Free Iron Kingdom : The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947 by Christopher Clark Page A

hat mir den ganzen Grunewald versaut
’). 20 Käthe Kollwitz laid claim to a specifically Prussian tradition in a different sense: in a widely praised cycle of etchings inspired by Hauptmann’s play, she invoked the Silesian weavers’ revolt of 1844. These were scenes of bitter conflict and suffering, in which the epic canvas of history painting was subverted to serve a socialist vision of the past. Even the proto-modernist architects Messel, Poelzig and Behrens were engaged in a dialogue with the specificity of the Prussian setting: their airy and technically innovative architectural designs responded at many levels with the spare neo-classicism of the ‘Prussian style’ associated with Gilly and Schinkel. 21
    The last decades before the war witnessed a dramatic proliferation inthe erection of public monuments and statues. In Prussia, as across much of Europe, the public statuary of this era tended towards weightiness and magniloquence. Patriotic themes loomed large. A study published in 1904 found that in recent years, 372 monuments had been erected to Emperor William I alone, most of them in the Prussian provinces. Some of these were financed from state funds, but local ‘monument committees’ also played a role in many areas, securing the necessary permissions and raising donations. By the turn of the century, however, the public echo of such objects was ambivalent. A telling moment was the opening in 1901 of the
Siegesallee
(Avenue of Victory), a chain of monumental statues extending for 750 metres along one of the axial roads of the capital. Set into a long sequence of spacious alcoves lined with stone balustrades were freestanding figures on lofty pedestals representing the rulers of the House of Brandenburg, flanked by busts of generals and senior statesmen from the reign. Already at the time of its opening, this gargantuan project appeared out of touch with the times. In his hurry to complete the avenue on schedule, Emperor William II had commissioned sculptors of varied distinction to execute the statues – all were conventional and bombastic, many were clumsy and lifeless as well. The resultwas an expensive exercise in pomposity and monotony. With their usual irreverence, the Berliners dubbed the avenue the
Puppenallee
, or ‘puppet alley’, and numerous contemporary visual satires mocked the project as the Emperor’s megalomaniacal folly. The
coup de grâce
was administered in 1903 when a famous advertisement for a brand of mouthwash featured the Avenue of Victory lined with gigantic bottles of Odol.

     
    48. The Avenue of Victory
(Siegesallee),
Berlin

     
    49. Advertisement for Odol mouthwash
    The increasingly polarized relationship between official and dissenting political cultures was – even in the German context – a specifically Prussian phenomenon. It was far less marked in the southern German states, where progressive coalitions succeeded in pushing through programmes of constitutional reform. The relationship between the ‘governmental’ parties and the Social Democrats was also less fraught in the south, partly because the established partisan groups were more open to collaboration with the left and partly because south German socialists were more moderate and less confrontational than their Prussian counterparts. In high-cultural terms, too, the polarization was less pronounced. By contrast with Kaiser Wilhelm II, who publicly denounced cultural modernism of all kinds, Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig of Hesse-Darmstadt was a well-known connoisseur and sponsor of modern art and sculpture. In this small federal state, the court was still an important centre of cultural innovation.
CULTURE WAR
     
    By the end of 1878, more than half of Prussia’s Catholic bishops were in exile or in prison. More than 1,800 priests had been incarcerated or exiled and over 16 million marks’ worth of ecclesiastical property seized. In the first four months of 1875 alone, 241 priests, 136 Catholic newspaper editors