Berlin

The most significant building to be completed in Berlin under Wilhelm II was not commissioned by the kaiser, nor did it win his approval. This was the new Reichstag, started in 1884 and dedicated a decade later. Bismarck had originally proposed that the lower assembly be housed in a simple structure on the Wilhelmstrasse, but a group of Berlin politicians and architects complained that this would hardly be adequate for the parliament of “the newly unified, victorious German nation, on the verge of taking over the leadership of Europe.” Searching for an appropriate site, a parliamentary committee recommended a sizable plot on the Königsplatz then occupied by the derelict palace of a Polish-Prussian aristocrat named Athanasius Raczynski. It took over twenty years to arrange for the purchase and demolition of Raczynski’s palace and to begin construction on the new building. The structure that finally opened for business in 1894 was, like so many public buildings in the capital, a mixture of styles, something like a cross between the Paris Opera and a Palladian palazzo. Its architect, Paul Wallot, had been charged with capturing the German spirit in stone, and he perhaps unwittingly achieved this through the eclectic confusion of his design. “It was,” as historian Michael Cullen has written, “a house that could not decide what it wanted to be.” The building’s ornate exterior adornments suggested a reverence for Prussian military glory rather than for parliamentary democracy. A twenty-foot-tall statue entitled Germania in the Saddle rose above the western facade, while a relief of St. George the Dragon-Slayer, bearing the visage of Bismarck, crowned the main entrance. For some, the building’s showiness symbolized all too well the lack of substance prevailing inside. In a contemporary novel entitled Bismarcks Nachfolger

(Bismarck’s Successors), the protagonist, a progressive parliamentary representative, laments that the new building was useless for practical political work, “with its front steps only good for parade viewing and its real entrance hidden confusedly in a narrow back street.” Another deficiency was a lack of work rooms for the delegates, who thus spent most of their time in the house restaurant, the Fraktion Schulze. Even Kaiser Wilhelm thought the structure “the height of tastelessness,” which, given his high tolerance for kitsch, was saying something. He complained loudly over the 22 million marks that had been spent on this “ape house of the Reich.” To show his contempt, he entered the building only twice during his entire reign. Wilhelm also vetoed Wallot’s proposed inscription over the entrance: Dem deutschen Volke (To the German People). The kaiser preferred Der deutschen Einheit

(To German Unity). Many Berliners, meanwhile, said that more appropriate slogans might be Entry Barred to the German People, or Beware of Pickpockets. The inscription Dem deutschen Volke was finally added in 1916 as part of the government’s futile effort to maintain morale at home in the face of increasing wartime privations.

Siegesallee, circa 1903

The architectural addition to Berlin’s topography of which the emperor was most proud was the Siegesallee (1901), an avenue in the Tiergarten lined with the marble busts of Hohenzollern heroes. The kaiser himself provided drawings for the figures, ordering that some of them bear the features of contemporary supporters. Thus the Elector Frederick I, founder of the Hohenzollern dynasty, looked startlingly like Philipp zu Eulenburg, Wilhelm’s closest friend. Although Wilhelm firmly believed that his new avenue would raise Berlin’s standing in the world, the project merely added to the German capital’s reputation for pretentious posturing. Contemplating one of the ensembles, a fountain dedicated to Roland, a foreign diplomat commented that he had not realized that “even flowing water could be made to be ugly.” Simplicissimus

, the Munich humor magazine, ran a cartoon showing a visitor declaring: “My, how beautiful everything is here! Even the bird shit is made of marble!” To many locals, the avenue was a source of embarrassment. They labeled it die Puppenallee—avenue of the dolls.

Wilhelm was indignant over the Berliners’ mockery of his bequest. He decided to punish the city by denying it his imperial presence for extended periods. “Once the Berliners have gone for some time without seeing the imperial carriage,” he said, “they will come crawling back on all fours.”