Berlin

Berlin’s dramatic growth and bustling modernity did not, in general, make it any more respected in the rest of the country. On the contrary, these developments further alarmed Germans who had believed for some time that the city was too big, too industrialized, too unruly, too “cosmopolitan.” In the first decade of the twentieth century Germany’s popular press was filled with horror stories about life in the big city. Pamphlets entitled “The Sterile Berlin” (1913) or “The Perverse Berlin” (1910) focused on the soul-killing effects of industrialization and the sinfulness of the capital’s nightlife. Operating within a long tradition of agrarian-Romantic hostility to urbanism, the “cultural pessimist” Julius Langbehn identified Berlin as the epicenter of all modern evil. The new capital, he said, was “an abode of rationalism. . . an enemy of creative education,” afflicted with a vast “spiritual emptiness.” Even Germans who found the place exciting often wondered if it was really suited to be the first city of the nation. There can be no doubt that of the major European capitals, Berlin remained the least loved among its own nationals.

But I Didn’t Offer You a Fountain!

When it came to ambiguity about Berlin, Kaiser Wilhelm II himself set the tone. Although he was born and raised in the old Prussian capital, and was rightly seen to have absorbed much of its spirit, he grew to dislike the city profoundly. It has become fashionable lately to write histories of Germany and Berlin in the Wilhelmian era without considering Wilhelm. However, a proper understanding of Berlin’s evolution from 1888, when Wilhelm II came to the throne, to the empire’s collapse in 1918 surely demands some appreciation of the man who gave his name to the age, and who in many respects personified the city from which he so disastrously ruled his young nation.

Bismarck with Kaiser Wilhelm II, 1888

On March 9, 1888, old Kaiser Wilhelm I died in his narrow camp bed at Berlin, which had changed so much in his lifetime that he had become increasingly bewildered by the city. His successor, fifty-six-year-old Friedrich Wilhelm, who took the title Friedrich III, did not, as custom dictated, march in his father’s funeral procession. Five months earlier he had been diagnosed with throat cancer, and by the time he inherited the throne he was a dying man, scarcely able to speak and certainly in no condition to take a long walk in the cold. Thus he witnessed the funeral procession from a window of Charlottenburg Palace, whispering, as the cortege passed below, “That is where I ought to be now.” In fact, he would be there soon enough, but not among the mourners.

The reign of Friedrich III lasted only ninety-nine days. Because his rule was so short, the new monarch could not make much of an impact. His effectiveness was also impeded by the machinations of Bismarck and his ultraconservative chief of staff, Count Alfred von Waldersee. They had long feared that Friedrich, who was known to share some of the liberal sympathies of his English wife, Vicky, would attempt to reform Germany along the constitutional lines prevailing in England. They distrusted him too for his openly friendly attitude toward the Jews, which he had demonstrated by attending a service at a Berlin synagogue dressed in a Prussian field marshal’s uniform. Having done their best to undermine his influence when he was crown prince, they now exploited his illness to keep him on the sidelines of the political action in Berlin.

Bismarck and Waldersee had an eager ally in the dying Kaiser’s son, Prince Wilhelm, who had become deeply estranged from his father and mother, whose liberal policies he saw as a threat to his own autocratic ambitions. Young Wilhelm’s greatest fear was that Friedrich, once he was emperor, would team up with progressive elements in the capital to democratize Germany before he could take control. For the short duration of Friedrich’s reign, Wilhelm acted as if his father were already dead, brazenly usurping royal prerogatives and openly siding with the Bismarck faction against his parents. As a member of the British Embassy noted: “There was all through this grim period . . . a conspicuous absence of chivalry in Berlin.”

The macabre wait for Friedrich’s demise ended on June 15, 1888. True to form, his son and successor hardly bothered to show remorse, shortening the usual period of mourning to only two days and inviting no foreign heads of state to the funeral. Wilhelm even ordered soldiers to cordon off the cortege route so that Berliners would have difficulty paying their last respects to the dead monarch. Wilhelm’s object was to banish his father’s memory as quickly as possible, so that no one could dwell on the possibility that a more liberal Germany might have emerged had Friedrich III been allowed a long and vigorous rule.