Music in the Third Reich – 1933-1945

© Copyright Peter Crawford 2013

GERMAN  MUSIC – 1933-1945

In the years 1933-1945, Hitler’s National Socialist Workers Party used music as a tool to forge political unity among Germans.

Hitler and the senior NSDAP leadership instinctively grasped that among the arts, music was the most readily laden with ideology, and could inculcate both the youth and the masses with state-serving Bildung.

NSDAP © Copyright Peter Crawford 2013

Hitler-Jugend © Copyright Peter Crawford 2013

National Socialist music education, promoted heavily by and among the Hitler Youth, expanded along with concerns of “cultural Bolshevism,” and served as a counterpoint to “degenerate music.”

Once in power, Hitler moved to purge music and music scholarship of Jews, in an effort to promote the unique origin of the German Volk, and further saturate citizens with racial theories.

In keeping with origin myths and racialism were the Romantic works of the composer Richard Wagner, a prominent anti-Semite who would assume supreme musical status in Hitler’s Germany.

In such a personalized regime as Hitler’s, the dictator’s tastes virtually defined official aesthetic norms. 

Throughout the period of Hitler’s chancellorship, the musical bureaucracy of the NSDAP would struggle to balance the tensions between art music (symbolized by Wagner) and popular demand for music such as jazz. 

Justified by vague  memos from their Führer, Hitler’s close associates carved out their own personal spheres of influence.

Hitler’s unwillingness to clearly lay out lines of command, combined with his intense personal interest in artistic policy, resulted in an administrative situation in the arts which was exceedingly complicated.

In 1933, competing National Socialist entities separately claimed control of all musical theaters in the Reich, proclaimed jurisdiction over all state musicians, pronounced guidelines for publication of musical materials, and sparred over administration of musical culture generally.

Alfred Rosenberg

A key figure in these struggles, and a key figure in any study of Nazi cultural policy, was Alfred Rosenberg.
For all of his failings – from inflating Hitler’s trust to vacillating administration in the occupation of the East – Rosenberg undeniably possessed a keen awareness of the power and potency of art forms as a means of ideological struggle.

In response to electoral defeats in 1928, Rosenberg had fashioned a political contingent upon the arts that would attract the German middle class to the NSDAP.

He also established the ‘Nazi Society for German Culture’ [Nationalsozialistische Gesellshaft für deutsche Kultur].

In keeping with the administrative entropy that characterized Nazi operations, Rosenberg’s Society for German Culture spawned still more organizations.

‘The League of Struggle for German Culture’ [Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur], founded in 1930, became an important offshoot.

This organization consisted of departments for music, cinema, visual arts, and radio, and effectively served as the forerunner of Goebbel’s ‘Ministry for Enlightenment and Propaganda’ [Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda].

Berlin Philharmonic

Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur (KfdK), was a nationalistic anti-Semitic political society during the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich. It was founded in 1928 as the Nationalsozialistische Gesellschaft für deutsche Kultur (NGDK) [National Socialist Society for German Culture] by Alfred Rosenberg, and remained under his leadership until it was reorganized and renamed as the Nationalsozialistische Kulturgemeinde in 1934. The aim of the association was to make a significant imprint on cultural life in Germany based on the aims and objectives of the inner circles of the NSDAP. Upon its reorganization, the club was merged with the association Deutsche Bühne (German Stage). This was connected with the establishment of the official body for cultural surveillance, the “Dienstelle Rosenberg” (DRbg), later known as the Amt Rosenberg.

In 1933, Rosenberg’s adjutants took control of German music Radio and Recording during the Third Reich, which amalgamated popular and traditional music history.

Membership in the Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur shot upwards.

From a membership of one thousand in 1932, the Kampfbund saw more than 20,000 new members join up in the first eight months of Hitler’s Chancellorship.

Music thus functioned not only as an emblem of German distinctiveness, but served as a magnet for mass involvement in party activities.

Rosenberg was the early architect of National Socialist cultural policies, but he was not their ultimate champion.

Dr Paul Joseph Goebbels

On July 20, 1933, only months after the Gleichshaltung, Hitler arrogated far-reaching oversight over state culture to Dr Paul Joseph Goebbels.

A philologist and writer, Dr Paul Josef Goebbels welded the whole of German artistic culture to the aims of the National Socialist  state.

Paul Joseph Goebbels (29 October 1897 – 1 May 1945) was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. As one of Adolf Hitler’s closest associates and most devout followers, he was known for his zealous orations.
Goebbels earned a PhD from Heidelberg University in 1921, writing his doctoral thesis on 19th century romantic drama; he then went on to work as a journalist. He also wrote novels and plays. Goebbels came into contact with the National Socialist German Worker’s Party (NSDAP) in 1923 during the French occupation of the Ruhr and became a member in 1924. He was appointed Gauleiter (regional party leader) of Berlin.

Goebbels would have lasting impacts on German musical culture.

Berlin Philharmonic

The ease of Goebbels’ first task – the co-opting of arts organizations – had been facilitated by the financial devastation of the preceding Weimar Republic.

The Weimer era may have produced some significant cultural figures, but a period of fiscal abundance it was not.

Orchestras, the Berlin Philharmonic among them, were actively seeking state support and patronage from any party in 1933.

Guided by Dr Paul Josef Goebbels the National Socialists supplied the Philharmonic with operating funds and in the process armed themselves with a significant tool that conferred the Party additional legitimacy among German elites.

Not only symphony orchestras fell under National Socialist sway.

Dr Paul Josef Goebbels

Reichskulturkammer © Copyright Peter Crawford 2013

On September 22, Dr Paul Josef Goebbels established the Reichsmusikkammer (Reichs Chamber of Music).
The Reichsmusikkammer promoted “good German music” which was composed by Aryans and seen as consistent with Völkisch ideals, while suppressing other, “degenerate” music, which included atonal music, pop music such as jazz and country, those experimenting with electronics and music by Jewish composers as they were seen to be of non-artistic merit and produced solely for popularity and financial gain.
The Institute was founded in 1933 by Joseph Goebbels and the Reichskulturkammer (State Bureau of Culture), and it operated until the fall of the Third Reich in 1945.
One of the Institute’s primary goals – that of extolling and promoting “good German music”, specifically that of Beethoven, Wagner, Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Brahms, Pfitzner and the like – was to legitimize the claimed world supremacy of Germany culturally. These composers and their music were re-interpreted ideologically to extol German virtues and cultural identity.

Peter Raabe

Richard Strauss

Although Richard Strauss was the president of the RMK, real power lay in the hands of the organization’s chair, Peter Raabe, a musicologist.

Peter Raabe (27 November 1872, Frankfurt an der Oder—12 April 1945, Weimar) was a German composer and conductor. Graduated in the Higher Musical School in Berlin and in the universities of Munich and Jena. In 1894-98 Raabe worked in Königsberg and Zwickau. In 1899-1903 he worked in the Dutch Opera-House (Amsterdam). In 1907-20 Raabe was the 1st Court Conductor in Weimar. Raabe has been giving performances in the United Kingdom, Belgium, Netherlands etc. On 19 July 1935 Raabe superseded Richard Strauss as the president of Reichsmusikkammer. For almost ten years Raabe directed the music activity of the Third Reich.

Franz Liszt

He was the first to provide a complete Chronology of Franz Liszt works.

By 1934, the organization consisted of seven departments for composers, performing musicians, concert managers and publicists, choral and folk singers, music publishers, music dealers, and music instrument manufacturers, respectively.

The high degree of organization indicated also that the RMK was not free to set its own course in the arts.

In keeping with his desire to see the Propaganda Ministry become the cultural arbiter for all of society Goebbels would provide the RMK with direction from above.

As scholars would later note, “the Reichsmusikkammer and German musical life were to become a single entity.”

Although orchestras suffered purges of their Jewish personnel, orchestral programming was not immediately brought into harmony with the Aryan party line.

Felix Mendelssohn

Felix Mendelssohn, Berlin’s wunderkind of the early 19 century, initially escaped censure, and his celebrated Violin Concerto remained on the programs of the Berlin Philharmonic.

Stravinsky, another problematic Jewish genius, enjoyed a 1935 performance of “Firebird” in Berlin.

In the autumn of that year, however, the NSDAP cultural apparatus initiated more codifie efforts to end the performance of music even marginally associated with Jews.

On September 1, 1935, Gobbels’ Propaganda Ministry issued a document for internal circulation, outlining a “blacklist” of 108 composers whose works could no longer be played in the Reich.

Of the composers listed, most were Jewish.

Goebbels clearly attributed high importance to both classical music and the elimination of the “Judenfrage” (Jewish Question) within the community of musicians.

After this,  little would be left to chance in the sphere of high culture.

Undoubtedly the two greatest German composers of this period were Richard Strauss and Hans Pfitzner.

Richard Georg Strauss (11 June 1864 – 8 September 1949) was undoubtedly the leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras.
His significant works of the period were:
‘Film music for Der Rosenkavalier’ (1925), and the operas ‘Die Frau ohne Schatten’ (1919), ‘Intermezzo’ (1923), ‘Die ägyptische Helena’ (1927), ‘Arabella’ (1932).
‘Olympische Hymne’, for chorus and orchestra (1934)
Horn Concerto No. 2 in E flat major (1942) and Oboe Concerto in D major (1945)
At the end of this period Strauss wrote the incomparable ‘Metamorphosen, for 23 Solo Strings’ (1945)

Hans Pfitzner

Hans Erich Pfitzner (5 May 1869 – 22 May 1949) is undeservedly less well known.
He was a German composer and self-described anti-modernist – (‘modernism’ being the atonal work of Schoenberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern)
His own music – including pieces in all the major genres except the symphonic poem – was respected by contemporaries such as Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss.
Pfitzner’s works combine Romantic and Late Romantic elements with extended thematic development, atmospheric music drama, and the intimacy of chamber music.
His greatest work of the period was the romantische Kantate ‘Von deutscher Seele’ (Of the German Soul) (1921).
During this period he also composed a ‘Sonata in e-minor for Violin and Piano’ Op. 27 (1918), and his ‘String Quartet [Nr. 3] in C-Sharp minor’ (1925).
Other Orchestral works composed during the period include the ‘Piano concerto in E-flat Major’ (1922), the ‘Violin Concerto in b-minor’ (1923) and the Symphony in C-sharp Minor (1932).
Small Symphony in G major, Op. 44 (1939).
Symphony in C major, Op. 46 (1940).
Cello Concerto in A minor, Op. 52 (1944).

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Music and Youth

Trommeln und Trompeten – Hitler-Jugend

With the inception of National Socialist rule in Thuringina and across Germany, the NSDAP conspicuously sought legitimacy through the promotion of German music.

The National Socialists thus merged their ideology with a deeply ingrained German song culture in a successful bid to assume a leading role in the music education of the youth.

Such a perspective is particularly necessary when one considers Germany occupied an elite position at the end of Weimar period as a world leader in the realm of music education.

Carl Orff

In the free-wheeling mélange that preceded Hitler’s accession to the Chancellorship, a number of German music educators and pedagogues had experimented with various pedagogical approaches.

The emerging pedagogical canons promoted Carl Orff and J.E. Dalcroze, however, were eventually overwhelmed by the ideologically-driven National Socialist party machinery.

Working from the basis of German tradition, German music educators were inevitably co-opted by the state. 

German music educators also had to pay obeisance to the racial theories of the National Socialist leadership. 

While music historians were looking selectively for examples of “Musik im Judentum,” the task of music educators became similarly wrapped up with the National Socialist cause.

Fritz Jöde

One National Socialist music educator, Fritz Jöde, wrote of the important role played by music in Kindergarten, a level he clearly believed should mark the beginning of overt state control over children.

Fritz Jöde (* August 2 1887 in Hamburg , † October 19 1970 ) was a German music teacher and one of the leading figures in the youth music movement .

Jöde wrote of Kindergarten as “a conclusive break from children’s reliance on their mothers” and the beginning of “going their own way…to fulfill their goals and dreams as adults.”

Kindergarten marked a clear opportunity for the state to sedulously promote National Socialist through ideological texts.

Wolfgang Stumme, an educator and editor, became one of the most prolific advocates of National Socialist music education.

His 1944 essay “Music in the Hitler Youth” reveals much about the climate for arts education under National Socialism.

Stumme enthusiastically cited over nine hundred musical groups united under the banner of the Hitler Youth, including all manner of youth choirs.

Hitler-Jugend Trommler

To this list, Stumme noted the presence of “orchestras, instrumental groups, groups of wind-playing comrades, music teams, sport and fanfare teams, song playing and puppet shows, and radio groups,” all sponsored by the Hitler Youth.

Stumme, in a plea for resources in the waning years of the Second World War, linked the expansion of music groups to the war effort:
This high number of musical groups has arisen from the progress of the war, the beginning of which saw only one hundred unified Hitler Youth music groups.
These groups evidence the foundational emotions of gratefulness that Germans hold toward all cultural efforts of the Hitler Youth; they also prove that political leadership and music education are intimately unified.
The war has established itself as the father of music practice, and formed an explicit antithesis of the old Latin saying that during the war the muses must have silence. The rich number of Hitler’s words [zahlreich Führerworte] on the “importance” of art are like the deepest kernels which the youth, in their action, transform into a constant state of fulfillment.
Throughout the war effort, Hitler Youth raised flagging morale by singing at community events, hospitals, and factories.
In the words of one Hitler Youth executive, performances of the “Hitler Youth Cultural Circle” simultaneously supported the war effort and “exposed the boys and girls to our nation’s most valuable cultural heritage.”

German musical traditions thus fused with party-centered patriotism.

The music of the Hitler Youth played an important role in state indoctrination and public morale, and the visual arts thus validated and eulogized the idea of musical youth.

Jürgen Wegener – Hitlerjugend Wandmalerei

A mural by Jürgen Wegener shows the ideal musical setting for the boys of the Hitler Youth.

The centerpiece of his triptych shows six boys in a circle, grasping bugle and drum, joining in the anthem entitled “For us the sun never sets.”

Such images were infused with the National Socialist desire to unite the nation through the martial music of the youth.

Leni Riefenstahl

It was not merely by coincidence, after all, that Leni Riefenstahl chose to highlight group musical activities of German youth in her film apotheosis of the NSDAP, ‘Triumph des Willens’ (Triumph of the Will).

Triumph des Willens

Beyond mere imagery, National Socialist musical curricula dipped deep into the stream of German folk tunes, creating a base of easily-retained tunes onto which nationalist texts could be sedulously placed.

The National Socialists thus used the classic model of music education first promoted by Plato, while simultaneously drawing upon theories of Martin Luther in order to improve the efficacy of their musical indoctrination.

In an age proliferating with radios and jazz, however, these techniques would be severely tested.

The National Socialists were not alone in their efforts to secure the loyalty of the youth.

Music was a battleground through which the NSDAP endeavoured to wrest control of children’s hearts and minds from Germany’s established churches.

While manoeuvring to separate the youth from the churches, the National Socialist Party also moved to counter secular rivals in the sphere of music education.

As became apparent in Vienna, the NSDAP expanded its influence among the youth by establishing ‘Hitler Jungend Music Schools’.

The Anschluss of 1938 had not resulted in the immediate National Socialist control over the musical apparatus; indeed, Vienna’s relative cultural autonomy in the early months of the Anschluss was reflected in the independence of all twenty-seven of the city’s youth music schools.

As part of political consolidation in 1938, the National Socialists opened two branch schools [Zweigschule für Volk und Jungend].

The first of these schools was planned for and administered by the Hitler Youth.

Hitlerjugend Musikschule

By 1942, the Hitler Youth music school had attracted sufficient numbers of students to close down six of Vienna’s non-Nazi youth music schools.

Administrator Othmar Steinbauer, the head of the Hitler schools, celebrated this triumph in a statement flecked with Austrian dialect “Now only the Party is the force for progress.
In strenuous cooperation with the community of Vienna, we set out to create a school fully new in form, through which the Volk, the youth, the industrious classes, and the artistic elite will unite and train for music.”

The unity that had eluded Germans during the Weimar period could now be achieved through dedication to a common musical culture.

Epitomizing this common musical culture was folk music, a genre which took on renewed importance in the Third Reich.

Although Germans had been drawing inspiration from their linguistic and mythical origins since the early nineteenth century, the National Socialists enacted a particularly forceful turn to this product of the Volk.

A 1934 essay by Fritz Stein, a music professor in Bremen, directly illustrates the connection between National Socialist ideology and folk music.

Stein’s essay “On the Nature of German Music” posited that folk music was the key method of unifying a fragmentary people.

Hitler-Jugend Trompeter

Moreover, as long as it remained undiluted and true to its German roots, folk music was an essential means of gaining respect abroad.

The purity of German music, the sacred symbol of the Volk, was also a means of national cultural defense in a hostile world.

Stein described the responsibilities of the musician in the Third Reich: The task of the German guardians of music is to be the intermediaries between art and the Volk. Our experience with German musical culture allows us to understand uniquely; we are the defenders of our highest musical inheritance, of its fullness and fulfilling purity. To further this defense, we must win over the Volk through orderly plans of education [Erziehung]. Our foundational work strives for unity, and we must strive to complete the desired and worthy goal: to create the great musical unity of Germans and to further struggle for the world recognition of German music.

With “world recognition of German music” came the possibility of German music serving as the glue for a new German empire.

Indeed, military campaigns into such regions as Poland and Ukraine prompted German musicologists to press hard for folk music education as a means of cementing the consolidation of the newly acquired Eastern territories.

Hitler-Jugend Trompeter

As the Germans knew from their own experience, political consolidation could be considered complete only when broad masses of citizens could raise their voices to the same tunes and words without fear of reproach. 

National Socialist efforts to guarantee the loyalty of German youth, however, inevitably clashed with ecclesiastical tradition.

Up until the forceful emergence of youth movements in the early twentieth century, German churches had held a monopoly on ritualistic rites of passage.

A regional report from a National Socialist Party Chancellery in April 1943 outlined several difficulties confronting the party in its competition with the churches.

The report stated that although induction ceremonies for new Hitlerjungend had followed all guidelines issued by the Propaganda Ministry, progress in recruiting new members remained slow.

The report complained: These Hitlerjungend ceremonies are still not accorded the importance which they deserve, particularly in those districts where the churches are strong. The fact that a large number of those being inducted had already participated in a corresponding church ceremony was particularly invidious.

The report went on to highlight the importance of the “musical background of the ceremonies,” criticizing wartime conditions for the lack of “appropriate musical backing.”

Wagner and National Socialist Culture

Richard Wagner

In their drive towards legitimacy, the NSDAP took pre-existing elements of German nationalism and amplified them.

In this period, therefore, the philosophical underpinnings of musical culture increasingly rested upon Wagnerian ideals.

The composer’s well-known writings and compositions accorded with Hitler’s ideology, and the cult of Wagner grew prodigiously under the National Socialists.

Wagner Societies, already a fixture of bourgeois [Bürgerlich] German life, further proliferated across the country.

Individuals joined for divergent reasons: some were prompted by Hitler’s nationalistic awakening, others by careerist desires, while others desired to display ideological conformity.

Among artistic circles, Wagner formed the centerpiece of Germanic musical rhetoric.

Walter Abendroth

In an essay in the prominent journal ‘Die Musik’, critic Walter Abendroth decried recent products of modernism while upholding Wagner as the attainable paragon of German musical expression: Avant-garde music was a foul, anti-Volk bacillus that denigrated the cultural body through cynicism and calculation.

Walter Abendroth (29 May 1896, Hanover – 30 September 1973, Fischbachau) was a German composer, editor, and writer on music

Wagner, in other words, served as a correct model from whom proper inferences could be drawn.

Bayreuth

Hitler’s personal connection to the cult of Bayreuth made Wagner’s image all the more powerful during the Gleichschaltung.

Hitler’s intense interest in Wagner’s ideals stemmed from the Austrian’s adolescent self-perceptions as an artist in Linz and Vienna, – cities where he attended many operas.

Some have speculated that Hitler’s failings as a young man en-flamed his deep desire to use the arts, particularly opera and the visual arts, as a means of propelling him to a position from which he could “save Germany.”

A performance of Wagner’s Rienzi in 1906 had called forth visions of grandiosity in the young man. Wagner’s musical architecture, his ideals of Gesamtkunstwerk, and his heroes had influenced Hitler profoundly.

Rienzi, der Letzte der Tribunen (WWV 49) (Rienzi, the Last of the Tribunes) is an early opera by Richard Wagner in five acts, with the libretto written by the composer after Bulwer-Lytton’s novel of the same name (1835). The title is commonly shortened to Rienzi. Written between July 1838 and November 1840, it was first performed at the Hofoper, Dresden, on 20 October 1842, and was the composer’s first success.

August Kubizek

The opera is set in Rome and is based on the life of Cola di Rienzi (1313–1354), a late medieval Italian populist figure who succeeds in outwitting and then defeating the nobles and their followers and in raising the power of the people.

The youthful Adolf was “overwhelmed by the resplendent, dramatic musicality” of the opera, as well as deeply affected by the story therein; that of Cola di Rienzi, a medieval rebel who was an outcast from his fellows and was “destroyed by their incomprehension“.
After the opera …
“… Hitler began to orate. Words burst from him like a backed-up flood breaking through crumbling dams. In grandiose, compelling images, he sketched for me his future and that of his people“.

Thirty years later Hitler would remark: “It all began at that hour !“.

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HITLER – KUBIZEK and WAGNER

Moreover, Hitler’s intimate connections to Wagnerian art forms profoundly influenced the artistic direction of state policy in the Third Reich.

This influence extended beyond Hitler’s table talk about the undoubted supremacy of German tenors. 

Wagner’s opera was accorded the highest respect by Walter Abendroth, in “Kunstmusik und Volstümlichkeit” in ‘Die Musik’, März 1934.

A recent source-book on the Third Reich accords Wagner a great deal of influence, including an excerpt from the 1850 essay “Judaism in Music.”

Celebrations of Wagner’s genius (and, by extension, the creative potency of the German people) were undertaken at tremendous state expense.

In December 1938, for example, Hitler’s adjutant personally authorized a payment of 150,000 DM for Clemens Kraus to direct ‘Tannhäuser’ (Richard Wagner) and ‘Arabella’ (Richard Strauss) in the Munich State Theater.

‘Tannhäuser und der Sängerkrieg auf Wartburg’ – (Tannhäuser and the Singers’ Contest at Wartburg Castle) is an opera in three acts, music and text by Richard Wagner, based on the two German legends of Tannhäuser and the song contest at Wartburg. The story centres on the struggle between sacred and profane love, and redemption through love, a theme running through most of Wagner’s mature work.

Arabella is a lyric comedy or opera in 3 acts by Richard Strauss to a German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, their sixth and last operatic collaboration. It was first performed on 1 July 1933, at the Dresden Sächsisches Staatstheater. The beautiful but proud Arabella is the daughter of the Waldner family, who face financial ruin unless Arabella marries a rich husband. Arabella hopes to marry for love, not money; but when a loving suitor unexpectedly appears, her happiness is threatened by a web of misunderstanding and deception.

Naturally, the NSDAP leadership could justify such expenses with arguments about culture superiority and the need to instil the German Volk with the myths of their origins.

Winnifred Wagner and Adolf Hitler – Bayreuth

Hitler’s birthday celebrations were typically Wagnerian affairs, although Verdi’s operas were sometimes performed in a concession to the alliance with fascist Italy.

Hitler’s devotion to the annual festival in Bayreuth was such that in late 1944, Hitler insisted that the Wagner festival scheduled for July 1945 proceed as usual.

Hitler ultimately saw the fundamental political gain to be reaped by declaring himself as the paladin of a reinvigorated and authentically German culture.

From his position at the pinnacle of the National Socialist hierarchy, Hitler used cultural to enhance the legitimacy of the National Socialist weltanschaung.

Richard Wagner’s music would serve a vital function in this endeavor.

In 1923, just before the abortive “Beer-Hall Putsch”, Hitler presented himself at Wahnfried, the home of the Wagner family.

There he met Siegfried Wagner, (Richard Wagner’s only son), and Siegfried’s English born wife Winifred (*see below). He is said to have sought out the Master’s study, and, deeply moved, stood before Wagner’s grave in the garden for a long time. 

Afterwards, he was introduced to Houston Stewart Chamberlain (see‘AN ENGLISHMAN AT THE COURT OF THE KAISER‘), (Richard Wagner’s English born son-in-law), who was of advanced age and could not speak. Chamberlain later wrote a letter to Hitler voicing his support for Hitler’s goals and ideas. 

Hitler valued this letter greatly, almost as if it were “a benediction from the Bayreuth Master himself”.

Hitler continued in his contacts with the family of Wagner, and it is rumoured that he had a relationship with Winifred after Siegfried’s death.

Hitler also became a favourite ‘uncle’ (uncle Wolf), to the Wagner’s two sons, Wieland (left) and Wolfgang (right).

His idea of the supreme expression of opera was the final scene in ‘Götterdämmerung’, and, when in Bayreuth, whenever he witnessed this finale, he would turn around in his darkened box, seek out the hand of Frau Winifred Wagner, and “breathe a deeply moved Handkuss upon it”.
By this time he had seen all of Wagner’s operas countless times, and boasted of having listened to ‘Tristan und Isolde’ and ‘Die Meistersinger’ over a hundred times each.

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© Copyright Peter Crawford 2013

WAGNER and HITLER

Degenerate Music

Clearly, National Socialist officials wished to use music didactically, using opera and symphonic music to heighten the sense of Teutonic identity among the listeners.

Yet National Socialist musical policy was not immune to popular pressures and public demand.

Goebbels and his subordinates could never escape the necessity of providing light entertainment for the masses.

Weimar Jazz Club

This contradiction between high and middlebrow culture became markedly apparent after 1942.

The free flow of largesse for opera performances was one arm of a Nazi musical policy within which leaders used enormous amounts of discretionary funds.

When a Japanese violinist toured Germany in 1942, Goebbels personally presented her with a priceless Stradavarius. 

While Goebbels wanted to strengthen the backbone of the populace with extravagant paeans to sacrifice, such as the film “Koblenz,” German citizens increasingly demanded distractions.

Like filmmaking, opera was expensive, but National Socialists were willing to pay the price.

Ultimately, however, distracting citizens with popular broadcast music became more important than engaging them in a polemical musical discussion of Germany’s racial origins.

American music, particularly jazz, had flooded into Germany in the 1920s.

Nationalist responses to this music focused on the negative African origins of jazz, while combining fears of American occupation of the Rhineland.

“Entarte musik,” or “degenerate music,” became a frequent target for the National Socialists. 

The National Socialists endeavored to steer Germans, particularly the young, away from such degenerative effects.

In a directive to his propaganda ministry, Goebbels stated: “Publications should be produced in a popular style aimed at the masses and, in particular, at young people, and should demonstrate that the uncritical adoption of certain American activities, such as jazz music…shows a lack of culture.” 

Extending on this theme, Goebbels instructed his subordinate to refer explicitly to “the grotesque distortions which occur, for example, in the transposition of Bach’s music into jazz.”

Germanic music, like the Volk itself, had to remain pure.

Also dangerous to national morals was the music of the new avant-garde, which had reached a heyday during the free-wheeling Weimar period.

Individuals like Paul Hindemith, scarred by the experiences of World War One, had freely released their angst, and in so doing, had vented their distaste for the political and artistic order.

Hitler-Jugend

Under the new life of the National Socialists, potentially dissenting voices were more or less silenced.

In a 1934 essay from the newly co-opted NS musical organ, ‘Die Musik’, a musicologist discussed the orthodox view of the avant-garde:
Everywhere in Europe, we Germans have released the immediate products of cultural decay, which fall under the name “New Music.” This “music” devours our Volk’s living and characteristic art music, directly attacking our healthy origins that presently and by all means long to recover the smallest Lebensraum. This ‘New Music’s’ spririt and essence, is antithetical to the people [unvolkstümlich] because it releases every natural dissatisfaction. Worse yet, it both knowingly and unconsciously denigrates the possession of the healthy feelings and desires felt by the strong, self-knowing Volk, whose music is a singular medium of expression, alert and humorous.

Faced with such pabulum in the mid-1930s, cutting-edge composers like Hindemith and Krenek had left Germany.

Clearly, however, the National Socialists could not stem the tide toward escapism in German musical life. 

Strauss’ ‘Arabella’, a three-act comedy set in nineteenth-century Vienna, was the most well known opera of the National Socialist period.

The opera’s libretto is devoid of political content, and there is nothing particularly Germanic about the story, other than the Viennese setting.

But given the circumstances, the work functioned as a display of normalcy in a faltering domestic economy. 

Even in the prior period, Goebbels had shown some flexibility toward popular music, remarking: Not all music suits everyone. Therefore that style of entertaining music that is found among the broad masses also has a right to exist, especially in an epoch in which the task of the state leadership must be, next to the difficult concerns that the times bring with them, to intervene on behalf of the Volk’s recuperation, support, and refreshment.

Acknowledging “difficult times,” Goebbels could justify sponsorship of music that might otherwise have verged on the “degenerate.”

Conclusion

German-speaking lands have always enjoyed a special connection with music.

Germanic composers were a dominant creative force in classical music from the eighteenth century.

The National Socialists wielded the legacy of Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, Wagner, Richard Strauss and Pfitzner precisely to justify the defence and expansion of German culture against “cultural Bolshevism and Jewish degeneracy”

© Copyright Peter Crawford 2013

Deutsches Kaiserreich

Kaiserreich is the German term for a monarchical empire.

Literally a Kaiser’s Reich, an emperor’s domain or realm.

Proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor

When the proper term is used without disambiguation, it is assumed in Germany to refer to the German Empire of 1871-1918, during which the large majority of historically-independent German states (with the significant exception of Austria) were unified under a single Kaiser.

Deutsches Kaiserreich is the common name given to the state officially named Deutsches Reich, designating Germany from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871, to 1918, when it became a federal republic, after defeat in World War I, and the abdication of the Emperor, Wilhelm II.

In a France defeated and invaded after the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, Chancellor Bismarck proclaimed the German Empire in the Hall of Mirrors.

This was Germany’s revenge for the humiliations imposed by Louis XIV and Napoléon I.

On 19 July 1870, France declared war on Prussia.

It capitulated at Sedan on 2 September. Prussia then invaded France.

On 19 September, it besieged Paris and the first Prussian troops arrived in Versailles.

On 5 October, William I and Bismarck moved into the town to prepare the proclamation of the German Empire from the Château.

Since the mid-1860s, Prussia had emerged enlarged and fortified from its campaigns against Austria and Denmark.

It now extended from the Rhine to Russia.

Bismarck, its Chancellor, attempted to federate the other German states around Prussia in order to create an empire at the expense of the Austrian-Hungarian empire, its rival.

He wanted Germany to become the new power of central Europe, between France and Russia.

He had managed to constitute the Confederation of Northern Germany which united all the states except those of the south.

Hesse and Baden, followed by Bavaria and Wurtemberg finally joined in November 1870.

Otto von Bismark

König Ludwig II. König von Bayern

At the request of Prussian Minister President Otto von Bismarck (and in exchange for certain financial concessions), Ludwig II König von Bayern wrote a letter (the so-called ‘Kaiserbrief’) in December 1870 endorsing the creation of the German Empire.

With the creation of the Empire, Bavaria lost its status as an independent kingdom, and became another state in the empire.

Ludwig attempted to protest these alterations by refusing to attend the ceremony where Wilhelm I was proclaimed the new empire’s first emperor.

Was this also out of love of the place and Louis XIV?

Whatever the reason, Ludwig’s brother Otto negotiated in his place.

However the Bavarian delegation under Prime Minister Count Otto von Bray-Steinburg had secured a privileged status of the Kingdom of Bavaria within the German Empire (Reservatrechte).

Within the Empire the Kingdom of Bavaria was even able to retain its own diplomatic body, and its own army, which would fall under Prussian command only in times of war.

.Prinz Otto von Bayern

After the creation of the greater Germany, Ludwig increasingly withdrew from politics, and devoted himself to his personal creative projects, most famously his castles, where he personally approved every detail of the architecture, decoration and furnishing.

And so the proclamation of German unity could be made.

The proclamation of the Empire was fixed for 18 January 1871 in the Hall of Mirrors.

An altar was set up here for the religious ceremony.

A stage was installed along the side next to the Salon of War, facing the spot where the throne of Louis XIV stood.

600 officers and all the German princes were present except Ludwig II of Bavaria.

After the Te Deum, Bismarck, in his cuirassier’s uniform, read out the proclamation.

When he had finished, the Grand-Duke of Baden shouted “Long live his Majesty the Emperor William!” The room rocked with the assembly’s “hurrahs!”.

The Chancellor had finally made his dream come true under the paintings of Le Brun glorifying the victories of Louis XIV on the Rhine.

He had also achieved his revenge for the defeat of Iena in 1806.

The Germans soon left Versailles to the elected representatives of defeated France.

Wappen des Königreichs Preußen

The German Empire consisted of 27 constituent territories (most of them ruled by royal families).

While the Kingdom of Prussia contained most of the population and most of the territory of the Reich, the Prussian leadership became supplanted by German leaders and Prussia itself played a lesser role.

Prussia’s “political and cultural influence had diminished considerably” by the 1890s.

Its three largest neighbours were rivals Imperial Russia to the east, France to the west, and ally Austria-Hungary to the south.

After 1850, Germany industrialized rapidly, with a foundation in coal, iron (and later steel), chemicals and railways.

From a population of 41 million people in 1871, it grew to 68 million in 1913.

From a heavily rural nation in 1815, it was now predominantly urban.

During its 47 years of existence, the German Empire operated as an industrial, technological and scientific giant, receiving more Nobel Prizes in science than Britain, France, Russia and the United States combined.

Dropping the Pilot

It became a great power, boasting a rapidly growing economy and the world’s strongest army and its navy went from being negligible to second only behind the Royal Navy in less than a decade.

After the removal of the powerful Chancellor Otto von Bismarck in 1890 following the death of Emperor Wilhelm I, the young Emperor Wilhelm II engaged in increasingly reckless foreign policies that left the Empire politically isolated.

Its network of small colonies in Africa and the Pacific paled in comparison to the British and French empires.

When the great crisis of 1914 arrived, it had only two weak allies (Austria-Hungary and Ottoman Empire) left.

In World War I its plans to quickly capture Paris in 1914 failed and the Western Front (against Britain and France) became a stalemate.

The Allied naval blockade made for increasing shortages of food.

The Empire collapsed overnight in the November 1918 Revolution as all the royals abdicated and a republic took over.

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE DEUTSCHES KAISERREICH

On 10 December 1870 the North German Confederation Reichstag renamed the Confederation as the German Empire and gave the title of German Emperor to the King of Prussia as President of the Confederation.

König Wilhelm I von Preußen

During the Siege of Paris on 18 January 1871, King Wilhelm I of Prussia was proclaimed German Emperor in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles.

The 1871 German Constitution was adopted by the Reichstag on 14 April 1871 and proclaimed by the Emperor on 16 April, which was substantially based upon Bismarck’s North German Constitution.

Germany acquired some democratic features.

The new empire had a parliament called the Reichstag, which was elected by universal male suffrage, however, the original constituencies drawn in 1871 were never redrawn to reflect the growth of urban areas.

As a result, by the time of the great expansion of German cities in the 1890s and first decade of the 20th century, rural areas were grossly overrepresented.

Legislation also required the consent of the Bundesrat, the federal council of deputies from the states. Executive power was vested in the emperor, or Kaiser, who was assisted by a chancellor responsible only to him.

The emperor was given extensive powers by the constitution.

He alone appointed and dismissed the chancellor, was supreme commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and final arbiter of all foreign affairs.

Officially, the chancellor was a one-man cabinet and was responsible for the conduct of all state affairs; in practice, the State Secretaries (bureaucratic top officials in charge of such fields as finance, war, foreign affairs, etc.) acted as unofficial portfolio ministers.

Reichstag

The Reichstag had the power to pass, amend or reject bills and to initiate legislation.

Although nominally a league of equals, in practice the empire was dominated by the largest and most powerful state, Prussia.

It stretched across the northern two thirds of the new Reich, and contained three fifths of its population.

The imperial crown was hereditary in the House of Hohenzollern, the ruling house of Prussia.

With the exception of the years 1872–1873 and 1892–1894, the chancellor was always simultaneously the prime minister of Prussia.

With 17 out of 58 votes in the Bundesrat, Berlin needed only a few votes from the small states to exercise effective control.

The other states retained their own governments, but had only limited aspects of sovereignty.

For example, both postage stamps and currency were issued for the empire as a whole.

Coins through one mark was also minted in the name of the empire, while higher valued pieces were issued by the states, but these larger gold and silver issues were virtually commemorative coins and had limited circulation.

While the states issued their own decorations, and some had their own armies, the military forces of the smaller ones were put under Prussian control.

Those of the larger states, such as the Kingdoms of Bavaria and Saxony, were coordinated along Prussian principles and would in wartime be controlled by the federal government.

The evolution of the German Empire is somewhat in line with parallel developments in Italy which became a united nation state shortly before the German Empire.

Coat of Arms of the Russian Empire

Some key elements of the German Empire’s authoritarian political structure were also the basis for conservative modernization in Imperial Japan under Meiji and the preservation of an authoritarian political structure under the Tsars in the Russian Empire.

One factor in the social anatomy of these governments had been the retention of a very substantial share in political power by the landed elite, the Junkers, resulting from the absence of a revolutionary breakthrough by the peasants in combination with urban areas.

Although authoritarian in many respects, the empire permitted the development of political parties. Bismarck’s intention was to create a constitutional façade which would mask the continuation of authoritarian policies.

In the process, he created a system with a serious flaw.

There was a significant disparity between the Prussian and German electoral systems.

Prussia used a highly restrictive three-class voting system in which the richest third of the population could choose 85% of the legislature, all but assuring a conservative majority.

As mentioned above, the king and (with two exceptions) the prime minister of Prussia were also the emperor and chancellor of the empire – meaning that the same rulers had to seek majorities from legislatures elected from completely different franchises.

CONSTITUENT STATES

Before unification, German territory was made up of 27 constituent states.

These states consisted of kingdoms, grand duchies, duchies, principalities, free Hanseatic cities and one imperial territory.

The Kingdom of Prussia was the largest of the constituent states, covering some 60% of the territory of the German Empire.

Several of these states had gained sovereignty following the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire.

Others were created as sovereign states after the Congress of Vienna in 1815.

Territories were not necessarily contiguous – many existed in several parts, as a result of historical acquisition, or, in several cases, divisions of the ruling family trees.

Some of the existing states, in particular Hanover, were abolished and annexed by Prussia as a result of the war of 1866.

Each component of the German Empire sent representatives to the Federal Council (Bundesrat) and, via single member districts, the Imperial Diet (Reichstag).

Relations between the Imperial centre and the Empire’s components were somewhat fluid, and were developed on an ongoing basis.

The extent to which the Emperor could, for example, intervene on occasions of disputed or unclear succession was much debated on occasion – for example with the Lippe-Detmold inheritance crisis.

THE ECONOMY UNDER BISMARK

Railways

München Hauptbahnhof

Lacking a technological base at first, the Germans imported their engineering and hardware from Britain, but quickly learned the skills needed to operate and expand the railways.

In many cities, the new railway shops were the centres of technological awareness and training, so that by 1850, Germany was self-sufficient in meeting the demands of railroad construction, and the railways were a major impetus for the growth of the new steel industry, however, German unification in 1870 stimulated consolidation, nationalisation into state-owned companies, and further rapid growth.

German Railways

Unlike the situation in France, the goal was support of industrialisation, and so heavy lines crisscrossed the Ruhr and other industrial districts, and provided good connections to the major ports of Hamburg and Bremen.

By 1880, Germany had 9,400 locomotives pulling 43,000 passengers and 30,000 tons of freight, and forged ahead of France.

Industrialisation

Germany before 1800 was heavily rural, with some urban trade centers.

In the 19th century it began a stage of rapid economic growth and modernization, led by heavy industry.

By 1900 it had the largest economy in Europe.

Before 1850 Germany lagged far behind the leaders in industrial development, Britain, France and Belgium. By mid-century  however, the German states were catching up, and by 1900 Germany was a world leader in industrialization, along with Britain and the United States.

In 1800, Germany’s social structure was poorly suited to entrepreneurship or economic development. Domination by France during the era of the French Revolution (1790s to 1815), produced important institutional reforms, including the abolition of feudal restrictions on the sale of large landed estates, the reduction of the power of the guilds in the cities, and the introduction of a new, more efficient commercial law.

Nevertheless, traditionalism remained strong in most of Germany.

Until midcentury, the guilds, the landed aristocracy, the churches, and the government bureaucracies had so many rules and restrictions that entrepreneurship was held in low esteem, and given little opportunity to develop.

From the 1830s and 1840s, Prussia, Saxony, and other states reorganized agriculture, introducing sugar beets, turnips, and potatoes, yielding a higher level of food production that enabled a surplus rural population to move to industrial areas.

The beginnings of the industrial revolution in Germany came in the textile industry, and was facilitated by eliminating tariff barriers through the Zollverein, starting in 1834.

The take-off stage of economic development came with the railroad revolution in the 1840s, which opened up new markets for local products, created a pool of middle manager, increased the demand for engineers, architects and skilled machinists and stimulated investments in coal and iron.

The political decisions about the economy of Prussia (and after 1871 all Germany) were largely controlled by a coalition of “rye and iron”, that is the Junker landowners of the east and the heavy industry of the west.

Industrialization progressed dynamically in Germany and German manufacturers began to capture domestic markets from British imports, and also to compete with British industry abroad, particularly in the U.S.

The German textiles and metal industries had by 1870 surpassed those of Britain in organization and technical efficiency and superseded British manufacturers in the domestic market.

Germany became the dominant economic power on the continent and was the second largest exporting nation after Britain.

Banks and Cartels

German banks played central roles in financing German industry.

Different banks formed cartels in different industries.

Cartel contracts were accepted as legal and binding by German courts although they were held to be illegal in Britain and the United States.

The process of cartelization began slowly, but the cartel movement took hold after 1873 in the economic depression that followed the postunification speculative bubble.

It began in heavy industry and spread throughout other industries.

By 1900 there were 275 cartels in operation; by 1908, over 500.

By some estimates, different cartel arrangements may have numbered in the thousands at different times, but many German companies stayed outside the cartels because they did not welcome the restrictions that membership imposed.

The government played a powerful role in the industrialization of the German Empire.

It supported not only heavy industry but also crafts and trades because it wanted to maintain prosperity in all parts of the empire.

Even where the national government did not act, the highly autonomous regional and local governments supported their own industries.

Each state tried to be as self-sufficient as possible.

Despite the several ups and downs of prosperity and depression that marked the first decades of the German Empire, the ultimate wealth of the empire proved immense.

German aristocrats, landowners, bankers, and producers created what might be termed the first German economic miracle, the turn-of-the-century surge in German industry and commerce during which bankers, industrialists, mercantilists, the military, and the monarchy joined forces.

Technology

Technological progress during German industrialization occurred in four waves: the railway wave (1877–86), the dye wave (1887–96), the chemical wave (1897–1902), and the wave of electrical engineering (1903–18).

Since Germany industrialized later than Britain, it was able to model its factories after those of Britain, thus making more efficient use of its capital and avoiding legacy methods in its leap to the envelope of technology. Germany invested more heavily than the British in research, especially in chemistry, motors and electricity. Germany’s dominance in physics and chemistry was such that one-third of all Nobel Prizes went to German inventors and researchers.

The German cartel system (known as Konzerne), being significantly concentrated, was able to make more efficient use of capital.

Germany was not weighted down with an expensive worldwide empire that needed defense.

Following Germany’s annexation of Alsace-Lorraine in 1871, it absorbed parts of what had been France’s industrial base.

BASF Ludwigschafen Works

By 1900, the German chemical industry dominated the world market for synthetic dyes.

The three major firms BASF, Bayer and Hoechst produced several hundred different dyes, along with the five smaller firms.

In 1913, these eight firms produced almost 90% of the world supply of dyestuffs and sold about 80% of their production abroad.

The three major firms had also integrated upstream into the production of essential raw materials and they began to expand into other areas of chemistry such as pharmaceuticals, photographic film, agricultural chemicals and electrochemicals.

Top-level decision-making was in the hands of professional salaried managers; leading Chandler to call the German dye companies “the world’s first truly managerial industrial enterprises”.

There were many spin-offs from research—such as the pharmaceutical industry, which emerged from chemical research.

By the start of World War I (1914–1918), German industry switched to war production.

The heaviest demands were on coal and steel for artillery and shell production, and on chemicals for the synthetization of materials that were subject to import restrictions and for chemical weapons and war supplies.

SOCIAL ISSUES UNDER BISMARK

Germany’s middle class, based in the cities, grew exponentially, but it never gained the political power it had in France, Britain or the United States.

The Association of German Women’s Organizations (BDF) was established in 1894 to encompass the proliferating women’s organizations that had sprung up since the 1860s.

From the beginning the BDF was a bourgeois organization, its members working toward equality with men in such areas as education, financial opportunities, and political life.

Working-class women were not welcome; they were organized by the Socialists.

German City Street Scene

Bismarck built on a tradition of welfare programs in Prussia and Saxony that began as early as in the 1840s.

In the 1880s he introduced old age pensions, accident insurance, medical care and unemployment insurance that formed the basis of the modern European welfare state.

His paternalistic programs won the support of German industry because its goals were to win the support of the working classes for the Empire and reduce the outflow of immigrants to America, where wages were higher, but welfare did not exist.

Bismarck further won the support of both industry and skilled workers by his high tariff policies, which protected profits and wages from American competition, although they alienated the liberal intellectuals who wanted free trade.

After achieving formal unification in 1871, Bismarck devoted much of his attention to the cause of national unity under the ideology of Prussianism.

He opposed conservative Catholic activism and emancipation, especially the powers of the Vatican under Pope Pius IX, and working class radicalism, represented by the emerging Social Democratic Party.

Kulturkampf

Prussia in 1871 included 16,000,000 Protestants, both Reformed and Lutheran, and 8,000,000 Catholics. Most people were generally segregated into their own religious worlds, living in rural districts or city neighborhoods that were overwhelmingly of the same religion, and sending their children to separate public schools where their religion was taught.

There was little interaction or intermarriage.

On the whole, the Protestants had a higher social status, and the Catholics were more likely to be peasant farmers or unskilled or semiskilled industrial workers.

Pope Pius IX

In 1870, the Catholics formed their own political party, the Centre Party, which generally supported unification and most of Bismarck’s policies, however, Bismarck distrusted parliamentary democracy in general and opposition parties in particular, especially when the Centre Party showed signs of gaining support among dissident elements such as the Polish Catholics in Silesia.

A powerful intellectual force of the time was anti-Catholicism, led by the liberal intellectuals who formed a vital part of Bismarck’s coalition.

They saw the Catholic Church as a powerful force of reaction and anti-modernity, especially after the proclamation of papal infallibility in 1870, and the tightening control of the Vatican over the local bishops.

The Kulturkampf launched by Bismarck 1871–1880 affected Prussia; although there were similar movements in Baden and Hesse, the rest of Germany was not affected.

According to the new imperial constitution, the states were in charge of religious and educational affairs; they funded the Protestant and Catholic schools.

German Junior School

In July 1871 Bismarck abolished the Catholic section of the Prussian Ministry of ecclesiastical and educational affairs, depriving Catholics of their voice at the highest level.

The system of strict government supervision of schools was applied only in Catholic areas; the Protestant schools were left alone.

Much more serious were the May laws of 1873.

One made the appointment of any priest dependent on his attendance at a German university, as opposed to the seminaries that the Catholics typically used.

Furthermore, all candidates for the ministry had to pass an examination in German culture before a state board which weeded out intransigent Catholics.

Another provision gave the government a veto power over most church activities.

A second law abolished the jurisdiction of the Vatican over the Catholic Church in Prussia; its authority was transferred to a government body controlled by Protestants.

Nearly all German bishops, clergy, and laymen rejected the legality of the new laws, and were defiant in the face of heavier and heavier penalties and imprisonments imposed by Bismarck’s government by 1876, all the Prussian bishops were imprisoned or in exile, and a third of the Catholic parishes were without a priest.

In the face of systematic defiance, the Bismarck government increased the penalties and its attacks, and were challenged in 1875 when a papal encyclical declared the whole ecclesiastical legislation of Prussia was invalid, and threatened to excommunicate any Catholic who obeyed.

There was no violence, but the Catholics mobilized their support, set up numerous civic organizations, raised money to pay fines, and rallied behind their church and the Centre Party.

The government had set up an “Old-Catholic Church,” which attracted only a few thousand members. Bismarck, a devout pietistic Protestant, realized his Kulturkampf was backfiring when secular and socialist elements used the opportunity to attack all religion.

In the long run, the most significant result was the mobilization of the Catholic voters, and their insistence on protecting their religious identity.

In the elections of 1874, the Centre party doubled its popular vote, and became the second-largest party in the national parliament—and remained a powerful force for the next 60 years, so that after Bismarck it became difficult to form a government without their support.

Social Reform

Bismarck built on a tradition of welfare programs in Prussia and Saxony that began as early as in the 1840s. In the 1880s he introduced old age pensions, accident insurance, medical care and unemployment insurance that formed the basis of the modern European welfare state.

He came to realize that this sort of policy was very appealing, since it bound workers to the state, and also fit in very well with his authoritarian nature.

The social security systems installed by Bismarck (health care in 1883, accident insurance in 1884, invalidity and old-age insurance in 1889) at the time were the largest in the world and, to a degree, still exist in Germany today.

Bismarck’s paternalistic programs won the support of German industry because its goals were to win the support of the working classes for the Empire and reduce the outflow of immigrants to America, where wages were higher but welfare did not exist.

Bismarck further won the support of both industry and skilled workers by his high tariff policies, which protected profits and wages from American competition, although they alienated the liberal intellectuals who wanted free trade.

Germanisation

Rathaus Posen – 1900

One of the effects of the unification policies was the gradually increasing tendency to eliminate the use of non-German languages in public life, schools and academic settings with the intent of pressuring the non-German population to abandon their national identity in what was called “Germanization”.

These policies had often the reverse effect of stimulating resistance, usually in the form of home schooling and tighter unity in the minority groups, especially the Poles.

The Germanization policies were targeted particularly against the significant Polish minority of the empire, gained by Prussia in the Partitions of Poland.

Poles were treated as a ethnic minority even where they made up the majority, as in the Province of Posen, where a series of anti-Polish measures was enforced.

Numerous anti-Polish laws had no great effect especially in the province of Posen where the German-speaking population dropped from 42.8% in 1871 to 38.1% in 1905, despite all efforts.

Law

Bismarck’s efforts also initiated the levelling of the enormous differences between the German states, which had been independent in their evolution for centuries, especially with legislation.

The completely different legal histories and judicial systems posed enormous complications, especially for national trade.

While a common trade code had already been introduced by the Confederation in 1861 (which was adapted for the Empire and, with great modifications, is still in effect today), there was little similarity in laws otherwise.

In 1871, a common Criminal Code (Reichsstrafgesetzbuch) was introduced; in 1877, common court procedures were established in the court system (Gerichtsverfassungsgesetz), civil procedures (Zivilprozessordnung) and criminal procedures (Strafprozessordnung).

In 1873 the constitution was amended to allow the Empire to replace the various and greatly differing Civil Codes of the states (If they existed at all; for example, parts of Germany formerly occupied by Napoleon’s France had adopted the French Civil Code, while in Prussia the Allgemeines Preußisches Landrecht of 1794 was still in effect).

In 1881, a first commission was established to produce a common Civil Code for all of the Empire, an enormous effort that would produce the Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch (BGB), possibly one of the most impressive legal works of the world; it was eventually put into effect on 1 January 1900.

It speaks volumes for the conceptual quality of these codifications that they all, albeit with many amendments, are still in effect today.

YEAR OF THE THREE EMPERORS

Kaiser Frederich III

Kaiser Wilhelm I

On 9 March 1888, Wilhelm I died shortly before his 91st birthday, leaving his son Frederick III as the new emperor.

Frederick was a liberal and an admirer of the British constitution, while his links to Britain strengthened further with his marriage to Princess Victoria, eldest child of Queen Victoria.

With his ascent to the throne, many hoped that Frederick’s reign would lead to a liberalisation of the Reich and an increase of parliament’s influence on the political process.

The dismissal of Robert von Puttkamer, the highly-conservative Prussian interior minister, on 8 June was a sign of the expected direction and a blow to Bismarck’s administration.

By the time of his accession, however, Frederick had developed incurable laryngeal cancer, which had been diagnosed in 1887.

He died on the 99th day of his rule, on 15 June 1888.

His son Wilhelm II became Kaiser.

WILHELMINE  ERA

Kaiser Wilhelm II

Wilhelm II sought to reassert his ruling prerogatives at a time when other monarchs in Europe were being transformed into constitutional figureheads.

This decision led the ambitious Kaiser into conflict with Bismarck.

The old chancellor had hoped to guide Wilhelm as he had guided his grandfather, but the emperor wanted to be the master in his own house and had many sycophants telling him that Frederick the Great would not have been great with a Bismarck at his side.

Otto Eduard Leopold Fürst von Bismarck Herzog von Lauenburg

A key difference between Wilhelm II and Bismarck was their approaches to handling political crises, especially in 1889, when German coal miners went on strike in Upper Silesia.

Otto Eduard Leopold, Prince of Bismarck, Duke of Lauenburg (1 April 1815 – 30 July 1898), simply known as Otto von Bismarck, was a conservative German statesman who dominated European affairs from the 1860s to his dismissal in 1890. In 1871, after a series of short victorious wars, he unified most of the German states (whilst excluding some, most notably Austria) into a powerful German Empire under Prussian leadership.  This created a balance of power that preserved peace in Europe from 1871 until 1914.
As ‘Minister President of Prussia’ 1862–90, Bismarck provoked wars that made Prussia dominant over Austria and France, and lined up the smaller German states behind Prussia. In 1867 he also became Chancellor of the North German Confederation. Otto von Bismarck became the first Chancellor of a united Germany after the 1871 Treaty of Versailles and largely controlled its affairs until he was removed by Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1890. His diplomacy of Realpolitik and powerful rule gained him the nickname the “Iron Chancellor“. 

Bismarck demanded that the German Army be sent in to crush the strike, but Wilhelm II rejected this authoritarian measure, responding “I do not wish to stain my reign with the blood of my subjects.“

Instead of condoning repression, Wilhelm had the government negotiate with a delegation from the coal miners, which brought the strike to an end without violence.

The fractious relationship ended in March 1890, after Wilhelm II and Bismarck quarrelled, and the chancellor resigned days later.

Bismarck’s last few years had seen power slip from his hands as he grew older, more irritable, more authoritarian, and less focused.
German politics had become progressively more chaotic, and the chancellor understood this better than anyone, but unlike Wilhelm II and his generation, Bismarck knew well that an ungovernable country with an adventurous foreign policy was a recipe for disaster.

With Bismarck’s departure, Wilhelm II became the dominant ruler of Germany.

Walther Rathenau

Unlike his grandfather, Wilhelm I, who had been largely content to leave government affairs to the chancellor, Wilhelm II wanted to be fully informed and actively involved in running Germany, not an ornamental figurehead.

Wilhelm allowed politician Walther Rathenau to tutor him in European economics and industrial and financial realities in Europe.

Walther Rathenau (September 29, 1867 – June 24, 1922) was a German industrialist, politician, writer, and statesman who served as Foreign Minister of Germany during the Weimar Republic. He was assassinated on June 24, 1922, two months after the signing of the Treaty of Rapallo, 1922.

Bismarkean foreign policy “was too sedate for the reckless Kaiser.”

Wilhelm became internationally notorious for his aggressive stance on foreign policy and his strategic blunders (such as the Tangier Crisis), which pushed the German Empire into growing political isolation.

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GERMAN ART, MUSIC, ARCHITECTURE and LITERATURE

in the KAISERREICH

‘William I Departs for the Front, July 31, 1870’ Adolph Menzel

ART

Biedermeier Style

‘Biedermeier’ refers to a style in literature, music, the visual arts and interior design in the period between the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and the revolutions of 1848.

Biedermeier art appealed to the prosperous middle classes by detailed but polished realism, often celebrating domestic virtues, and came to dominate over French-leaning aristocratic tastes, as well as the yearnings of Romanticism. Carl Spitzweg was a leading German artist in the style.

‘Eisenwalzwerk – Ironworks’ Adolph Menzel

This style continued to be popular throughout the Kaiserreich and Wilhelmine period.

In the second half of the 19th century a number of styles developed, paralleling trends in other European counties, though the lack of a dominant capital city probably contributed to even more diversity of styles than in other countries.

Adolph Menzel enjoyed enormous popularity both among the German public and officialdom; at his funeral Kaiser Wilhelm II walked behind his coffin.

He dramaticised past and contemporary Prussian military successes both in paintings and brilliant wood engravings illustrating books, yet his domestic subjects are intimate and touching.

‘Coronation of Prince Wilhelm Friedrich Ludwig of Hohenzollern as King Wilhelm I of Prussia – Schlosskirche, Königsberg’ Adolph Menzel

His popularity in his native country, owing especially to politically propagandistic works, was such that few of his major paintings left Germany, as many were quickly acquired by museums in Berlin. Menzel’s graphic works and drawings were more widely disseminated; these, along with informal paintings not initially intended for display, have largely accounted for his posthumous reputation.

‘Hirtenknabe’ Franz von Lenbach

Karl von Piloty was a leading academic painter of history subjects in the latter part of the century who taught in Munich.

Among his more famous pupils were Hans Makart, Franz von Lenbach, Franz Defregger, Gabriel von Max and Eduard von Grützner.

The term “Munich school” is used both of German and of Greek painting, after Greeks like Georgios Jakobides studied under him.

‘Gekreuzigten Diebe’ (Crucified Thief) – 1893 Lovis Corinth

Lovis Corinth – ‘Self Portrait’

The ‘Berlin Secession’ was a group founded in 1898 by painters including Max Liebermann, who broadly shared the artistic approach of Manet and the French Impressionists, and Lovis Corinth then still painting in a naturalistic style.

The group survived until the 1930s, despite splits, and its regular exhibitions helped launch the next two generations of Berlin artists, without imposing a particular style.

Near the end of the century, the Benedictine Beuron Art School developed a style, mostly for religious murals, in rather muted colours, with a medievalist interest in pattern that drew from Les Nabis and in some ways looked forward to Art Nouveau or the Jugendstil (“Youth Style”) as it is known in German.

‘Das Heilige Herz Jesu’ (The Sacred Heart of Jesus) Wuger Steiner

The Beuron art school was founded by a confederation of Benedictine monks in Germany in the late nineteenth century.

Beuronese art is principally known for its murals with “muted, tranquil and seemingly mysterious colouring”.

‘Sede Sapietiae’

Though several different principles were in competition to form the canon for the school, “the most significant principle or canon of the Beuronese school is the role which geometry played in determining proportions.” Lenz elaborated the philosophy and canon of a new artistic direction, which was based on the elements of ancient Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine and early Christian art.

Beuronese art had a large influence on the Austrian painter Gustav Klimt. In 1898, shortly after the beginning of the Vienna Secession, Father Desiderius Lenz had his book published – ‘Zur Aesthetic der Beuroner Schule’ (On the Aesthetics of the Beuron School). It is assumed that Klimt will have read Lenz’s work with enthusiasm and images of the Beuron Abbey, for instance, may show sections of the decorated ceiling which appear to have made quite a direct impact on Klimt’s decorative, golden paintings.

‘Kreuzigung’ (Crucifiction) Franz von Stuck

‘Geist des Sieges’ (The Spirit of Victory) Franz von Stuck

Two of the greatest artists of the Wilhelmine age were Franz von Stuck and Max Klinger – who today are often described as German Symbolists.

Franz Stuck (February 24, 1863 – August 30, 1928), ennobled as Franz Ritter von Stuck in 1906, was a German symbolist/Art Nouveau painter, sculptor, engraver, and architect.

Stuck’s subject matter was primarily from mythology, inspired by the work of Arnold Böcklin. Large forms dominate most of his paintings and indicate his proclivities for sculpture.

‘Selbstportrait’ Franz von Stuck

His seductive female nudes are a prime example of popular Symbolist content.

Stuck paid much attention to the frames for his paintings and generally designed them himself with such careful use of panels, gilt carving and inscriptions that the frames must be considered as an integral part of the overall piece.

The number of Stuck’s pupils who achieved great success served to enhance the teacher’s own fame.

Yet by the time of his death, Stuck’s importance as an artist in his own right had lapsed.
Stuck’s reputation languished until the late 1960s when a renewed interest in Art Nouveau brought him to attention once more.

In 1968 the Villa Stuck was opened to the public; it is now a museum.

‘Der Arbend’ (Evening) Max Klinger

Max Klinger (February 18, 1857 – July 5, 1920) was a German Symbolist painter, sculptor, printmaker, and writer.
Klinger was born in Leipzig and studied in Karlsruhe.
An admirer of the etchings of Menzel and Goya, he shortly became a skilled and imaginative engraver in his own right.
He began creating sculptures in the early 1880s.
From 1883-1893 he lived in Rome, and became increasingly influenced by the Italian Renaissance and antiquity.
Ludwig Fahrenkrog is an example of the way that art, politics and religion became interwoven during the Wilhelmine period, leading up to the ‘Great war’.

‘Schicksal’ (Fate) Ludwig Fahrenkrog

Ludwig Fahrenkrog (20 October 1867 – 27 October 1952) was a German writer, playwright and artist.
He was born in Rendsburg, Prussia, in 1867.
He started his career as an artist in his youth, and attended the Berlin Royal Art Academy before being appointed a professor in 1913.
He taught at the School of Arts and Crafts in Bremen from 1898 to 1931.
He was also involved in the founding of a series of folkish religious groups in the early 20th century, as part of a movement to create what its adherents referred to as the Germanische Glaubens Gemeinschaft.

‘Die heilige Stunde’ (The Holy Hour) Ludwig Fahrenkrog

Fahrenkrog was trained in the classical tradition, and had a successful artistic career.
His style, however, was more dependent on Art Nouveau and Symbolist influences than on the classical tradition, and he always stressed the religious nature and mission of art.

Thule Swastika German Faith Movement

The “religious mission” in question is the revival of the pre-Christian Germanic faith and the rejection of Christianity, which is hinted at in paintings such as ‘Lucifer’s Lossage von Gott’ (Lucifer’s Renunciation of God, 1898).
While Fahrenkrog’s work can be seen in the context of contemporary art movements, it was also strongly influenced by his participation in the religious movement taking place at the same time.
The emblem of German Faith Movement was the curved (Thule) swastika, which was one of the first examples of the use of this symbol which was to be  associated with the Dritte Reich.

‘Im walde – Des-Knaben Wunderhorn’ Moritz von Schwind

‘Rose’ Moritz von Schwind

There was a tendency in the Kaiserreich to idealize the middle ages.
This tendancy is to be found in literature, architecture (Ludwig II), and the visual arts.
Moritz von Schwind, (January 21, 1804 – February 8, 1871) although technically an Austrian, produced works for the German market, including the Bavarian king Ludwig II.
In 1834 he was commissioned to decorate King Ludwig’s new palace with wall paintings illustrating the works of the poet Tieck.
He also found in the same place congenial sport for his fancy in a “Kinderfries”.
He was often busy working on almanacs, and on illustrating Goethe and other writers through which he gained considerable recognition and employment.
In the revival of art in Germany, Schwind held as his own the sphere of poetic fancy.

MUSIC

Wotan und Brunhilde

Richard Wagner

Early in the 19th century, a composer by the name of Richard Wagner was born.

He was a “Musician of the Future” who disliked the strict traditionalist styles of music.

He is credited with developing leitmotivs which were simple recurring themes found in his operas.

His music changed the course of opera, and of music in general, forever.

Wagner’s use of ancient German mythology in his ‘Ring’ cycle was a considerable boot to the growing nationalism of the Kaiserreich, and his last work, the sacred music drama ‘Parsifal’, created a link between German nationalism and quasi-Christian sentiments.

Parsifal and the Flower Maidens

In general the music of Wagner provided a strong stimulus for the emerging and developing Völkisch movement which had become fashionable among the educated middle and upper classes in the Kaiserreich.

The later 19th century saw Vienna continue its elevated position in European classical music, as well as a burst of popularity with Viennese waltzes.

These were composed by people like Johann Strauss the Younger.

Other German composers from the period included Albert Lortzing, Johannes Brahms, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn, Anton Bruckner, Max Bruch, Gustav Mahler, and the great Richard Strauss.

These composers tended to mix classic and romantic elements.

Salome – Richard Strauss von Stuck

Richard Strauss

Richard Georg Strauss (11 June 1864 – 8 September 1949) was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras.

He is known for his operas, which include ‘Der Rosenkavalier’ and ‘Salome’; his lieder, especially his ‘Four Last Songs’; and his tone poems and other orchestral works, such as ‘Death and Transfiguration’, ‘Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks’, ‘Also sprach Zarathustra’, ‘An Alpine Symphony’, Symphonia Domestica and ‘Metamorphosen’.

Strauss was also a prominent conductor throughout Germany and Austria.

Strauss represents the great late flowering of German Romanticism after Richard Wagner in which pioneering subtleties of orchestration are combined with an advanced harmonic style.

ARCHITECTURE

In architecture, Historicism (historismus), sometimes known as eclecticism, is an artistic and architectural style that draws inspiration from historic styles or craftmanship.

After the neo-classicist period (which could itself be considered a historicist movement), a new historicist phase emerged in the middle of the 19th century, marked by a return to a more ancient classicism, in particular in architecture and in the genre of history painting.

Gottfried Semper

Münchner Festspielhaus

An important architect of this period was Gottfried Semper, who built the gallery (1855) at the Zwinger Palace and the Semper Opera (1878) in Dresden.

The building has features derived from the Early Renaissance style, Baroque and even features Corinthian style pillars typical of classical Greece (classical revival).

There were regional variants of this style.

Examples are the resort architecture (especially on the German Baltic coast), the Hanover School of Architecture and the Nuremberg style.

‘Altes Museum’ – Karl Friedrich Schinkel

Karl Friedrich Schinkel (13 March 1781 – 9 October 1841) was a Prussian architect, city planner, and painter who also designed furniture and stage sets.

Schinkel was one of the most prominent architects of Germany and designed both neoclassical and neogothic buildings, and was a strong influence on building styles in the Kaiserreich.

Neue Wache – Karl Friedrich Schinkel

Schinkel’s style, in his most productive period, is defined by a turn to Greek rather than Imperial Roman architecture, an attempt to turn away from the style that was linked to the recent French occupiers. (Thus, he is a noted proponent of the Greek Revival.)

His most famous buildings are found in and around Berlin.

These include Neue Wache (1816–1818),

The Neue Wache (“New Guard House”) is a building in Berlin. It is located on the north side of the ‘Unter den Linden’, a major east-west thoroughfare in the centre of the city.

Schauspielhaus – Berlin – 1821 – Karl Friedrich Schinkel

Dating from 1816, the Neue Wache was designed by the architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel, and is a leading example of German neoclassicism. Originally built as a guardhouse for the troops of the Crown Prince of Prussia, the building has been used as a war memorial since 1931.

National Monument for the Liberation Wars (1818–1821), the Schauspielhaus (1819–1821) at the Gendarmenmarkt, which replaced the earlier theatre that was destroyed by fire in 1817, and the ‘Altes Museum’ (old museum) on Museum Island (1823–1830).

He also carried out improvements to the Crown Prince’s Palace.

Later, Schinkel moved away from classicism altogether, embracing the Neo-Gothic in his Friedrichswerder Church (1824–1831).

Schloss Neuschwanstein under Construction

The predilection for medieval buildings has its most famous exemplar in the castle of Neuschwanstein, which Ludwig II commissioned in 1869.

Neuschwanstein was designed by Christian Jank, a theatrical set designer, which possibly explains the fantastical nature of the resulting building.

Christian Jank (1833–1888), was a German sce­nic pain­ter no­ta­ble for his pa­lace de­signs for King Lud­wig II of Bavaria.

Christian Jank

Jank was born on 15 July 1833 in Munich, the Bavarian ca­pi­tal.

Here he ori­gi­nally worked as a scenic painter. Among other things he was in­vol­ved in the sce­nery for Richard Wagner’s opera Lohengrin. His work pi­qued the in­te­rest of Lud­wig II, who com­mis­sio­ned him to create con­cepts for his ar­chi­tec­tu­ral pro­jects in­spi­red by Wag­ner. Jank’s historistic drafts were the basis for Neuschwanstein Castle, which was built star­ting in 1869 by Eduard Riedel and later Georg von Dollmann. Jank was also in­vol­ved in the in­te­rior of Linderhof Palace. His con­cepts for Falkenstein Castle could not be rea­li­zed, as the pro­ject was aban­do­ned after the king’s death in 1886. Jank him­s­elf died in Mu­nich on 25 No­vem­ber 1888.

The architectural expertise, vital to a building in such a perilous site, was provided first by the Munich court architect Eduard Riedel and later by Georg Dollmann, son-in-law of Leo von Klenze.

There is also Ulm Cathedral, and at the end of the period the Reichstag building (1894) by Paul Wallot.

‘Jugend’ – January 1900

The Art Nouveau style is commonly known by its German name, Jugendstil.

Drawing from traditional German printmaking, the style uses precise and hard edges, an element that was rather different from the naturalistic style of the time.

The movement was centered in Hamburg

Within the field of Jugendstil art, there is a variety of different methods, applied by the various individual artists. Methods range from classic to romantic.

One feature that sets Jugendstil apart is the typography used, whose letter and image combination is unmistakable.

‘Der Kuss’ – Peter Behrens

The combination was used for covers of novels, advertisements, and exhibition posters.

Designers often used unique display typefaces that worked harmoniously with the image.

Henry Van de Velde, who worked most of his career in Germany, was a Belgian theorist who influenced many others to continue in this style of graphic art including Peter Behrens, Hermann Obrist, and Richard Riemerschmid.

August Endell is another notable Art Nouveau designer.

Magazines were important in spreading the visual idiom of Jugendstil, especially the graphical qualities. Besides Jugend, other important ones were the satirical Simplicissimus and Pan.

Young Germany (Junges Deutschland) was a loose group of Vormärz writers which existed from about 1830 to 1850.

It was essentially a youth movement (similar to those that had swept France and Ireland and originated in Italy).

Its main proponents were Karl Gutzkow, Heinrich Laube, Theodor Mundt and Ludolf Wienbarg; Heinrich Heine, Ludwig Börne and Georg Büchner were also considered part of the movement.

The wider circle included Willibald Alexis, Adolf Glassbrenner and Gustav Kühne.

The so-called Biedermeier poets reacted by withdrawing into the realm of the family and idyllic nature.

Heinrich Heine

This resignation was replaced in the poems of Heinrich Heine by new political directions and a realistic outlook.

Many writers had to go into exile after the revolution of 1848, among them Karl Marx and Carl Schurz. Throughout the 19th century the forms introduced by Goethe and Schiller prevailed: in poetry, the Lied derived from folksongs; in drama, the historical tragedy in blank verse; in prose, the novella, an artistically structured story centered on an extraordinary event.

Annette Elisabeth von Droste-Hulshoff and Eduard Morike were the leading poets; Franz Grillparzer and Christian Friedrich Hebbel, the dramatists; Jeremias Gotthelf, Gottfried Keller, Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, Wilhelm Raabe, Adalbert Stifter, and Theodor Storm, the storytellers.

Far ahead of his time was Georg Buchner, who rejected bourgeois values and wrote such plays as Woyzeck (1850; Eng. trans., 1957), in which he anticipated modern styles.

Georg Hegel

Literature in the Reich was not only restricted to poetry, novels and biography, however.

Germany became, during this period, a world leader in philosophy.

Hegel was the precursor of these great philosophers.

He was followed by Arthur Schopenhauer, and later Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (August 27, 1770 – November 14, 1831) was a German philosopher, and a major figure in German Idealism.

His historicist and idealist account of reality revolutionized European philosophy. He was considered to be the ‘official philosopher’ of the Prussian State.

Hegel developed a comprehensive philosophical framework, or “system”, of Absolute idealism to account in an integrated and developmental way for the relation of mind and nature, the subject and object of knowledge, psychology, the state, history, art, religion, and philosophy.

In particular, he developed the concept that ‘mind’ or ‘spirit’ manifested itself in a set of contradictions and oppositions that it ultimately integrated and united, without eliminating either pole or reducing one to the other. This concept is known as dialectic.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Arthur Schopenhauer (22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher best known for his book, ‘Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung’, in which he claimed that our world is driven by a continually dissatisfied will, continually seeking satisfaction.

A key focus of Schopenhauer was his investigation of individual motivation. Before Schopenhauer, Hegel had popularized the concept of Zeitgeist, the idea that society consisted of a collective consciousness which moved in a distinct direction, dictating the actions of its members. Schopenhauer, a reader of both Kant and Hegel, criticized their logical optimism and the belief that individual morality could be determined by society and reason. Schopenhauer believed that humans were motivated by only their own basic desires, or Wille zum Leben (“Will to Live”), which directed all of mankind.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (October 15, 1844 – August 25, 1900) was a German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist.

He wrote critical texts on religion, morality, contemporary culture, philosophy, and science, displaying a fondness for metaphor, irony, and aphorism.

Nietzsche’s key ideas include the “death of God,” the ‘Übermensch’, ‘the eternal recurrence’, ‘the Apollonian and Dionysian dichotomy’, ‘perspectivism’, and ‘der Wille zur Macht’ (the will to power).

Central to his philosophy is the idea of “life-affirmation”, which involves questioning of all doctrines that drain life’s expansive energies, however socially prevalent those views might be.

His influence remains substantial within philosophy, notably in existentialism, post-modernism, and post-structuralism, as well as outside it.

His radical questioning of the value and objectivity of truth has been the focus of extensive commentary, especially in the continental tradition.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Physics  –  The work of Albert Einstein and Max Planck was crucial to the foundation of modern physics, which Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrödinger developed further.

They were preceded by such key physicists as Hermann von Helmholtz, and Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit, among others.

Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen discovered X-rays, an accomplishment that made him the first winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901 and eventually earned him an element name, roentgenium.

Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen

Heinrich Rudolf Hertz

Heinrich Rudolf Hertz’s work in the domain of electromagnetic radiation were pivotal to the development of modern telecommunication.

Mathematical aerodynamics was developed in Germany, especially by Ludwig Prandtl.

At the start of the 20th century, Germany garnered fourteen of the first thirty-one Nobel Prizes in Chemistry, starting with Hermann Emil Fischer in 1901.

Numerous important mathematicians were born in Germany, including Gauss, Hilbert, Riemann, Weierstrass, Dirichlet and Weyl.

Germany has been the home of many famous inventors and engineers, such as Hans Geiger, the creator of the Geiger counter; and Konrad Zuse, who built the first computer.

Gottlieb Daimler

Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin

German inventors, engineers and industrialists such as Zeppelin, Daimler, Diesel, Otto, and Benz helped shape modern automotive and air transportation technology including the beginnings of space travel.

Ferdinand Adolf Heinrich August Graf von Zeppelin (also known as Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin – 8 July 1838 – 8 March 1917) was a German general, and later aircraft manufacturer. He founded the Zeppelin Airship company. He was born in Konstanz, Grand Duchy of Baden (now part of Baden-Württemberg, Germany).

Gottlieb Daimler ( March 17, 1834 – March 6, 1900) was an engineer, industrial designer and industrialist born in Schorndorf (Kingdom of Württemberg, a federal state of the German Confederation), in what is now Germany. He was a pioneer of internal-combustion engines and automobile development. He invented the high-speed petrol engine and the first four-wheel automobile.

Alexander von Humboldt’s (1769–1859) work as a natural scientist and explorer was foundational to biogeography.

Wladimir Köppen (1846–1940) was an eclectic Russian-born botanist and climatologist who synthesized global relationships between climate, vegetation and soil types into a classification system that is used, with some modifications, to this day.

Alfred Wegener (1880–1930), a similarly interdisciplinary scientist, was one of the first people to hypothesize the theory of continental drift which was later developed into the overarching geological theory of plate tectonics.

Wilhelm Wundt is credited with the establishment of psychology as an independent empirical science through his construction of the first laboratory at the University of Leipzig in 1879.

Sigmund Freud, who was in fact Austrian, was the inventor of the dream deutung.

Domestic Affairs

Under Wilhelm II, Germany no longer had long-ruling strong chancellors like Bismarck.

The new chancellors had difficulty in performing their roles, especially the additional role as Prime Minister of Prussia assigned to them in the German Constitution.

The reforms of Chancellor Leo von Caprivi, which liberalized trade, and so reduced unemployment, were supported by the Kaiser and most Germans except for Prussian landowners, who feared loss of land and power and launched several campaigns against the reforms.

While Prussian aristocrats challenged the demands of a united German state, in the 1890s several organizations were set up to challenge the authoritarian conservative Prussian militarism which was being imposed on the country.

Educators opposed to the German state-run schools, which emphasized military education, set up their own independent liberal schools, which encouraged individuality and freedom, however nearly all the schools in Imperial Germany had a very high standard and kept abreast with modern developments in knowledge.

Artists began experimental art in opposition to Kaiser Wilhelm’s support for traditional art, to which Wilhelm responded “art which transgresses the laws and limits laid down by me can no longer be called art.”

It was largely thanks to Wilhelm’s influence that most printed material in Germany used ‘blackletter’ (fraktur) instead of the Roman type used in the rest of Western Europe.

At the same time, a new generation of cultural creators emerged.

From the 1890s onwards, the most effective opposition to the monarchy came from the newly formed Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), which advocated Marxism.

The threat of the SPD to the German monarchy and industrialists caused the state both to crack down on the party’s supporters and to implement its own programme of social reform to soothe discontent.

Germany’s large industries provided significant social welfare programmes and good care to their employees, as long as they were not identified as socialists or trade-union members.

The larger industrial firms provided pensions, sickness benefits and even housing to their employees.

Having learned from the failure of Bismarck’s Kulturkampf, Wilhelm II maintained good relations with the Roman Catholic Church and concentrated on opposing socialism.

This policy failed when the Social Democrats won ⅓ of the votes in the 1912 elections to the Reichstag, and became the largest political party in Germany.

Feldmarschall Paul von Hindenburg

Generalquartiermeister Erich Ludendorff

The government remained in the hands of a succession of conservative coalitions supported by right-wing liberals or Catholic clerics and heavily dependent on the Kaiser’s favour.

During World War I, the Kaiser increasingly devolved his powers to the leaders of the German High Command, particularly future President of Germany, Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and Generalquartiermeister Erich Ludendorff.

Hindenburg took over the role of commander–in–chief from the Kaiser, while Ludendorff became de facto general chief of staff.

By 1916, Germany was effectively a military dictatorship run by Hindenburg and Ludendorff, with the Kaiser reduced to a mere figurehead.

Foreign Affairs

Wilhelm II wanted Germany to have her “place in the sun,” like Britain, which he constantly wished to emulate or rival.

With German traders and merchants already active worldwide, he encouraged colonial efforts in Africa and the Pacific (“new imperialism”), causing the German Empire to vie with other European powers for remaining “unclaimed” territories.

With the encouragement or at least the acquiescence of Britain, which at this stage saw Germany as a counterweight to her old rival France, Germany acquired German Southwest Africa (today Namibia), German Kamerun (Cameroon), Togoland and German East Africa (the mainland part of current Tanzania). Islands were gained in the Pacific through purchase and treaties and also a 99-year lease for the territory of Kiautschou in northeast China.

But of these German colonies only Togoland and German Samoa (after 1908) became self-sufficient and profitable; all the others required subsidies from the Berlin treasury for building infrastructure, school systems, hospitals and other institutions.

Bismarck had originally dismissed the agitation for colonies with contempt; he favoured a Eurocentric foreign policy, as the treaty arrangements made during his tenure in office show.

As a latecomer to colonization, Germany repeatedly came into conflict with the established colonial powers and also with the United States, which opposed German attempts at colonial expansion in both the Caribbean and the Pacific.

Native insurrections in German territories received prominent coverage in other countries, especially in Britain; the established powers had dealt with such uprisings decades earlier, often brutally, and had secured firm control of their colonies by then.

The Boxer Rising in China, which the Chinese government eventually sponsored, began in the Shandong province, in part because Germany, as colonizer at Kiautschou, was an untested power and had only been active there for two years.

Eight western nations, including the United States, mounted a joint relief force to rescue westerners caught up in the rebellion.

On two occasions, a French-German conflict over the fate of Morocco seemed inevitable.

Upon acquiring Southwest Africa, German settlers were encouraged to cultivate land held by the Herero and Nama. Herero and Nama tribal lands were used for a variety of exploitive goals (much as the British did before in Rhodesia), including farming, ranching, and mining for minerals and diamonds.

In 1904, the Herero and the Nama revolted against the colonists in Southwest Africa, killing farm families, their laborers and servants.

In response to the attacks, troops were dispatched to quell the uprising.

Middle East

Bismarck, and Wilhelm II after him, sought closer economic ties with the Ottoman Empire.

Under Wilhelm, with the financial backing of the Deutsche Bank, the Baghdad Railway was begun in 1900, although by 1914 it was still 500 km (310 mi) short of its destination in Baghdad.

In an interview with Wilhelm in 1899, Cecil Rhodes had tried “to convince the Kaiser that the future of the German empire abroad lay in the Middle East” and not in Africa; with a grand Middle-Eastern empire, Germany could afford to allow Britain the unhindered completion of the Cape-to-Cairo railway that Rhodes favoured.

Britain initially supported the Baghdad Railway; but by 1911 British statesmen came to fear it might be extended to Basra on the Persian Gulf, threatening Britain’s naval supremacy in the Indian Ocean. Accordingly they asked to have construction halted, to which Germany and the Ottoman Empire acquiesced.

Europe

Wilhelm II and his advisers committed a fatal diplomatic error when they allowed the “Reinsurance Treaty” that Bismarck had negotiated with Tsarist Russia to lapse.

Germany was left with no firm ally but Austria-Hungary, and her support for action in annexing Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908 further soured relations with Russia.

Wilhelm missed the opportunity to secure an alliance with Britain in the 1890s, when it was involved in colonial rivalries with France, and he alienated British statesmen further by openly supporting the Boers in the South African War and building a navy to rival Britain’s.

By 1911 Wilhelm had completely picked apart the careful power balance established by Bismarck and Britain turned to France in the Entente Cordiale.

Germany’s only other ally besides Austria was the Kingdom of Italy, but it remained an ally only pro forma. When war came, Italy saw more benefit in an alliance with Britain, France, and Russia, which, in the secret Treaty of London in 1915 promised it the frontier districts of Austria, where Italians formed the majority of the population, and also colonial concessions.

Germany did acquire a second ally that same year when the Ottoman Empire entered the war on its side, but in the long run supporting the Ottoman war effort only drained away German resources from the main fronts.

THE CAUSES OF THE ‘GREAT WAR’

The causes of World War I, which began in central Europe in late July 1914, included intertwined factors, such as the conflicts and hostility of the four decades leading up to the war. Militarism, alliances, imperialism, and nationalism played major roles in the conflict as well.

The immediate origins of the war, however, lay in the decisions taken by statesmen and generals during the Crisis of 1914, ‘casus belli’ for which was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife by Gavrilo Princip, an irredentist Serb.

The crisis came after a long and difficult series of diplomatic clashes between the Great Powers (Italy, France, Germany, the British Empire, the Austria-Hungarian Empire and Russia) over European and colonial issues in the decade before 1914 that had left tensions high.

In turn these diplomatic clashes can be traced to changes in the balance of power in Europe since 1867.

The more immediate cause for the war was tensions over territory in the Balkans.

Austria-Hungary competed with Serbia and Russia for territory and influence in the region, and they pulled the rest of the Great Powers into the conflict through their various alliances and treaties.

Background

In November 1912, Russia was humiliated because of its inability to support Serbia during the Bosnian crisis of 1908 – also known as the ‘First Balkan War’, and announced a major reconstruction of its military.

On November 28, German Foreign Secretary Gottlieb von Jagow told the Reichstag, that “If Austria is forced, for whatever reason, to fight for its position as a Great Power, then we must stand by her.“

As a result, British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey responded by warning Prince Karl Lichnowsky, the Germany Ambassador in London, that if Germany offered Austria a “blank cheque” for war in the Balkans, then “the consequences of such a policy would be incalculable.”

To reinforce this point, R. B. Haldane, the Germanophile Lord Chancellor, met with Prince Lichnowsky to offer an explicit warning that if Germany were to attack France, Britain would intervene in France’s favor.

With the recently announced Russian military reconstruction and certain British communications, the possibility of war was a leading topic at the German Imperial War Council of 8 December 1912 in Berlin, an informal meeting of some of Germany’s top military leadership called on short notice by the Kaiser.

Attending the conference were Kaiser Wilhelm II, Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz – the Naval State Secretary, Admiral Georg Alexander von Müller, the Chief of the German Imperial Naval Cabinet (Marinekabinett), General von Moltke – the Army’s Chief of Staff, Admiral August von Heeringen – the Chief of the Naval General Staff and General Moriz von Lyncker, the Chief of the German Imperial Military Cabinet.

The presence of the leaders of both the German Army and Navy at this War Council attests to its importance, however, Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg and General Josias von Heeringen, the Prussian Minister of War, were not invited.

Wilhelm II called British ‘balance of power’ concept “idiocy,” but agreed that Haldane’s statement was a “desirable clarification” of British policy.

His opinion was that Austria should attack that December and/ if “Russia supports the Serbs, which she evidently does…then war would be unavoidable for us, too,” and that would be better than going to war after Russia completed the massive modernization and expansion of their army that they had just begun. Moltke agreed.

In his professional military opinion “a war is unavoidable and the sooner the better“.

Moltke “wanted to launch an immediate attack“.

Both Wilhelm II and the Army leadership agreed that if a war were necessary it were best launched soon. Admiral Tirpitz, however, asked for a “postponement of the great fight for one and a half years” because the Navy was not ready for a general war that included Britain as an opponent.

He insisted that the completion of the construction of the U-boat base at Heligoland and the widening of the Kiel Canal were the Navy’s prerequisites for war.

The date for completion of the widening of the Kiel Canal was the summer of 1914.

Though Moltke objected to the postponement of the war as unacceptable, Wilhelm sided with Tirpitz. Moltke “agreed to a postponement only reluctantly.”

It should be noted that this War Council only showed the thinking and recommendations of those present, with no decisions taken.

Admiral Müller’s diary states: “That was the end of the conference. The result amounted to nothing.” Certainly the only decision taken was to do nothing.

With the November 1912 announcement of the Russian ‘Great Military Programme’, the leadership of the German Army began clamoring even more strongly for a “preventive war” against Russia.

Moltke declared that Germany could not win the arms race with France, Britain and Russia, which she herself had begun in 1911, because the financial structure of the German state, which gave the Reich government little power to tax, meant Germany would bankrupt herself in an arms race.

As such, Moltke from late 1912 onward was the leading advocate for a general war, and the sooner the better.

Throughout May and June 1914, Moltke engaged in an “almost ultimative” demand for a German “preventive war” against Russia in 1914.

The German Foreign Secretary, Gottlieb von Jagow, reported on a discussion with Moltke at the end of May 1914:

“Moltke described to me his opinion of our military situation. The prospects of the future oppressed him heavily. In two or three years Russia would have completed her armaments. The military superiority of our enemies would then be so great that he did not know how he could overcome them. Today we would still be a match for them. In his opinion there was no alternative to making preventive war in order to defeat the enemy while we still had a chance of victory. The Chief of the General Staff therefore proposed that I should conduct a policy with the aim of provoking a war in the near future.”

The new French President Raymond Poincaré, who took office in 1913, was favourable to improving relations with Germany.

In January 1914 Poincaré became the first French President to dine at the German Embassy in Paris.

Poincaré was more interested in the idea of French expansion in the Middle East than a war of revenge to regain Alsace-Lorraine.

Had the Reich been interested in improved relations with France before August 1914, the opportunity was available, but the leadership of the Reich lacked such interests, and preferred a policy of war to destroy France.

Because of France’s smaller economy and population, by 1913 French leaders had largely accepted that France by itself could never defeat Germany.

In May 1914, Serbian politics were polarized between two factions, one headed by the Prime Minister Nikola Pašić, and the other by the radical nationalist chief of Military Intelligence, Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijević, known by his codename Apis.

In that month, due to Colonel Dimitrigjevic’s intrigues, King Peter dismissed Pašić’s government.

The Russian Minister in Belgrade intervened to have Pašić’s government restored.

Pašić, though he often talked tough in public, knew that Serbia was near-bankrupt and, having suffered heavy casualties in the Balkan Wars and in the suppression of a December 1913 Albanian revolt in Kosovo, needed peace.

Since Russia also favoured peace in the Balkans, from the Russian viewpoint it was desirable to keep Pašić in power.

It was in the midst of this political crisis that politically powerful members of the Serbian military armed and trained three Bosnian students as assassins and sent them into Austria-Hungary.

Domestic Political Factors

German Domestic Politics  –  Left-wing parties, especially the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) made large gains in the 1912 German election.

German government at the time was still dominated by the Prussian Junkers who feared the rise of these left-wing parties.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, Junker was an often pejorative designation for a member of the landed nobility in Prussia and eastern Germany.

Supporting monarchism and military traditions, they were seen as reactionary, anti-democratic and protectionist. This political class held tremendous power over industrial classes and government alike.

It is possible that the Junkers deliberately sought an external war to distract the population and whip up patriotic support for the government.

Russia was in the midst of a large-scale military build-up and reform that they completed in 1916–17.

It is also argued, however, that German conservatives were ambivalent about a war, worrying that losing a war would have disastrous consequences, and even a successful war might alienate the population if it were lengthy or difficult.

French Domestic Politics  –  The situation in France was quite different from that in Germany as going to war appeared to the majority of political and military leaders to be a potentially costly gamble.

It is undeniable that forty years after the loss of Alsace-Lorraine a vast number of French were still angered by the territorial loss, as well as by the humiliation of being compelled to pay a large reparation to Germany in 1870.

The diplomatic alienation of France orchestrated by Germany prior to World War I caused further resentment in France.

Nevertheless, the leaders of France recognized Germany’s strong military advantage against them, as Germany had nearly twice as much population and a better equipped army.

At the same time, the episodes of the Tangier Crisis in 1905 and the Agadir Crisis in 1911 had given France a strong indication that war with Germany could be inevitable if Germany continued to oppose French colonial expansionism.

More than a century after the French Revolution, there was still a fierce struggle between the left-wing French government and its right-wing opponents.

Austria

In 1867, the Austrian Empire fundamentally changed its governmental structure, becoming the ‘Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary’.

For hundreds of years, the empire had been run in an essentially feudal manner, with a German-speaking aristocracy at its head, however, with the threat represented by an emergence of nationalism within the empire’s many component ethnicities, some elements, including Emperor Franz Joseph, decided that a compromise was required to preserve the power of the German aristocracy.

In 1867, the Ausgleich was agreed on, which made the Magyar (Hungarian) elite in Hungary almost equal partners in the government of Austria-Hungary.

This arrangement fostered a tremendous degree of dissatisfaction among many in the traditional German ruling classes.

Some of them considered the Ausgleich to have been a calamity, because it often frustrated their intentions in the governance of Austria-Hungary.

For example, it was extremely difficult for Austria-Hungary to form a coherent foreign policy that suited the interests of both the German and Magyar elite.

Throughout the fifty years from 1867 to 1914, it proved difficult to reach adequate compromises in the governance of Austria-Hungary.
At the same time, a form of social Darwinism became popular among many in the Austrian half of the government.
This thinking emphasised the primacy of armed struggle between nations, and the need for nations to arm themselves for an ultimate struggle for survival.

As a result, at least two distinct strains of thought advocated war with Serbia, often unified in the same people.

Some reasoned that dealing with political deadlock required that more Slavs be brought into Austria-Hungary to dilute the power of the Magyar elite.
With more Slavs, the South Slavs of Austria-Hungary could force a new political compromise in which the Germans could play the Magyars against the South Slavs.

Another fear was that the South Slavs, primarily under the leadership of Serbia, were organizing for a war against Austria-Hungary, and even all of Germanic civilization.
Some leaders, such as Conrad von Hötzendorf, argued that Serbia must be dealt with before it became too powerful to defeat militarily.

A powerful contingent within the Austro-Hungarian government was motivated by these thoughts and advocated war with Serbia long before the war began.
Prominent members of this group included Leopold von Berchtold, Alexander von Hoyos, and Johann von Forgách.
Although many other members of the government, notably Franz Ferdinand, Franz Joseph, and many Hungarian politicians did not believe that a violent struggle with Serbia would necessarily solve any of Austria-Hungary’s problems, the hawkish elements did exert a strong influence on government policy, holding key positions.

It is important to understand the central role of Austria-Hungary in starting the war.
Convinced Serbian nationalism and Russian Balkan ambitions were disintegrating the Empire, Austria-Hungary hoped for a limited war against Serbia and that strong German support would force Russia to keep out of the war and weaken its Balkan prestige.

Imperialism

Some attribute the start of the war to imperialism.

Countries such as the United Kingdom and France accumulated great wealth in the late 19th century through their control of trade in foreign resources, markets, territories, and people.

Other empires, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Russia all hoped to do so as well in economic advantage.

Their frustrated ambitions, and British policies of strategic exclusion created tensions.

In addition, the limits of natural resources in many European nations began to slowly alter trade balance, and make national industries seek new territories rich in natural resources.

Commercial interests contributed substantially to Anglo-German rivalry during the scramble for tropical Africa.

This was the scene of sharpest conflict between certain German and British commercial interests.

There have been two partitions of Africa.

One involved the actual imposition of political boundaries across the continent during the last quarter of the 19th century; the other, which actually commenced in the mid-19th century, consisted of the so-called ‘business’ partition.

In southern Africa the latter partition followed rapidly upon the discoveries of diamonds and gold in 1867 and 1886 respectively.

An integral part of this second partition was the expansion in the interior of British capital interests, primarily the British South Africa Company and mining companies such as De Beers.

After 1886 the Witwatersrand goldfields prompted feverish activity among European as well as British capitalists.

It was soon felt in Whitehall that German commercial penetration in particular constituted a direct threat to Britain’s continued economic and political hegemony south of the Limpopo.

Amid the expanding web of German business on the Rand, the most contentious operations were those of the German-financed N.Z.A.S.M. or Netherlands South African Railway Company, which possessed a railway monopoly in the Transvaal.

Rivalries for not just colonies, but colonial trade and trade routes developed between the emerging economic powers and the incumbent great powers.

Berlin-Baghdad Railway

This rivalry was illustrated in the Berlin-Baghdad Railway, which would have given German industry access to Iraqi oil, and German trade a southern port in the Persian Gulf.

A history of this railroad in the context of World War I has arrived to describe the German interests in countering the British Empire at a global level, and Turkey’s interest in countering their Russian rivals at a regional level.

‘It was felt in England that if, as Napoleon is said to have remarked, Antwerp in the hands of a great continental power was a pistol leveled at the English coast, Bagdad and the Persian Gulf in the hands of Germany (or any other strong power) would be a 42-centimetre gun pointed at India.’

On the other side, “Public opinion in Germany was feasting on visions of Cairo, Baghdad, and Tehran, and the possibility of evading the British blockade through outlets to the Indian Ocean.”

Britain’s initial strategic exclusion of others from northern access to a Persian Gulf port in the creation of Kuwait by treaty as a protected, subsidized client state showed political recognition of the importance of the issue.

If outcome is revealing, by the close of the war this political recognition was re-emphasized in the military effort to capture the railway itself, recounted with perspective in a contemporary history: “On the 26th Aleppo fell, and on the 28th we reached Muslimieh, that junction on the Baghdad railway on which longing eyes had been cast as the nodal point in the conflict of German and other ambitions in the East.”

The Treaty of Versailles explicitly removed all German ownership thereafter, which without Ottoman rule left access to Mesopotamian and Persian oil, and northern access to a southern port in British hands alone.

Otto von Bismarck

Rivalries among the great powers were exacerbated starting in the 1880s by the scramble for colonies, which brought much of Africa and Asia under European rule in the following quarter-century.

It also created great Anglo-French and Anglo-Russian tensions and crises that prevented a British alliance with either until the early 20th century.

Otto von Bismarck disliked the idea of an overseas empire, but pursued a colonial policy to court domestic political support.

This started Anglo-German tensions since German acquisitions in Africa and the Pacific threatened to impinge upon British strategic and commercial interests.

Bismarck supported French colonization in Africa because it diverted government attention and resources away from continental Europe and revanchism.

In spite of all of Bismarck’s deft diplomatic maneuvering, in 1890 he was forced to resign by the new Kaiser (Wilhelm II).

His successor, Leo von Caprivi, was the last German Chancellor who was successful in calming Anglo-German tensions.

Leo von Caprivi

After his loss of office in 1894, German policy led to greater conflicts with the other colonial powers.

The status of Morocco had been guaranteed by international agreement, and when France attempted to greatly expand its influence there without the assent of all the other signatories Germany opposed it prompting the ‘Moroccan Crise’s, the ‘Tangier Crisis’ of 1905 and the ‘Agadir Crisis’ of 1911.

The intent of German policy was to drive a wedge between the British and French, but in both cases produced the opposite effect, and Germany was isolated diplomatically, most notably lacking the support of Italy despite Italian membership in the Triple Alliance.

The French protectorate over Morocco was established officially in 1912.

In 1914, there were no outstanding colonial conflicts, Africa essentially having been claimed fully, apart from Ethiopia, for several years, however, the competitive mentality, as well as a fear of “being left behind” in the competition for the world’s resources may have played a role in the decisions to begin the conflict.

The Arms Race

A self-reinforcing cycle of heightened military preparedness…was an essential element in the conjuncture that led to disaster…The armaments race…was a necessary precondition for the outbreak of hostilities.

If Archduke Franz Ferdinand had been assassinated in 1904 or even in 1911, there might have been no war. It was…the armaments race…and the speculation about imminent or preventive wars  that made his death in 1914 the trigger for war.

Some historians see the German naval build-up as the principal cause of deteriorating Anglo-German relations.

The overwhelming British response, however, proved to Germany that its efforts were unlikely to equal the Royal Navy.

In 1900, the British had a 3.7:1 tonnage advantage over Germany; in 1910 the ratio was 2.3:1 and in 1914, 2.1:1.

So decisive was the British victory in the naval arms race that it is hard to regard it as in any meaningful sense a cause of the First World War.

This ignores the fact that the Kaiserliche Marine had narrowed the gap by nearly half, and that the Royal Navy had long intended to be stronger than any two potential opponents; the United States Navy was in a period of growth, making the German gains very ominous.

Technological changes, with oil- rather than coal-fuelled ships, decreasing refuelling time while increasing speed and range, and with superior armour and guns also would favour the growing, and newer, German fleet.

One of the aims of the ‘First Hague Conference’ of 1899, held at the suggestion of Russian Emperor Nicholas II, was to discuss disarmament.

The ‘Second Hague Conference’ was held in 1907.

All the signatories except for Germany supported disarmament.

Germany also did not want to agree to binding arbitration and mediation.

The Kaiser was concerned that the United States would propose disarmament measures, which he opposed.

Russian interests in Balkans and Ottoman Empire

The main Russian goals included strengthening its role as the protector of Eastern Christians in the Balkans (such as the Serbians).

Although Russia enjoyed a booming economy, growing population, and large armed forces, its strategic position was threatened by an expanding Turkish military trained by German experts using the latest technology.

The start of the war renewed attention of old goals: expelling the Turks from Constantinople, extending Russian dominion into eastern Anatolia and Persian Azerbaijan, and annexing Galicia.

These conquests would assure Russian predominance in the Black Sea.

Over by Christmas

Field Marshal Lord Horatio Herbert Kitchener

Both sides believed, and publicly stated, that the war would end soon.

The Kaiser told his troops that they would be, “…home before the leaves have fallen from the trees,” and one German officer said he expected to be in Paris by Sedantag, about six weeks away.

Germany only stockpiled enough potassium nitrate for gunpowder for six months.

Russian officers similarly expected to be in Berlin in six weeks, and those who suggested that the war would last for six months were considered pessimists.

Von Moltke and his French counterpart Joseph Joffre were among the few who expected a long war, but neither adjusted his nation’s military plans accordingly.

The new British Secretary of State for War, Lord Kitchener, was the only leading official on either side to both expect a long war (“three years” or longer, he told an amazed colleague) and act accordingly, immediately building an army of millions of soldiers who would fight for years.

Schlieffen Plan

	Alfred Graf von Schlieffen

Germany’s strategic vulnerability, sandwiched between its allied rivals, led to the development of the audacious (and incredibly expensive) Schlieffen Plan.

It aimed to knock France instantly out of contention, before Russia had time to mobilize its gigantic human reserves.

It aimed to accomplish this task within 6 weeks.

Germany could then turn her full resources to meeting the Russian threat.

Although Count Alfred von Schlieffen initially conceived the plan before his retirement in 1906, Japan’s defeat of Russia in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 exposed Russia’s organizational weakness and added greatly to the plan’s credibility.

The plan called for a rapid German mobilization, sweeping through the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Belgium, into France.

Schlieffen called for overwhelming numbers on the far right flank, the northernmost spearhead of the force with only minimum troops making up the arm and axis of the formation as well as a minimum force stationed on the Russian eastern front.

Helmuth von Moltke

Schlieffen was replaced by Helmuth von Moltke, and in 1907–08 Moltke adjusted the plan, reducing the proportional distribution of the forces, lessening the crucial right wing in favor of a slightly more defensive strategy.

Also, judging Holland unlikely to grant permission to cross its borders, the plan was revised to make a direct move through Belgium, and an artillery assault on the Belgian city of Liège.

With the rail lines and the unprecedented firepower the German army brought, Moltke did not expect any significant defense of the fortress.

The significance of the Schlieffen Plan is that it forced German military planners to prepare for a pre-emptive strike when war was deemed unavoidable.

Otherwise Russia would have time to mobilize and crush Germany with its massive army.

On August 1, Kaiser Wilhelm II briefly became convinced that it might be possible to ensure French and British neutrality, and cancelled the plan despite the objections of the Chief of Staff that this could not be done, and resuming it only when the offer of a neutral France and Britain was withdrawn.

It appears that no war planners in any country had prepared effectively for the Schlieffen Plan.

The French were not concerned about such a move. They were confident their offensive (Plan XVII) would break the German center and cut off the German right wing moving through Belgium.

They also expected that an early Russian offensive in East Prussia would tie down German forces.

Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria

Erzherzog Franz Ferdinand

On 28 June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, were shot dead in Sarajevo, by Gavrilo Princip, one of a group of six Bosnian Serb assassins coordinated by Danilo Ilić.

Franz Ferdinand, eldest son of Carl Ludwig, the brother of Emperor Franz Josef, was born in 1863. Educated by private tutors, he joined the Austro-Hungarian Army in 1883.
His military career included service with an infantry regiment in Prague and with the hussars in Hungary.
While in the army Ferdinand received several promotions: captain (1885), major (1888), colonel (1890) and general (1896). 

Crown Prince Rupert

In 1889, Rudolf (21 August 1858 – 30 January 1889), Erzherzog von Österreich (Archduke of Austria) and Kronprinz von Österreich, Ungarn und Böhmen, (Crown Prince of Austria, Hungary and Bohemia,) the son of Franz Josef, shot himself at his hunting lodge.
The succession now passed to Franz Ferdinand’s father, Carl Ludwig.
When he died in 1896, Franz Ferdinand became the new heir to the throne.

Sophie von Chotkovato

After attending the official reception at the City Hall, Franz Ferdinand and Sophie von Chotkovato were driven through the city.
Gavrilo Princip, the assassin, stepped forward, drew his gun, and at a distance of about five feet, fired several times into the car.
Franz Ferdinand was hit in the neck and Sophie von Chotkovato in the abdomen. Princip’s bullet had pierced the archduke’s jugular vein but before losing consciousness, he pleaded “Sophie dear! Sophie dear! Don’t die! Stay alive for our children!” Franz Urban drove the royal couple to Konak, the governor’s residence, but although both were still alive when they arrived, they died from their wounds soon afterwards.

The political objective of the assassination was to break off Austria-Hungary’s south-Slav provinces so they could be combined into a Greater Serbia or a Yugoslavia.

The assassins’ motives were consistent with the movement that later became known as ‘Young Bosnia’. Serbian military officers stood behind the attack.

At the top of these Serbian military conspirators was Chief of Serbian Military Intelligence, Dragutin Dimitrijević, his righthand man Major Vojislav Tankosić, and Masterspy Rade Malobabić. Major Tankosić armed (with bombs and pistols) and trained the assassins, and the assassins were given access to the same clandestine tunnel of safe-houses and agents that Rade Malobabić used for the infiltration of weapons and operatives into Austria-Hungary.

The assassins, the key members of the clandestine tunnel, and the key Serbian military conspirators who were still alive were arrested, tried, convicted and punished.

Those who were arrested in Bosnia were tried in Sarajevo in October 1914.

The other conspirators were arrested and tried before a Serbian kangaroo court on the French-controlled Salonika Front in 1916–1917 on unrelated false charges; Serbia executed three of the top military conspirators.

Much of what is known about the assassinations comes from these two trials and related records.

Assignment of responsibility for the bombing and murders of 28 June is highly controversial because the attack led to the outbreak of World War I one month later.

Consequences

The murder of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and his wife produced widespread shock across Europe, and there was initially much sympathy for the Austrian position.

Within two days of the assassination, Austria-Hungary and Germany advised Serbia that it should open an investigation, but Secretary General to the Serbian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Slavko Gruic, replied “Nothing had been done so far and the matter did not concern the Serbian Government.”

An angry exchange followed between the Austrian Chargé d’Affaires at Belgrade and Gruic.

After conducting a criminal investigation, verifying that Germany would honor its military alliance, and persuading the skeptical Hungarian Count Tisza, Austria-Hungary issued a formal letter to the government of Serbia.

Serbia was a state in the Balkans that came into existence as a result of the Serbian Revolution which lasted between 1804 and 1817. Despite serious and extremely brutal oppression and revenge by the Ottoman authorities, the revolutionary leaders, first Karađorđe Petrović and then Miloš Obrenović I, succeeded in their goal to liberate Serbia after centuries of Ottoman rule.

The letter reminded Serbia of its commitment to respect the Great Powers’ decision regarding Bosnia-Herzegovina, and to maintain good neighborly relations with Austria-Hungary.

The letter contained specific demands aimed at preventing the publication of propaganda advocating the violent destruction of Austria-Hungary, removing the people behind this propaganda from the Serbian Military, arresting the people on Serbian soil who were involved in the assassination plot and preventing the clandestine shipment of arms and explosives from Serbia to Austria-Hungary.

This letter became known as the ‘July Ultimatum’, and Austria-Hungary stated that if Serbia did not accept all of the demands in total within 48 hours, it would recall its ambassador from Serbia.

After receiving a telegram of support from Russia, Serbia mobilized its army and responded to the letter by completely accepting point #8 demanding an end to the smuggling of weapons and punishment of the frontier officers who had assisted the assassins and completely accepting point #10 which demanded Serbia report the execution of the required measures as they were completed.

Serbia partially accepted, finessed, disingenuously answered or politely rejected elements of the preamble and enumerated demands #1–7 and #9.

The shortcomings of Serbia’s response were published by Austria-Hungary and can be seen beginning on page 364 of Origins of the War, Vol. II by Albertini, with the Austrian complaints placed side-by-side against Serbia’s response.

Austria-Hungary responded by breaking diplomatic relations.

The next day, Serbian reservists being transported on tramp steamers on the Danube crossed onto the Austro-Hungarian side of the river at Temes-Kubin and Austro-Hungarian soldiers fired into the air to warn them off.

The report of this incident was initially sketchy and reported to Emperor Franz-Joseph as “a considerable skirmish”.

Austria-Hungary then declared war and mobilized the portion of its army that would face the (already mobilized) Serbian Army on 28 July 1914.

Erzherzog Franz Ferdinand von Österreich

Under the Secret Treaty of 1892 Russia and France were obliged to mobilize their armies if any of the Triple Alliance mobilized.

Russia’s mobilization set off full Austro-Hungarian and German mobilizations.

Soon all the Great Powers except Italy had chosen sides and gone to war.

A review of the consequences of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria shows that it was the initial actions of the Serbian Government (see above – Serbian military officers stood behind the attack – probably members of the Black Hand – an organisation  formed on 6 September 1901 by members of the Serbian Army).

Dragutin Dimitrijević Apis (right) and his associates

Chief of Serbian Military Intelligence Dragutin Dimitrijević Apis stated that he had organized the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914 –

(the assassin was Гаврило Принцип – (Gavrilo Princip) – who was an athiest. 

Гаврило Принцип – (Gavrilo Princip)

Gavrilo Princip was born in the remote village of Obljaj near Bosansko Grahovo, at the time de jure part of Bosnia Vilayet within the Ottoman Empire, however the province had since 1878 been occupied by Austria-Hungary which governed it as its condominium, a de facto part of Austria-Hungary. Princip was too young to receive the death penalty, being only twenty-seven days short of his twentieth birthday at the time of the assassination. Instead, he received the maximum sentence of twenty years in prison. He was held in harsh conditions which were worsened by the war. He contracted tuberculosis,[3] and had one of his arms amputated in 1917 when the disease infected an arm bone (probably because of a badly performed procedure to repair a bone broken during his capture).[10] He died on 28 April 1918 at Terezín 3 years and 10 months after he assassinated the Archduke and Duchess. At the time of his death, Princip weighed around 40 kilograms (88 lb), weakened by malnutrition, blood loss from his amputated arm, and disease.

His politics are unclear. Some of his associates were Muslims. ).

– in the process, Dragutin Dimitrijević Apis used not only his power over elements of the Serbian military, but also the Black Hand.

Dragutin Dimitrijević was born in Belgrade in 1876. At sixteen Dimitrijević went to the Belgrade Military Academy. A brilliant student, Dimitrijević was recruited into the General Staff of the Serbian Army immediately after his graduation.

Captain Dimitrijević and a group of junior officers planned the assassination of the autocratic and unpopular king of Serbia. On 11 June 1903, the group stormed the royal palace and killed both King Alexander and his wife Queen Draga. During the attack Dimitrijević was badly wounded, and, although he eventually recovered, the three bullets from the encounter were never removed from his body. When Dimitrijević heard that Archduke Franz Ferdinand was planning to visit Sarajevo in June 1914, he sent three members of the Young Bosnia group, Gavrilo Princip, Nedeljko Čabrinović, Trifko Grabež and four others from Serbia to assassinate him. At this time, Dimitrijević was Chief of Serbian Military Intelligence.

Leaders of the Black Hand in turn had penetrated Narodna Obrana and used the Narodna organization to infiltrate the arms and assassins into Sarajevo.

So it can be categorically stated that responsibility for the ‘Great War’ lies with the actions of the Serbian Government.

Subsequently Serbian reservists were mobilized and moved into Austro-Hungarian territory.

In response to this invasion of their territory (combined with the assassination of the heir to the Austrian throne by agents of the Serbian military, Austria-Hungary, in justified self-defense, declared war on Serbia.

Russia then mobilised in order to attack Austria.

Realising that Russian mobilisation threatened their Eastern borders, German mobilised against Russia, and Russia’s ally, France.

To prempt a French invasion of their Western borders, Germany, in accordance with the revised Schlieffen plan, sent her armies through Belgium.

In accordance with her treat obligations with regard to Belgium, Great Britain declared war on Germany.

REFLECTIONS

Bismarck’s emphasis on military force amplified the voice of the officer corps, which combined advanced modernization of military technology with reactionary politics.

The rising upper-middle-class elites, in the business, financial, and professional worlds, tended to accept the values of the old traditional elites.

The German Empire was a strange mixture of highly successful capitalist industrialization and socio-economic modernization on the one hand, and of surviving pre-industrial institutions, power relations and traditional cultures on the other, which produced a high degree of internal tension, which led on the one hand to the suppression of socialists, Catholics, and reformers, and on the other hand to a highly aggressive foreign policy.

The origins of Germany’s path to disaster lie in the 1860s–1870s, when economic modernization took place, but political modernization did not happen and the old Prussian rural elite remained in firm control of the army, diplomacy and the civil service.

The historiographical concept of a German Sonderweg has had a turbulent history.

Nineteenth century scholars, who emphasized a separate German path to modernity, saw it as a positive factor that differentiated Germany from the “western path” typified by Great Britain.

They stressed the strong bureaucratic state, reforms initiated by Bismarck and other strong leaders, the Prussian service ethos, the high culture of philosophy and music, and Germany’s pioneering of a social welfare state.

Traditional, aristocratic, pre-modern society battled an emerging capitalist, bourgeois, modernizing society. Recognizing the importance of modernizing forces in industry and the economy and in the cultural realm,  reactionary traditionalism dominated the political hierarchy of power in Germany, as well as social mentalities and in class relations (Klassenhabitus).

The catastrophic German politics between 1914 and 1918 may be interpreted in terms of a delayed modernization of its political structures.