The Iron Chancellor and the“Enemies of the Reich”

1872/73: Kulturkampf begins: Prussian laws impose lay school inspectors and regulate the training of priests.

1875: Unification of Marxist and Lassallean socialists.

1878/79: Détente with Catholicism; Anti-Socialist Law; shift to protective tariffs; alliance with Austria.

1883/84: Laws for national health insurance and disability pensions for factory workers

1884/85: Germany founds colonies in Africa and the South Pacific

1890: Kaiser Wilhelm II dismisses Bismarck

1898: Publication of Bismarck’s memoirs

The German Empire of 1871-1918

“Homage to Kaiser Wilhelm I,” (Berlin, 1871; Luther, Frederick the Great, & Blücher already

hang on the wall)

Early session of the German Reichstag, 1872, in the former Royal Porcelain Factory

Bismarck took alarm at the overlap between Catholicism and secessionism

“Night on the Rhine,” Berliner Wespen,

March 17, 1871 (the

Center Party won 17% of the national

vote that year)

“In Canossa: How the Delegate for Meppen [Windthorst] Would Like to See Bismarck Stymied,”

Der Ulk, May 22, 1872

The Police offer “Assistance” to socialist leaders and Bishop Melchers, Ulk, 9 April 1874

“Between Berlin & Rome” (May 1875)

The Gothic parish church at Kiedrich, near Wiesbaden, contains another sort of “Bismarck

monument”

Kiedrich Parish Church, Stations of the Cross (1877)

Bismarck as Christ’s tormentor (Adalbert Falk looks on)

“Modus vivendi” (March 1878):

After the election of Leo XIII, the Pope

offers his slipper for Bismarck to kiss, and the

Iron Chancellor reciprocates.

Ludwig Windhorst looks

on anxiously.

“’Of One Mind.’(For Once!),”Punch, Jan.

1879.Bismarck and

Leo XIII together slam the door on “socialism, nihilism,

democracy.”

Anton von Werner, “The Congress of Berlin, June-July 1878”(Bismarck cooperated with Benjamin Disraeli)

“The same old hurdy-gurdy! ‘The Song of the

Bad Jews,’”Berliner Wespen,

July 16, 1875.The Kreuz-Zeitung

depicts:

1. Jewish politicians breaking into the national treasury

2. Bismarck bowing to “King Bleichröder”

3. “The persecution of the Christians in 1875” (Jewish stockbrokers slaughter German investors)

“The Triple Alliance,”

Kladderadatsch, 1883:

France and Russia are left out in the cold

The empires of East Central Europe:Italy joined the Triple Alliance with Germany and

Austria-Hungary in 1882

“Dissolution of the Reichstag,” Kladderadatsch, 7 July 1878:

“The arrow is aimed at the Social Democrats, but what if he misses?”

NATIONAL LIBERAL LEADERS, 1878Wehrenpfennig, Lasker, Heinrich von Treitschke, J. Miquel

Roggenbach, Karl Braun, Rudolf Gneist, Ludwig Bamberger

“The Mighty Trinity” (September 1880): “The Reich Chancellor conferred yesterday with the Prime Minister of

Prussia and the new Minister of Commerce. Perfect harmony prevailed…”

REPRESSION UNDER THE ANTI-SOCIALIST LAW IN THE 1880s:

The police dissolve a workers’ rally after judging that the speaker had advocated socialism.

The police search a worker’s apartment

for socialist pamphlets or

magazines, smuggled from

Switzerland.

Robert Koehler, “The Strike” (Munich, 1886):With unions outlawed, strikes often erupted in

violence.

The Calvinist Court Preacher Adolf Stöcker

founded a “Christian Social Party” in Berlin

in 1878 to inoculate

workers against Marxism.

“Germany’s Dawn. The Kaiser

Proclaims Social Reform on the

Ethical Foundation of Christianity,” Die Wahrheit,

September 1882 (note the unhappy

Jew at left)

“Experimental Socialism: ‘What a lovely show, but

alas, only a show.’”Kladderadatsch,

25 May 1884.The “Right to

Work” tames the working-class lion.

“The Ideal of the Old-Age Pensions

Law,” Kladderadatsch, April 21, 1889:

Civil servants wait on the elderly hand and foot

“The Partition of the Dark

Continent” (June 1884):

Colonialists exhort Bismarck not to

fall behind France and Great Britain

King Leopold II of Belgium, who hired H.M. Stanley to found the “Congo Free State,” and Stanley’s Congo Expedition

of 1874-1877

The Berlin Congo Conference of 1884/85 recognized Leopold’s “Congo Free State,” agreed to suppress slavery, and established rules to define “effective

occupation”

The Partition of Africa:

The Marginal European presence

in 1878 and the colonial empires of

1914

“The New Petticoat”

(March 1885):Bismarck has

just sold Germania the latest French

fashion, a colonial

petticoat. Her old housekeeper,

Windthorst, is appalled by the

expense

RESULTS OF THE SAMPLE REICHSTAG ELECTIONS, 1871-1884

Year Soc.Dem.

Left Liberal

National

Liberal

Center Party

Free Conserv

.

German Conserv

.

Seces-sionist

1871

3/0.5 9/12 30/33 19/17 9/10 14/15 6/6

1877 9/3 8/9 30/36 25/23 8/10 10/10 10/8

1884 10/6 18/17 18/13 23/25 7/7 15/20 8/11

• Each result is expressed as a percentage of the popular vote, then of the Reichstag seats.

• In each district, if no candidate received an absolute majority in the first round, the election would be held again; in the second round, a plurality sufficed.

• Voter turnout in 1871 was only 51%.

THE NEW KAISER VISITS

CHANCELLOR BISMARCK AT

FRIEDRICHSRUH.Bismarck said,

“The Kaiser is like a balloon; if you let

go of the string, you never know where he’ll wind

up.”

Kaiser Wilhelm II (1888-1918) The Pilot Leaves the

Ship,Punch, March 1890

Bismarck in retirement (in 1895 at

Friedrichsruh, outside

Hamburg)

“Chancellors Come in Three

Sizes,”Lustige Blätter, January 1895

Bismarck in the uniform of a cavalry

general, Bad Kreuznach,

1896

The official Bismarck monument in Berlin (1897-1901):

Sibylle peers into the book of history, and Germania puts her heel on the leopard of rebellion and discord

Germania, built from 1874 to 1885 by Johannes

Schilling with contributions from the veterans of the

Franco-Prussian War

Germania Detail: The Conquest of Paris and Lyrics to “The Watch on the Rhine”

The voluntary Bismarck monument outside Hamburg

(completed in 1906)

Bismarck as Medieval Knight