BRITISH IDENTITY AND THE GERMAN OTHER A Dissertation ...

his dismissal. In 1901, Henry W. Wolff complained in the Monthly Review that German ill-will
had arisen only after Bismarck’s accession to power, and that “official inspiration” had
orchestrated the systematic distortion of English history in German eyes. Old German
admiration and envy of English foreign policy, self-government and individualism had been
recast as scorn for “unfair, self-seeking and scheming” English ways. British complaints of
German methods or manners had themselves been chalked up to envy of German military and
economic advancement. 68 “Patriae quis Exul,” writing for the Contemporary Review in 1902,
likewise condemned Bismarck’s efforts to foster Anglophobia against German liberals and
English influences at Court, and he blamed Bismarck for inspiring articles calculated to stir up
European pro-Boer sentiments against Britain following the First Anglo-Boer War (1800-
1801). 69
New Germany and the Old Stereotype
The Germany that arose within twenty years after the wars of unification to new heights
of military, economic and industrial power caused a realignment of the old stereotype. At mid-
century Germans could be pejoratively labeled “conservative agriculturalists” and accused of
leading dull, unchanging, inland existences which made them non-commercial and impractical,
given to reflection and intellectual endeavor—qualities that, when combined with the constant
68 “German Anglophobia,” 59-60, 64, 66-67. The German government’s selective and
polemical use of the British model for anti-liberal nationalist arguments anticipates Nazi
propaganda critical of British social inequities and the ostensibly hypocritical British opposition
to German imperial aims. Hitler particularly liked the tale of conquest, discipline and obedience
portrayed in the British film, The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, starring Gary Cooper and directed by
Henry Hathaway (Agoura, CA: Paramount, 1935). See Gerwin Strobl, The Germanic Isle: Nazi
Perceptions of Britain (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 29, 76, 153-
55.
69 “Anglophobia in Germany,” Reprinted in Living Age 232 (February 1902): 454-55.
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