Ludwig Meidner, Apocalyptic Landscape, 1913
On the occasion of what Kaiser Wilhelm I called Schliemann’s “patriotic gift,” imperial Berlin made him an honorary citizen (an honor bestowed heretofore only on Bismarck and Helmuth von Moltke) and threw a lavish dinner party for him at the Town Hall. The menu, written in ancient Greek, showed the Discoverer of Ancient Troy seated on the throne of Priam holding a spade in one hand and a statuette of Victory in the other, while a chastened Berlin bear reposed at his feet. In an official proclamation, Mayor Forckenbeck declared that Schliemann, “by his combination of practical activity with idealism” had become “a pattern for all German citizens.” Messages of congratulation came from Kaiser Wilhelm I and Bismarck, both of whom had worked assiduously to stroke the archeologist’s bruised ego. In his brief response, Schliemann showed that while he had forgiven Berlin its earlier snubs, he had not forgotten them: “In spite of her former cold treatment, you see that Berlin has done me honor at last. She has three great citizens—Bismarck, von Moltke, and myself.”
Schliemann’s archeological bug bit Kaiser Wilhelm II, who loved to dig for ancient treasure at his summer estate on Corfu, where, it was rumored, fragments were buried every year by sycophantic aides to facilitate his “discoveries.” On his numerous trips abroad he met with foreign potentates to personally press Germany’s case for access to the best sites and the right to bring some of the finds back to Berlin. In 1899, for example, he convinced the Turkish sultan to allow German archeologists to claim for Berlin half of what they found at the ancient Greek sites of Priene and Baalbek. Germany thereby gained a great advantage over Britain, France, Russia, and Austria in the exploitation of the cultural riches of the eastern Mediterranean. Germany’s cultural warriors brought home the Gate of Milet to add to the fabled Pergamum Altar, which had been placed on display in Berlin in 1880 and touted as Berlin’s answer to the Elgin Marbles. In 1902 Kaiser Wilhelm II presided over the dedication of a new space dedicated to the Pergamum treasures. (The famous Pergamum Museum itself was constructed in the period between 1912 and 1929.) With these additions, Berlin indeed rivaled London as a treasure-house of ancient plunder.
Matters were somewhat different when it came to collections of contemporary art. Old Berlin’s holdings had not been very distinguished in this domain, and in the imperial era they suffered from the misguided intervention of the kaiser. Wilhelm took a personal interest in acquisitions to the National Gallery, Berlin’s major museum for contemporary art; he hoped to weed out works that were too modern in technique or insufficiently edifying in theme. After visiting the National Gallery in 1899, Wilhelm complained to the Cultural Ministry that some “educative” national works had been “replaced by pictures of modern taste, some of them of foreign origin.” He demanded that the originals be replaced and the new pictures be “demoted to a less prominent place.” He also insisted that henceforth all acquisitions receive his approval.
Wilhelm’s censure was aimed primarily at the director of the National Gallery, Hugo von Tschudi, a distinguished scholar with a true appreciation for modern art, particularly for the modern art of France. Doggedly, Tschudi found ways to acquire some important modern pieces for his museum despite the kaiser’s guidelines. For example, in 1897 he acquired a painting by Cezanne, becoming the first museum director in the world to do so. (The French state had just refused to include this painter’s works in its official collections.) Tschudi failed, however, to slip a major purchase of works by Delacroix, Courbet, and Daumier past the emperor’s vigilant eye. Spotting the paintings on a visit to the gallery, Wilhelm indignantly declared that the director “could show such stuff to a monarch who understood nothing of art, but not to him.” The rebuke infuriated Tschudi, who hated having to defer to a man he considered an art-ignoramus. Thus he gratefully accepted an offer to become the head of Bavaria’s royal museums in 1908.
Munich’s gain was Berlin’s loss. Tschudi’s successor, Ludwig Justi, also hoped to open the National Gallery to innovative works, but he lacked his predecessor’s dynamism and drive. Visiting the National Gallery in 1912, the distinguished American critic James Huneker wrote that he wanted to gnash his teeth over the plethora of mediocre paintings and the relative dearth of distinguished ones. He was appalled to discover that the museum’s French Impressionist works were all hung in a badly lighted room on the top floor. As for the rest: “The sight of so much misspent labor, of the acres of canvas deluged with dirty, bad paint, raises my bile.”
Many of the artists and intellectuals who enjoyed the Kaiser’s favor were faculty members at the Royal Academy of Art, the Academy of Music, or the University of Berlin. This last institution was the imperial capital’s most important center of higher learning. Located on Unter den Linden in a palace built in 1766 by Frederick the Great (but immediately abandoned by the king when he moved his court to Potsdam), the university was established in 1810 to help Prussia revitalize and throw off the domination of Napoleon. Among its founding patrons were the Humboldt brothers, Alexander and Wilhelm, whose organizing principle was the “unity of learning”—the symbiosis of humanism and the natural sciences. In the 1840s bronze statues of the brothers were erected in front of the main building (they are still there today). A century later, when the East German Communists took over the university, they changed the name from Friedrich-Wilhelm-Universitat to Humboldt-Universität. They also inscribed in the central hall a famous line from Karl Marx, who had attended the university in the late 1830s: “Philosophers have hitherto explained the world; it is now time to change it.”
By the beginning of the imperial period Berlin University was indeed helping to change the world, albeit more through practical learning than through philosophically inspired political action. As an intellectual ally of German industry and government, the university was a key player in Germany’s development as a world leader in technology, the natural sciences, and medicine. A brief look at the school’s contributions to the disciplines of medicine and physics should suffice to document this point.
Rudolf Virchow, a physician, biologist, and amateur archeologist (he was a friend and supporter of Schliemann) invented the modern discipline of pathology. He also promoted reforms in the meat-processing industry through his discovery of trichina worms in uncooked ham and sausage. He was somewhat less scientific in his approach to tuberculosis, typhus, and cholera; as a radical democrat (about which more below), he argued that these diseases were caused by poverty and overcrowding rather than by microorganisms. His remedies were therefore exclusively sociaclass="underline" more rights for the poor rather than quarantine or disinfecting.