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Anyone walking through some streets in a district like Berlin-Kreuzberg in 2021 will quickly ask themselves the question: Where are the Prussians when you need them?

The sidewalk is littered with cigarette butts and bottle caps, the house walls are smeared, because someone will take care of it, no trace of order anywhere.

In such places it is difficult to imagine that 150 years ago with the empire a state was created in which the soldier's goose-step was not only seen by the military as the “crown of the upright gait” and that liberal journalists often enough described as a “straitjacket”.

From today's standpoint, this formulation sounds plausible at first.

Hadn't Chancellor Otto von Bismarck made the foundation possible through “blood and iron”, that is, through a series of wars?

Wasn't an emperor ruling together with the nobility - and despite the constitution, couldn't this man do more or less what he wanted?

Didn't Bismarck put the Catholics under heavy pressure in the “Kulturkampf” and put the workers at the same time through the Socialist Law?

Didn't the nationalist boom get out of hand after his resignation?

There's nothing to be denied about any of this.

And yet there are developments and structures that continue to have an effect in today's Federal Republic.

Above all else, two things have been confirmed: on the one hand, Bismarck's little German solution, i.e. a Germany without Austria.

On the other hand, with all Prussian dominance, the Kaiserreich was a federal state in which the states had their own constitutions.

It was not for nothing that the Chancellor had to bribe the Bavarians with their own postal system.

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In addition, Germany was a monarchy after 1871, but it was a constitutional one with a parliament that had budgetary rights: “I don't know any parties, I only know Germans” - these almost pleading words from Kaiser Wilhelm II, when he needed the hated Social Democrats of all places for the approval of war credits in 1914, have their story.

Whether he wanted to or not: Bismarck had to deal with a freely elected Reichstag

Source: picture-alliance / akg-images

It is the same with the fact that the Reichstag was composed on the basis of free, equal and secret suffrage for men.

Systems such as the Prussian three-class electoral law might still apply in the federal states; theoretically every vote counted equally at the Reich level.

In general, historians used the term “liberal era” to describe the years after the founding of the empire.

This is based on the one hand on Bismarck's alliance with the National Liberals;

the Chancellor needed it because this trend assumed that progress could best develop in the housing of the nation, while many old conservatives continued to feel obliged to the respective rulers of their countries.

But alongside this political community of convenience, liberal modernity paved its way in Germany against the traditional corporate state.

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Apart from the progressive right to vote, this meant the breakthrough of the market economy and the bourgeois figure of thought of ascent through describable achievement that counts more than inherited privileges.

This not only benefited the educated Protestant bourgeoisie, which held most of the key positions in the state apparatus and in academia (and today includes Angela Merkel as the daughter of a pastor).

The bourgeois world also gave the type of technical expert an unprecedented level of validity.

Engineers, inventors and entrepreneurs such as Carl Benz, Gottlieb Daimler and Werner von Siemens prove this.

The work of these men in particular has an impact on the self-image of the Federal Republic.

To be a country of designers that offers the best technical solutions in mechanical engineering is at the core of German identity: the company names Siemens and Daimler-Benz spread this image all over the planet.

Icon of industrialization: "Das Eisenwalzwerk" (1875) by Adolph von Menzel

Source: picture alliance / akg-images

The working class that created industrialization after 1871 also still exists, although it is less and less involved in heavy industry.

In the years of the German Empire, on the other hand, the production of industrial goods such as steel accelerated rapidly.

Social democracy was orientated towards Marxism and was in contrast to all other social classes.

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In the Reichstag elections, from 1890 onwards, the SPD always won the highest percentage of votes - Bismarck tried not only to alleviate the pressure that had built up as a result of this in the years before by introducing socialist laws, but also by introducing structures of the welfare state.

It is currently debatable whether the Germans have exaggerated this line of tradition or not, but the finding that even the Hartz IV legislation is rooted in this policy remains.

It can be used to show some elements in the structure of the state and society that still exist.

But to stay in the image of the straitjacket, not only the jacket belongs to it, but also someone who is in it.

The soldier was the guiding principle of the whole nation: Parade on Tempelhofer Feld in Berlin in 1908

Source: picture-alliance / IMAGNO / Austri

Writers like Heinrich Mann have already published a great deal about the spirit of subjugation during the imperial era - in historical studies, discussions around these years revolved around the term militarism.

It is undisputed that military thinking and action were overrepresented.

The soldier, or rather: the officer, was - to put it somewhat simply - the model of an entire nation.

Command and obedience, authority, hierarchy, subordination, discipline, hardship, all these categories dominated even civil life.

The uniform gave the man rank;

whoever tried to evade it was considered effeminate.

In political speeches, the high-pitched tones extolling war increased steadily after Bismarck's resignation.

Often enough, this rhetoric is paired with chauvinistic and anti-Semitic attacks: The “place in the sun” as a metaphor for more colonies is to be mentioned, but also the conviction that the world will recover once again with the German being.

The emperor's naval building policy made a concrete contribution to the fact that foreign countries perceived the empire less and less as a power aiming at compromise and maintaining peace.

And although one can point out that when the war broke out in 1914, people cheered not only in Berlin but also in Paris, Wilhelm II and his Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg did nothing to prevent the great catastrophe of the 20th century.

It would be absurd to claim that the Federal Republic has inherited an inheritance here.

It had no way of doing this, as it was based on the collapse of May 8, 1945, which was accompanied by an unconditional surrender.

With some current news about the miserable condition of the Bundeswehr, it is almost astonishing how things could get so far in a country where soldiers were once so important.

Correspondingly, the overwhelming majority have meanwhile dearly considered bourgeois-civilian life.

No sensible person can diagnose nationalism and the longing for war across the board.

The situation is different when it comes to the relationship to the authoritarian. On the one hand, the right and left margins have grown stronger in recent years.

The bankruptcy of both worldviews is immovable, but that doesn't break the fascination.

In addition, there is a tendency to be opinionated, a tendency to first morally charge one's own position and then push it through.

The bon mot according to which the Germans, after declaring war on the world, now declared their all the more dogged peace, is already slightly old.

However, discussions with contemporaries who are in possession of the ultimate truth about the good can still be observed particularly frequently in the Federal Republic.

A tendency to be righteous and morally correct: Kaiser Wilhelm II. (L.) And Crown Prince at the issue of slogans and a poster with current slogans

Source: picture-alliance / akg-images

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These staff will never admit a mistake, but expect total submission to their own point of view.

But that is the end of all liberality.

And that's why there is probably far more empire in the Federal Republic than the Germans can please.

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