Bismarck biography book
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Bismarck
Excerpt
Introduction
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Those who possess great political power for a long time and then suddenly lose it generally feel the urge to compose their memoirs – not only in beställning to transmit to posterity as favourable a view as possible of their own achievement, but also so as to settle accounts with former political opponents. It was no different in the case of Otto von Bismarck after his fall. On 16 March , one day after his definitive break with the ung Kaiser Wilhelm II, he confided to a visitor: ‘Now inom am going to write my memoirs’. Meanwhile, the Reich Chancellery was already piled high with boxes full of secret files that Bismarck, during the next few weeks, would have taken to Friedrichsruh, his place of retirement in the Saxon Forest, outside Hamburg.
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As his assistant, Bismarck chose Lothar Bucher, a former liberal whom he had appointed a councillor in the utländsk Ministry, where he served Bismarck faithfully. Without Bucher’s in
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Bismarck: A Life
Nineteenth century Europe was a game of two halves or, better, a game of two men: the Emperor Napoleon, who dominated the first, and Otto von Bismarck, who dominated the second. If anything Bismarck was the more important of the two, creating not just a new Germany but a new Europe, with a legacy that extended well into the twentieth century. He was the greater because he was the more cunning; the lesser because his vision was considerably more limited. In some ways Bismarck was the best statesman Germany ever had; in other ways the worst.
The paradox of the Iron Chancellor is superbly explored by Jonathan Steinberg in Bismarck: A Life, published earlier this year. Given his importance it’s remarkable how little attention he has achieved in the English-speaking world, obsessed, as it is, with Hitler. The only other study that I have read is Alan Palmer’s Bismarck, a dated and not terribly satisfactory biography. Steinberg makes up for
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A new account of the life and policies of the first German chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, this concise historical-biography reflects, for the first time in English, the historical shift in emphasis from the traditional political-economic approach to the more complex social-economic one of post—World War II scholarship.
Since the middle of the s, much new material on Bismarck and nineteenth-century Germany and new interpretations of existing material have been published in Germany, Great Britain, and the United States. Professor George O. Kent’s brilliant synthesis, drawing on this mass of material, examines changes in emphasis in post—World War II scholarship. The book, particularly in the historiographical notes and bibliographical essay, provides the serious student with an invaluable guide to the intricacies of recent Bismarckian scholarship. For the general reader, the main text presents a picture of the man, the issues, and the age in the light of modern scholarship.
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