The German Genius

the same as Schliemann had found at Mycenae. Finally, he found evidence of a great fire that had ended the site, designated as Troy VI.
    Not everyone accepts that Troy VI is Homer’s city—the American Carl Blegen later argued for Troy VIIa—and maybe it never will be settled. It is also unlikely we shall ever again have an archaeologist as colorful and controversial as Schliemann.
    Schliemann arranged with Bismarck for his discoveries to be displayed in the Ethnological Museum in Berlin (five halls all marked “SCHLIE-MANN” ) and this was soon built on. The growing national consciousness of the late nineteenth century would eventually be expressed (and not just in Germany) in museums as much as in military affairs. The Berlin Museum, on an island in the Spree and designed by Schinkel, had been approved in 1823 and featured a massive Ionic colonnade of eighteen columns. Only genuine sculptures were admitted (there were to be no casts), and antiquities of all periods were gradually assembled, designed to appeal to the public, the artist, and the scholar—in that order. 31 But it wasn’t for another fifty years that the Berlin Museum accepted its first work of world importance: the altar of Zeus from Pergamum.
    Pergamum was, of course, one of the great cities of the Hellenistic world, rising in importance after the death of Alexander the Great; it was the site of one of antiquity’s most famous libraries—2,000 volumes in all. There were many temples in Pergamum, but the glory was the altar of Zeus, on the highest hill. It was famous in antiquity for its brilliant sculptures and friezes, 120 meters in length. In the third century, Ampelius described it to his friend Macrinus as one of the Wonders of the World: “a marble altar forty feet high with very large sculptures; and it portrays the Gigantomachy” (the battle of the gods and the giants, before humans were formed).
    By 1871, when Carl Humann, an engineer and architect from Essen who, like Schliemann, had a fascination with archaeology, first began to excavate at Pergamum, the city was run down, many of its ancient stone blocks plundered by Turkish builders. Humann’s brother, Franz, had acquired various rail and trade concessions from the sultan, and Carl worked with him. They secured permission to dig and were visited by Ernst Curtius as it soon became clear that spectacular discoveries were being made. Most notable were a series of slabs of bluish marble, which were sent on to Berlin. There, the new director of the sculpture gallery, Alexander Conze, came across a reference in Ampelius that caused him to realize that Humann had excavated—was still excavating—the Gigantomachy itself. In all, thirty-nine slabs were unearthed, ten free-standing statues, and many inscriptions. The next year another twenty-five slabs, including that of Zeus with his giant opponent, were uncovered, along with thirty-seven statues.
    Because Turkey was then very poor, the sultan sold his interest to the Germans, and the altar of Pergamum became, with Priam’s treasure, the first great archaeological discovery to go on display in Berlin, in 1880. The Royal Museum in Berlin, under Conze, now gained an “overwhelming lead” in the display of treasures from the Greek lands. 32
    By then, the French, British, and Americans had all established their own archaeological institutes in Greece and Italy. It was not only Mommsen, Sybel, and Treitschke who felt the call of nationalism.

The Pathologies of Nationalism
     
    M ilitarism as we know it, modern militarism, probably emerged in the eighteenth century when the rise of absolutism was accompanied by the growth of large-scale military organizations to support princely power. 1 Even then, though, because most of the soldiers had to travel on foot, the size of armies was limited. That, as we have seen, changed with Napoleon’s introduction of the citizen army, which made fighting units much bigger and meant far more people had the experience of being in the military. In Prussia, after his victories, Napoleon confined the army to 42,000 men. The king responded by dismissing all the soldiers after twelve months and inducting another 42,000, a process he repeated the following year. In turn, the industrial revolution, the development of techniques of mass production, together with developments in metal technology resulting from the steam engine, meant that weapons were more plentiful as well as more terrible. The development of