German History - 1815 - 1871 (Post-Napoleonic / Pre-unification Era), German History - 1871 - 1918 (German Empire / Kaiserreich), German History - Political Aspects, General & Miscellaneous European History, Prussia - History, Nationalism & Sovereignty -
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Overview
This study in the genre of political biography is revisionist. Bismarck emerges as a somewhat more conservative traditionalist than much of the national liberal historiography has depicted him. Moreover, the national orientation in much of the literature on the history of Central Europe during the nineteenth century is also implicitly challenged. Downgrading somewhat the founding of the German Reich of 1871, traditionally viewed as Bismarck's greatest achievement, the author treats this episode as but one of many throughout Bismarck's long career wherein his efforts to build a federative, multiethnic Mitteleuropa encountered many setbacks or otherwise necessitated at best the acceptance of many limited achievements that cumulatively produced a quite incomplete Middle-European system stretching from the northern seas to the mideast. From this perspective, the author sees the limited victory of Bismarck's Prussia over Franz Joseph's Austria in the War of 1866 as the critical event in the entire history of Bismarckian politics. His policy until then was to achieve a restructuring of the German Confederation on the basis of a joint Austro-Prussian leadership in Mitteleuropa. After Franz Joseph decided in early 1866 that a war was preferable to the limited concessions sought by Bismarck, the Prussian armies failed to inflict on the main Habsburg host the Cannae that the general staff planned for 3 July. Thereafter, Bismarck's task became more difficult than ever. His labors were often fruitless. His own master, Wilhelm I, and the Prussian bureaucrats, diplomats, and courtiers with direct access to this first of Bismarck's Wilhelmian nemeses could be at least as obstructionist in Berlin as Franz Joseph and his minions in Vienna. In fact, all too often Bismarck's lack of control over the Prussian elites was in part responsible for the resistance of the Habsburg ruling circle. If Bismarck left his neo-Wilhelmian successors an incomplete system upon his retirement fromBook Details
Published
October 31, 1994
Publisher
Fairleigh Dickinson University Press,U.S.
Pages
623
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780838635124