Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
pieces of shrapnel in his body. While the Kaiser recovered, Bismarck used the event to
justify a
crackdown on socialists
, closing newspapers and persecuting trade unionists.
he growth of unionism was a direct result of relentless urbanization. Between 1890
and 1900, Berlin's population doubled to two million and thousands of tenement
buildings sprang up in working-class districts like
Prenzlauer Berg
and
Wedding
. he
poor conditions here meant its residents were solidly behind the Social Democratic
Party (
SPD
), whose deputies were the chief dissenters within the Reichstag. By 1890
Wilhelm II had become Kaiser and dropped Bismarck, but the country continued to
be militaristic and authoritarian. While Berlin remained defiantly liberal, it steadily
acquired the attributes of a modern capital. Now an established centre for commerce
and diplomacy, it boasted electric trams, an underground railway, and other technical
innovations of the age. In the arts Berlin also moved forward, developing its own form
of Modernism, in the
Berlin Secession
movement, which rejected the art establishment
and included artists Max Liebermann, Edvard Munch and Walter Leistikow.
World War I and its aftermath
he arms race and alliances that polarized Europe during the 1890s and the first decade
of the twentieth century led inexorably towards
World War I
. Its 1914 outbreak was
greeted with enthusiasm by most German civilians - only pacifists and communists
resisted the heady intoxication of patriotism. In Berlin, Kaiser Wilhelm II spoke “to
all Germans” from the balcony of his palace, and shop windows across the city were
festooned with national colours. Military bands played
Heil dir im Siegerkranz
(“Hail
to you in the Victor's Laurel”) and
Die Wacht am Rhein
(“he Watch on the Rhine”) in
cafés, while Berliners threw flowers to the Imperial German army, or Reichswehr, as it
marched off to war. he political parties agreed to a truce, and even the Social
Democrats voted for war credits.
he General Staff's calculation that France could be knocked out before Russia fully
mobilized soon proved hopelessly optimistic, and Germany found itself facing a war
on two fronts - the very thing Bismarck had dreaded. As casualties mounted on the
stalemated western front, 350,000 German men perished in the war. Rationing and
food shortages began to hit poorer civilians and
disillusionment
set in. By the summer
of 1915 housewives were demonstrating in front of the Reichstag, a portent of more
serious popular unrest to come. Ordinary people were beginning to see the war as an
exercise staged for the rich at the expense of the poor.
In December 1917, nineteen members of the SPD announced that they could no
longer support the war and formed an independent socialist party known as the USPD.
his party joined the “International Group” of
Karl Liebknecht
and
Rosa Luxemburg
- later known as the Spartacists - which had opposed SPD support for the war since
1915. his grouping later formed the nucleus of the postwar Kommunistische Partei
Deutschlands, or
KPD
. Meanwhile, fuel, food and even beer shortages added to
growing hardships on the home front.
Defeat and revolution
With their last great offensive spent, and America joining the Allied war effort, even
Germany's supreme warlord, Erich von Ludendorff, recognized that
defeat
was inevitable
1699
1701
Inauguration of Schloss Charlottenburg, commissioned by Sophie
Charlotte, wife of Friedrich I.
Berlin becomes the capital
of Prussia.
