William Cook

Why Germany shouldn’t cancel Bismarck

Bismarck monument, Hamburg (Photo: Getty)

What’s in a name? On the face of it, the Bismarck-Zimmer in Berlin’s Foreign Ministry building looks like just another boring conference room: functional office furniture, bland bureaucratic décor – an ideal forum for those tedious, conscientious meetings at which German politicians and diplomats excel.

However, that nondescript committee room has now become headline news in Germany, after the Bundesrepublik’s Foreign Ministry announced it would henceforth be renamed the Saal der Deutschen Einheit, or the Hall of German Unity (the ‘Tag der Deutschen Einheit’, the Day of German Unity, on 3October, is the day when Germans celebrate the Reunification of 1990).

Bismarck’s fluctuating reputation has always revealed a good deal about German attitudes to its stormy past – and its challenging future

Is this a sign that Germany is turning against Otto von Bismarck, the architect of Germany’s original unification in 1871? After all, this hasn’t happened in isolation. Germany’s biggest Bismarck statue, in Hamburg, became a focus for street protests, prompting Hamburg’s Ministry of Culture & Media to begin a process of ‘contextualisation’ (whatever that means) of his memorial.

Bismarck’s fluctuating reputation has always revealed a good deal about German attitudes to its stormy past – and its challenging future. As the great British historian AJP Taylor observed, ‘Bismarck is the German barometer – the test of what Germans think of themselves, and of the world.’

To many Germans, mainly on the right, Bismarck remains a hero – the founder of the nation, who presided over a long period of peace, prosperity and social emancipation. However, for some Germans, mainly on the left, he’s always been a villain – a reactionary warmonger who set Germany on an imperialistic path that led to the first world war and the Third Reich.

Which of these is the prevailing view tells you a lot about which way the wind is blowing in Germany, whether the forces of conservatism or radicalism are in the ascendant.

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