The German Genius

sounds quite uncensored.” There was an overwhelming deference to the military, such that a “merchant carrying a pile of hats would step off the sidewalk to allow a sergeant to pass.” 10 Berlin’s many beer gardens struck visitors as unfortunate, “raucous places where all social classes crammed together on benches.” And there were numerous “dissolute dancing places,” boasting “nudities in postures difficult to describe.” 11
     
     
    On February 8, 1873, a National Liberal Reichstag deputy named Edward Lasker made a three-hour speech in parliament that attacked head-on imperial Germany’s economic boom, in particular the railways, which, he said, were little more than a giant house of cards where corrupt officials were protecting get-rich-quick speculators. Some of the unpalatable facts that Lasker released in his speech sparked a wave of selling on the stock market and, when both the Vienna and New York markets crashed, a raft of bankruptcies followed. In 1874, 61 banks, 116 industrial enterprises, and 4 railway companies went under.
    Although the laissez-faire liberals were blamed at first, fingers soon began to point at the Jews, since not a few of the leading liberals and bankers were Jews. This was when Heinrich von Treitschke published his article in the Preussische Jahrbücher in which he used the phrase, “The Jews are our misfortune.” Even Theodor Fontane admitted that his avowed “philosemitism” was tested by these events. 12 Bismarck took firm action—but not against the Jews. The economic liberalism of the Gründerzeit was dispensed with, and a program of high tariffs and state subsidies introduced to protect hard-pressed manufacturers. Economic nationalism became the order of the day.
    Anti-Semitism did not disappear. The term itself was coined at that time by a Berlin journalist named Wilhelm Marr, who recognized the change in public sentiment because anti-Jewish agitation in Tsar Alexander III’s Russia had caused Jewish immigration to the German capital to increase rapidly. Although immigration became a major political issue, anti-Semitism was always a less disturbing force in Berlin than in Vienna. In Berlin there were countervailing voices to those of Treitschke and Marr—most important, a “Declaration of Notables” was issued, signed by university professors, liberal politicians, and a few progressive industrialists, that condemned anti-Semitism as “a national disgrace” and an “ancient folly.” 13
    As the 1870s came to an end, the German economy was recovering, this “second industrial revolution” further aided by Germany’s adoption of the gold standard and the introduction of a single national currency. * The infrastructure was overhauled, a horse-drawn train on rails being introduced in the 1870s, soon to be replaced by a steam railway system (the Ringbahn, or Circle Line) built on the course of the old city wall. Next came the Stadtbahn, or city railway, linking the center of Berlin with its suburbs. Alongside this, electric lamps were introduced on many of the main streets in the 1880s. Mark Twain visited Berlin in 1891 and found it to be “the German Chicago.” 14 Julius Langbehn dismissed Berlin as the “epicentre of all modern evil,” its nightlife the embodiment of sin. 15
    T HE I MPERIAL K NOW -A LL
     
    Kaiser Wilhelm II also disliked Berlin. For a start, it was far too free-thinking and disrespectful of royalty. Nevertheless, Germany needed a capital to match his ambitions, and he therefore insisted that it must become “the most beautiful city in the world.” To that end he made sure he had a finger in almost every pie: churches, prisons, barracks, hospitals—all bore the imprint of his vision, for good or ill. 16
    Under him, the most significant building to be constructed in Berlin was scarcely his favorite. The new Reichstag, started in 1884 and dedicated a decade later, was originally intended to be a simple affair on the Wilhelmstrasse. But politicians and architects alike argued that this would not reflect the “newly unified, glorious German nation, on the verge of taking over the leadership of Europe.” The architect, Paul Wallot, charged with “capturing the German spirit in stone,” produced a cross between the Paris Opera and a Palladian palazzo. 17
    Hardly better was the Siegesallee, an avenue built in 1901 in the Tier-garten and lined with marble busts of Hohenzollern heroes. The Kaiser was extremely fond of the