Germany’s importance to Europe and the world since the 20th century obscures the relatively short time it has been a country. Compare its establishment in 1871 with that of the United States in 1776 or the United Kingdom in 1707. France, Russia, and Spain have undergone transformative political changes, but have much longer histories as recognized states. By contrast, Germany before its unification was a geographic expression comprising a variety of separate realms sharing a common culture and language. That history shaped both its emergence as a country and the empire ruled by the Hohenzollern dynasty until 1918. Despite underlying political and social fragility that cut against its intrinsic strengths, Imperial Germany survived the strains of World War I and subsequent pressures to fragment the country into its original components. What made it fragile and lasting at the same time?
Katja Hoyer, an Anglo-German historian born in East Germany, addresses that question in Blood and Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German Empire. A concise, well-written study, it deftly blends narrative with analysis to set a crucial era in the context from which the German state emerged. Hoyer draws her title from Otto von Bismarck’s famous 1863 September speech declaring that force, not constitutional procedure, would unite Germany. Victory in a series of limited wars provided Bismarck the opportunity to proclaim a German Empire in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles on January 18, 1871, but this process made conflict its primary binding force. Rather than a solid edifice, Hoyer describes the federal empire as “a mosaic, hastily glued together with the blood of its enemies.” Bismarck used the struggle against foreign and domestic threats as a unifying force, but successors managed that difficult balancing act far less well. Although their careless steps produced the conflict that brought the monarchy’s downfall, fifty years of economic development and population growth provided Germany the cohesion to last through its transition to a republic.
