The German Genius

to create a corpus of material on the artist. Eventually some 1,500 photographs, prints, and engravings were collected and deposited in the British Museum for the use of scholars. He was helped by two German art historians. 25
    As a clever man who could see the changes taking place around him, he recognized the need for education and industry to work together. He joined the Society of Arts (founded in 1754 “for the encouragement of Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce”) very soon after his arrival in Britain and became its president in 1843. It was officials of this society who, in 1844, revived the idea of an annual exhibition of manufacturers, which would eventually lead to the Great Exhibition of 1851. This was, perhaps, Albert’s greatest contribution, his role in making the Great Exhibition happen. He was chairman of the Royal Commission on the exhibition and intimately involved in all the detailed planning.
    The displays of the German-speaking states at the exhibition easily outstripped those of the United States in magnitude and rivaled those of France. 26 The best work from the Prussian government’s iron and zinc foundries was shown, together with Saxony’s Meissen porcelain, musical instruments, and clocks, and telegraphs produced by Siemens and Halske, revealing the advanced state of communications in the country. There were textiles—dyed many colors—lenses, machines for creating newspaper type, plus sculptures from the Berlin and Munich schools. It was an early view of Germany’s looming industrial power.
    The Great Exhibition was a notable success, not least financially, realizing a surplus of £180,000, an enormous sum. Initially, Prince Albert wanted the profits from the exhibition (which the government promised to match) to be used to found a number of schools of science and industry at South Kensington, where he also wanted all the scientific societies to be grouped, together with the Institution of Civil Engineers, to form a Napoleonic-style technical-national university. It didn’t work out but “Albertopolis” was realized to the extent that “South Kensington,” “that un-English complex of museums, scientific institutions, colleges of music and art, part university, part polytechnic,” advanced in fits and starts, and today is the intellectual and artistic heart of London. The Albert Memorial stands at the edge of this, overseeing the prince’s great creation. 27
    While he was in Britain, the prince retained his interest in the country of his birth. He had been infected with enthusiasm for German unity while he was a student at Bonn. 28 He used his London experience to try to influence the Prussian king in the direction of a constitutional monarchy and parliamentary government along British lines, a model he genuinely approved. His advice may have been responsible for Friedrich Wilhelm’s decision in 1847 to issue a patent establishing a united Diet for the whole of Prussia. Albert fell gradually out of sympathy with the authoritarian trend that was such an important element of the Bismarckian approach. However, he did form a firm friendship with the prince of Prussia, the later King and Emperor Wilhelm I. When Prince Wilhelm was forced to flee from Berlin after the Berlin uprising in March 1848 (he was responsible for the shooting of demonstrators and became known as Kartätschenprinz , the Prince of Cartridge Shot), Albert made use of the prince’s presence in London to begin a sustained attempt to win him over to constitutionalism; Albert argued that, after 1848, a confederation was no longer adequate and that a single state was necessary. 29 He was also critical of an excessive Prussian influence over the future of Germany.
    The political differences between Prince Albert and his son, Edward, the Prince of Wales, should not be overlooked. The latter reacted against what he saw as his father’s “overestimation” of Germany and his marriage to Alexandra, the daughter of the future king of Denmark, ensured that he was firmly in the anti-German camp after the Schleswig-Holstein war of 1864 (by which time Albert was dead). Following this, Edward’s sympathies lay with France. A parallel development occurred with Wilhelm II of Prussia, who took against his father and his English mother. In the new climate, dynasties could no longer be links between nations. 30
    These are murky waters, with ambiguous messages. Albert’s very tangible influences on the arts and sciences in