Wilhelminism
Wilhelminism | |||
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1890–1918 | |||
Wilhelm II | |||
Chronology
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The Wilhelmine Period or Wilhelmian era (
It represented an era of creative ferment in the society, politics,
Overview
The term "Wilhelminism" (Wilhelminismus) is not meant as a conception of society associated with the name Wilhelm and traceable to an intellectual initiative of the
Wilhelminism also characterizes the social, literary, artistic, and cultural climate of Wilhelm II's reign, which on the one hand was dominated by the rigidly-
Subsequent Chancellor
Architecture
While "Wilhelmism" is equally applied to the last Kaiser's favored styles in both the visual arts and architecture, such as the ornate Germania postage stamps, numerous government buildings and the Wilhelmine Ring housing areas of Berlin and many other German cities, the term is also used to describe an essentially-Neo-Baroque and prestige-oriented style of architecture. Similarly to the architecture of other European Capitols of the era, the Neo-Baroque was calculated to express Germany's ambitions to become and remain a naval, imperial, and colonial power.
This neo-Baroque style was particularly exemplified by the grandiose Siegesallee, a boulevard of what were intended to be heroic-looking marble statues of the last Kaiser's ancestors in the Tiergarten of Berlin.
Even though the Siegesallee was widely ridiculed by the infamously irreverent and sarcastic Berliners of the era as die Puppenallee, 'The Boulevard of Dolls' and as an alley where, "even the bird-shit is made of marble", the neo-Baroque statues received Royal Assent in Kaiser Wilhelm's Rinnsteinrede (German for 'gutter speech'), which was also a very harsh criticism of the recent birth of German modernist art which the last Kaiser considered degenerate art, at the formal unveiling of the Siegesallee on 18 December 1901.
Colonialism and militarism
Foreign policy was founded on Kaiser Wilhelm's support for both his Government's
The distinctive spiked helmet, the so-called
Relations with Britain were badly strained by the
Until the mid-20th century, young German boys were still dressed in
A very similar national iconization also took place within the
The gravesites of Oswald Boelcke and Manfred von Richthofen, on the other hand, remain sites of secular
Criminal underworld
Even though the
For example, the 1900-1902 manhunt for
In 1891, the Imperial Capital of Berlin witnessed the birth of
Culture and the arts
In a December 1931 conversation in Frankfurt with journalist Heinrich Simon, Harry Graf Kessler was asked for the reasons why, despite being a descendant of the German nobility, he embraced the concept of Republicanism and opposed the post-1918 restoration of the House of Hohenzollern. According to Count von Kessler, "William II's downright perverse bad taste, I said, was more responsible than anything else. Bad taste in the selection of his friends and advisors; bad taste in art, literature, politics and his style of living; bad taste revealed by every word he uttered... A crowned barbarian who gave the whole German nation a reputation for barbarity."[8]
Despite Count von Kessler's later contempt for the cultural life during the final decades of the German Empire, the Wilhelmian era also seethed with radical innovation, literary, artistic, and cultural ferment inside the literary coffee houses, theatres, and bohemian urban quarters of Berlin, Munich, and many other German cities.
Meanwhile, the
In addition to witnessing the birth of modern art, the same era also witnessed the introduction of the
Among many other examples of the power and influence the George-Kreis wielded over Germany cultural and literary life, the scholarly and editorial skills of one member,
Adler has also written that August Stramm's "essential innovation (still too little recognized in Germany) was to create a new, non-representational kind of poetry," which is, "comparable," to
In his 1985 book, The German Poets of the First World War, Patrick Bridgwater dubbed the
Shortly before the outbreak of war in 1914,
The same era also witnessed the iconoclastic invention of modern theatrical staging by Reinhard Sorge and Max Reinhardt, under the influence of Stefan George, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Richard Dehmel.
Sorge's The Beggar was written during the last three months of 1911.[13] According to Michael Paterson, "The play opens with an ingenious inversion: the Poet and Friend converse in front of a closed curtain, behind which voices can be heard. It appears that we, the audience, are backstage and the voices are those of the imagined audience out front. It is a simple, but disorienting trick of stagecraft, whose imaginative spatial reversal is self-consciously theatrical. So the audience is alerted to the fact that they are about to see a play and not a 'slice of life.'"[14]
According to Walter H. Sokel, "The lighting apparatus behaves like the mind. It drowns in darkness what it wishes to forget and bathes in light what it wishes to recall. Thus the entire stage becomes a universe of [the] mind, and the individual scenes are not replicas of three-densional physical reality, but visualizes stages of thought."[15][16]
Tragically and in an added parallel to the many other nations experiencing similar cultural ferment during the same era, many of Germany's most gifted and innovative poets, writers, artists, and intellectuals were soon to die prematurely upon the battlefields of the Great War.
Motion pictures
End and legacy
The Wilhelmian era ended in the
Nevertheless,
During the same era, the
Even after the
In interviews with
Even after
East German Premier Walter Ulbricht had ordered the demolition of both the Berlin Imperial Palace and the Garrison Church in Potsdam, sites which were closely associated with the former German Imperial Family and the ideology of the German Empire. Both buildings, however, are now being rebuilt, almost exactly as they were.
Moreover, the last Kaiser's home in exile and ultimate burial place,
A less benign form of nostalgia for the Wilhelmian era was on display in the
In popular culture
- The 1966 film .
- Nietzschean ideology of the superman.
- The 2016 spy film The Exception, set in and around Huis Doorn during World War II and in which actor Christopher Plummer plays the exiled Kaiser, is also an example of subtle nostalgia for the Wilhelmian era. Throughout the film, the values of the constitutional monarchy that the former Kaiser still represents are repeatedly contrasted with those of both Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, and depicted as far preferable.
See also
- Wilhelm Voigt
- Der Untertan
- Königliche Hoheit
- National Kaiser Wilhelm Monument
- Index of Germany-related articles
References
- ^ Zudeick, Peter (19 November 2012). "Order makes Germans' world go round". dw.com. Retrieved 16 September 2016.
- ^ Mark Benecke (2005), Murderous Methods: Using Forensic Science to Solve Lethal Crimes, Columbia University. pp. 217-224.
- ^ Mark Benecke, translated by Karin Heusch, (2005), Murderous Methods: Using Forensic Science to Solve Lethal Crimes, Columbia University Press. Pages 217-218.
- ^ Anthony Read and David Fischer (1994), Berlin Rising: Biography of a City, W.W. Norton. pp. 175-178.
- ^ Peter Feraru (1995), Muskel-Adolf & Co. Die Ringvereine und organisierte Verbrechen in Berlin, Argon. pp. 9-75.
- ^ Hartmann, Arthur, and Klaus von Lampe. "The German underworld and the Ringvereine from the 1890s through the 1950s." Global Crime 9, no. 1-2 (2008): 108-135.
- ^ Goeschel, Christian. "The Criminal Underworld in Weimar and Nazi Berlin." In History Workshop Journal, vol. 75, no. 1, pp. 58-80. Oxford University Press, 2013.
- ^ Kessler, Harry Graf (1990). Berlin in Lights: The Diaries of Count Harry Kessler (1918–1937). New York: Grove Press. Saturday 5 December 1931.
- ^ Tim Cross (1988), The Lost Voices of World War I, page 124.
- ^ Tim Cross (1988), The Lost Voices of World War I, page 125.
- ^ Patrick Bridgwater (1985), The German Poets of the First World War, Croom Helm Ltd. Page 39.
- ^ Patrick Bridgwater (1985), The German Poets of the First World War, Croom Helm Ltd. Page 38.
- ^ Tim Cross, "The Lost Voices of World War I: An International Anthology of Writers, Poets, and Playwrights," University of Iowa Press, 1989. Page 144.
- ^ Tim Cross, "The Lost Voices of World War I: An International Anthology of Writers, Poets, and Playwrights," University of Iowa Press, 1989. Pages 144-145.
- ^ Tim Cross, "The Lost Voices of World War I: An International Anthology of Writers, Poets, and Playwrights," University of Iowa Press, 1989. Page 145.
- ^ Walter H. Sokel (1959), The Writer in Extremis, Stanford University Press.
- ^ a b c Otto Köhler (November 18, 1968). "Unverzichtbare Kaiserkrone". Der Spiegel. Retrieved July 15, 2020.
- ^ C.L. Sulzberger (1977), The Fall of Eagles, Crown Publishers. Pages 384-393.
- ^ Piet den Blanken. "Germans Pay Honour at the Grave of Their Beloved Kaiser". Great War. Retrieved 9 January 2022.
- ^ Thorwarth, Katja (10 December 2022). "Prinz Reuß von den "Reichsbürgern" bedient antisemitische Verschwörungserzählungen". Frankfurter Rundschau (in German). Retrieved 2022-12-10.
- ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2022-12-11.
- ^ Murray, Miranda (7 December 2022). "Germany foils far-right plot to install Prince Heinrich XIII in coup". Reuters. Retrieved 9 December 2022.
Sources
- Geoff Eley (ed.) and James Retallack (ed.): Wilhelminism and Its Legacies. German Modernities and the Meanings of Reform, 1890–1930. Essays for Hartmut Pogge von Strandmann. Berghahn Books, New York and Oxford, 2003
- R. J. Evans (ed.) and Hartmut Pogge von Strandmann (ed.): The Coming of the First World War. Clarendon Press, 1990.
- John C. G. Röhl: The Kaiser and His Court: Wilhelm II and the Government of Germany. Cambridge University Press, 1966.
- John C. G. Röhl: Wilhelm II : The Kaiser's Personal Monarchy, 1888–1900. Cambridge University Press, 2004.
- John C. G. Röhl: Kaiser, Hof und Staat. Wilhelm II. und die deutsche Politik. C. H. Beck, Munich ³1988 (TB 2002), ISBN 978-3-406-49405-5.
- John C. G. Röhl: Wilhelm II., C. H. Beck, Munich 1993–2008:
- Volume 1: Die Jugend des Kaisers, 1859–1888. Munich 1993, ²2001, ISBN 3-406-37668-1.
- Volume 2: Der Aufbau der Persönlichen Monarchie, 1888–1900. Munich 2001, ISBN 3-406-48229-5.
- Volume 3: Der Weg in den Abgrund, 1900–1941. Munich 2008, )
- Volume 1: Die Jugend des Kaisers, 1859–1888. Munich 1993, ²2001,
- ISBN 3-7700-0902-9.
External links
- Zeitreise – exhibition in Nordrhein-Westfalen
- Preußen – Chronik eines deutschen Staates (ARD series during “Preußenjahr“ 2001)
- Warum der Wilhelminismus als politischer Kampfbegriff nichts taugt - Die Zeit, February 1999