BRITISH IDENTITY AND THE GERMAN OTHER A Dissertation ...

Catholics and socialists in order to whip up nationalist support, constitute what David
Blackbourne has designated “the Bismarck-problem” that limited the political integration and
evolution of Germany. 49 In his opposition to liberal German Anglophilia, Bismarck drew on
Anglo-German distinctions based upon his own misapprehensions of the English political model.
He admired the English hereditary aristocracy’s retention of power in the House of Lords but
despised the weak British monarchy, insisting that the Prussian crown remain the “main pillar” of
the state. 50
Besides Bismarck’s anti-English sentiments and Machiavellian schemes, the
acquiescence of elected German politicians to the government’s top-down approach revealed a
disturbing disconnect between popular nationalism and liberalism. In 1867 the London Review,
remarking on the ease with which Bismarck, as “arch-magician,” had “smoothed down the
acerbities of conflicting opinion,” wondered how the government’s constitution for the North
German Confederation had passed almost unanimously, even without needed amendments on
ministerial responsibility, compensation for elected members and the free reporting of debates. 51
Gentlemen’s Magazine in 1870, while retaining the idea that a freedom-loving German people
would continue to oppose Bismarck’s Prussian Junker policies, nevertheless admitted the
“fictitious halo of patriotism” that insured his unlimited power and popularity. German
unification would thus allow of no immediate prognostication for German democracy, which the
49 David Blackbourn, History of Germany, 1780-1918: The Long Nineteenth Century, 2nd
ed. (Malden, MA; Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), 202.
50 Schlesinger, “Count Bismarck,” 396-97.
51 “The North German Constitution” (29 June 1867): 720.
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