthel, Friedrich
der Große in Hitlers Geschichtsbild (Wiesbaden, 1977).
43
The first to apply Weber’s concept of ‘charismatic leadership’ to Hitler was Joseph Nyomarkay, Charis-
ma and Factionalism in the Nazi Party (Minneapolis, 1967).
44
See Dietrich Orlow, The History of the Nazi Party, vol. 1: 1919–1933 (Pittsburgh, 1969), 8–10.
45
Albrecht Tyrell, Vom ‘Trommler’ zum ‘Führer’: Der Wandel von Hitlers Selbstverständnis zwischen 1919
und 1924 und die Entwicklung der NSDAP (Munich, 1975).
 Towards the Abyss 129
him Bismarck was synonymous with such leadership. In April 1922, for exam-
ple, on the occasion of a National Socialist ‘Bismarck festival’, Hitler praised
the Iron Chancellor extensively and stated: ‘We must follow in his footsteps.’
Only then would the party succeed in ‘gaining the support of the millions . . .
And when that time has come, then we will want to say: we bow before you,
Bismarck!’46
At this stage Hitler did not specify what qualified Bismarck as a model for
the National Socialist movement. Most of his comments suggest that he did
not want to promote a return to the political structures of Bismarck’s Reich.
But Hitler had recognized the intense public demand for a saviour-like charis-
matic leader, the creator of a new Reich. He consciously appealed to the idea
that only a strong personality of Bismarckian proportions would be able to
bring about the kind of political change which could lead Germany out of its
present misery. Bismarck had created the German Reich single-handedly, a
Reich which was ‘the most powerful embodiment of German power and mas-
tery . . . A single head, towering above all, had restored freedom of develop-
ment to the German genius in a battle against the mediocrity of the majority.
If we were to dispense with Bismarck in our history only wretched mediocrity
would fill the most glorious period for our people in centuries.’47
At no time before 1923–4 did Hitler unambiguously claim ‘Bismarckian
qualities’ for himself. The failed putsch in Munich, however, made Hitler
believe that he was a martyr of the nationalists’ cause and changed his self-
perception remarkably: being the ‘drummer’ of the nationalist-völkisch move-
ment was no longer enough for him.48 During his high treason trial at the
Munich People’s Court in 1924 this became particularly evident. Hitler accept-
ed full responsibility for the attempt to overthrow the Weimar Republic. None
the less, he denied that he had committed high treason, since the ‘crime of
November 1918’ had not been expunged and a constitution based on this
‘crime’ could have no validity. He then defended himself by referring to the
constitutional conflict prior to 1871, insisting that often enough history had
been made by great Germans against majority decisions.49 By positing a

46
Adolf Hitler, Sämtliche Aufzeichnungen, 1905–1924, ed. Eberhard Jäckel (Stuttgart, 1980), 599.
47
Adolf Hitler, Hitler’s Secret Book, introd. Telford Tailor, translated from German into English by
Salvator Attanasio, 2nd edn. (New York, 1962), 124.
48
On this see Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1889–1936: Hubris (London, 1999), 183–5. On 5 August 1923, Hitler still
maintained that he was only preparing the ground for the coming Führer. See Sämtliche Aufzeichnungen, no.
554, p. 966. During his trial, however, he suggested that he himself was the one to fulfil the role of the leader.
Ibid., no. 606, pp. 1107–8; no. 622, p. 1188; no. 625, pp. 1210 and 1215.
49
On the constitutional conflict see Ernst R. Huber, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte seit 1789, vol. 3:
Bismarck und das Reich, 3rd edn. (Stuttgart, 1988), 305–67.
130 Towards the Abyss
kinship between his own high treason and Bismarck’s breach of the constitu-
tion, he suggested that in both cases seemingly illegal means had been adopted
for better ends: ‘What did Bismarck actually commit in the constitutional con-
flict? He ignored the constitution, the parliament, and the stifling majority
. . . and ruled purely by recourse to the means of power of the state, ruled with
the support of the army, the body of officials and the crown. How was
Bismarck described in the entire press of the opposition? As a violator of the
constitution, as a person guilty of high treason!’ Bismarck’s action had, how-
ever, been legitimized by the success of the German troops at Sedan and by the
results of this military victory. For only because of this deed had ‘the German
people reached unity . . . its highest fulfilment and its greatest freedom’.50
The Munich People’s Court, chaired by Judge Georg Neithardt, was obvi-
ously predisposed to Hitler’s arguments. On 1 April 1924 the court condemned
him and his three co-conspirators to the minimum sentence of five years’
imprisonment and imposed a comparatively low fine of 200 Reichsmark.
Hitler’s imprisonment at Landsberg, which in fact ended in December 1924,
provided him with the opportunity to study Nietzsche, Ranke, Treitschke,
Marx, and Bismarck’s Thoughts and Reminiscences.51
The basis of Hitler’s special interest in history was ambivalent. He and other
leading representatives of the ‘movement’ certainly believed in the mythical
past of the German people and its particular world mission.52 Joseph Goebbels,
for example, noted in his diary that he shared the German people’s ‘longing for
the one man, just as the earth longs for rain in the summer’. The German peo-
ple would have to return to ‘strength, enthusiasm, and restless devotion. These
are all miraculous things. But isn’t a miracle the only thing which can save us

50
Cf. Der Hitler-Prozess 1924: Wortlaut der Hauptgerichtsverhandlung vor dem Volksgericht München I, ed.
Lothar Gruchmann and Reinhard Weber, part 4: 19.–25. Verhandlungstag (Munich, 1999), here: 23. Ver-
handlungstag, 1574. The same theme appears in a speech by Hitler on 9 November 1927. See: ‘Die Toten des
9. November 1923’, in Hitler: Reden, Schriften, Anordnungen, Februar 1925 bis Januar 1933, vol. 2: Vom
Weimarer Parteitag bis zur Reichstagswahl, Juli 1926–Mai 1928, part 2: August 1927–Mai 1928, ed. Bärbel
Dusik (Munich, 1996), 542.
51
On this see the memoirs of Hans Frank, party lawyer and later Governor-General of occupied Poland:
Hans Frank, Im Angesicht des Galgens: Deutung Hitlers und seiner Zeit auf Grund eigener Erlebnisse und Er-
kenntnisse (Munich, 1953), 43. Apart from Bismarck’s Thoughts and Reminiscences, Hitler read several books
on the Iron Chancellor and his time in office. In Mein Kampf, he described how he found two illustrated
books devoted to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1 in his father’s library. They became his ‘favourite books’.
Finally, Hitler received a copy of Fürst Bismarcks gesammelte Reden in 1935, according to the bookplate signed
by Hitler’s personal secretary, Martin Bormann. Hitler marked certain sections in this book, particularly
those in which Bismarck commented on conflicting party interests, questions of leadership, and relations
with Russia and the SPD. On this see Herbert D. Andrews, ‘Hitler, Bismarck and History’, German Studies
Review, XIV (1991), 511–36.
52
See Frank-Lothar Kroll, Utopie als Ideologie: Geschichtsdenken im Dritten Reich (Paderborn, 1998), 66.
 Towards the Abyss 131
now? God, show the German people a miracle! A miracle!! One man!!!
Bismarck, wake up!’53
As Hitler made clear in Mein Kampf, however, ‘history’ had a primarily
instrumental purpose for the movement.54 To Hitler, history was important
both as a political weapon against his opponents and as a means to justify his
own political beliefs.55 Hitler’s preoccupation with Bismarck’s Thoughts and
Reminiscences assisted him in defining his own role in the historical develop-
ment of Germany. And in Landsberg, he realized what this role was. He was not
merely the ‘drummer’ of the nationalist cause; he was the predestined leader
himself, the Bismarck of his time.56
In Mein Kampf, which was praised in nationalist circles as the ‘most signifi-
cant political publication since Bismarck’s Thoughts and Reminiscences’, Hitler’s
representation of himself as a ‘second Bismarck’ received only fleeting expres-
sion.57 Soon after Landsberg, however, Hitler began to suggest that he would
fill the void which the Iron Chancellor had left in 1890. Immediately after the
end of his imprisonment, for example, he posed for a photograph with a
Lenbach portrait of Bismarck in the background.58
Hitler’s writings and speeches suggest that he began to use the Bismarck
myth for his own ends once he had discovered that he himself was the one to
lead ‘his’ people. In Hitler’s Second Book, written in 1928 but only published
posthumously, this became particularly evident.59 According to Hitler’s admir-
ing statements, Bismarck’s kleindeutsch solution to the German question was
the ‘highest achievement’ which could have been expected ‘within the limits of
the possible of that time’. Bismarck in his old age was therefore able to look
back upon a mission fulfilled. However, his ‘finished life work’ did not signify
the ‘end of the life of the German nation’. In Hitler’s view it had been the ‘task
of the post-Bismarck period’ to pursue an ethnic policy [Volkstumspolitik] and

53
See Goebbels’ diary entry of 4 July 1924, in Joseph Goebbels, Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels:
Sämtliche Fragmente, ed. Elke Froehlich, 5 vols. (Munich, 1987), here 1. 94.
54
Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, translated from German into English by James Murphy, 2nd edn. (London,
1939), 110.
55
Ibid.
56
Kershaw, Hubris, 212–19. Also Sabine Behrenbeck, Der Kult um die toten Helden: Nationalsozialistische
Mythen, Riten und Symbole 1923–1945 (Vierow, 1996), 96.
57
Quotation from Adolf Bartels, ‘Adolf Hitlers “Mein Kampf ” ’, Deutsches Schrifttum, XIX (1927), 1–2.
In his book, Hitler praised Bismarck’s qualities as a statesman and denounced his ‘bungling successors’ as
incompetent. See Hitler, Mein Kampf, 132.
58
See the photograph in Rudolf Herz, Hoffmann & Hitler: Fotografie als Medium des Führer-Mythos
(Munich, 1994), 100.
59
On the significance of Hitler’s Second Book see Martin Broszat, ‘Betrachtungen zu “Hitlers Zweitem
Buch” ’, Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte, VI (1961), 417–30.
132 Towards the Abyss
furthermore, to solve the acute problem of sustaining the German people
through the acquisition of Lebensraum—living space in the East.60
According to Hitler, it was precisely this task which the post-Bismarckian
era had failed to fulfil. Instead, social and political disintegration had prevailed
and increased up to 1914. Responsibility for the growing social fragmentation
after 1871 could not be ascribed to Bismarck, but to his ‘incompetent’ succes-
sors and the various political opposition groups of the Kaiserreich: the Centre
Catholics, the Progressive Liberals, and the Socialists in particular. The same
political groups had then prevented a German victory in the Great War and
founded the despised Weimar Republic upon the ruins of ‘Bismarck’s proud
Reich’.61
Hitler was convinced that the Iron Chancellor had understood the ‘destruc-
tiveness’ of socialism and that he had tried to eradicate the evil forces threaten-
ing ‘his’ Reich from within. He had, however, chosen the wrong method to
achieve this goal. ‘In his anti-socialist laws’, Hitler argued, Bismarck ‘put up
desperate resistance against the destructive mission of the Marxist dogma. It
had no effect. Not only because his successors lacked the energy in following
the course Bismarck had charted, and because they abandoned this course, no,
because the means of conflict themselves were not up to the task. By using
political means of police force, an attempt was made to break the backbone of
an ideological doctrine which was anchored in the masses and found their pos-
itive response.’62 According to Hitler, the ‘breaking’ of the Marxist world-view
and its representative organizations was only possible by countering ‘Bolshe-
vism’ with an ideology of equal resolution and determination. Bismarck had
not been able to rely upon a collective ideology as strong as National Socialism.
This, Hitler argued, was why the anti-socialist laws had failed and why social-
ism in Germany had not thus far been destroyed.63 For Hitler, an essential part
of his own self-appointed historical mission was to make up for this missed
opportunity.
In Mein Kampf, Hitler set out the ideological programme with which he
hoped to confront socialism. His programme contained two fundamental
ideas, both of which were derived from a vulgarized form of Social Darwinism:

60
Quotations in this paragraph are taken from Hitler’s Secret Book, 54 ff.
61
Hitler, Mein Kampf, 534.
62
Hitler on 14 April 1926, in Hitler: Reden, Schriften, Anordnungen, Februar 1925 bis Januar 1933, vol. 1: Die
Wiederbegründung der NSDAP, Februar 1925–Juni 1926, ed. Clemens Vollnhans (Munich, 1992), 377–8.
63
Ibid. See also Hitler’s speech at a NSDAP rally in Delmenhorst on 25 May 1932, in Hitler: Reden,
Schriften, Anordnungen, Februar 1925 bis Januar 1933, vol. 5: Von der Reichspräsidentschaftswahl bis zur
Machtergreifung, April 1932–Januar 1933, part 1: April 1932–September 1932, ed. Klaus A. Lankheit (Munich,
1996), 131–5, here p. 133.
 Towards the Abyss 133
the racial doctrine, and the quest for living space. These two components pro-
vided the basis for Hitler’s anti-Semitic and expansionist world vision, his con-
cept of a permanent, merciless struggle between races for Lebensraum. The
fight for Lebensraum could only be won by a people which maintained and
defended its ‘racial purity’.64 In other words, Germany would have to conquer
new ‘living space’ in the East and it would have to ‘remove’ the Jews. These were
Hitler’s ultimate objectives and the political aims which Germany’s political
leaders after Bismarck had failed to pursue.
Hitler believed that the implementation of these goals allowed him to
invoke Bismarck’s definition of politics as the ‘art of the possible’. According to
Hitler this phrase numbered among those most frequently misinterpreted by
his contemporaries. He complained bitterly about the politicians who current-
ly used the phrase in order to justify their ‘policy of weakness’ towards the
Western allied powers.65 In this context Hitler explicitly criticized Gustav
Stresemann and his foreign policy of rapprochement: ‘If Bismarck had ever
imagined that fate would have damned him to endorse with this utterance
[‘politics is the art of the possible’] the statesmanlike qualities of Herr Strese-
mann, he would have surely omitted the utterance, or in a very small note he
would have denied Herr Stresemann the right to refer to it.’66
Hitler emphasized that both Bismarck’s intentions and his methods had
been fundamentally different from those of Stresemann. Bismarck ‘utilized
every opportunity and worked through the diplomatic art as long as it prom-
ised success; he threw the sword into the scales if force alone was in a position
to bring about a decision’. In other words, Bismarck had been convinced that
in pursuing a particular goal all means were to be exploited in order to guaran-
tee the undertaking’s success. This and nothing else, Hitler insisted, was the
legitimate interpretation of Bismarck’s statement that ‘politics is the art of the
possible’.67
In accordance with this interpretation, Hitler felt historically justified in
taking advantage of all means at his disposal for Germany’s new ascent to world
power status. In order to recapture Germany’s ‘freedom’, he was willing to run
the same degree of risk as the ‘greats’ to perform exceptional historical deeds:
‘Was Frederick the Great’s decision, for instance, to participate in the first

64
See Eberhard Jäckel, Hitlers Weltanschauung: Entwurf einer Herrschaft, 4th rev. edn. (Stuttgart, 1991),
29 ff. and 55 ff.
65
Hitler’s Secret Book, 153. 66
Ibid. 87 and 135.
67
Ibid. 153. On Hitler’s interpretation of ‘Realpolitik’, see also Broszat, ‘Betrachtungen zu “Hitlers
Zweitem Buch” ’, 420–2. Already in Mein Kampf, Hitler repeatedly referred to this Bismarckian quote. See
Hitler, Mein Kampf, 182 and 226–7.
134 Towards the Abyss
Silesian War not linked with a risk? Or did Germany’s unification by Bismarck
entail no dangers? No, a thousand times no!’68 By taking risks similar to those
Frederick II and the Iron Chancellor had taken in their days, Hitler promised
to bring what they had begun to a triumphant conclusion. In the eyes of the
German public, the National Socialist ‘blood and soil’ ideology should appear
as the extension of Bismarck’s ideas, adapted to the present situation. ‘If Bis-
marck were to return with his political comrades,’ Hitler declared in January
1931, ‘they would all stand on our side today!’69
The question remains as to why Hitler was more successful in assuming the
role of a ‘new Bismarck’ after 1929 than he was in the earlier days of the move-
ment. The NSDAP had not undergone a fundamental programmatic change,
even though Hitler was keen to tone down his radicalism in the years after the
failed putsch. In the Reichstag elections of 1928, the Nazi Party did not manage
to outgrow its role as an insignificant splinter party. Historical research focus-
ing on the rise of the NSDAP has always been eager to emphasize the multiple
reasons for Hitler’s electoral successes from the late 1920s onwards.70 However,
with respect to the factors enabling Hitler to perform the role of a ‘new
Bismarck’, few were as important as the failure of the Austro-German customs
union project in the summer of 1931. It was this second failed attempt of the
Republic to compensate for its supposed lack of legitimacy via a großdeutsch
enlargement which enhanced Hitler’s credibility as the only politician with
the necessary resolution to overcome the Versailles Treaty and to complete
Bismarck’s work with the establishment of a Greater German Reich.
The customs union project, which was high up on the political agenda from
late 1930, was the clearest expression of a reversal in German foreign policy. The
dreadful state of domestic politics and the National Socialists’ electoral
successes encouraged the government to abandon Stresemann’s Verständi-
gungspolitik, as well as the idea of a far-reaching economic and political
integration of Europe as formulated in the Briand Plan of May 1930.71
With the Austro-German customs union project, Brüning and Stresemann’s
successor as Foreign Minister, Julius Curtius, hoped to achieve the first con-
crete step in the gradual revision of the kleindeutsch borders as determined by

68
See Hitler’s Secret Book, 119.
69
Hitler’s speech in Coburg on 18 January 1931, in Hitler: Reden, Schriften, Anordnungen, Februar 1925 bis
Januar 1933, vol. 4: Von der Reichstagswahl zur Reichspräsidentschaftswahl, Oktober 1930–Juni 1931, part 1:
Oktober 1930–Juni 1931, ed. Constantin Goschler (Munich, 1996), 175–6, here p. 176.
70
See the detailed account in Kershaw, Hubris, 313 ff.
71
On the Briand Plan see Antoine Fleury (ed.), Le Plan d’Union fédérale européenne: Perspectives
nationales, avec documents (Frankfurt, 1998). On the reversal of German foreign policy, see Peter Krüger, Die
Außenpolitik der Republik von Weimar, 2nd edn. (Darmstadt, 1993), 529.
 Towards the Abyss 135
the treaties of Versailles and St Germain.72 At the same time, the customs
union was designed to lessen the pressure resulting from domestic politics and
economic crisis through a prestigious foreign policy success. At least in this
respect, the customs union project was quite similar to the SPD’s commitment
to Anschluß in 1919. Like Ebert and Löbe in 1919, Brüning and Curtius assumed
that the establishment of a customs union would immediately reduce the
domestic political pressure on their government. They knew that, despite the
Allies’ ban on Anschluß in 1919, the idea of Großdeutschland had never ceased
to enjoy the broadest non-partisan support within the German public.73
‘Geopoliticians’ such as Karl Haushofer, neo-conservatives like the editor of
Die Tat, Hans Zehrer, and democrats such as Paul Löbe and Wilhelm Heile, all
equally favoured the idea of a customs union with Austria because they consid-
ered it a prerequisite for a later political unification.74 German industry, too,
was pressing for the customs union, hoping that Austria’s traditional connec-
tions with south-eastern Europe would be beneficial to their businesses.75 The
liberal journalist Werner Christiansen thus described a broad consensus among
the German public when he noted that ‘the customs union will give rise to the
Anschluß . . . just as a hundred years ago the Zollverein has prepared the way for
the unified German state created by Bismarck’.76
The Reich cabinet eventually committed itself to the customs union on 18
March 1931 after long negotiations with Vienna, and despite the anticipation of
unfriendly French reactions in the Wilhelmstraße.77 Few, however, expected

72
Andreas Rödder, Stresemanns Erbe: Julius Curtius und die deutsche Außenpolitik 1929–1931 (Paderborn
and Munich, 1996), 186–226.
73
In addition to the Austro-German Volksbund, founded in the immediate post-war-period, another
influential association, the Austro-German Arbeitsgemeinschaft, was established in 1925 to promote the idea
of Anschluß. On the Arbeitsgemeinschaft and its prominent members see BA (Berlin), R 8011/10. On the pos-
itive publicity which the founding of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft received, see BA (Berlin), R 8011/1. Finally,
Gerhard von Branca, Die Deutsch-österreichische Arbeitsgemeinschaft (Munich, 1927).
74
See Wilhelm Heile’s article in Berliner Tageblatt, 15 Aug. 1925 as well as Gustav Stolper, ‘Die Vision Mit-
teleuropas’, Die Hilfe, XXXV (1929), 402. For the same view from nationalist sources, see Karl Haushofer,
‘Mitteleuropa und der Anschluß’, in Friedrich Kleinwächter and Heinz von Paller (eds.), Die Anschlußfrage
in ihrer kulturellen, politischen und wirtschaftlichen Bedeutung (Vienna, 1930), 150–3. Hans Zehrer, ‘Die Ideen
der Außenpolitik’, Die Tat, XXI (1929), 109.
75
Since the beginning of 1927 the ‘Reichsverband der Deutschen Industrie’ and the German ‘Industrie-
und Handelstag’ held joint meetings with their Austrian counterparts in order to prepare for economic
unification. On this see Suval, Anschluss Question, 108. For a contemporary assessment of the economic
importance of the Anschluß question see Bruno von Enderes, Die wirtschaftliche Bedeutung der
Anschlußfrage (Leipzig, 1929).
76
Werner Christiansen, ‘Ueber die Zollunion zum Anschluß’, Die Hilfe, XXXVII (1931), 249–51, here
p. 251.
77
Cabinet minutes of 18 March 1931, in Akten der Reichskanzlei: Die Kabinette Brüning, 2. 969–71. The
government’s public announcement of the customs union project is reprinted in Schulthess, LXXII (1931),
88–90.
136 Towards the Abyss
the severity with which Paris responded to the Austro-German customs union
plans. To counter the German initiative, the Quai d’Orsay dramatically
increased its financial pressure on the weaker partner, Austria.78 Paris was able
to exploit the fact that, at the time, France was the only large European nation
with the resources to float large international loans. Vienna, shaken by the
consequences of the Great Depression and in desperate need of international
financial aid, started enquiring confidentially in April 1931 as to whether the
French government would grant them a loan. When Austria’s largest financial
institution, the Rothschild-owned Credit-Anstalt, had to announce its insol-
vency on 12 May 1931 the whole Austrian economy was on the verge of collapse.
The bankruptcy of the Credit-Anstalt immediately affected German banks,
too, whose financial stability was already shaky before American loans were
withdrawn in 1929. In the summer of 1931, the German bank crisis reached its
critical peak.79
On 3 September 1931, Curtius and his Austrian colleague Schober were
forced to assure the European Affairs Committee of the League of Nations that
all plans for the establishment of a customs union between the two countries
had been abandoned. Two days later, the Permanent Court of International
Justice in The Hague announced, in a narrow decision of 8 to 7 votes, that the
Austro-German customs union was incompatible with the principles laid
down in Article 88 of the Treaty of St Germain and with the accords of the
Geneva Protocol of 4 October 1922.80
The failure of the customs union provoked indignation across the entire
political spectrum in Germany. Even in liberal circles, the outcome of Geneva
and The Hague was seen as the ‘worst conceivable defeat’ and as proof of
Germany’s current inability to ‘conduct an independent policy on the world
stage’.81 Meanwhile, it fell to the political right to ascribe the diplomatic defeat
to the lack of ‘national’ will in the Brüning government and the general inca-
pacity of the democratic state to pursue an active foreign policy.82 The neo-

78
See Haim Shamir, Economic Crisis and French Foreign Policy 1930–1936 (Leiden, 1989), 8–10 and 27–34.
79
On the German banking crisis see James, German Slump, 283–323. See, too, Edward W. Bennett,
Germany and the Diplomacy of the Financial Crisis 1931 (Cambridge, Mass., 1962), 59–74.
80
Schulthess, LXXII (1931), 573–5. See, too, Krüger, Außenpolitik, 535.
81
Werner Christiansen, ‘Die deutsche Niederlage—was nun?’, Die Hilfe, XXXVII (1931), 873–7, quota-
tions on pp. 873–4. A summary of the German public’s reactions to the failure of the customs union can be
found in Egelhaafs Historisch-politische Jahresübersicht (1931), 60.
82
See, for example, Neue Preußische Zeitung, 4 Sept. 1931 as well as the edition of 6 Sept. 1931. Interest-
ingly, after the Second World War, both Curtius and Brüning denied any personal responsibility for the
customs union project and its failure. See Julius Curtius, Bemühung um österreich: Das Scheitern des
Zollunionsplans von 1931 (Heidelberg, 1951), 34 as well as Brüning, Memoiren, 265.
 Towards the Abyss 137
conservative periodical Die Tat evaluated the failure of the customs union proj-
ect as the ‘most bitter defeat in German foreign policy since the Battle of the
Ruhr’. The abandonment of vital national interests as embodied in the customs
union project could not be justified to the public as ‘Realpolitik’. In fact, Cur-
tius’s ‘surrender’ in Geneva had been nothing less than a declaration of bank-
ruptcy on the part of the ‘ailing’ Weimar system.83 Once again, it was argued, it
had become evident that the vision of a großdeutsch Reich dominating central
Europe could only be realized after the elimination of the Treaty of Versailles
and the Weimar state, both of which allegedly stood in the way of Germany’s
‘rebirth’ in the forthcoming ‘Third Reich’.84
The immediate political consequences of the failure of the customs union
plans were less severe than anticipated by the right, but nevertheless noticeable.
Curtius’s position as Foreign Minister had become untenable and, on 3 Octo-
ber, Brüning urged his Foreign Minister to resign. Less than a week later, on 9
October, the Chancellor conceded to the demands of Schleicher and Hinden-
burg to include more nationalist politicians in his cabinet.85
In his subsequent government declaration of 13 October 1931, Brüning
demonstrated strength. Two days earlier the extreme right, at its convention in
Bad Harzburg, had severely criticized the Reich Chancellor because of his lack
of success in domestic and foreign policy.86 The Chancellor, however, declared
his resolution not to wilt in the face of criticism from the right-wing opposi-
tion. He would rather be branded as ‘traitor to the fatherland’ than retreat from
his chosen path. He could take heart in the ‘beneficent precedents in the histo-
ry of the Prussian and German people. At first these men, who did not lose
their nerve and had the courage to pursue an unpopular policy, were scorned
and ridiculed. After things had turned out for the best, however, these person-
alities were monopolized as examples of national conviction.’87
Brüning’s obvious reference to Bismarck provided Hitler with a welcome
cue. On 16 October 1931, Völkischer Beobachter published a letter Hitler had
written to the Reich Chancellor. In this letter Hitler appealed to Brüning, as

83
Die Tat, 1931.
84
See Stefan Brauer, Grundpositionen der deutschen Rechten 1871–1945 (Tübingen, 1999), 117–39. Also
Hans Fenske, ‘ “Das ‘Dritte Reich”: Die Perversion der Reichsidee’, in Bernd Martin (ed.), Deutschland in
Europa: Ein historischer Rückblick (Munich, 1992), 210–30.
85
See cabinet minutes of 10 Oct. 1931, in Akten der Reichskanzlei: Die Kabinette Brüning, vol. 3, 1823, n. 1.
Brüning took over the office of Foreign Minister himself; Reichswehr Minister Groener also became Minis-
ter of the Interior as successor to the Centre politician and previous Reich Chancellor Wirth; the highly con-
servative State Secretary Joel was promoted to Minister of Justice.
86
See Schulthess, LXXII (1931), 224–9.
87
RT, 13 Oct. 1931, vol. 446, 2074.
138 Towards the Abyss
the successor to ‘the great founder of the Reich’, to learn from the mistakes of
the recent past, and to break with the ‘dominant political ideas and tendencies
of the Weimar system’. Hitler demanded that Brüning resort to more radical
means in pursuing national interests, such as the project of a customs union
with Austria. If, however, Brüning continued to collaborate with the Social
Democrats, then, according to Hitler, success for his government would
remain elusive. Bismarck, to whom the Chancellor had referred in his speech,
had in contrast to Brüning ‘created the preconditions which enabled him to
push through his political programme’. Hitler advised the Reich Chancellor to
follow the example set by Bismarck.88
A month before, Hitler had received ‘thunderous applause’ from his party
followers when he cast ironic aspersions on the government’s hope that a pow-
erful großdeutsch Reich would arise out of the customs union with Austria.
When Bismarck resolved to pursue the path leading from the Zollverein to the
North German Federation (Norddeutsche Bund ) and finally to the German
Reich, Hitler argued, he had not relied on the parliament but rather on the
military strength of his armed forces: ‘Bismarck implemented his unification
policy with the aid of the Prussian army. Brüning implements his policy with a
rag-bag assortment [Gemengsel ] of Social Democrats, Centrists [Zentrümlern],
members of the German People’s Party, with an elite composed of pacifists and
democrats . . . He who has such forces behind him cannot pursue a policy of
national reawakening!’89
It was moments like these during which Hitler displayed the uniqueness of
his demagogic talent. Like no other politician of his time, he knew how to
exploit the failure of the customs union project for his own purposes. Hitler
linked his criticism of the system with the staging of his own person as the only
politician with the necessary power of will to ‘complete’ what Bismarck had
begun. What Hitler’s message conveyed to the German people after the foreign
policy defeat of the Brüning government in Geneva was unmistakable: only a
leader of Bismarck’s dimensions could bring about a revision of both Versailles:
the kleindeutsch solution of 1871 and the peace settlement of 1919. This was
exactly what Hitler promised to achieve. He never intended to ‘restrict’ himself
to a revision of the Austro-German border. For the time being, however, Hitler
only claimed to be the guardian of Bismarck’s legacy, and the man who would
overcome the kleindeutsch limitations of Bismarck’s Reich.

88
‘Offener Brief Hitlers an Heinrich Brüning, 14. Oktober 1931’, in Hitler: Reden, Schriften, Anordnun-
gen, Februar 1925 bis Januar 1933, vol. 4 B: Von der Reichstagswahl bis zur Reichspräsidentenwahl, part 2: Juli
1931–Dezember 1931, ed. Christian Hartmann (Munich, 1996), 138–48.
89
‘Rede auf dem Gautag der Thüringer NSDAP in Gera, 6. September 1931’, ibid. 78–9.
 Towards the Abyss 139
The idea of the Anschluß and its concomitant slogans, such as ‘Heim ins
Reich’—originally the title of a periodical published by the largely Social
Democratic Austro-German People’s League—was not the only Zeitgeist
tendency that Hitler absorbed into his own world-view. Hitler’s ideological
‘borrowing’ was in fact systematic. None of the ideas put forward by him was
original. What he offered the Germans in terms of a political programme was
a crude mixture comprising the populist ideas and ideologies which were
brewing in the post-war intellectual atmosphere.90
Hitler absorbed popular Zeitgeist tendencies and projected them onto the
coming ‘Third Reich’—a slogan invented by the neo-conservative author
Arthur Moeller van den Bruck in 1923.91 The Nazis adopted the catchphrase of
the ‘Third Reich’, which seemed ideal to represent both their concept of a rad-
ical break with Weimar democracy and the re-establishment of historical con-
tinuity. Combined with other important reasons for supporting the NSDAP
(such as fear of Marxism, frustrated career ambitions, and the erosion of social
prestige and professional security) it was the utopia of this coming ‘Third
Reich’, allegedly freed from social, economic, and political tensions, which
appealed to many voters in times of economic and political despair.92 Hitler
equally benefited from the widely entertained hope for a strong political lead-
ership which would encapsulate the traditions of German history and which
would commit itself to the idea of fulfilling the unique ‘world mission’ of the
German people. Whoever could satisfy this seemingly paradoxical but never-
theless widespread thirst for continuity and change could be sure of finding
wide approval from the electorate.93
Hitler and other high-ranking Nazis consciously appealed to the people’s
desire for the restoration of continuity. In a campaign rally in April 1932—
shortly before the Prussian Landtag elections—Joseph Goebbels insisted that
‘National Socialism has every right to claim that it embodies the idea of Prus-
sia. Wherever in Germany we National Socialists may stand, we are Prussians.

90
On this see, for example, Verhey, Spirit of 1914, particularly 213 ff. See, too, Nobert Götz, ‘Ungleiche
Geschwister. Die Konstruktion von nationalsozialistischer Volksgemeinschaft und schwedischem
Volksheim’, Ph.D. thesis (Berlin, 1999), 87 ff.; Chickering, ‘We men who feel most German’, 37. Also, Karl
Lange, ‘Der Terminus Lebensraum in Hitler’s Mein Kampf ’, Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte, XIII (1965),
426–37. Finally, Woodruff D. Smith, The Ideological Origins of Nazi Imperialism (New York and Oxford,
1986), 224–30.
91
Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, Das dritte Reich, ed. Hans Schwarz, 3rd edn. (Hamburg, 1931).
92
Thomas C. Childers, The Nazi Voter: The Social Foundations of Fascism in Germany, 1919–1933 (Chapel
Hill and London, 1983), 264–5.
93
See Martin Broszat, ‘Soziale Motivation und Führerbindung des Nationalsozialismus’, Viertel-
jahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte, XVIII (1970), 392–409. On the importance of historical continuity and the
impact of a ‘hero cult’ for the National Socialist movement, see Behrenbeck, Kult um die toten Helden.
140 Towards the Abyss
The idea we promote is Prussian. What we fight for is the modernized version
of those ideals pursued by Frederick William I, Frederick the Great, and
Bismarck.’94
At the same time, the NSDAP used the Bismarck myth to express its
unrivalled opposition to the Weimar Republic. During the campaign for the
Reichstag elections, Hitler never tired of pointing out that the parties of the
November Revolution had presided over the unparalleled demise of every
aspect of German life. Even before the electoral campaign for the July general
elections began, Hitler combined this theme with the Bismarck myth: ‘Thir-
teen years have passed [since the revolution]. Thirteen years were enough for
Bismarck to transform the Prussia of Olmütz into the Prussia of the German
Reich founding. It was enough time for him to bring Germany out of its state
of disunity and lead it to a beautiful and prosperous future. A system which has
ruled as unrestricted as the current one rules in Germany must be able, after
thirteen years, to point to some successes.’95
The general election results of 31 July 1932 indicated that similar beliefs were
held by vast sections of the German population. With a total turnout of 84.1
per cent, the highest in a Reichstag election in the Weimar Era, the NSDAP
managed to gain a share of 37.4 per cent of the popular vote. That was an in-
crease of 19.1 per cent from the previous Reichstag elections and, accordingly,
the number of National Socialist Reichstag mandates rose from 107 to 230.96
Even though the NSDAP enjoyed cross-class support, they had been partic-
ularly successful in mobilizing previous non-voters and those who in previous
elections had voted for the two liberal parties, the DNVP, or for the splinter
parties.97 Evidence suggests that many of Hitler’s supporters came from politi-
cal circles in which the Bismarck cult enjoyed its greatest adherence. Between
1930 and 1933, the NSDAP proved to be particularly popular in Hindenburg’s
strongholds in the presidential elections of 1925, regardless of the social struc-
ture of the constituency. Equally, the NSDAP received fewer votes wherever
Hindenburg had been unsuccessful in 1925.98 Whoever had hoped in 1925 that
Hindenburg would become a ‘second Bismarck’ now turned to Hitler.99
94
Goebbels, as quoted in Manfred Schlenke, ‘Nationalsozialismus und Preußen / Preußentum’, in Otto
Büsch (ed.), Das Preußenbild in der Geschichte (Berlin and New York, 1981), 247–64, here p. 248.
95
Hitler’s speech in Delmenhorst on 25 May 1932, in Hitler: Reden, Schriften, Anordnungen, Februar 1925
bis Januar 1933, vol. 5: Von der Reichspräsidentschaftswahl bis zur Machtergreifung, April 1932–Januar 1933, part
1: April 1932–September 1932, ed. Klaus A. Lankheit (Munich, 1996), 131–5, here p. 132. On the Olmütz Punc-
tuation of 29 November 1850, see Heinrich Lutz, Zwischen Habsburg und Preußen. Deutschland 1815–1866
(Berlin, 1994), 386–9. 96
Falter, Wahlen, 44.
97
See Jürgen Falter, Hitlers Wähler (Munich, 1991), 369. 98
Ibid. 357–60.
99
See Falter, Wahlen, 46, and id., ‘The Two Hindenburg Elections of 1925 and 1932: A Total Reversal of
Voter Coalitions’, Central European History, XXIII (1990), 225–41.
 Towards the Abyss 141
The Bismarckians’ receptiveness to Hitler was also evident in the case of the
German Nationalists’ Bismarck League, which in the 1930s lost more and more
members to the NSDAP’s Hitler Youth. Horst Wessel, for example, the famous
Berlin SA leader who was murdered in 1930 and was later stylized as a ‘hero of
the Nazi movement’, had started his political career in the DNVP’s Bismarck
Youth before converting to National Socialism.100 Even Otto von Bismarck Jr.,
who had been an honorary member of the Bismarck Youth, and his younger
brother Gottfried joined the Nazi: Party in the early 1930s.101
Within the industrial elite, too, promoters of the Bismarck myth were
particularly quick to profess their sympathy for Hitler. Fritz Thyssen and Emil
Kirdorff were among the first leading industrialists to support Hitler openly.102
Both Thyssen and Kirdorff had sat on the board of the Bismarck Film Com-
pany and both were members of the executive committee of the League for the
Erection of a Bismarck National Monument. It is likely that Hitler was aware
of this connection because he played the ‘Bismarck card’ when giving his
famous speech in the Düsseldorf Industry Club on 26 January 1932. Hitler
promised to re-establish the ‘unity of will’ which the German nation had
shown in Bismarck’s time. The audience greeted his words with considerable
applause.103
The close affinity between the Bismarck myth and the belief in Hitler as a
new ‘saviour’ was no secret to his contemporaries. Confronted with the increas-
ing number of calls for a ‘second Bismarck’, the chief editor of Weltbühne, Carl
von Ossietzky, had already reflected upon the connection between Bismarck
and Hitler in early 1931. Hitler’s success in presenting himself as a national
redeemer aroused a feeling of incomprehension in the 1935 Nobel Peace laure-
ate. Ossietzky emphasized that despite all due criticism of his domestic policy,
Bismarck had been one of the most important figures of the past century (‘eine
Jahrhundertgestalt’). ‘But’, he continued, ‘who is Adolf Hitler? How intellectu-
ally deprived a people must be to see a leader, a personality worthy of emula-
tion, in this absurd poltroon! How big their psychological incapacity must be,
how impoverished their instinct for the genuine and the false! Well, Hitler will
never proclaim the “Third Reich”, Hitler will meet his end . . .’.104

100
See Jay W. Baird, To Die for Germany: Heroes in the Nazi Pantheon (Bloomington, Ind., 1990), 75 ff.
101
See Malinowski, Vom König zum Führer, 500.
102
Kirdorf became a member of the NSDAP in 1927. Thyssen was a sympathizer of Hitler’s movement
since the early 1930s. On this see Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler (New
York and Oxford, 1985), 91 and 145–6.
103
Ibid. 204–19. See, too, Reinhard Neebe, Grossindustrie, Staat und NSDAP 1930–1933: Paul Silverberg
und der Reichsverband der Deutschen Industrie in der Krise der Weimarer Republik (Goettingen, 1981), 119 ff.
104
Carl von Ossietzky, ‘Zur Reichsgründungsfeier’, Die Weltbühne, XXVII (1931), 79–81.
142 Towards the Abyss
Despite the Nazis’ landslide success in the first Reichstag elections of 1932, it
seemed as if Ossietzky’s prediction would come true. Hindenburg was still not
willing to go beyond offering the ‘Bohemian corporal’ the post of vice-
chancellor in a cabinet led by Papen. And the grave electoral setbacks which the
NSDAP experienced in the second Reichstag elections of 1932 (as well as the
similarly disappointing results of the local elections in Thuringia on 4 Decem-
ber 1932) strengthened the conviction among many contemporaries that
Hitler’s political demise was only a question of time.105
This assumption proved to be premature. On the evening of 29 January
1933, Franz von Papen informed Hindenburg that if Hitler was appointed
as Chancellor, ‘reliable’ conservative politicians (among them three leading
members of the League for the Erection of a Bismarck National Monument,
Count Schwerin von Krosigk as Minister of Finance, Hugenberg as Econom-
ics Minister, and Seldte as Minister of Labour) would determine the character
of his cabinet. On these grounds, the Reich President was willing to relinquish
his reservations with regard to Hitler’s appointment as Reich Chancellor.106 On
the morning of 30 January 1933, Hitler, who appeared to be ‘framed in’ by the
‘Bismarckians’, swore his oath of allegiance to the Weimar Constitution.107
Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor of the Reich was by no means the
inevitable outcome to the multi-dimensional German state crisis which had
begun with the collapse of Hermann Müller’s Grand Coalition government on
27 March.108 Nor was it the necessary result of Weimar Germany’s battle over
the past, even if right-wing circles suggested in 1933 that the ‘Bismarckian’ tra-
dition had emerged victoriously from this conflict. Hitler was only appointed
as Chancellor because Hindenburg and his camarilla urgently needed a broad
popular basis for their authoritarian politics. In this respect, the popular sup-
port which the National Socialists enjoyed made the appointment of Hitler as

105
Compared to the previous Reichstag elections on 31 July, the NSDAP lost over 2 million votes in
November 1932. Their share sank from 37.3% to 33.1%, and the number of Reichstag mandates from 230 to
196. See Falter, Wahlen, 74. For an analysis of the election results see Thomas C. Childers, ‘The Limits of
National Socialist Mobilisation: The Election of 6 November 1932 and the Fragmentation of the Nazi Con-
stituency’, in id. (ed.), The Formation of the Nazi Constituency 1919–1933 (London and Sydney, 1986), 232–59.
On the election results in Thuringia see Falter, Wahlen, 96. The end of Hitler was predicted, for example, by
Simplicissimus in its edition of January 1933. In the Weltbühne, similar predictions can be found. See the
anonymous article, ‘Die größte Firma’, Die Weltbühne, XXIX (1933).
106
On the context see Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., Hitler’s Thirty Days to Power: January 1933 (Reading,
Mass., 1996).
107
See Mommsen, Weimar, 526 ff.
108
See Ian Kershaw, ‘Der 30. Januar 1933: Ausweg aus der Staatskrise und Anfang des Staatsverfalls’, in
Heinrich August Winkler (ed.), Die deutsche Staatskrise 1930–1933: Handlungsspielräume und Alternativen
(Munich, 1992), 277–84.
 Towards the Abyss 143
head of government possible. Even though a majority of Germans had voted
against Hitler in the Reichstag elections of 6 November 1932, he was still the
leader of the strongest political party.
Of the manifold causes of the rise of the National Socialist movement to
become the strongest party in Germany, there can be no doubt that the public’s
longing for a saviour-like ‘Führer’, which had intensified throughout the 1920s,
featured prominently. By the late 1920s, as a result of the growing political and
economic crisis of the depression era, the public’s perception of Weimar
democracy as a total failure allowed the idea of charismatic leadership to move
from the wings of politics to centre stage. It did not escape Hitler’s attention
that Bismarck was widely perceived as the ultimate model of such a heroic lead-
ership. As the well-respected Munich historian Karl Alexander von Müller had
already exclaimed in 1929, it was Bismarck’s image ‘which appears in front of
us, when we hope’ for the ‘future leader’.109 When this future leader of the
German people emerges, Müller concluded, ‘he will greet the man we memo-
rize today as his relative and predecessor’.110
In precisely this respect, the Bismarck myth helped to create a political cli-
mate which smoothed the way for Hitler’s success. Hitler was cunning enough
to seize the political opportunities which were latent in the Bismarck myth.
With genuine virtuosity Hitler appealed to existing myths and used them for
his own purposes. In so doing, he narrowed the gulf between large parts of
middle-class Germany and his own political movement, as is evident from the
immediate reactions to Hitler’s appointment. Lieutenant-General Richard
Kaden, for example, commented on the events of January 1933 with the words:
How clearly the turn of fate of our people on 30 January confirms the old empirical
principle, that only the leader, the single personality, never the masses, can bring liber-
ation. . . . We saw that in Bismarck, now we see it again in Hitler, whose flaming bat-
tle cries, in combination with national sentiment and social understanding, have
stirred up and united the masses.111

How little Hitler’s Chancellorship would actually have in common with

Bismarck’s rule should have been obvious to anyone who had read Mein Kampf
or who had listened to any of Hitler’s speeches. Hitler made no secret of his

109
Karl Alexander von Müller at the ‘Third German Bismarck Day’ in Munich, 14 September 1929, as
quoted in: Bismarck-Blatt, Jan. 1930, 3–8.
110
Karl Alexander von Müller, ‘Bismarck und die heutige Zeit’, in Bismarck-Blatt, Jan. 1930, 3–8, here p.
8. See, too, the similar speech given by the former Reichstag president, Max Wallraf, at the ‘Fourth German
Bismarck Day’ in Bingen (Rhineland) in September 1931. The speech is printed in Bismarck-Blatt, Nov. 1931.
111
Richard Kaden, In der alten Armee: Lebenserinnerungen aus Frieden und Krieg (Groitzsch, 1933), 311.
144 Towards the Abyss
unshakable determination to radically break with all of the parliamentary and
constitutional traditions which had also characterized Bismarck’s Reich. For
the moment, however, the critical reasoning of a minority, who warned against
analogies being drawn between Hitler and Bismarck or between ‘1871’ and
‘1933’, faded into the background. Heinrich Mann’s verdict that Hitler’s refer-
ences to Frederick the Great and Bismarck could not legitimize his political
actions, since neither one of the two would have accepted him as German
Chancellor, found no echo whatsoever in public debate after 30 January 1933.112
Instead, the dominant voices were those celebrating the ‘seizure of power’ as a
victory of the ‘ideas of 1871’. In accordance with this general sentiment, the
majority of Germans greeted Hitler as the man who would continue and com-
plete the work of Bismarck. For some of them it took twelve years to realize that
the ‘Bismarckians’ had won a Pyrrhic victory and that Hitler was in fact the
man who would destroy the Reich that Bismarck had created in 1871.
112
Heinrich Mann, Der Hass: deutsche Zeitgeschichte (Amsterdam, 1933), 79 and 90–2. See, too, Thomas
Mann’s diary entry of 8 September 1933, in Thomas Mann, Tagebücher 1933–1934, ed. Peter de Mendelssohn
(Frankfurt, 1977), 173.
 9
Epilogue: Bismarck between the ‘Seizure of
Power’ and Reunification (1933–1990)

Bismarck under the swastika

Two months after Hitler’s appointment as German Chancellor, the historian
Otto Westphal triumphantly proclaimed the end of an era. The period during
which ‘Bismarck’s enemies’ had ruled over Germany was irrevocably over.
Westphal concluded his talk at Göttingen’s Historical Society by emphasizing
that Germany was currently witnessing a ‘revolution and a re-creation of
Bismarck’s Reich at the same time, a revolutionary transformation with deep
historical sympathies’.1
Westphal’s interpretation of 30 January 1933 as a victory of the ‘Bismarckian’
tradition over the ‘spirit of 1918’ indicates how successful Nazi propaganda was
in nurturing conservative illusions about the true character of the ‘Third
Reich’. In early May 1933, both the Frankfurter Illustrierte and Münchner
Neueste Presse reported in lengthy features that construction works at the
Bismarck National Monument in Bingen had begun thanks to the Führer’s
initiative.2 Hitler had in fact no responsibility at all for the building work. In
1932, Max Wallraf ’s successor as chairman of the League for the Erection of a
Bismarck National Monument succeeded in securing Hindenburg’s patronage
of the organization. It was on his assurances that the construction works for
the Bismarck National Monument in Bingen started on 30 January 1933—a
coincidence which Nazi propaganda knew how to exploit.3
Shortly afterwards, on 5 March 1933, Hitler gave another example of his skil-
ful demagogic use of historical myths when he announced a new flag decree
over the radio. In conjunction with the swastika banner, the black, white, and
red colours of the Bismarckreich would once again become the national flag of

1
Otto Westphal, ‘Bismarck und Hitler’, Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, XXIII (1933), 469–81, here p. 481.
2
Dormann, ‘Bismarck-Nationaldenkmal’, 1083.
3
On the beginning of the construction works in Bingen, see Hauptstaatsarchiv Düsseldorf, file ‘Verein
zur Errichtung eines BND’, vol. 8, p. 375.
146 Epilogue (1933–1990)
the German Empire. ‘These flags’, so Hitler suggested, ‘combine Imperial
Germany’s glorious past and the powerful rebirth of the German nation.
United they shall symbolize the power of the state and the internal unity of all
German nationalist circles.’4
The flag change was a prelude to the festive opening of the new Reichstag on
21 March 1933. Joseph Goebbels, the recently appointed Propaganda Minister
of Hitler’s cabinet, had chosen the place and date of the ‘Day of Potsdam’ for
symbolic reasons. On 21 March 1871, Bismarck had opened the first sitting of
the German Reichstag. Furthermore, the Garrison Church at Potsdam was the
burial place of Frederick the Great. Both the day and the setting were therefore
ideal to demonstrate National Socialism’s attachment to Prusso-German his-
tory. The ceremony itself was a solemn commemoration of Prussia’s glory.
Veterans of the old Prussian army marched by the Garrison Church, which had
been decorated with black, white, and red banners. The high point of the day
was the meeting of Hindenburg and Hitler on the steps of the Garrison
Church. The Führer went up to the uniformed Reich President, shook his
hand, and bowed in respect over the coffin of Frederick the Great.5
The ‘Day of Potsdam’ did not fail to serve its intended purpose. In reflecting
upon 21 March 1933, the historian Johannes Haller, for example, declared with
relief that ‘the beginning has been made. We have left the false path and found
again the right way . . . Today he [Hitler] stands where Bismarck stood once,
the inheritor, the continuer, and, should God wish it, the completer of his [Bis-
marck’s] works. When the old Field Marshal, the Prussian soldier, and the
youthful Chancellor, the South German son of the people, shook hands by the
sarcophagus of Frederick the Great . . . then the seed which Bismarck sowed
grew, the tree, which he had planted, and which had been struck by lightning,
began to bloom once again.’6
Haller’s judgement was premature. Bismarck’s Germany was not ‘resur-
rected’ on 21 March 1933. The new rulers only appropriated the myths sur-
rounding Germany’s past in order to give their rule the appearance of historical
legitimacy. This ‘wooing’ of Prusso-German history was as much a ‘central
element of the seizure of power and consolidation period’ as were the violent

4
Schulthess, LXXIV (1933), 56–66.
5
On the ‘Day of Potsdam’ see the article by Werner Freitag, ‘Nationale Mythen und kirchliches Heil: Der
“Tag von Potsdam” ’, Westfälische Forschungen, XLI (1991), 379–430.
6
Johannes Haller, ‘Zum 1. April 1933’, in id., Reden und Aufsätze zur Geschichte und Politik (Stuttgart and
Berlin, 1934), 376–81, here p. 381. See, too, Bernd Faulenbach, ‘Die “nationale Revolution” und die deutsche
Geschichte: Zum zeitgenössischen Urteil der Historiker’, in Wolfgang Michalka (ed.), Die nationalsozialis-
tische Machtergreifung (Paderborn, Munich, Vienna, and Zurich, 1984), 357–71.
 Epilogue (1933–1990) 147
attacks against the political enemies of National Socialism.7 Between 30
January and early March 1933 alone, 51 opponents to the new regime were killed
and hundreds were injured in street fights.8 The overall pogrom atmosphere
increased after the Reichstag fire of 27 February 1933.9 Only one day later, the
Hitler cabinet announced two emergency decrees: one ‘for the Protection of
the Nation and the State’ and another to counter ‘Treason against the German
Nation’. Important civil rights were suspended ‘temporarily’. The ‘Reichstag
Fire Decree’ (as it was commonly referred to) was nothing less than ‘the procla-
mation of the permanent state of emergency’ in Germany.10 Along with lead-
ing Communist party functionaries like Ernst Thälmann and the editor of Rote
Fahne, Werner Hirsch, numerous left-wing intellectuals (such as Carl von
Ossietzky, Erich Mühsam, and Egon Erwin Kisch) were arrested.
In the following months, the process of eliminating the ‘internal enemies of
the Reich’ continued to go hand in hand with repeated assurances of the histor-
ical legitimacy of the ‘Third Reich’. Only a week after the Enabling Law had
been passed by the Reichstag on 23 March 1933 with a comfortable majority of
444 (out of 642) votes, Bismarck’s birthday on 1 April provided an ideal oppor-
tunity to exploit the Bismarck myth for National Socialism.11 In a nationwide
broadcasted speech of 1 April 1933 held at the Bismarck Memorial on the banks
of Lake Müggel in Berlin, Joseph Goebbels underlined the similarities between
Germany’s current leader and his historical ‘model’, the Iron Chancellor:
‘Bismarck was the great political revolutionary of the nineteenth century, Hitler
is the great political revolutionary of the twentieth century. . . . We want to
promise the great dead man and his name: the Reich is in safe hands with us!’12
While Goebbels spoke on the parallels between Hitler and Bismarck, the
first co-ordinated action of the Nazi regime against Jewish-owned businesses
was taking place. Under the slogan ‘Germans! Defend yourselves! Do not buy

7
Karl Dietrich Bracher, ‘Das Ende Preußens’, in Karl Dietrich Erdmann (ed.), Preußen: Seine Wirkung
auf die deutsche Geschichte (Stuttgart, 1985), 281–307, here p. 298.
8
Figures taken from Jost Dülffer, Nazi Germany 1933–1945: Faith and Annihilation, translated from the
German by Dean Scott McMurry (London, 1996), 32.
9
On the Reichstag fire, see, for example, Hans Mommsen, ‘Der Reichstagsbrand und seine politischen
Folgen’, Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte, XII (1964), 351–413.
10
Karl Dietrich Bracher, The German Dictatorship: The Origins, Structure, and Effects of National Social-
ism, translated from German into English by Jean Steinberg (London, 1971), 197.
11
On the passing of the Enabling Law, see RT, 23 Mar. 1933, vol. 457, 45. See, too, Karl Dietrich Bracher,
‘Stufen der Machtergreifung’, in id. et al. (eds.), Die Nationalsozialistische Machtergreifung: Studien zur
Errichtung des totalitären Herrschaftssystems in Deutschland 1933/34, 2nd edn. (Cologne, 1962), 31–368, here
pp. 144 ff.
12
Goebbels as quoted in Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger, 2 Apr. 1933. Another large commemoration event,
jointly organized by the Nazis, the Stahlhelm, the BVP, and the DNVP, was held at the Rottmannshöhe near
Lake Starnberg (Bavaria). See Völkischer Beobachter (Munich edition), 3 Apr. 1933.
148 Epilogue (1933–1990)
from Jews!’, the NSDAP called for a nationwide boycott of Jewish shops on 1
April 1933.13 Goebbels’ speech in Berlin was designed to underscore the histor-
ical mission of the ‘Third Reich’, its legitimate right to fight all ‘internal ene-
mies’ including the Jews. At the same time, the references to Bismarck and
other ‘heroes’ of Prusso-German history served to appease Hitler’s German
Nationalist partners, whose ministers in the government had objected not only
to the boycott of Jewish shops and institutions, but also to the increasing street
violence instigated by the SA in the first weeks after 30 January 1933.14
It was not long before Hitler gave up his strategic conciliatory policy towards
the conservatives who were to become the next victims of the process of
Gleichschaltung. Within a couple of months, the whole pluralistic parlia-
mentary system of Weimar—including nationalist organizations and parties—
was replaced by a one-party state.15 On 27 June 1933, the leadership of the
German Nationalist Front (formerly the DNVP) announced its affiliation with
the NSDAP in a ‘friendship agreement’.16 ‘Voluntary’ assimilation and official
bans on parties and organizations went hand in hand. The leader of the Berlin
Bismarck League, Georg Haever, tried to rescue his organization’s inde-
pendence by expressing his unreserved support for the new regime. In a
personal letter to Hitler, Haever offered his organization’s ‘help in the great task
of building the new Reich’.17 His assurances of loyalty were of no use. On the
basis of the emergency decree ‘for the Protection of the Nation and the State’ of
28 February 1933—originally issued to counter the alleged threat of Communist
insurrections—the Bismarck League was dissolved and its assets confiscated.18
National Socialist rule was further consolidated by the establishment of the
one-party state on 14 July 1933 and the subsequent elimination of internal party
opposition in the ‘Night of the Long Knives’ of 30 June 1934.19 Once this was

13
On this see Goebbels, Tagebücher, 2. 400–1. (1–2 Apr. 1933). For a detailed account of the boycott on 1
April 1933, see Saul Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Persecution 1933–39 (London, 1997),
20–4. See, too, Avraham Barkai, Vom Boykott zur ‘Entjudung’: Der wirtschaftliche Existenzkampf der Juden im
Dritten Reich 1933–1943 (Frankfurt, 1987), 26 ff.
14
On the German Nationalists’ objections to the boycott, see AdR, Kabinett Hitler, as well as Friedlän-
der, Nazi Germany, 20. On the Bismarck myth and its role in the ‘appeasement’ of the conservative right, see
Lothar Gall, ‘Die Deutschen und Bismarck’, 532. Similarly, Machtan (ed.), National-Mythos, 56.
15
Bracher, German Dictatorship, 214 ff.
16
See Friedrich Freiherr von Gaertringen, ‘Die Deutschnationale Volkspartei’, in Erich Mathias and
Rudolf Morsey (eds.), Das Ende der Parteien 1933 (Düsseldorf, 1960), 543–652, here p. 652.
17
BA (Berlin), R43 I/2655.
18
See Gaertringen, ‘Deutschnationale Volkspartei’, 610–11. See, too, Arno Klönne, Jugend im Dritten
Reich (Munich, 1990), 20.
19
See Immo von Fallois, Kalkül und Illusion: Der Machtkampf zwischen Reichswehr und SA während der
Röhm-Krise 1934 (Berlin, 1994), 104 ff. On the consolidation of the Nazi regime in general, see Kershaw,
Hubris, 597 ff.
 Epilogue (1933–1990) 149
achieved, the old nationalist myths were pushed into the background. Bis-
marck, so it seemed, had fulfilled his role for Germany’s new rulers.20 In the
summer of 1934, shortly after the Röhm purge, the Pan-German League’s
Bismarck celebrations were declared illegal and the work on the Bismarck
National Monument in Bingen was stopped, never to be resumed.21 In the
same year, the Bismarck memorial in Munich, which had only been erected in
1931, was moved from the Ludwig Bridge to a less prominent spot.22
To be sure, Bismarck did not disappear completely from public life. How-
ever, the myth was appropriated by an all-embracing totalitarian regime which
could not allow the historical mission of its own quasi-religious leader to be
overshadowed by the deeds of other ‘great men’ in German history. Both Bis-
marck and Frederick the Great were consequently reinvented as Hitler’s spiri-
tual predecessors, whose work was about to be completed by the ‘greatest leader
of all times’. This quasi-official reading of history found its first expression in a
postcard printed in millions on the occasion of Hitler’s forty-fourth birthday
on 20 April 1933.23 Three men—each with his own caption—were pictured on
the postcard: Frederick the Great ‘brought about Prussia’s powerful position
through his military successes, the protection of acquisitions, improvement of
the army and the legal system, reorganizing the administration and establish-
ing new settlement areas, and thus laid the foundations for the German Reich’.
Otto von Bismarck ‘founded first the North German Federation and then the
German Reich, created the Triple Alliance with Austria and Italy, acquired
colonies and thus made Germany into a great power’. Adolf Hitler finally ‘put
an end to the destruction of the German Reich by Marxism and Bolshevism,
restored German national self-belief, re-awoke the spirit of Potsdam and com-
pleted Bismarck’s work—the unified nation-state’.24
Large historical exhibitions in Berlin in the mid-1930s, such as ‘Eternal
Germany’ (a presentation of ‘immortal’ German books such as Bismarck’s
Gedanken und Erinnerungen, and Hitler’s Mein Kampf ) or ‘The German Face

20
Wilhelm Mommsen, ‘Der Kampf um das Bismarck-Bild’, Universitas, V (1950), 273–80, here p. 275.
Also Emil Franzen, ‘Das Bismarck-Bild in unserer Zeit’, Neues Abendland, V (1950), 223–30. See, too,
Zmarzlik, Bismarckbild, particularly pp. 18, 21–2, and 35.
21
See Freisel, Bismarckbild der Alldeutschen, 98. See, too, the protocol of the last executive committee
meeting on 30 December 1936, in Hauptstaatsarchiv Düsseldorf, file ‘Verein zur Errichtung eines BND’, vol.
6 I, 323.
22
Rosenfeld, Munich and Memory, 114.
23
See Manfred Schlenke, ‘Nationalsozialismus und Preußen: Legitimation durch Tradition’, in id. (ed.),
Preußische Geschichte: Eine Bilanz in Daten und Deutungen, 2nd edn. (Freiburg and Würzburg, 1991), 262–7,
here p. 266.
24
Machtan (ed.), National-Mythos, 50.
150 Epilogue (1933–1990)
over the Centuries’ (a collection of portraits of ‘great Germans’), adopted a
similar historical schema of rupture and recovery: the German ascent had
begun with Hermann’s battle against Rome and was continued under
Frederick the Great and Bismarck. After the temporary low point of German
history, marked by Bismarck’s dismissal in 1890 and the Weimar Republic, con-
tinuity had been re-established through the ‘national rebirth’ of 1933.25
The transformation of Weimar Germany’s pluralistic historical discourse
into the officially regulated historical narratives of Nazi Germany was also
reflected in school textbooks, which soon adopted a mélange of traditional
nationalist images of Bismarck combined with specifically National Socialist
views. School textbooks dating from the Nazi period interpreted Bismarck as
an outstanding German genius who had realized the ‘centuries-old’ desire of
the Germans for national unity.26 The parliament and its ‘Jewish infiltrated’
parties, on the other hand, were portrayed as the greatest obstacles to Bis-
marck’s policies. By eliminating the party political system, Adolf Hitler had
consequently removed the most important reason for Germany’s internal
fragmentation.27
Karl Dietrich Erdmann, who was to become one of the most influential his-
torians in the Federal Republic, strongly supported this view in a history text-
book for grammar and senior schools.28 Erdmann and many of his colleagues
thus performed a crucial role for Germany’s new rulers: historiography was
used to justify and legitimize the Nazis’ world-view.29
The official image of Hitler as the man who had completed Bismarck’s work
could be promoted even more convincingly after the Anschluß of Austria in
March 1938.30 In Völkischer Beobachter, the Austro-German historian Heinrich
Ritter von Srbik proclaimed that Bismarck’s unfulfilled historical mission was
now completed: ‘Bismarck’s greatness is not diminished when we . . . consider

25
Hans-Ulrich Thamer, ‘Geschichte und Propaganda: Kulturhistorische Ausstellungen in der NS-Zeit’,
Geschichte und Gesellschaft, XXIV (1998), 349–81, here 352 ff.
26
On this see the detailed analysis provided by Schridde, Bismarckbild im Geschichtsunterricht, 54–67.
27
Ibid. 64.
28
See the appropriate passages of Erbe der Ahnen as printed in Martin Kröger and Roland Thimme, Die
Geschichtsbilder des Historikers Karl Dietrich Erdmann: Vom Dritten Reich zur Bundesrepublik (Munich,
1996), 120–9.
29
On the involvement of German historians in the legitimization of the Nazi regime, see, for example,
Karen Schönwälder, Historiker und Politik: Geschichtswissenschaft im Nationalsozialismus (Frankfurt and
New York, 1992). A contemporary example is the monograph by Wilhelm Mommsen, Politische Geschichte
von Bismarck bis zur Gegenwart 1850–1933 (Frankfurt, 1935) in which—according to the author himself—a
new (National Socialist) view of history is being adopted.
30
See Hitler’s ‘Proclamation to Germany’, issued on 12 March 1938, as quoted in The Speeches of Adolf
Hitler, April 1922–August 1939, ed. Max Domarus, translated from German into English by Norman H.
Baynes (Oxford, 1942).
 Epilogue (1933–1990) 151
his [Bismarck’s] Reich only as a highly important step in the development of
the German people and in the history of the German Empire.’31
Srbik’s enthusiasm over the Anschluß was typical of the public response in
the Reich. More than 99 per cent of the population of Germany and Austria
had voted for their countries’ ‘reunification’. However unrealistic this figure
might be—the conditions under which the plebiscite of April 1938 was held can
hardly be described as democratic—there is every reason to assume that the
Anschluß was popular.32 In the eyes of many of his fellow countrymen, the
Führer had finally fulfilled Bismarck’s legacy.
The completion of his ‘highest historical mission’ enabled Hitler to step out
of Bismarck’s shadow.33 A few months after the Anschluß, the ‘founder of the
Greater German Reich’ travelled to Friedrichsruh to visit the grave of the
‘creator of the kleindeutsch Reich’. On 13 February 1939, Hitler laid a laurel
wreath on Bismarck’s sarcophagus.34 The following day, the Führer attended
the launching of the Bismarck, Germany’s largest battleship, in Hamburg. He
explained his reasons for choosing the battleship’s name to the 50,000 invited
guests—including the majority of cabinet members and many senior military
officers—by saying: ‘As Führer of the German people and Chancellor of the
Reich I can give this ship no finer name from our history than the name of the
man who as a true knight, without fear and without reproach, was the creator
of that German Empire whose resurrection from the direst misery and whose
wonderful enlargement has been granted to us by Providence.’35
With the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, Bismarck
disappeared almost entirely from National Socialist propaganda. The only
exception was Wolfgang Liebeneiner’s two-part Bismarck film of 1940–2.36
Some leading Nazis were, in fact, rather sceptical about the ‘educational’ value
of these films. The National Socialist chief ideologist, Alfred Rosenberg, was

31
Völkischen Beobachter, 10 Apr. 1938.
32
See Hellmuth Auerbach, ‘Volksstimmung und veröffentlichte Meinung in Deutschland zwischen
März und November 1938’, in Franz Knipping and Klaus-Jürgen Müller (eds.), Machtbewußtsein in Deutsch-
land am Vorabend des Zweiten Weltkrieges (Paderborn, 1984), 273–93.
33
Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen, 1932–1945, ed. Max Domarus, 2 vols. (Wiesbaden, 1973), here 2. 830.
34
The German News Agency’s report about this visit is published ibid., 1077.
35
Hitler’s speech as quoted in The Times, 15 Feb. 1939. Völkischer Beobachter’s front-page account of
Hitler’s historical interpretation of Bismarck was entitled ‘Wegbereiter des neuen Reiches’, Völkischer
Beobachter, 15 Feb. 1939. See, too, Herbert D. Andrews, ‘Hitler, Bismarck and History’, German Studies
Review, XIV (1991), 511–36.
36
See Boguslaw Drewniak, Der deutsche Film 1938–1945 (Düsseldorf, 1987), 198–9. See, too, John E.
Davidson, ‘Working for the man, whoever that may be: The Vocation of Wolfgang Liebeneiner’, in Robert
C. Reimer (ed.), Cultural History through a National Socialist Lens: Essays on the Cinema of the Third Reich
(New York, 2000), 240–67, here p. 255. Also Machtan, ‘Der inszenierte Mythos’, 247–58.
152 Epilogue (1933–1990)
‘highly doubtful’ as to whether the second part of the Bismarck film, Die Ent-
lassung, should be released at all. In a letter to Hitler in early 1942, Rosenberg
questioned ‘whether now is the time to confront the German people with the
problem of the Reinsurance Treaty [and] the unfortunate politics of Kaiser
Wilhelm’.37 To Rosenberg and others, the Bismarck myth was not suitable for
ideological wartime mobilization, and it is telling that the Bismarck monu-
ment in Frankfurt (Main) was melted down for arms production soon after the
outbreak of World War II.38
While the Nazis increasingly abandoned Bismarck as a political propaganda
device, the founder of the Reich was rediscovered by the German anti-Hitler
resistance. From the Moscow-based National Committee of Free Germany
(NKFD) to the conservative-nationalist military resistance, highly heteroge-
neous opposition groups appropriated Bismarck for their own political ends.39
The vice-president and co-founder of the NKFD, Bismarck’s great-grandson
Heinrich von Einsiedel, for example, used Bismarck’s name extensively in his
struggle against Nazi Germany. Only a few weeks after his capture during the
advance of the Sixth Army against Stalingrad in September 1942, Einsiedel
signed a leaflet to be dropped behind the German lines, in which he reminded
his fellow countrymen of his great-grandfather’s warnings of the possible con-
sequences of a war against Russia.40
After the German defeat at Stalingrad in January 1943, the historical-politi-
cal use of Bismarck in Soviet war propaganda increased, thereby confirming
the importance which was attributed to this myth by those responsible for
Moscow’s ideological warfare against Nazi Germany. In the written and oral
propaganda of the NKFD and the Moscow-based German Officers’ League
(BDO), German soldiers were reminded of the beneficent results of good
Russo-German relations in the Bismarckian Era and asked to compare them
with the misery caused by Hitler’s megalomania. On 18 January 1944, the
seventy-third anniversary of Bismarck’s foundation of the Reich, Otto Korfes,
a major-general in the Sixth Army defeated at Stalingrad, told his compatriots
on the radio station Freies Deutschland that ‘Germany fell into the misfortune

37
Rosenberg, as quoted in Drewniak, Der deutsche Film, 198–9.
38
The monument was melted down in April 1940. See Frankfurter Rundschau, 6 June 1995.
39
On the diversified German resistance movement, see Michael C. Thornsett, The German Opposition to
Hitler: The Resistance, the Underground, and Assassination Plots 1938–1945 (London, 1997). See, too, Jürgen
Schmädeke and Peter Steinbach (eds.), Der Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus: Die deutsche
Gesellschaft und der Widerstand gegen Hitler (Munich, 1994).
40
Heinrich Graf von Einsiedel, Tagebuch der Versuchung 1942–1950 (Frankfurt, Berlin, and Vienna, 1985),
37. See, too, the Russian leaflet ‘Dieser Mann [Hitler] führt Deutschland der Katastrophe entgegen’ [‘This
man leads Germany into the catastrophe’].
 Epilogue (1933–1990) 153
of the First World War because we deviated from Bismarck’s clever and cau-
tious policies. The gamble by which Adolf Hitler forced the German Reich into
this war is an act, which Bismarck would class as a crime against the nation.
Every German should be aware of the gap which separates the demagogy of
Adolf Hitler from the statesmanlike intelligence and thoughtfulness of
Otto von Bismarck.’41
Korfes’ positive references to Bismarck were less surprising than one might
think. Before starting his military career and while still an undergraduate at
Berlin University, Korfes had been one of the favourite pupils of Professor Otto
Hoetzsch, a German Nationalist expert on Bismarck and a constant defender
of good bilateral relations between Soviet Russia and Germany. Korfes had
been educated in a social and intellectual environment which had endorsed the
Bismarck myth since the 1890s. The same holds true for the conservative oppo-
nents of Hitler within the German Wehrmacht. Just like Korfes, the men asso-
ciated with the attempted overthrow of 20 July 1944 drew on Bismarck as a
representative of a ‘better Germany’ in their criticism of Hitler’s regime. In
early July 1944, barely three weeks before the attempted assassination of Hitler
by Claus von Stauffenberg, one of the leading figures of the conservative resist-
ance, Ulrich von Hassel, visited Bismarck’s estate in Friedrichsruh. On this
occasion Hassel noted in his diary:
It was almost unbearable. I was close to tears most of the time at the thought of the
work destroyed. Germany, situated in the middle of Europe, is the heart of Europe.
Europe cannot live without a sound, strong heart. During recent years I have studied
Bismarck, and his stature as a statesman grows constantly in my estimation. It is regret-
table what a false picture of him we ourselves have given the world—that of the power-
politician with cuirassier’s boots—in our childish joy over the fact that at least someone
had made Germany a name to reckon with again. In his own way he knew how to win
confidence in the world; exactly the reverse of what is done today. In truth, the highest
diplomacy and great moderation were his real gifts.42

Hassel’s statement must be seen in the broader context of the German con-
servative resistance’s political ambitions. Most of those who participated in the
assassination plot of July 1944 had originally welcomed Hitler’s establishment
of an authoritarian regime in Germany in 1933, because they succumbed to the
illusion of some form of resurrection of the old Bismarckian Empire. The ‘men
of 20 July 1944’ did not turn against Hitler to re-establish parliamentary

41
Korfes, as quoted in Wegner-Korfes, Bismarck und Rußland, 227‒8.
42
Ulrich von Hassel, The von Hassel diaries 1938–1944: The Story of the Forces against Hitler inside Germany
as recorded by Ambassador Ulrich von Hassel, a Leader of the Movement (London, 1948), 316–17.
154 Epilogue (1933–1990)
democracy in Germany. Instead, they intended to create a corporate state based
on conservative political values similar to those endorsed in Bismarck’s consti-
tution of 1871. Facing the defeat of the German Empire, Hassel, Stauffenberg,
and others wanted to save Bismarck’s Reich from total destruction. What drew
them into opposition was the gradual realization that the man whom they had
celebrated as a ‘second Bismarck’ in 1933 was not re-creating and strengthening,
but destroying the Reich which Bismarck had founded in 1871.43
In the meantime (and parallel to the declining relevance of the Bismarck
myth for National Socialist wartime mobilization), Nazi war propaganda
invoked memories of the Wars of Liberation against Napoleon and reminis-
cences of the mythical figure of Frederick the Great.44 In the face of the collapse
of the Wehrmacht, Frederick embodied hopes for a repetition of the ‘Miracle of
the House of Brandenburg’ of 1762, when the death of the Tsarina and the sub-
sequent abandonment of the anti-Prussian coalition by Russia brought about
Prussia’s unexpected rescue from a disastrous defeat in the Seven Years War. The
way in which the King of Prussia held out grimly during the Seven Years War
after the crushing defeat at Kunersdorf (1759) was celebrated as a modern-day
lesson from history.45 In the last phase of the Second World War, Frederick
served as a historical ‘proof ’ that resolution and sheer willpower could triumph
over an enemy with a distinct material advantage.
It was not merely for propaganda purposes that the Nazis referred to Fred-
erick as historical model.46 The National Socialist ruling elite itself believed in
the myth. Goebbels, for example, engrossed himself in the study of Thomas
Carlyle’s Geschichte Friedrichs des Großen, which was published in a new popular
edition in 1943.47 In the spring of 1945, he read out appropriate passages from the
book to his depressed Führer. Goebbels interpreted the death of the American
President Franklin Roosevelt on 12 April 1945 as a repeat of the ‘Miracle of the
House of Brandenburg’ even though it was clear that the Allied Powers would
not abandon their pursuit of Germany’s unconditional surrender.48 Ironically,
43
On the motifs of the resistance and the assassination plot, see among others Theodore S. Hamerow, On
the Road to the Wolf ’s Lair: German Resistance to Hitler (Cambridge, Mass., 1997); Hermann Graml et al.
(eds.), The German Resistance to Hitler (London, 1970). Finally, Joachim C. Fest, Plotting Hitler’s Death: The
German Resistance to Hitler 1933–1945, trans. Bruce Little (London, 1997).
44
On the film ‘Kolberg’, see David Welch, Propaganda and the German Cinema 1933–1945, 2nd rev. edn.
(Oxford, 2001), 189–98. 45
Behrenbeck, Kult um die toten Helden, 546–7.
46
Examples of the dissemination of the myth through official propaganda channels can be found in Her-
fried Münkler, ‘Nationalsozialismus und Preußen/Preußentum: Bericht über ein Forschungsprojekt’, in
Otto Busch (ed.), Das Preußenbild in der Geschichte: Protokoll eines Symposiums (Berlin and New York, 1981),
247–64, particularly pp. 253 ff.
47
Thomas Carlyle, Friedrich der Große, translated from English into German by Kurt Linnebach (Berlin
and Amsterdam, 1943).
48
Joachim Fest, Der Untergang: Hitler und das Ende des Dritten Reiches (Berlin, 2002), 26. See also
Helmut Heiber, Joseph Goebbels, 3rd edn. (Munich, 1988), 328–9.
 Epilogue (1933–1990) 155
leading National Socialists eventually became victims of the mythical illusions
which they had previously used to secure their own position of power.

The gradual revision of the Bismarck myth in

Western Germany
When the Second World War ended in May 1945 Bismarck’s Reich was in
ruins. Hitler’s war had killed millions of people and left most of Germany’s
larger cities and industrial centres wrecked by carpet bombing and street fight-
ing. After the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht, first at Reims on 7
May 1945 and two days later at a formal ceremony in Berlin-Karlshorst, the
Allied authorities established their rule throughout Germany.
The time seemed ripe for a deconstruction of nationalist historical narra-
tives. The crushing defeat of the ‘Third Reich’ and the excessive crimes com-
mitted in the name of the German nation during the Second World War
(which became known to the wider public in the course of the 1946 Nuremberg
trials) made it difficult for conservative circles to revive nationalist myths.49
After 1945, unlike the aftermath of 1918, legends about the army being ‘stabbed
in the back’ by ‘Bismarck’s enemies’ had little chance of gaining wide public
support. This was not merely the result of Allied press censorship. The failure
of the bomb plot in July 1944, Germany’s total military defeat, and the concrete
experience of occupation prevented any conspiracy theories from coming into
existence.
Instead of the re-emergence of nationalist myths, the need for historical
reorientation as a precondition for a change in Germany’s political culture was
clearly articulated: ‘What and how we remember’, the Heidelberg philosopher
Karl Jaspers wrote in the first edition of the periodical Die Wandlung, ‘will be a
decisive factor in our further development’.50 An essential part of this historical
reorientation was an examination of when and why Germany’s historical
development had taken the fateful turn which led to Hitler. For Jaspers this
question was easy to answer: it was Bismarck who had laid the foundations
upon which Hitler’s Reich had been built.51

49
Rainer M. Lepsius, ‘Das Erbe des Nationalsozialismus und die politische Kultur der Nachfolgestaaten
des “Großdeutschen Reiches” ’, in id., Demokratie in Deutschland: Soziologisch-historische Konstellations-
analysen (Göttingen, 1993), 229–45, here p. 235.
50
Die Wandlung, I (1945/46), 3–6, here p. 5.
51
Karl Jaspers, Die Schuldfrage (Heidelberg, 1946). See, too, Barbro Eberan, Luther? Friedrich ‘der Große’?
Wagner? Nietzsche? . . . ? . . . ? Wer war an Hitler schuld? Die Debatte um die Schuldfrage 1945–1949 (Munich,
1983).
156 Epilogue (1933–1990)

11. ‘This man leads Germany towards catastrophe.’ Bismarck warns the
Germans that Hitler will destroy his Reich in a Russian war propaganda
leaflet dropped behind the German lines in December 1941.

Similar, though more carefully articulated ideas, were put forward by

Friedrich Meinecke. In his 1946 book, Die deutsche Katastrophe, Meinecke
stated that the ‘staggering course of World War I and still more of World War
II makes it impossible to pass over the query whether the germs of the later evil
were not really implanted in Bismarck’s work from the outset. It is a query
which courageous and unfettered historical thinking must pose in regard to
 Epilogue (1933–1990) 157
every great and apparently beneficent historical phenomenon in which a
degeneration takes place. One then breathes the atmosphere of the tragedy of
history, of human and historical greatness, and also the problematical uncer-
tainty which will ever hover around Bismarck and his work . . .’.52 The ‘road to
survival’, Meinecke concluded, would require historical reorientation: ‘The
work of Bismarck’s era has been destroyed through our own fault, and we must
go back beyond its ruins to seek out the ways of Goethe’s era.’53
Meinecke’s plea for an abandonment of ‘Bismarckian values’ in favour of a
return to the ‘cosmopolitanism’ of the Goethe era coincided with more com-
prehensive attempts to revise Bismarck’s image.54 A milestone in this respect
was the Bismarck biography written by Erich Eyck, a German lawyer who had
been forced into exile by the National Socialists.55 Eyck’s biography, written in
England, drew on the spirit of left-liberal criticism of Bismarck’s domestic poli-
cies articulated in the 1920s. Without questioning Bismarck’s political genius as
a statesman and diplomat, Eyck accused him of having negatively influenced
the political value system of his fellow Germans. Eyck suggested that Bismarck
had laid the foundations for the corruption of German nationalism through
his lack of respect for liberalism and democracy and through his authoritarian
leadership style.56 Eyck’s criticism was taken to the extreme in Robert
Saitschick’s book Bismarck und das Schicksal des deutschen Volkes, which sug-
gested that the founder of the Reich had introduced a tradition of militarism
and a leadership cult which had led directly to the Third Reich.57
Even though criticism of Bismarck was much stronger in the immediate
post-war era than it had ever been before, the revisionism of Meinecke, Eyck,
and others was hardly representative of West German society. As far as the
majority of Germans were concerned, there was no Stunde Null, no immediate
democratic ‘rebirth’ of the German nation and no historical reorientation. The

52
Friedrich Meinecke, The German Catastrophe: Reflections and Recollections, translated from the German
by Sidney B. Fay (Cambridge, Mass., 1950), 13. 53
Ibid. 115.
54
See in particular the introduction to Lothar Gall (ed.), Das Bismarck-Problem in der Geschichtsschrei-
bung nach 1945 (Cologne and Berlin, 1971), 9–24. See also Hans Hallmann (ed.), Revision des Bismarck-
Bildes: Die Diskussion der deutschen Fachhistoriker 1945–1955 (Darmstadt, 1972). Finally, Andreas Dorpalen,
‘The German Historians and Bismarck’, The Review of Politics, XV (1953), 26.
55
Erich Eyck, Bismarck: Leben und Werk, 3 vols. (Zurich, 1941–4). The English translation is entitled Bis-
marck and the German Empire, 2 vols. (London, 1950).
56
Eyck rejected the traditional conservative interpretation of Bismarck upon which Arnold Oskar
Meyer’s biography of Bismarck—written prior to 1945, but only published after the end of the Second World
War—was based. See Arnold Oskar Meyer, Bismarck: Der Mensch und der Staatsmann, 2nd edn. (Stuttgart,
1949). The first edition was destroyed by fire during a bombing raid in 1944. The different images of Bis-
marck in Eyck’s and Meyer’s biographies were discussed at length in Der Spiegel, 13 Apr. 1950, 20 ff.
57
Robert Saitschick, Bismarck und das Schicksal des deutschen Volkes: Zur Psychologie und Geschichte der
deutschen Frage (Munich, 1949).
158 Epilogue (1933–1990)
political climate in Western Germany in the late 1940s and 1950s was far more
nationalist than the pro-Western foreign policy of the Adenauer Era suggests.58
Glorifying novels such as Rudolf Baumgardt’s Bismarck (1951) sold extremely
well.59 In schools and universities, many of those who had collaborated with
the ‘Third Reich’ were either reinstated or had not been removed in the first
place. Conservative historians continued to dominate academic discourse and
they decisively rejected the theory of a negatively connoted German Sonderweg
from Bismarck to Hitler. Hans Rothfels, who had been driven from his profes-
sorship in Königsberg by the Nazis in 1934, was among those who heavily
criticized Eyck for his ‘demonization’ of Bismarck. In his 1947 review of Eyck’s
biography of Bismarck, Rothfels insisted that the first German Chancellor had
tamed rather than promoted extreme nationalism.60 Bismarck, Rothfels
argued in one of his other numerous publications on the Iron Chancellor,
had known how to prevent the threatened confrontation of European nation-
alisms and how to maintain the equilibrium between European alliances.61
However impassioned the historical debates of the late 1940s and 1950s may
have been, they nevertheless differed fundamentally from the uncompromis-
ing clash of historical narratives during the Weimar Era in one decisive respect:
in Weimar, Bismarck had been used as a historical reference point for right-
wing circles to call into question the Republic’s historical right of existence.
This was never the case in the second post-war era of the twentieth century.
Regardless of all the ideological differences which certainly prevailed after 1945,
there was at least a far-reaching consensus that ‘there could be no “return to Bis-
marck” in any sense of the words’.62 To be sure, up until the late 1950s Western
Germany’s dominant political parties were united in their determination to re-
establish the German nation-state within the borders of 1937.63 The idea of a
single, indivisible nation was upheld by the inter-party Committee for an Indi-
visible Germany (Kuratorium Unteilbares Deutschland or KUD), which was
founded in reaction to the suppressed uprising of East German workers on 17
June 1953.64 However, the idea of reunification was never linked to the hope for

58
See Heinrich August Winkler, Der lange Weg nach Westen, vol. 2: Deutsche Geschichte vom ‘Dritten Reich’
bis zur Wiedervereinigung (Munich, 2000), 169–70.
59
Rudolf Baumgardt, Bismarck (Munich and Vienna, 1951). See, too, the book review in Der Spiegel, 2
Jan. 1952, 32.
60
See Hans Rothfels’ review of Eyck’s biography in The Review of Politics, IX (1947), 362–80.
61
See the introduction to Hans Rothfels (ed.), Bismarck und der Staat, 2nd edn. (Stuttgart, 1953) as well
as his essay collection Bismarck: Vorträge und Abhandlungen (Stuttgart, 1970).
62
Wilhelm Mommsen, ‘Der Kampf um das Bismarck-Bild’, Universitas, V (1950), 273–80, here p. 280.
63
The Bonn Constitution: Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany (New York, 1949), 5 and 56.
64
Edgar Wolfrum, ‘Der Kult um den verlorenen Nationalstaat in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland bis
Mitte der 60er Jahre’, Historische Anthropologie, V (1997), 83–114. On the ‘KUD’, see id., Geschichtspolitik in
 Epilogue (1933–1990) 159
a Bismarck-like ‘saviour’ which (predominant as it was during the Weimar
Republic) no longer seemed appropriate after the experience of Hitler’s rule. It
was all too evident that the man who in 1933 the majority of Germans had
regarded as a ‘second Bismarck’ had unleashed the Second World War and bore
the responsibility for the destruction of the German Empire.
Once again, the Bismarck myth had undergone a change of content. Instead
of promoting the vision of a coming Führer, ‘Bismarck’ reappeared as a syn-
onym for what had been lost as a result of Hitler’s war: the unified German
nation-state. From 1945, and particularly after the founding of the two German
states (the Federal Republic and the GDR) in 1949, Bismarck became an indis-
pensable component of political speeches about the ‘German question’ in the
Federal Republic.65 At the first annual meeting of the Committee for an Indi-
visible Germany on 11 and 12 June 1955 in Braunschweig, for example, the Göt-
tingen historian Hermann Heimpel emphasized in front of 5,000 listeners that
the restoration of the ‘kleindeutsch Bismarckreich’ was the ultimate goal of his
struggle for reunification.66
Like Heimpel, the local FDP of North Rhine and Westphalia aligned its
hopes for reunification with Bismarck’s name. In 1958 they publicly suggested
that a monument to German unity be built on the Elisenhöhe near Binger-
brück—the very site where the Bismarck National Monument should have
been erected according to plans from the Wilhelmine era and the Weimar
Republic.67
In the mid-1960s, the federal government under Ludwig Erhard (CDU)
continued to stand unanimously behind the interpretation of Bismarck as a
warrant of German reunification. In the Bundestag’s ceremony on 1 April 1965
to commemorate Bismarck’s 150th birthday, Chancellor Erhard insisted that in
the face of Germany’s division Bismarck would remain ‘the symbol of the
Germans’ desire to be one nation’.68 At the same time, however, Erhard
was eager to emphasize that his government’s aim of reunification did not

der Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Der Weg zur bundesrepublikanischen Erinnerung 1948 bis 1990 (Darmstadt,
1999), 108–9. See, too, Leo Kreuz, Das Kuratorium Unteilbares Deutschland: Aufbau, Programmatik. Wirkung
(Opladen, 1980).
65
On the founding of the GDR and the FRG see Christoph Kleßmann, Die doppelte Staatsgründung:
Deutsche Geschichte 1945–1955, 5th rev. edn. (Göttingen, 1991).
66
Hermann Heimpel, as quoted in Christoph Meyer, Die deutschlandpolitische Doppelstrategie: Wilhelm
Wolfgang Schütz und das Kuratorium Unteilbares Deutschland (Landsberg, 1997), 122.
67
Dorrmann, ‘Bismarck-Nationaldenkmal’, 1087.
68
Ludwig Erhard’s speech as printed in Gedenkfeier zum 150. Geburtstag des Reichkanzlers Fürst Otto von
Bismarck, ed. German Foreign Office (Bonn, 1965). See, too, the commemorative speech in the Bundestag
by Hans Rothfels, ‘Otto von Bismarck—Persönlichkeit und Werk’, Das Parlament, 7 Apr. 1965, and id.,
‘Zum 150. Geburtstag Bismarcks’, Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte, XVIII (1965), 225–35.
160 Epilogue (1933–1990)
contradict the Federal Republic’s commitment to democracy and western
integration. In his carefully worded speech, which was edited and published by
the German Foreign Office, the Chancellor stated that the Federal Republic
was not at all about to combine ‘our desire for reunification with the idea of an
Empire along Bismarck’s model’.69
Erhard’s clarification was not only directed towards the Federal Republic’s
Western Allies, who might well have been irritated by the Chancellor’s speech.
It was also designed to counter a left-wing change of paradigms within western
German society which was well on its way in the mid-1960s. When Erhard gave
his ‘Bismarck speech’ in the Bundestag, his interpretation of Bismarck as a
‘warrant of German reunification’ was in fact more disputed than ever. In 1959,
Karl Jaspers had distinctly rejected the present relevance of Bismarck’s histori-
cal deeds in his acceptance speech for the German Publishers’ Peace Prize.
Jaspers’ speech, held in the Frankfurt Paulskirche in the presence of President
Theodor Heuss, culminated in the words: ‘Today, in an entirely different world
order with new world powers, the Bismarck state is history. If we live as if it
[Bismarck’s Reich] could once again become reality, then we let the ghosts of
the past drink the life-blood of the present and hinder us from recognizing the
real dangers and great possibilities of the future.’70 As opposed to Bismarck,
who had achieved German unity on the sacrifice of political freedom, the
Federal Republic should recognize that the principle of political freedom was
far more important than its desire for reunification.71
By 1965, Jaspers’ views had found an ever-growing number of supporters.
Immanuel Geiss, a young historian from Hamburg, wrote in Vorwärts on 1
April 1965: ‘We, the younger generation, who no longer wish to have anything
to do with heroes and hero worship, have a right to examine Bismarck’s his-
torical persona critically and sceptically, coolly and without emotions. Enough
incense is being burnt in his honour these days, and many patriots will—either
publicly or in private—shed sorrowful tears of patriotic mourning’ over the
loss of Bismarck’s Reich. However, the Bismarck cult of the older generation
would ‘pose the greatest obstacle to a realistic world view, the lack of which has
been one of the most important factors for the catastrophes of both World
Wars’.72

69
Ludwig Erhard’s speech as printed in Gedenkfeier.
70
Karl Jaspers, ‘Wahrheit, Freiheit und Friede’ in id., Karl Jaspers: Reden zur Verleihung des Friedenspreises
des deutschen Buchhandels, ed. Hannah Arendt (Munich, 1958), 9–26.
71
Jaspers, in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 17 Aug. 1960. Equally, Karl Jaspers, Freiheit und Wiederver-
einigung: Über Aufgaben deutscher Politik (Munich, 1960).
72
Vorwärts, 31 Mar. 1965.
 Epilogue (1933–1990) 161
Geiss’s statements are an indication of the gradual change in the Federal
Republic’s political culture, a change which had much to do with the so-called
‘Fischer controversy’.73 Although the Fischer controversy ostensibly focused on
the question of Germany’s responsibility for the First World War, it was nothing
less than a struggle over the comprehensive revision of twentieth-century
German historiography. Up until the early 1960s the distinction between the
‘good’ traditions of the Bismarckian Empire and the bad traditions of the ‘Third
Reich’ had remained a constituent part of the (West) German historical
self-image. The Nazi dictatorship was accordingly marginalized as a terrible
‘accident’ in German history.74 In 1961, the historian Fritz Fischer questioned
the empirical basis for the ‘legend of innocence’ in the start of the First World
War with his monograph Griff nach der Weltmacht.75 On the 26th German
Historikertag in October 1964, Fischer’s interpretation received strong support,
although influential conservative historians such as Gerhard Ritter, Karl Diet-
rich Erdmann, and Egmont Zechlin rejected the ‘left-wing’ paradigm change in
German historiography and the idea of a negatively connoted Sonderweg vig-
orously.76 In an article for Berliner Tagesspiegel on 1 April 1965, Ritter decisively
contradicted the theory of a continuous line between Bismarck and Hitler:
We must not always be blind to the truly great and the successful in our history and
concentrate on the shadows and dirty spots in it. We do bitter injustice to ourselves and
our ancestors, if we only regard German history through a darkening lens, if we con-
sider it only as a prelude to Hitler’s Reich. Those who have lived during the old empire
and then through the Nazi period will regard any comparison between the second and
the so-called Third Reich as the most hideous slander.77

73
See Immanuel Geiss, ‘Die Fischer-Kontroverse: Ein kritischer Beitrag zum Verhältnis zwischen Histo-
riographie und Politik in der Bundesrepublik’, in id., Studien über Geschichte und Geschichtswissenschaft
(Frankfurt, 1972), 108–98. See, too, Wolfgang Jäger, Historische Forschung und politische Kultur in Deutsch-
land: die Debatte über den Ausbruch des Ersten Weltkrieges (Göttingen, 1984). Finally, Arnold Synottek, ‘Die
Fischer Kontroverse: Ein Beitrag zur Entwicklung historisch-politischen Bewußtseins in der Bundesrepub-
lik’, in Immanuel Geiss and Bernd Jürgen Wendt (eds.), Deutschland in der Weltpolitik des 19. Jahrhunderts
(Düsseldorf, 1973), 19–47.
74
Cf. Thomas Herz and Michael Schwab-Tapp, Umkämpfte Vergangenheit: Diskurse über den National-
sozialismus seit 1945 (Opladen, 1997), 11 ff. See, too, Jeffrey Herff, Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two
Germanys (Cambridge, Mass., 1997).
75
Fritz Fischer, Griff nach der Weltmacht: Die Kriegszielpolitik des kaiserlichen Deutschland 1914/18
(Düsseldorf, 1961).
76
On the Sonderweg theory, see Bernd Faulenbach, ‘ “Deutscher Sonderweg”: Zur Geschichte und
Problematik einer zentralen Kategorie des deutschen geschichtlichen Bewußtseins’, Aus Politik und
Zeitgeschichte, XXXIII (1981), 3–21. See, too, David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley, The Peculiarities of German
History: Bourgeois Society and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Oxford, 1984).
77
Gerhard Ritter, ‘Bismarck und die deutsche Einheit’, Tagesspiegel, 1 Apr. 1965. For similar views,
see Theodor Schieder, ‘Bismarck: Zur Wiederkehr seines Geburtstages vor 150 Jahren’, Geschichte in
Wissenschaft und Unterricht, XVI (1965), 197–207.
162 Epilogue (1933–1990)
Ritter found support in his struggle against the theory of a German Sonder-
weg from prominent CDU politicians such as the speaker of the Bundestag,
Eugen Gerstenmaier. In his book Neuer Nationalismus? Von der Wandlung der
Deutschen, Gerstenmaier asked his fellow Germans to develop a more positive
attitude towards ‘their’ history: ‘If we [Germans] want to survive as a nation, we
must once again begin to know who we are and what we want.’ Unless a posi-
tive sense of national identity were to become part of the German historical
consciousness, he continued, ‘we will, already in this century, be reduced to a
perhaps quite well functioning, but historically and nationally quite unimpor-
tant part of a European consumer society or perhaps to a provincial appendage
to the American industrial society . . . In such a state of consciousness a reuni-
fication of our people and thus the natural and imperative self-realization of the
Germans as a nation would no longer be possible.’78 In accordance with these
demands, Gerstenmaier wrote an open letter addressed to Bismarck, in which
he claimed that ‘no right thinking person’, regardless of ‘whether he stands in
critical opposition to you for one reason or another will go along with . . . the
statement that there is a direct line leading from Luther via Frederick the Great
and Bismarck to Hitler. . . . This accusation brings you close to a criminal,
with whom you have nothing in common.’79
Nevertheless, there were clear signs that the conservative glorification of Bis-
marck as the ‘father of the German nation-state’ was losing ground; and the stri-
dent tone with which Gerstenmaier and Ritter defended their view was one of
them. Bismarck started to lose his importance as a political ‘guiding star’ in a
society increasingly satisfied with ‘their’ Federal Republic. In 1955, 45 per cent of
West Germans had considered the era of the Bismarckreich to be the best in
German history. Only 2 per cent, on the other hand, thought that Germany had
never enjoyed better times than the present.80 In the 1960s, this perception
slowly began to change. The growing satisfaction with democracy among the
population of the Federal Republic can above all be attributed to economic
reasons. What is generally referred to as the Wirtschaftswunder or ‘economic
miracle’ was the beginning of a thirty-year period of prosperity—the longest in
German history.81 Economic growth facilitated the incorporation of refugees
from the former East German provinces into West German society just as it
helped to reconcile the West German public to the reality of German division.82

78
Eugen Gerstenmaier, Neuer Nationalismus? Von der Wandlung der Deutschen (Stuttgart, 1965), 6–10.
79
Die Welt, 27 Mar. 1965. 80
Jahrbuch der öffentlichen Meinung 1947–1955, 201.
81
See Hartmut Kaelble, Der Boom 1948–1973 (Opladen, 1992).
82
See Gerold Ambrosius, ‘Flüchtlinge und Vertriebene in der westdeutschen Wirtschaftsgeschichte’, in
Rainer Schulze (ed.), Flüchtlinge und Vertriebene in der westdeutschen Nachkriegsgeschichte (Hildesheim,
 Epilogue (1933–1990) 163
Furthermore, a younger generation proved unwilling to uncritically accept
the outdated value system and myths of their parents’ generation. When the
city council of Göttingen, dominated by a majority of Social Democrats and
Free Democrats, ordered the demolition of the Bismarck monument on 1 April
1965 in what was a deliberately provocative act, it could count on the support
of its student-dominated constituency.83 The student movement of the second
half of the 1960s contributed decisively to the change of political climate in the
Federal Republic. Radical as it was in its extreme form, the student movement
created an atmosphere in which challenges to the images of history of the older
generation gained broad support.84
Above all, however, it was the Neue Ostpolitik of the social-liberal coalition
under Chancellor Willy Brandt which undermined the pre-existing view of
history and the traditional concept of German national identity.85 The 1970
treaties with Moscow and Warsaw meant an end to thoughts of re-establishing
Germany within its 1937 borders. In the Eastern Treaties the Federal Republic
recognized the Oder–Neisse frontier as Germany’s unalterable eastern border.
In 1972, these agreements were followed by the Basic Treaty or Grundlagenver-
trag between the Federal Republic and the GDR, in which the two states agreed
to develop good neighbourly relations with each other on the basis of equal
rights and to respect each other’s frontiers as inviolable.86
It was during the conclusion of the Eastern Treaties that the final historical-
political battle was fought over Bismarck in the Bonn Republic. The decisive
turning point in the public controversy about Bismarck’s relevance for the poli-
tics of the Federal Republic came in 1971. In a live TV speech on 18 January
1971, the hundredth anniversary of Bismarck’s Imperial Proclamation at Ver-
sailles, President Gustav Heinemann (SPD) announced that the past one hun-
dred years of German history ‘do not only include one Versailles, but two, 1871
and 1919. They also include Auschwitz, Stalingrad, and the unconditional
1987), 216–27. See, too, Dierk Hoffmann, ‘Die Integration von Flüchtlingen und Vertriebenen nach 1945:
Interdisziplinäre Ergebnisse und Forschungsperspektiven: Ein Forschungskolloquium des Instituts für Zeit-
geschichte’, Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte, XLVI (1998), 551–4.
83
On the deconstruction of the Bismarck memorial in Göttingen see Die Welt, 31 Mar. 1965. A similar
attempt, undertaken by the Bavarian Party, to remove the Bismarck monument from the Bosch Bridge in
Munich failed in 1948. See Rosenfeld, Munich and Memory, 114.
84
See Anthony J. Nicholls, The Bonn Republic: West German Democracy, 1945–1990 (London, 1997), 207;
Klaus Schönhoven, ‘Aufbruch in die sozialliberale Ära: Zur Bedeutung der 60er Jahre in der Geschichte der
Bundesrepublik’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, XXV (1999), 123–45.
85
See the detailed analysis provided by Peter Bender, Die ‘Neue Ostpolitik’ und ihre Folgen: Vom Mauer-
bau bis zur Vereinigung, 3rd rev. edn. (Munich, 1995).
86
The most important parts of this agreement are reprinted in Politics and Government in the
Federal Republic of Germany 1944–1994: Basic Documents, ed. Carl-Christoph Schweitzer et al., 2nd edn.
(Providence, RI, 1995), 62–5.
164 Epilogue (1933–1990)
surrender of 1945.’87 The ‘Iron Chancellor’, continued Heinemann, while sit-
ting in front of Anton von Werner’s famous painting of the Imperial Procla-
mation of 1871, did not belong in the ‘black, red, and gold family gallery’.
Bismarck was not part of the liberal tradition upon which the Federal Repub-
lic had been founded. On the contrary, he who ‘draws a direct line from the
Wars of Liberation via the Wartburg and Hambach, the Frankfurt Paulskirche,
and Rastatt . . . up to Sedan and Versailles, creates a wrong picture of history’.88
Heinemann’s speech on the centenary of the Imperial Proclamation at Ver-
sailles marked a central turning point in the debate about the German past.
Never before had a German head of state attacked the Iron Chancellor in a
comparably pointed manner. And never before had such criticism found the
support of a vast majority of Germans. Even though the former Chancellor
Georg Kiesinger (CDU) immediately voiced his ‘lack of understanding’ of the
President’s speech, the positive public response was much stronger than any
such criticism.89
It was impossible for political commentators to overlook the changes in Ger-
many’s political culture that had occurred in the 1960s. In the Frankfurter All-
gemeine Zeitung, which had glorified the founder of the Reich only six years
before, criticism of Bismarck was now clearly articulated. Karl Otmar Freiherr
von Aretin argued on 16 January 1971 that even if Bismarck could not be held
responsible for the development of the Reich up until 1945 there were at the
very least considerable lines of continuity in German political thinking. Bis-
marck’s ‘constant toying with the idea of ridding himself of the unco-operative
Reichstag by a coup d’état’ had inspired the conservative elites during the dis-
solution phase of the Weimar Republic—with far-reaching consequences.90
In Die Zeit three leading academics of different generations—Theodor
Schieder, Karl Dietrich Bracher, and Peter Count Kielmannsegg—expressed
their opinion on Bismarck’s Reich. Their contributions mirrored the growing
willingness of German intellectuals to abandon the Bismarckian Empire as a
model for Germany’s future. For both Schieder and Kielmannsegg, Bismarck’s
unified German nation-state was merely ‘an episode which did not last’.91 The

87
Gustav W. Heinemann, Zur Reichsgründung 1871: Zum hundertsten Geburtstag des ersten deutschen
Reichspräsidenten Friedrich Ebert, ed. Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (Bonn, 1971). See, too, Sebastian
Schubert, ‘Abschied vom Nationalstaat? Die deutsche Reichsgründung 1871 in der Geschichtspolitik des
geteilten Deutschlands von 1965 bis 1974’, in Winkler (ed.), Griff nach der Deutungsmacht, 230–65.
88
Heinemann, Reichsgründung. See, too, Matthias Rensing, Geschichte und Politik in den Reden der
deutschen Bundespräsidenten 1949–1984 (Münster and New York, 1996).
89
On Kiesinger’s comments see Neue Züricher Zeitung, 19 Jan. 1971, and Die Welt, 18 Jan. 1971.
90
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 16 Jan. 1971.
91
Die Zeit, 15 Jan. 1971.
 Epilogue (1933–1990) 165
division of Germany was accepted as part of the new world order. Karl Dietrich
Bracher went even further in his departure from the ‘Bismarckian tradition’:
the ‘destruction of the state of 1871’ was ‘the premiss and starting point for a
new German state altogether’. The ‘second, finally successful democracy in
Germany is unimaginable, impossible without the ultimate failure of the Reich
of 1871’.92
Statements such as these were indicative of the fundamental changes of his-
torical consciousness in the Federal Republic. In 1952, 36 per cent of West
Germans had classed Bismarck as the ‘greatest’ German (far ahead of Hitler (9
per cent), Frederick II (7 per cent), and Konrad Adenauer (3 per cent) ). By
1956, only 25 per cent of the population thought of the Iron Chancellor as the
greatest figure in German history. In the following years Bismarck’s popularity
tailed off even further. In 1967, shortly after Adenauer’s death, only 17 per cent
of Germans considered Bismarck the ‘greatest’ German, as opposed to 60 per
cent for Adenauer.93
The historical-political caesura of the late 1960s and early 1970s was pro-
found. For the first time in the history of the German nation-state, Bismarck
was no longer associated with a political order for which a majority of Germans
was striving. Instead, Bismarck was confined to history and ceased to be a
political model for the Federal Republic.

The primacy of politics over history: Bismarck in the GDR

Post-war images of Bismarck were not only subject to gradual changes in the
Federal Republic, but also in the GDR. In contrast to the pluralistic Federal
Republic, however, the numerous changes in the GDR’s quasi-official image of
Bismarck did not occur through public controversies or debates. Instead, his-
torical interpretations were dictated by a state which instrumentalized histori-
cal traditions both for domestic political integration and for the Systemkonflikt
with the ‘imperialist’ Federal Republic.94
Up until the early 1950s, historical perceptions of the Iron Chancellor in the
Soviet zone were dominated by a quasi-official ‘misery theory’ which had
found its classic expression in Alexander Abusch’s 1946 book Irrweg einer

92
Ibid.
93
The older those questioned were, the greater the proportion of votes for Bismarck. On these statistics,
see Jahrbuch der öffentlichen Meinung 1965–1967, 144–5.
94
See Martin Sabrow, Verwaltete Vergangenheit: Geschichtskultur und Herrschaftslegitimation in der DDR
(Leipzig, 1997).
166 Epilogue (1933–1990)
Nation. Abusch, who had worked in the press office of the KPD’s headquarters
during the Weimar Republic, argued that there was a direct line of continuity
from Bismarck and Prussian militarism to Hitler.95 According to Abusch, Bis-
marck’s legacy was ‘a tradition of violence, deception and demagoguery’ upon
which Hitler built. Abusch acknowledged that Hitler was far more radical than
Bismarck. However, Hitler only ‘completed Bismarck’s struggle against the
workers’ party and every democratic movement’.96
In July 1952 Walter Ulbricht officially abandoned the ‘misery theory’. In a
speech at the Second SED Party Conference on 9 July 1952, Ulbricht exhorted
the East Germans not to neglect their patriotic consciousness: ‘Everyone
understands how important the study of German history and the promotion
of all German tradition is to the struggle for Germany’s national unity, espe-
cially in the face of the efforts of the American occupying powers to wipe out
the memory of our people’s great achievements.’97 Initially, Bismarck’s unifica-
tion of Germany was not promoted as one of these ‘great achievements’ from
which the GDR could draw its historical legitimacy. Instead the SED’s his-
torical propaganda focused on Communist resistance to Hitler, the 1848 revo-
lution, and the Wars of Liberation against Napoleon.98
The reason for Ulbricht’s historical-political paradigm change was clear. As
long as the westward integration of the Federal Republic was incomplete, the
GDR attempted to mobilize the West Germans against the Adenauer regime
with nationalist slogans and to push for a unified and socialist German nation-
state.99 Even after the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, the SED contin-
ued to suggest that Germany would ultimately be united in a socialist state.100
In attempting to create historical legitimacy for this aim, the SED made refer-
ence to precisely the man Alexander Abusch had assigned as Hitler’s spiritual
predecessor in his book Irrweg der Nation only a few years earlier: Bismarck. An
article which appeared on 2 April 1965 in the SED’s newspaper, Neues Deutsch-
land, suggested that the Bismarckian inheritance of ‘political good sense’ had
not just been neglected during the Kaiserreich and under the Nazis, but also by

95
Alexander Abusch, Der Irrweg einer Nation: Ein Beitrag zum Verständnis deutscher Geschichte (Berlin,
1946).
96
Ibid., 130.
97
Ulbricht as quoted in Wolfrum, Geschichtspolitik in der Bundesrepublik, 47.
98
See Harald Bluhm, ‘Befreiungskriege und Preußenrenaissance’, in Rudolf Speth and Edgar Wolfrum
(eds.), Politische Mythen und Geschichtspolitik: Konstruktion—Inszenierung—Mobilisierung (Berlin, 1996),
71–95. See, too, Herfried Münkler, ‘Das kollektive Gedächtnis der DDR’, in Dieter Vorsteher (ed.),
Parteiauftrag: Ein neues Deutschland: Bilder, Rituale und Symbole der frühen DDR (Berlin, 1996), 458–68.
99
Eberhard Kuhrt and Henning von der Löwis, Griff nach der deutschen Geschichte: Erbaneignung und
Traditionspflege in der DDR (Paderborn, 1988). See, too, Schubart, ‘Abschied vom Nationalstaat?’, 242–5.
100
See ‘Article 8’ of the GDR’s 1968 constitution as printed in Deutsche Verfassungen, ed. Rudolf Schuster,
2nd edn. (Munich, 1992), 359.
 Epilogue (1933–1990) 167
the Bonn Republic, a state obsessed with ‘revanchism’ and the acquisition of
nuclear weapons. In this respect, Bonn had much ‘to learn from Bismarck and
his great and powerful character’. As long as the Federal Republic would not
learn from ‘Bismarck and his historic achievements’ it had ‘no right to leader-
ship in Germany’.101
The GDR’s nationalist rhetoric came to an abrupt end with the Federal
Republic’s Neue Ostpolitik. In the early 1970s, the GDR abandoned its gesamt-
deutsch policy and attempted to resolve the German question through the con-
cept of a ‘socialist nation GDR’.102 In October 1974, the reunification clause
was deleted from the GDR constitution, which now declared that the GDR
was ‘forever and irrevocably allied with the USSR’. All references to the
‘German nation’ were expunged. The GDR was no longer a ‘socialist state of
the German nation’, but rather a ‘socialist state of the workers and peasants’.103
The constitutional change of 1974 was the culmination of a process which
had begun in 1971, when the GDR adopted a policy of Abgrenzung from the
Federal Republic. This reversal of policy was the result of both internal and
external factors. In May 1971 Walter Ulbricht was replaced as chairman of the
SED by Erich Honecker, a party functionary with more loyalty to Moscow than
Ulbricht. Additionally, following the 1968 military intervention in Czechoslo-
vakia, the Soviet Union strove to integrate its bloc more closely, in order to
create greater internal cohesion, and to reinforce its hegemony. The beginning
of the Honecker era was therefore marked by an abandonment of Ulbricht’s
hopes for reunification and the subsequent revision of the GDR’s official inter-
pretation of history.104 In this context, the SED reversed its formerly positive
attitude towards Bismarck. On the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of
Bismarck’s unification of Germany, the East German historian Ernst Diehl
denied any connection between the GDR and Bismarck. In Neues Deutschland
Diehl wrote: ‘Today, one hundred years after the foundation of the Reich an
incontrovertible situation has arisen . . . in the centre of Europe. Any policy
which truly aims at détente in Europe must proceed from this reality: the exis-
tence of two states at the heart of our continent with opposed fundamentals of
society, the socialist GDR and the imperialist Federal Republic.’105

101
Neues Deutschland, 2 and 4 Apr. 1965.
102
See, for example, Alfred Kosing, Nation in Geschichte und Gegenwart: Studie zur historisch-
materialistischen Theorie der Nation (East Berlin, 1976).
103
Timothy Garton Ash, In Europe’s Name: Germany and the Divided Continent (New York, 1993), 189.
On this constitutional amendment see, too, Neues Deutschland, 28 Sept. 1974. On the ‘farewell to the nation’,
see Dietrich Staritz, Geschichte der DDR, 2nd edn. (Frankfurt, 1996), 278–9.
104
Monika Kaiser, Machtwechsel von Ulbricht zu Honecker: Funktionsmechanismen der SED-Diktatur in
Konfliktssituationen 1962 bis 1972 (Berlin, 1997), 279.
105
Neues Deutschland, 19 Jan. 1971.
168 Epilogue (1933–1990)
Shortly after the conclusion of the Basic Treaty between the Federal Repub-
lic and the GDR in 1972, the SED changed its attitude towards Prussian his-
tory yet again.106 Under the slogan of ‘heritage and tradition’, the GDR regime
attempted to co-opt certain aspects of Germany’s historical and cultural past.
In order to legitimize the existence of two German nations—one ‘capitalist’
and one ‘socialist’—the SED appropriated ‘progressive’ traditions of the
German past. As opposed to the ‘reactionary’ state of the Federal Republic (so
the concept of ‘heritage and tradition’ suggested), the GDR had learnt from the
lessons of history.107 In 1985, shortly after the statue of Frederick the Great had
been returned to Unter den Linden, the East German historian Ernst Engel-
berg published a relatively positive biography of Bismarck in which he praised
‘how strong and rich in personality he [Bismarck] was and how able he proved
himself to be in solving problems in his own way from above after the failed
revolution of 1848’.108
None the less, however hard the SED leadership strove to reinvent traditions
for their state, the idea of ‘heritage and tradition’ became increasingly ques-
tionable in the 1980s. As Günther Heydemann argued, the concept’s basic idea,
namely to establish greater historical legitimacy for the GDR, could only be
persuasive if the supposed advantages of the SED state corresponded with the
daily economic and social experiences of the country’s citizens. For the major-
ity of GDR citizens this was not the case.109 From the mid-1980s onwards in
particular, the SED’s historical propaganda was less and less able to conceal
either the growing dissatisfaction of GDR citizens with the political leadership
or the country’s increasing economic difficulties that would eventually bring
about its collapse.110

Bismarck after reunification

When the Berlin Wall fell in autumn 1989, many political observers in Ger-
many and abroad assumed that the myths of German nationalism would

106
Hellmut Diwald, ‘Geschichtsbild und Geschichtsbewußtsein im gegenwärtigen Deutschland’,
Saeculum, XXVIII (1978), 22–30.
107
See Günther Heydemann, ‘Geschichtsbild und Geschichtspropaganda in der ära Honecker: Die
“Erbe-und-Tradition”-Konzeption der DDR’, in Ute Daniel and Wolfram Siemann (eds.), Propaganda:
Meinungskampf : Verführung und politische Sinnstiftung 1789–1989 (Frankfurt, 1994), 161–71.
108
Ernst Engelberg, Bismarck, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1985–1990), here vol. 1: Urpreuße und Reichsgründer, p. xiii.
109
Heydemann, ‘Geschichtsbild’, 170–1.
110
On the collapse of the GDR, see Mary Fulbrook, Anatomy of a Dictatorship: Inside the GDR, 1949–1989
(Oxford, 1995), 279–83.
 Epilogue (1933–1990) 169
quickly be revived once again in a reunified Germany.111 Even some historians
feared that German reunification would lead to a ‘return to the traditions of the
Bismarckian Reich which belongs again to the arsenal of nationalist propa-
ganda in Germany’.112
It is true that the unexpected end of German partition resulted in Bismarck’s
temporary return to the political arena. In late October 1989, a few days before
the collapse of the GDR, Deutsche Bank’s CEO Alfred Herrhausen invoked
memories of Bismarck when he underlined the necessity of reconsidering
German identity in the event of reunification. Herrhausen believed ‘that we
have good chances to experience a new Bismarckian Era, in which the German
nation-state can contribute to peace and stability in Europe’.113
The subsequent public debate on Bismarck after reunification was not, how-
ever, dominated by discussions about the similarities between 1871 and 1990.114
Quite the opposite was true. The editor of Die Zeit, Theo Sommer, for exam-
ple, wrote: ‘The second German unification, 120 years after the first, is not—
thank God—a business of blood and tears. This unification is a democratic
one. . . . Also, the difficulties involved in the unification process of 1990 are
much bigger than they were in 1870: psychologically, but moreover in financial
and economic respects. These difficulties would have been more demanding, if
not too demanding, for Bismarck.’115 Sommer’s article reflected a widespread
attitude towards the Iron Chancellor in reunified Germany. When the German
Historical Museum (DHM) opened its large 1990 Bismarck exhibition in
Berlin, the DHM’s director, Christoph Stölzl, emphasized that no one was
interested in promoting uncritical or even heroic images of Bismarck any
longer.116
The experiences of the past ten years have proven Stölzl right. A revival of the
Bismarck myth in the context of the re-emergence of a new German national-
ism is not in sight. Even if a nationalist party was to play an important role in
German domestic policies once again, it seems highly unlikely that Bismarck
would be the reference point for that movement for two major reasons. First,

111
See Dörner, Hermannsmythos. Also, Daniel Johnson, ‘Blood, Iron and Champagne: The Explosive
Legacy of Bismarck’, The Times, 10 July 1998.
112
Machtan, Bismarck, 192. Also Stefan Berger, The Search for Normality: National Identity and Histori-
cal Consciousness in Germany since 1800 (Providence, RI, and Oxford, 1997), 113 ff.
113
Herrhausen, as quoted in Die Zeit, 27 Oct. 1989.
114
See Rolf Parr, ‘Bismarck-Mythen—Bismarck-Analogien’, Kulturrevolution, XXIV (1991), 12–16.
115
Die Zeit, 21 Sept. 1990.
116
See Christoph Stölzl’s introductory note in Bismarck—Preussen, Deutschland und Europa: Eine Austel-
lung des Deutschen Historischen Museums Berlin, 26. August–25. November 1990 (Berlin, 1990), not paginated.
See, too, Susanne Schreiber, ‘Wider den Heroenkult’, Handelsblatt, 31 Aug. 1990.
170 Epilogue (1933–1990)
the political power of a myth essentially depends on its widespread appeal.
Only if a mythical narrative is anchored in the collective memory of a social
entity can it be used effectively as a weapon in political debates. In the collec-
tive memory of reunified Germany, however, the Bismarckian Era plays a mar-
ginal role.117 According to a survey in 1998, most Germans (53 per cent) do not
even know who Otto von Bismarck was.118 Secondly, the political transforma-
tions of 1989 have led to a reunified German nation-state, but not to a return to
Bismarck’s Reich. The myth consequently lacks relevance for the problems of
the present and future. In terms of its political orientation, its constitution, and
its political culture, the Federal Republic is more a break with Bismarck’s Reich
than its continuation. For both of these reasons, it seems reasonable to assume
that Bismarck’s ‘second life’ as a political myth, ‘as an emotionally charged and
contested figure’, is irrevocably over.119
117
Felix P. Lutz, Das Geschichtsbewußtsein der Deutschen: Grundlagen der politischen Kultur in Ost und
West (Cologne, 2000), 175–7. On the general de-politicization of public debates over the Prussian past after
1990, see Gavriel D. Rosenfeld, ‘A Mastered Past? Prussia in Postwar German Memory’, German History
XXII (2004), 505–35.
118
Die Woche, 30 Jan. 1998, 11.
119
Jürgen Kocka, ‘Otto von Bismarcks zweites Leben’, Berliner Tagesspiegel, 26 July 1998.
 10
Conclusion

Between 1918 and 1933, Germany witnessed an uncompromising clash of ide-

ologies and invented historical traditions. Ideological conflict translated into a
fierce pseudo-historical and highly political fight for the ‘correct’ and universal
interpretation of the German past. In the course of this battle over the past, the
Bismarck myth proved to be one of the most powerful weapons employed by
right-wing circles in their struggle against Weimar. The myth suggested that
the Republic had been founded against the ‘spirit of Bismarck’ by those politi-
cal groups which the Iron Chancellor himself had characterized as the ‘internal
enemies of the Empire’. One of the prime intentions of the myth-makers was
to associate the Weimar Republic with the odium of treason. In order to restore
the historical legitimacy which the democratic state was allegedly lacking, the
Republic would therefore have to be replaced by some form of authoritarian
system dominated by a towering leader figure: a ‘second Bismarck’.
To the extent that the Bismarck myth radically questioned the Weimar
Republic’s historical legitimacy, its character differed fundamentally in the
periods before 1918 and after 1933. While the Bismarck myth served as a narra-
tive to legitimize the political system during most of the Kaiserreich and the
years after 1933, it fulfilled quite the opposite task between 1918 and 1933. Even
in the Federal Republic, where Bismarck reappeared in the public debate as a
‘warrant of reunification’ up until the early 1970s, the myth was never used to
question the democratic state’s historical legitimacy.
The Bismarck myth was originally created and disseminated in the early
1890s by the political opponents of Wilhelm II and the New Course. Shortly
after Bismarck’s death in 1898, however, the myth was appropriated by the
Kaiser and his government. The Iron Chancellor was redefined as a loyal ser-
vant of the Hohenzollern dynasty. Bismarck had completed Prussia’s mission
for national unity in a genuinely German way: from ‘above’. In the years to fol-
low this became the foundation myth of the German Empire, a narrative that
was used to ‘prove’ the historical legitimacy of the Kaiserreich. The Bismarck
myth was instrumentalized for a large variety of purposes; for example, it
served to justify Germany’s struggle to become a world power or to attack those
172 Conclusion
groups within the Reich which were dissatisfied with the political and social
order of Wilhelmine Germany. Whoever dared to call into question the exist-
ing political regime was consequently accused of the worst possible crime:
committing treason against the legacy of the Iron Chancellor.
After 1914, the Bismarck myth served as a source of wartime mobilization.
The Great War was interpreted as a defensive struggle over Bismarck’s inheri-
tance. Annexationist war aims were equally formulated with reference to the
Iron Chancellor’s policy of ‘Blood and Iron’. The First World War did not,
however, end with a German victory, but rather with the military defeat of
Imperial Germany which was itself swept away in the wake of the November
Revolution. The political events of 1918–19 and the increasing polarization
of German society as a result of military defeat, revolution, and counter-
revolution had repercussions upon the public perception of Bismarck. In the
first weeks after the end of the Great War, it seemed as if the Bismarck myth
could no longer be appropriated to meet the political needs of a fundamentally
changed present. Up until early 1919, the collapse of the regime established by
Bismarck was welcomed by a majority of Germans. Many people felt that the
establishment of a democratic Republic would not only ensure the conclusion
of a moderate peace agreement, but also pave the way to a more just political
and social order.
There was another reason why it initially seemed as if Bismarck was losing
his relevance: since the end of World War I, Bismarck’s kleindeutsch solution to
the German question, the main reason for his mystification, was considered
to be outdated by virtually all Germans. Under the influence of the Austro-
German war alliance against the Entente, leading politicians and intellectuals
promoted the Anschluß of Austria and thus the abandonment of Bismarck’s
kleindeutsch concept of the German nation-state.
The strongest supporters of Anschluß came from within the republican left.
The SPD in particular propagated a peaceful revision of the 1871 borders and
thereby hoped to associate the democratic state with a highly popular foreign
policy success. Social Democrats, such as Paul Löbe or Friedrich Ebert, argued
that the establishment of a großdeutsch Republic would be a fulfilment of the
revolutionary aims of 1848. At the same time, the idea of a democratic
Großdeutschland was used as an argument against Bismarck’s kleindeutsch Reich
in the first months of the Republic’s existence. Bismarck’s Reich of 1871 was rep-
resented as a catastrophic deviation from the großdeutsch-democratic traditions
of the early German nationalist movement. With the explicit ban on a
großdeutsch enlargement of the Reich imposed by the Western Allies in Ver-
 Conclusion 173
sailles, this argument lost its pervasiveness. Consequently, right-wing politi-
cians argued that the Republic had betrayed ‘Bismarck’s legacy’ without
succeeding in its ultimate objective: the establishment of the großdeutsch
Republic. This popular accusation was combined with the ‘stab-in-the-back’
motif, according to which Bismarck’s political enemies—the Left Liberals, the
Centre, and the Social Democrats—had committed treason against the ‘unde-
feated’ German army.
The Bismarck myth experienced a sudden and unexpected revival after the
radicalization of the German revolution in the winter of 1918‒19 and the pub-
lication of the harsh peace conditions which were to be imposed on Germany
by the Allied Powers. However, it became evident that the myth had funda-
mentally changed both in character and function. As a symbol of the retro-
spectively idealized ‘great’ German past, Bismarck became an important
political weapon in right-wing propaganda against a Republic which was
allegedly unable to live up to the ‘high’ standards set by the followers of Bis-
marck. In other words, whereas between 1898 and 1918 the prime task of the
myth had been the legitimization of the existing state, its main function after
the revolution was to de-legitimize the new political system.
Left-Liberal and Social Democratic intellectuals countered the nationalists’
Bismarck myth with the argument that Bismarck’s policies had split the
German people into political camps and had prevented a thorough process
of democratization. Consequently, the Bismarckian era was interpreted by the
left as an expression of Germany’s political and moral decline after the failed
revolution of 1848. According to the left, Bismarck’s Reich had been a a ‘feudal’
state protecting the interests of the rich few and ignoring those of the working
classes. The constitution of 1919, on the other hand, was represented as a delib-
erate abandonment of Bismarck’s political system and the fulfilment of the
liberal-democratic tradition of 1848.
None the less, from the start, the Republicans were in a position of disadvan-
tage in the civil war of historical myths and invented traditions. Born out of mil-
itary defeat and an unloved revolution, Weimar lacked a generally accepted
foundation myth and cherished historical-political traditions upon which to
build. Additionally, the Republic could not count on the support of those insti-
tutions which were essential in the process of instilling democratic principles in
a younger generation. Neither German schools nor universities were strong-
holds of democracy. Weimar historiography in particular did little to emphasize
the historical legitimacy of the Republic. In the light of the identity crisis engen-
dered by the loss of ‘national greatness’ in 1918, the vast majority of
174 Conclusion
German historians came to see it as their task to remind their contemporaries of
‘better times’ in the past. Bismarck’s policies were thereby accorded the status
of a yardstick against which the increasingly despised Republic was measured.
Despite its generally anti-democratic character, the Bismarck myth was far
from static. In fact, the politically motivated references to Bismarck were mod-
ified constantly according to changing practical needs. In the debates over the
Law for the Protection of the Republic following the assassination of Walther
Rathenau in 1922, for example, the law was compared with the legislation that
Bismarck had enacted unsuccessfully against political Catholicism and the
socialist movement in the late 1870s and 1880s. The DNVP, accused of stimu-
lating the lethal ideological climate in which the assassination of Rathenau had
been carried out, rejected the law as the SPD’s late revenge for Bismarck’s anti-
socialist legislation. Although the DNVP was unable to prevent the passing of
the law, the debates were evidence of the fact that Bismarck was politically
useful in a variety of different contexts. The Bismarckian era was a historical
quarry which the right became particularly astute at exploiting.
Only a few months later, in the context of the Battle of the Ruhr, the content
of the Bismarck myth underwent another change: the myth was externalized
and directed against the French occupiers of German soil. The Battle of
the Ruhr gave a sharp and immediate relevance to memories of the Franco-
Prussian War of 1870–1, causing the Republic’s various subcultures to tem-
porarily lay aside their internal differences. For a short while, the diametrically
opposed viewpoints that marked the early Weimar period seemed noticeably
blunted; even representatives and supporters of the Republic referred to
Bismarck in formulating their criticism of Poincaré’s policy. Nevertheless, the
content of the Bismarck myth was never undisputed. While the nationalist
right campaigned for active resistance to French occupation in 1923 under the
banner of the Iron Chancellor, the moderate right represented Bismarck as an
advocate of passive resistance.
The controversy over the ‘correct’ interpretation of Bismarck’s lessons for the
present and future outlasted even the state crisis of 1923. During the Reichstag
election campaigns of 1924, both the DVP and the DNVP formulated their
political goals with reference to the Iron Chancellor in order to lend historical
legitimacy to their policies. Ironically, Bismarck was used both as an exponent
of the German Nationalists’ thirst for revenge and as the figurehead of Strese-
mann’s foreign policy of international reconciliation.
In the presidential election of 1925, the DVP and the DNVP combined their
efforts to instrumentalize Bismarck as a tangible resource in the battle for votes.
Karl Jarres, the Reichsblock’s candidate for presidency in the first round of vot-
 Conclusion 175
ing, campaigned with the slogan ‘Back to Bismarck’. In the second round of
voting, the Reichsblock’s campaign strategists projected ‘Bismarckian qualities’
onto Paul von Hindenburg in order to increase his chances of success over the
Republican presidential candidate, Wilhelm Marx. Democratic parties to the
left of the DVP also endorsed historical-political campaigning. As opposed to
the bourgeois right, however, the republican Volksblock campaigned for votes
by referring to the 1848 revolution.
Hindenburg’s close victory over Marx strengthened those circles which had,
since 1919, been trying to deprive the Republic of its legitimacy through the use
of the Bismarck myth. They had assisted in placing a man at the pinnacle of
power who was more sympathetic to their social and political ideals than his
Social Democratic predecessor in office, Friedrich Ebert. Hindenburg was
indeed prepared to support several projects of great symbolic importance to the
Weimar right. The League for the Erection of a Bismarck National Monument,
for example, which had taken up its work in the days of the Kaiserreich but
ceased to exist after the outbreak of the First World War, was re-founded soon
after Hindenburg had taken office. Hindenburg himself was very much in
favour of this project. He also personally supported the two-part Bismarck film
of 1925–7 which appealed to the anti-modernist sentiments and anxieties of
large segments of post-war German society and succeeded in popularizing the
anti-republican Bismarck myth via a modern mass medium.
The popularity of pseudo-historical and ideological films such as Bismarck
or Fridericus Rex indicates that despite some political successes in the Strese-
mann Era, the governments’ attempts to instil democratic principles in the
majority of German citizens had failed. The great symbolic controversies of the
1920s (especially the long-running disagreement over the introduction of 18
January as a national holiday) demonstrated the deep divisions in German
society. The fundamental lack of consensus in relation to ideology, religion,
and class remained a gaping chasm even during the ‘Golden Twenties’, a chasm
which could not be spanned either by the temporary decrease in economic
pressure or by the accompanying reduction in domestic political tension.
When the economic and political situation in Germany worsened after
1929, the content of the Bismarck myth radicalized in a similar way. To be sure,
the idea of overcoming parliamentary democracy in favour of a more authori-
tarian political system had been an essential component of the Bismarck myth
ever since 1918. However, the severe and permanent crisis after 1929 intensified
the perceived need for a charismatic leader of ‘Bismarckian qualities’ to brush
aside the seemingly helpless democracy and to solve Germany’s problems with-
out parliamentary constraints.
176 Conclusion
The man who profited most from this crisis was Adolf Hitler. There can be
no doubt that Hitler’s astonishing success in public elections after 1929 was
partly due to his demagogic use of the magical power of political myths. He was
quick to exploit the connection between the Bismarck myth and the wide-
spread desire for a politically strong charismatic leadership. Hitler suggested
that he was the long-awaited ‘second Bismarck’, both willing and able to vigor-
ously combat all allegedly divisive forces in a currently ‘leaderless’ and divided
society. He also promised to launch a concerted effort to overcome the restric-
tions imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles. This promise included
the revision of the kleindeutsch borders. According to Hitler, German politi-
cians after Bismarck had failed to pursue the goal of Großdeutschland. After the
SPD’s hopes for an Anschluß of Austria had foundered in the face of Allied
opposition in 1919, and given that Brüning’s attempt to achieve a großdeutsch
enlargement via the Austro-Germans customs union in 1931 had failed on sim-
ilar grounds, Hitler was able to present himself as the only politician with the
necessary determination to ‘complete’ Bismarck’s Reich.
The importance of Hitler’s promise to become a ‘second Bismarck’ who
would revise the kleindeutsch borders cannot be overestimated when examining
the reasons for the massive support he received in the early 1930s. The wide-
spread belief in the coming Bismarckian Führer who would lead Germany to
new heights helped to bridge the gulf between Hitler’s intellectually unsophis-
ticated movement and Germany’s educated classes. When Hitler was appoint-
ed as Chancellor of the German Reich on 30 January 1933, he was consequently
first and foremost welcomed by vast sections of the German population as the
man to continue and to complete the work of Bismarck by revising both Ver-
sailles: the kleindeutsch solution of 1871 and the peace settlement of 1919.
Hitler’s ‘seizure of power’ marked the end of the fierce political battle over
Bismarck’s legacy, which had raged between 1918 and 1933. However, the out-
come of this ideological struggle was not what the ‘Bismarckians’ had hoped
for. The men who helped Hitler to power on 30 January 1933 intended to use
the Nazi movement to implement their ‘Bismarckian’ authoritarian policies.
However, even though Nazi propaganda suggested in the coming months that
‘Bismarck’s spirit’ had triumphed with the ‘seizure of power’, Hitler was far
from being interested in a restoration of Bismarck’s Empire. Ironically, the Bis-
marck myth started to lose importance just at the time when its proponents
thought they had achieved their aims.
The mythically exaggerated figure of the Iron Chancellor would never again
leave such a clear trail in Germany’s political culture as it did before 1933. Bis-
marck continued to appear in public debates after 1933 (and indeed after 1945),
 Conclusion 177
but the myth never had the same destructive power as between 1918 and Hitler’s
‘seizure of power’. The main reason for this is clear: one of the few common fea-
tures of Wilhelmine Germany, the ‘Third Reich’, the GDR, and the Federal
Republic, was that there was a basic consensus (either authoritarian or demo-
cratically defined) which protected the existence of the state. The Weimar
Republic completely lacked this basic consensus.
In Weimar, the public debate on Bismarck’s legacy was a fundamental con-
troversy over which norms and values should constitute the German nation-
state. At the very heart of this fierce and uncompromising battle over the past
lay differing and irreconcilable conceptualizations of the present and future of
the German state and people. The public debate on Bismarck thus mirrored
the fundamental lack of any basic political and ethical consensus within
Weimar’s fragmented political culture. It was this lack of consensus which
largely contributed to the failure of Germany’s first democracy.
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 INDEX

Ablaß, Bruno 40 n. 50 Bell, Johannes 30, 68

Abusch, Alexander 165–6 Below, Georg von 58
Adenauer, Konrad 24, 158, 165 Berg, Friedrich von 120
AEG 95 Bergsträßer, Ludwig 104 n. 52
Agrarian League 12, 28 Berlin 16, 64, 70, 74, 106, 112, 113, 114,
Alsace-Lorraine 30, 31, 71–2, 99 149, 155
Anschluß: Berlin Cathedral 18
Allied ban on 36–7, 172 Berlin Treaty (1926) 95 n. 11, 101–3
hopes for 25, 31–7, 41, 99, 134–7, 172, Berndt, Emil 105
176 Bethmann Hollweg, Theobald von 23,
realization of 150–1 25
anti-Semitism 133 Bielefeld 107
anti-socialist legislation 64–9, 113–14, Bismarck, Gottfried von 141
117, 132 Bismarck, Herbert von 13
Aretin, Karl Otmar von 164 Bismarck, Otto von:
Auschwitz 163 ‘Back to Bismarck’ 54, 81, 88, 175
Austria 22, 26, 31–7, 99, 134–8, 149, and charismatic leadership 4, 52, 129,
150–1, 176 143, 175
Austro-German arms fraternity 25, 33 death of 18, 171
Austro-German customs union project dismissal of 11, 53, 74, 87, 88, 91, 150
134–8, 176 eightieth birthday of 14, 88
Austro-German People’s League 34, 135 and election campaigns in Weimar
n. 73, 139 Germany 37–8, 78–92
Authenrith, Otto 52 and exceptional legislation 67–9
and the Federal Republic of Germany
Bad Harzburg 137 155–65
Baden, Max von 28 as German ‘national myth’ 8, 18–24
Bamberger, Ludwig 20 and German reunification 159–60,
Barmat scandal 86 168–70
Barth, Emil 32 and Hindenburg 86–92
Bassermann, Ernst 23 and Hitler 128–55
Battle of Königgrätz 35 hundredth birthday of 25
Battle of the Ruhr 69–73, 76–7, 137, 174 and the idea of Anschluß 30–7, 45,
Bauer, Gustav 53 n. 42 150–1
Bäumer, Gertrud 60 and national unification 14, 49, 75,
Baumgardt, Rudolf 158 166
Bavaria 15, 76 one-hundred-fiftieth birthday 159
Belgium 93, 99 and policy of Blood and Iron 66, 172
210 Index
Bismarck, Otto von (cont.): Brüning, Heinrich 121–4, 134, 135, 136
and political Catholicism 19, 55–6 Bülow, Bernhard von 23
and resistance to Hitler 152–4 Bund der Landwirte, see Agrarian League
and Social Democracy 19, 60–3 Burckhardt, Jacob 14
and Stresemann 93–104 Bürgerblock 84, 86, 101
and Weimar constitution 37–44 BVP 55, 69, 147 n. 12
and Weimar historiography 45–51
and the Weimar right 51–5 Caprivi, Leo von 12–13
and Wilhelm II 11–18 Carlyle, Thomas 6, 154
and World War I 24–9 Cary, Noel D. 90
Bismarck, Otto (II) von 81, 106, 110, Cassirer, Ernst 3
120, 141 Centre Party 15, 19, 27, 41, 47, 55, 64,
Bismarck Archipelago 22 67–9, 75, 78, 84, 86, 90, 101, 121,
Bismarck films 10, 92, 111–12, 151–2, 175 132, 138, 173
Bismarck League 107, 125, 141, 148 CDU 159, 162, 164
Bismarck Memorials 21–3 Christiansen, Werner 135
in Berlin 22, 24, 28 Claß, Heinrich 41, 54, 73
in Buea 22 Cohn, Oskar 40–1
in Darussalam 22 Committee for an Indivisible Germany
in Frankfurt (Main) 152 158–9
in Göttingen 163 Communist International 124
in Hamburg xii, 22, 88 Communist Manifesto 105
at Lake Müggel 147 Constitution Day 59, 114, 117
at Lake Starnberg 147 n. 12 Council of People’s Representatives 31
in Muanza 22 Cruiser A 116
in Munich 110, 149, 163 n. 83 Cuno, Wilhelm 70, 73
National Monument at Bingerbrück Curtius, Julius 134–7
23, 92, 145, 149, 159 Czechoslovakia 93
in Oppeln 46 Czerépy, Anton von 110
in Samoa 22
in Tanga 22 Danube 37
Bismarck Youth 10, 106–9, 125 Danzig 99
see also Bismarck League Dawes, Charles 79
Black Friday 119 Dawes Plan 79–81, 84, 118 n. 1
Bodelschwingh, Friedrich von 15 Day of Potsdam 146
Bohemia 22 DDP 40–1, 78, 83, 84, 101, 104
Bormann, Martin 130 n. 51 Delbrück, Clemens von 40–2
Bracher, Karl Dietrich 164–5 Deutsche Studentenschaft, see German
Braun, Otto 86 n. 35, 122 Students’ Association
Braunschweig 107, 159 Dittmann, Wilhelm 32
Brehm, Fritz 110 DNVP 39–42, 37, 53, 56, 66–9, 78,
Briand, Aristide 99 80–6, 94, 97, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105,
Briand Plan 134 107, 140, 141, 147 n. 12, 148, 174
 Index 211
Dresden 112 Franz Joseph I, Kaiser of Austria and
Droysen, Johann Gustav 32–3 king of Hungary 13
DVP 39–42, 56–7, 65–6, 75, 78, 83, 84, Frederick I, king of Prussia 2
86, 97, 104, 105, 138, 174 Frederick II (the Great), king of Prussia
33, 128, 133–4, 140, 144, 146, 149,
Ebert, Friedrich 32, 34–6, 38, 53 n. 42, 150, 154, 162, 165, 168
61, 64, 70 n. 25, 76, 84, 86, 92, 95, Frederick William I, king of Prussia 140
135, 172, 175 Freedom Law, see Law against the
Eichhorn, Emil 38 Enslavement of the German
Einsiedel, Heinrich von 152 People
Elbe 37 Freedom Party 78
Enabling Law 147 Freikorps 38
Engelberg, Ernst 168 Freyer, Hans 54
Erdmann Karl Dietrich 150, 161 Friedländer, Georg 11
Erhard, Ludwig 159–60 Friedrich-Wilhelm University Berlin 45,
Erlangen 107 70, 153
Etsch 37 Friedrichsfelde graveyard 62
Eupen Malmédy 99 Friedrichsruh 14, 19, 107, 123, 150, 153
Eyck, Erich 157–8
Gay, Peter 44
FDP 159, 163 GDR 159, 165–8, 177
Feder, Ernst 87, 113 Gedanken und Erinnerungen, see
Federal Republic of Germany 155–65, Thoughts and Reminiscences
167, 171, 177 Geiss, Immanuel 160
Fehrenbach, Konstantin 61 general elections:
Fischer, Fritz 161 1919 37
Fischer controversy 161 1920 56
flag: 1924 (May) 78–84, 97, 174
black, red, and gold 36, 41–3, 66, 79, 1924 (December) 84–6, 97, 174
81, 85, 88, 90 1928 107, 113, 134
black, white, and red 42–3, 66, 70, 1930 121
79, 81, 85, 90, 124, 145, 146 1932 (July) 78, 140, 142
controversy over 41–3 1932 (November) 142, 143
Foch, Ferdinand 30 Geneva Protocol 136
Fontane, Theodor 11 German-Austria, see Austria
Fourteen Points 32 German Fatherland Party 28
France: German High Command 39
constitution of 1789 38, 43 German Historical Museum 169
and Locarno 93, 95, 99 German National Constituent Assembly
and occupation of the Ruhr 69–73 34–44, 61, 74, 83
Franco-Prussian War 24, 30, 71–2, 130 n. German Nobility’s Council 120
51, 174 German October 76
Frankfurt Peace Treaty 57 German Officers’ League 152
212 Index
German question: Heidelberg 155
after World War II 159 Heile, Wilhelm 32, 60, 135
hopes for großdeutsch solution to Heimpel, Hermann 159
32–7, 85, 134–8; see also Anschluß Heinemann, Gustav 163–4
kleindeutsch solution to 2, 85, 131, 134, Heinze, Rudolf 39–40, 57
138, 172 Held, Heinrich 110
German Reich: Helfferich, Karl 80
constitution of 1871 38, 43, 51, 82, 121, Hellpach, Willy 86 n. 35
144 Hergt, Oskar 81, 85
foundation of 20, 52, 61, 111 Herrhausen, Alfred 169
military defeat in World War I 29, 50, Hesse 106
74 Heuss, Theodor 104, 160
German reunification 145, 159, 168–9 Heydebrand und der Lasa, Ernst von
German Students’ Association 22 23
Gerstenmaier, Eugen 162 Heydemann, Günther 168
Geschichtspolitik 5 Hindenburg, Paul von 28, 53 n. 42,
Goebbels, Joseph 130, 139, 146, 147 86–92, 101, 104, 105, 111, 137, 140,
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 157 142, 145, 175
Goetz, Walter 72, 76 Hirsch 147
Göring, Karl 12 Hitler, Adolf 4, 18, 54, 124, 127–55, 159,
Goslar 107 162, 165, 166, 176
Graef, Walther 67 Hitler putsch 76, 108, 129
Graefe, Albrecht von 73 n. 40 Hitler Youth 141
Great Britain 93, 95–6 Hoermann, Franz Xaver 55–6
Great Depression 117, 119–20, 136 Hoetzsch, Otto 45–7, 95 n.8, 103, 153
Great Elector 33 Hofmann, Karl von 17
Great War, see World War I Hohenzollern 2, 53, 108, 112, 171
Grimm, Jacob 89 Honecker, Erich 167
Gröber, Adolf 19, 42 Hugenberg, Alfred 10, 94, 103, 118 n. 2,
Groener, Wilhelm 137 142
hyperinflation 73, 77
Haase, Hugo 32
Haffner, Sebastian 59 Imperial Germany, see Kaiserreich
Halbwachs, Maurice 5 see also Wilhelmine Germany
Haller, Johannes 49, 146 Inter-Party Committee 27
Hamburg 81, 88, 105, 106, 160 Iron Chancellor, see Otto von
Hanover 106 Bismarck
HAPAG 70 Italy 93, 149
Harden, Maximilian 17
Hartmann, Ludo 34 Jacobi, Hugo 17
Hassel, Ulrich von 153, 154 Jarres, Karl 86 n. 35, 87–8, 174
Hatzfeldt, Paul von 96 Jaspers, Karl 155, 160
Haushofer, Karl 135 Joel, Curt Walter 137 n. 85
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 43 Jogiches, Leo 62
 Index 213
Kaden, Richard 143 Lenz, Max 47, 74 n. 42
Kahl, Wilhelm 42, 66, 123 Levi, Paul 62–3
Kahr, Gustav von 76 Lewinsohn, Richard 1, 61
Kaiserreich 2–3, 11–29, 33, 45, 54, 55, 69, Liebeneiner, Wolfgang 151
75, 122, 132, 166, 171, 175 Liebknecht, Karl 38, 62
see also Wilhelmine Germany Löbe, Paul 34, 37, 62, 135, 172
Kantorowicz, Hermann Ulrich 1, 57–9, Locarno Treaties 93–9, 101–2, 112
77 Loebell, Friedrich Wilhelm von
Kapp-Lüttwitz putsch 53, 75, 108 110
Kardorff, Siegfried von 105 n. 53 London payment plan 79
Kehr, Eckart 50 Lower Saxony 106
Kessler, Harry Count 21, 89 Ludendorff, Erich 28
Kielmannsegg, Peter Count 164 Ludwig, Emil 59
Kiesinger, Georg 164 Luther, Hans 42 n. 62, 86, 87 n. 36, 93,
Kirdorf, Emil 110, 141 94, 101
Kisch, Egon Erwin 147 Luther, Martin 33, 162
Königgrätz 35, 98 Luxemburg, Rosa 38, 62
Korfes, Otto 152–3 Lyon, Otto 17
Köster, Adolf 68 n. 16
KPD 38, 60–3, 69, 78, 90, 114, 116–17, McGuire, Michael 8
121, 123–4, 147 Machtan, Lothar 8
Krestinskij, Nikolaj 101 Mackensen, August von 108, 120
Kube, Wilhelm 106 Magdeburg 106, 125
Kulturkampf 2, 48, 68, 82 Mann, Heinrich 144
Kunersdorf 154 Mann, Thomas 144 n. 112
Künstler, Franz 111 Marcks, Erich 24, 47–8
Kyffhäuser League 105, 123 n. 26 Marx, Karl 130, 139
Marx, Wilhelm 84, 86, 87, 90, 101, 175
Landsberg 127, 130, 131 Mehring, Franz 62
Lang, Fritz 110, 112 Meinecke, Friedrich 33–4, 48 n. 12,
Laverrenz, Wilhelm 42, 81 156
Law against the Enslavement of the Meyer, Arnold Oskar 157 n. 56
German People 118 Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig 62
Law for the Protection of the Republic Miracle of the House of Brandenburg
64–9, 113, 174 154
League for the Erection of a Bismarck Mischler, Franz 85
National Monument 23, 109, 120, misery theory 165–6
141, 142, 145, 175 Moeller van den Bruck, Arthur 54, 139
League of German Students 98 Moltke, Helmuth von 111
League of Nations 36, 93, 94, 99, 101, monarchism 53, 87, 108
103, 136 Moscow 101–2, 124, 152
Lebensraum 132 MSPD 27, 34, 37, 42–3, 61, 78
Leipzig 69 see also SPD
Lenbach, Franz von 131 Müller, Hermann 30, 114, 116, 121, 142
214 Index
Müller, Karl Alexander von 110, 143 Pompeckj, Josef Felix 113 n. 101
Munich 57, 85, 109, 119, 129 Posadowsky-Wehner, Arthur von 39–40
Potthoff, Heinz 58–9
Näf, Werner 50 Preuß, Hugo 35, 39, 42 n. 61, 43
name-change debate 40–1 Primus-Palast 111–12
Napoleon III, emperor 24 Prussia 2, 11, 15, 19, 37, 83, 87, 109, 112,
National Committee of Free Germany 122, 139–40, 146, 149, 154, 171
152 Prussian constitutional conflict 51, 75,
National Front of Unity 70 n. 27, 73 129, 130
National Liberal Party 27, 75 Prussian Lower House 62
Naumann, Friedrich 21, 26 Prussian Upper House 23
Nazi Party 54, 121, 123, 124–5, 134, Prussian reforms 59
139–44, 148 primacy of foreign policy 49–50
Neithardt, Georg 130 Progressive Party 16, 27, 132
Neue Ostpolitik 163 Pschorr, Joseph 110
New York 119
Nietzsche, Friedrich 51, 130 Quarck, Max 42
Night of the Long Knives 148
North German Federation 138 Radbruch, Gustav 67–8
Noske, Gustav 38, 53 n. 42, 62, 117 Ranke, Leopold von 130
November Revolution, see revolution of Rapallo 95 n. 11, 102
1918–19 Rathenau, Walther:
NSDAP, see Nazi Party assassination of 63–6, 69, 174
Nuremberg trials 155 as member of League for the Erection
of a Bismarck National Monument
Oder 37 23
Olden, Rudolf 59 Realpolitik 98, 137
Olmütz 140 Redslob, Edwin 59
Oncken, Hermann 33–4, 48 n. 12, 49 Reformation 33
Organization Consul 64 Reich Foundation Day 15 n. 21, 45, 57,
Ossietzky, Carl von 141–2, 147 60–2, 66, 104, 122, 126
Oswald, Paul 56 Reichsbahn 80
Reichsbank 80
passive resistance 71–3, 75, 174 Reichsbanner 85–6
Pan-German League 25 n. 66, 28, 34, 39 Reichsblock 87 n. 36, 88, 89, 92, 174
nn. 42 & 43, 41, 90, 103–4, 105, 149 Reichskunstwart 59
Pannwitz, Rudolf 71 Reichstag 22, 31, 69, 70, 74, 78, 80, 94,
Papen, Franz von 142 102–3, 104, 121, 122, 123
Patriotic Leagues 1, 39, 105, 123 n. 26 Reichstag fire 147
Paulskirche 35–6, 51, 83, 92, 160, 164 Reims 155
Poincaré, Raymond 70–2, 174 Reinsurance Treaty 18, 95, 102, 103, 152
Poland 93, 94, 99, 102 Renan, Ernest 6
policy of productive mortgages 71 republicans by reason 48
Pomerania 106 Rethwisch, Konrad 17
 Index 215
Reusch, Paul 110 Soviet Union 94, 95, 153, 167
revolution of 1848 2, 7, 44, 59, 66, 83, Spahn, Martin 26
89, 92, 166, 172, 173, 175 Spahn, Peter 19
revolution of 1918–19 2, 7, 28–9, 52, 59, Spartacist Uprising 38–9
61, 75, 114, 118, 140, 172, 173 SPD 16, 19, 25, 47, 60–3, 67–8, 73, 75,
Rhineland 99 78, 85–6, 101, 104, 111, 113–17, 123–4,
Richter, Eugen 73 138, 163, 173, 174, 176
Ritter, Gerhard 161–2 see also MSPD; USPD
Röhm purge 149 Spengler, Oswald 54, 110
Roosevelt, Franklin D. 154 Spieckernagel, Wilhelm 106
Rosenberg, Alfred 151–2 spirit of 1870–1 71
Rothardt, Erwin 86 spirit of 1914 71
Rothfels, Hans 158 Srbik, Heinrich Ritter von 150
Ruhr, occupation of 70–2, 77 stab-in-the-back-myth 3, 39, 173
Stahlhelm 53, 105, 120, 123 n. 26, 125,
SA 141, 148 147 n. 12
Saar 99 Stalingrad 152, 163
St Germain, Treaty of 36 n. 30, 135, 136 Stampfer, Friedrich 113, 117
Saitschick, Robert 157 state crisis of 1922–3 64–77, 84
Salin, Edgar 120 Stauffenberg, Claus von 153–4
Schäfer, Dietrich 82 Stettin 107
Scharnagel, Karl 110 Stinnes, Hugo 9
Scheidemann, Philipp 32, 62, 79, 82 Stolberg-Wernigerode, Albrecht von
Schleicher, Kurt von 137 97–8, 100 n. 31, 103
Schober, Johann 136 Stölzl, Christoph 169
Schücking, Walther 68–9 Strasser, Gregor 121
Schulze, Hagen 100 Stresemann, Gustav 9–10, 65–6, 73–6,
Schulze-Pfaelzer, Gerhard 88 84–5, 87 n. 36, 93–104, 120, 133,
Schwerin von Krosigk, Lutz Count 142 134
SED 166–8 swastika 70, 145
Sedan 15, 72, 112, 130, 164 Sybel, Heinrich von 33
Sedan Day 15 n. 21, 28
Seeckt, Hans von 95 Tannenberg 87, 88
seizure of power 144–7 Thälmann, Ernst 90, 116, 147
Seldte, Franz 120, 125–6, 142 Third Reich 108, 124, 126, 137, 139, 141,
Seven Years War 154 145–55, 157, 158, 177
Siegen 107 Thoughts and Reminiscences 17–18, 20,
Siemens 95 53, 130, 131, 149
Sieveking, Hermann Otto 107, 120, 125 Thuringia 106, 142
Socialist Workers’ Youth 107 Thyssen, Fritz 110, 120, 141
Sollmann, Wilhelm 104 Tirpitz, Alfred von 84, 87
Sommer, Theo 169 Traub, Gottfried 43
Sonderweg 158, 161–2 Treitschke, Heinrich von 130
Sorbonne University 6 Tyrell, Albrecht 128
216 Index
Uhland, Ludwig 83, 88 Weimar historiography 45–51
Ulbricht, Walter 166–7 Weimar Republic:
unemployment 119–20 foundation of 37–44
United States 119 dissolution of 118–44
USPD 38, 40, 66, 78 Werner, Anton von 60, 164
Weser 37
Vaterländische Verbände, see Patriotic Wessel, Horst 141
Leagues Westarp, Kuno Count 10, 36–7,
Versailles: 52 n. 34, 82, 95 n. 11, 103
Imperial Proclamation 2, 37, 62, 87, Westphal, Otto 43
104, 112, 163–4, 176 Wilhelm II, Kaiser 13, 18–19, 24–5, 38,
Peace Conference at 30, 37, 42, 88, 93, 50, 53, 59 n. 64, 108, 111, 120, 152, 171
172–3 Wilhelmine Germany 7, 11–29, 54, 106,
Treaty of 1, 37, 39, 57, 71, 80–1, 97, 177
100, 125, 134, 135, 137, 176 see also Kaiserreich
Vistula 37 Wilson, Woodrow 28, 32
Volksblock 87, 89, 175 Winckler, Friedrich 85
Volksgemeinschaft 7, 108 Wirth, Joseph 59, 64, 122, 125, 137 n. 85
Wolff, Theodor 9, 32, 57
Wallraff, Max 81, 85, 109, 119, 143 n. 110, World War I 1, 7, 24–9, 50, 72, 74, 88,
145 98, 99, 110, 132, 153, 156, 161, 172, 175
Wars of Liberation 2, 26, 59, 61, 66, 112, World War II 136 n. 82, 152–5, 156, 159
154, 164, 166 Wright, Jonathan 75
Wars of Unification 24, 54, 112 Wulle, Reinhold 41
Weber, Max 27, 35 Württemberg-Hohenzollern 15, 107
Weber, Wilhelm 70
Weimar Constitution: Young Plan 117–19
and Anschluß 35–6
and Article 3 42–3 Zechlin, Egmont 161
and Article 48 121 Zehrer, Hans 135
and Constitution of 1871 43, 173 Ziehen, Ludwig 111
criticism of 52 Ziekursch, Johannes 50–1
and Law for the Protection of the Zollverein 135, 138
Republic 68 Zukunftsstaat 19