Berlin

The conditions that day were indeed difficult: it was so hot and humid that several riders suffered heatstrokes and fell from their horses. But the heat apparently did not bother the kaiser’s grandson, twelve-year-old Wilhelm, who, despite a withered left arm, stayed on his mount throughout the ordeal. Haughtily, he refused to acknowledge a well-wisher in the crowd who addressed him as “Wilhelmkin.” “He will never forget this day,” said Wilhelm I of the boy who would later rule Germany as Kaiser Wilhelm II.

In accordance with the epochal significance of the occasion, Berlin was decked out as never before in its history. “The via triumphalis was about three miles long, through streets as wide and in some cases thrice as wide as Broadway,” wrote the American minister George Bancroft. All along the route stood captured French cannon and flagstaffs festooned with oak leaves and evergreens. At important way stations rose enormous allegorical figures made of wood, linen, and straw. A twenty-meter-high statue of Berolina, patron goddess of Berlin, graced the Halle Gate, while two huge female figures, representing the newly acquired cities of Strasbourg and Metz, presided over the Potsdamer Platz. In the Lustgarten next to the Royal Palace loomed an even larger statue: Mutter Germania, flanked by her youngest daughters, Alsace and Lorraine. A velarium suspended over Unter den Linden depicted the great military victories that had finally brought Germany its unity.

Upon reaching their destination at the Pariser Platz, next to the Brandenburg Gate, the kaiser and his retinue stood under a canopy while dignitaries from the city of Berlin paid their respects and a maiden in white recited an interminable poem. Princess Victoria, daughter of Queen Victoria and the wife of Grown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm of Germany, had deep reservations about this new Reich born of blood and iron, but even she could not contain her admiration for the victory parade, declaring it “the greatest fete Berlin, and I may say Germany, has ever seen.”

Such pomp did not come cheaply. The celebration cost more than 450,000 talers, which had to be raised through a surcharge on all income taxes levied in Berlin. Few Berliners complained, however, for the festivities offered ample opportunity to recoup the tax. Restaurants and taverns added extra tables and dispensed a “Commemoration Beer,” which, though the same as the regular beer, cost a few pennies more because of its historical significance. Street vendors hawked a “War and Victory Chronicle 1870–71,” along with guides to Berlin’s nightlife, tickets to tours of the city, coats of arms of famous generals, regimental flags, and fragrant laurel wreaths.

Kaiser Wilhelrn I enters the Pariser Platz during the victory celebration in Berlin on June 16, 1871

Vantage points from which to watch the proceedings in comfort were in great demand. Merchants with houses or shops along the route rented out viewing space for breathtaking sums. One enterprising store owner on Unter den Linden installed ten “comfortable chairs” in his window “with an unobstructed view of the Pariser Platz.” Thousands brought camp-stools to the street or perched atop trees, lampposts, and monuments. “No roof was too high, no stool too low that was not occupied by people,” wrote the Vossische Zeitung. “There was not even any empty space atop the dizzying heights of the Brandenburg Gate. . . . The men and women up there sought to outdo each other with daring poses, all of them showing a contempt for death that was truly astounding.”

This moment, with all its bombast and swagger, can be seen as deeply symbolic of Bismarckian Germany and its raw new capital. Apart from its dominant military motif, the triumphal celebration resembled nothing so much as a house-warming party thrown by a newly rich sausage baron upon taking possession of his neo-Renaissance mansion. In subsequent decades the prevailing mood in Berlin would not remain uniformly celebratory, but the city’s self-conscious determination to display its prowess and to show the world that it had arrived as a great capital remained constant.

The Unloved Capital