The Prussian generals were unimpressed by such sentimental nonsense.24 They were winning a vital war, carving out an empire by crushing their greatest historical enemy; Paris had not even surrendered when Bismarck decided to make his move and announce the unification of Germany. His timing was perfect. With the Prussians winning on all sides nobody, least of all the other German princes, was in a position to refuse him. The German army headquarters, the king, Bismarck, the Prussian court, the government of Prussia and the representatives from the North German Confederation were all crowded together in Versailles, along with the courts of twenty German princes. On 18 January 1871 the representatives were called in to Louis XIV’s magnificent Hall of Mirrors and forced to watch as King William was declared German emperor. At the stroke of a pen Berlin had been elevated to the capital of a united Germany.
Not all Germans were pleased by these developments. The south German states had conformed but many resented Prussian dominance and the exclusion of Austria – and Vienna – from the new Germany. Some complained that the state could not be considered ‘unified’ despite the foundation of the Reich as one-third of the German speakers of Europe remained outside its borders. Furthermore Germany remained a land of regions: there were still kingdoms within the Reich, including Saxony and Bavaria, grand duchies (including Hessen), and free cities like Hamburg and Bremen – each proud of its identity. Berlin was not a popular choice for capital in much of the rest of Germany and there were many in Nuremberg, Frankfurt and beyond who felt that their cities would have made better, worthier and, best of all, anti-Prussian centres; Munich above all saw itself as a rival to Berlin, particularly as a centre of the arts, and Prince Otto of Bavaria was not atypical when he said, ‘I cannot even describe … how infinitely sad and hurt I felt during the ceremony … Everything was so cold, so proud, so glittering, so showy and swaggering and heartless and empty.’25
But despair was not confined to other Germans. Many conservative Prussians were dismayed at the loss of their little kingdom and even King William of Prussia wept, overcome by what he saw as the destruction of his ancestral Prussian crown. He had never wanted to be emperor of Germany, but with Bismarck dictating policy he had little choice. He pointedly refused to shake Bismarck’s hand during the ceremony and would soon be heard to mutter that ‘it was not easy being King under such a Chancellor’. But none of these things bothered Bismarck.26 He had fulfilled his dream to become leader of the Second Reich. He had ended two centuries of Austrian involvement in Germany and the particularist tradition of the Old Reich. He had stifled German dualism and German confederation, and he had destroyed Old Prussia. Bismarck was now eager to assume power in Berlin. He sought to be made Chancellor and Foreign Minister of Germany as well as Minister President of Prussia, and set out to rule a country in which the Reichstag had no real power and the people had no popular representation and no Bill of Rights. Erstwhile liberals became increasingly conservative and Germany developed an ever more aggressive chauvinistic nationalism.
These developments fuelled the ahistorical post-1945 thesis that the nation had followed a Sonderweg by not developing ‘correctly’ into a Western liberal representative democracy like England or the United States. The thesis was absurd; Germany was not unique – Russia also refused to follow the so-called ‘correct path – and the notion that history follows such ‘courses’ is simplistic. Even so, Bismarck stymied the creation of a stable parliamentary system and retained some of the most oppressive aspects of Prussian rule. It was this inflexibility which would ultimately lead to its complete collapse.28
After 1871 Berlin’s political power increased dramatically. It now housed the federal government, including its executive – the Kaiser and the Chancellor, who personally controlled all aspects of German foreign and military policy as Article XI of the constitution declared that ‘presidency of the union belongs to the King of Prussia who shall, in this capacity, be termed German Emperor’. Berlin was the main benefactor of the German Constitution of 1871, which turned it into the centre of the federal union of twenty-five allied states. Although each had a representative assembly of its own, they also now sent delegates to the Bundesrat or Federal Council and to the Reichstag or National Parliament, made up of representatives elected by male suffrage and secret ballot. The Bundesrat and the Reichstag controlled most aspects of German commerce, transportation, communication, patents, tolls and matters relating to the economy. The individual states were left to govern their own police forces, education and health, but any important measures had to pass through the Berlin Bundesrat which was dominated by the Prussian state government. This was a backward, undemocratic parliamentary system which represented the landowners, aristocrats and Junkers through an electoral system which based status on the amount of taxes paid by the candidate.29 And yet as the largest state, with seventeen out of fifty-eight votes in the Bundesrat, Prussia could control most important decisions in the federal government. Berlin’s own political structure reflected this conservatism; the mayor-elect of Berlin had to be confirmed by the Kaiser and despite its large urban proletariat the three-tier voting system ensured a politically ‘reliable’ mayor, as reflected in the continuing electoral success of Adolph Wermuth, bürgerlich mayor of Berlin until 1920.30 Politically, there was no question that Bismarck’s Berlin was the powerhouse of the Reich. Berliners were impressed by their status and many put aside their reservations to bask in the glow of the power and authority of the post-unification city. Above all, they began to make money.
Within months of the grand victory parade the city had become wildly prosperous, its fortunes boosted by the 5 billion francs indemnity pouring in from France. Felix Philippi wrote, ‘Everyone, everyone flew into the flame … the market had bullish orgies; millions, coined right out of the ground, were won; national prosperity rose to apparently unimagined heights. A shower of gold rained down on the drunken city.’31 Industry boomed, the population skyrocketed, and a frenzy of luxury and materialism marked the glorious age of the Gründerzeit or ‘time of foundations’, a term which alluded not only to the Empire, but also to the sheer number of new companies created at the time.
The years following the creation of the empire were undisturbed by war. Bismarck had achieved all he wanted through the military; now he tried to avoid conflict through a carefully balanced foreign policy dictated by Realpolitik. He survived the stock market crash of 1873, which saw the destruction of economic liberalism, and he enhanced his comprehensive system of social security reforms. But a shadow was soon to pass over the prosperous new capital. Years before, the revolutionary citizens had hated the ‘Cartridge Prince’ who had tried to crush the 1848 revolution, but by the 1880s their old Kaiser William I had become a revered and beloved figure. Revolutionary talk had moved to the slums and the back streets, and the well-to-do had become enthusiastic supporters of the new order which had brought them such wealth.
In 1887 rumours began to fly through the cafés and offices that the Kaiser was ill; loyal subjects gathered beneath the palace windows waiting for news, and bulletins were put up every few hours. After a short illness the Kaiser died at the age of ninety-one, sixteen years after the birth of the empire.
For decades, the crown prince Frederick William had waited in the wings for a chance to rule, nurturing his liberal values and holding an alternative court on Unter den Linden with his wife Vicky. Young Etonians had cheerfully pushed the royal carriage from the train station to Windsor the day the prince married Queen Victoria’s eldest daughter, and the young man was popular in England. The gentleman prince had been the great moderate hope of the future; his preference for British liberalism and hatred of Bismarck made him the only man who might successfully have challenged the all-encompassing power of the Junkers, and many hoped that he would introduce a constitutional monarchy modelled on the English system. But fate intervened. The pair had waited thirty years for the throne, but when Frederick finally succeeded he was a dying man. The throat cancer which now ravaged his body had made him speechless and he could only breathe through a little silver tube pushed into his windpipe. His illness had become a great source of tension between England and Germany; German doctors had pronounced his tumour malignant early on and would probably have saved him had they operated immediately, but Vicky had relied on the incorrect diagnosis of her Scottish doctor, sentencing her husband to an early