BRITISH IDENTITY AND THE GERMAN OTHER A Dissertation ...

German statecraft and culture under Bismarck. 41 These intra-party disparities tended to
undermine the “idealist” position for several reasons: first, calls for emulating Germany, for the
sake of competing with her, betrayed an intrinsic Germanophobia; second, old distinctions
between the “two Germanies,” between stern, disciplined, autocratic Prussia and cosmopolitan,
romantic, philosophical southern Germany, began to wane with the rise of imperialist and
nationalist sentiments in Germany; third, colonial rivalry, events such as the kaiser’s
inflammatory 1896 Kruger Telegram and increased German armaments all strengthened the
Germanophobe argument; and fourth, an increasing perception of the breadth of German
Anglophobia at the century’s end weakened Germanophile attempts to differentiate between the
German people and the Hohenzollern regime. 42 Kaiser Wilhelm II’s confused love/hate
relationship with his English mother’s country and his indiscretions in the press constituted yet
another byway complicating this maze of ambiguous opinion regarding Germany. Wilhelm’s
volubility, and his unquenchable desire to reconcile his English sympathies with his autocratic
Prussian heritage, and with his idea of popular Anglophobia in Germany, produced the infamous
Daily Telegraph Affair, in which Wilhelm stated that he belonged to a select minority of
41 Kennedy, Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, 119.
42 Kennedy, “Idealists and Realists,” 144-47. The Kaiser’s congratulatory telegram to
South African President Paul Kruger for his defeat of the Jameson Raid perpetrated by English
settlers in the Transvaal aroused British public indignation and brought recriminations against
devious and meddlesome German tactics. The rebellion grew out of long-standing disputes
between English immigrants, or Uitlanders, and the pro-German government in the Transvaal.
Later, German pro-Boer sympathies, accelerated German naval construction, the two Moroccan
Crises (1905 and 1911), and, in general, the political manipulation of anti-English sentiment in
Germany confirmed Germanophobic opinion in Britain.
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