LITMIR.BIZ

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50 marks. He began his spectacular career by collecting Renaissance bronzes but he soon attracted a tremendous group of specialists and art historians who between them turned Berlin into a centre of the European art market and art journalism. He also developed a network of ‘informers’, such as his friend Hainhauer, who would tell him if there was anything of interest for sale in Paris or Rome. He was a most charming man and managed to beguile most of the famous private collectors of the day from the coal magnate Eduard Arnold to the newspaper baron Rudolf Mosse. He befriended the mine owner Oscar Hulschinsky, whose collection included a Frans Hals, a Botticelli and a Rembrandt, along with other important and generous friends – among them Jacoby, who collected Japanese art, and Eugen Gutmann, the founder of the Dresdner Bank who had works by Van Dyck, Ruisdael, Rubens, Tintoretto and Rembrandt. Bode worked closely with the Kaiser to persuade collectors to give to the Berlin museums; if a potential donor was spotted Bode would ask William to ‘have coffee’ with them, and the Kaiser would then casually promise the collector honours or titles if he would consider donating his treasure to the state. Bode’s Berlin acquisitions were spectacular by any standard before or since, and included works by Filippo Lippi, Dürer, Botticelli and Bellini, Rembrandt, Raphael, Correggio, Veronese, Titian, and dozens of others. Felix Braun once wrote from Vienna that he was amazed by the works he had seen in Berlin, the likes of which were ‘missing from our Hofmuseum’, while Jacob Burckhardt said in 1882 that ‘nowhere else offers the chance to become familiar with the best of so many periods of art’. The Kaiser-Friedrich Museum, which juts out into the Spree and is crowned by a great dome, was filled with Bode’s treasures and was later renamed the Bode Museum in his honour.¹⁰⁸

      But the acquisition of Old Masters was not enough for the Kaiser; it had not escaped his attention that the other great European cities were building up collections of archaeological and ethnographical treasures to rival their art galleries, that while the British Museum and the Louvre were being filled with Greek statues and Egyptian mummies, Berlin was lagging far behind.

      As ever, William’s motives were linked to his desire to increase the importance of the German state. In the nineteenth century new museums and institutes dedicated to archaeology and ethnography went hand-in-hand with the rush for colonies which became yet another symbol of national pride. Germany had come late to the race for colonies; indeed Bismarck had been against the idea of rushing around the globe for land for fear it would upset his carefully balanced equilibrium in Europe. But in the summer of 1884, urged on by German nationalists as well as by merchants, bankers and entrepreneurs who sought markets and raw material overseas, and with the help of the English (who appreciated his support in Egypt), he changed course and within a few years he had acquired South-West Africa (Namibia), German East Africa (Tanzania), Togo and the Cameroons in West Africa, the Bismarck Archipelago (Solomon Islands) and much of New Guinea. The colonies were not particularly successful: most holdings in South-West Africa were ‘only good for diamond mines’ and German East Africa was uninhabitable; indeed by the outbreak of the First World War only 25,000 Germans had settled there. But they remained a source of great pride. The Berlin department stores and speciality shops sold racks of tropical clothes and outlandish gear and the city was host to organizations from the German Colonial Society and the Colonial Lottery to the Colonial Troops and the Colonial Congress. Germans felt themselves to be as much of a ‘civilizing force’ as other Europeans and no one batted an eyelid when, for example, the learned Professor Doktor Emil Steudel debated whether or not one should best use ‘a rope or a hippopotamus whip to keep plantation workers in line’.¹⁰⁹ It was during this period that the museums of Ethnology, Arts and Crafts, the Colonial Museum and the Natural History Museum grew most rapidly, and even the Maritime Museum, built in 1906, was little more than an excuse to present more nationalistic propaganda about the need for a large German navy to defend the new colonies or trade routes.

      Berlin’s archaeologists first flexed their muscles in North Africa. The fearsome leader Mohammed Ali had kept all Europeans out of his ancient territory for years, but the Berlin Egyptologist Carl Lepsius managed to get an audience with him and exchanged a few pieces of Prussian porcelain for permission to remove all the treasures he could find. It was a great coup. He returned to Berlin in 1850 with crates and boxes bursting with artefacts, leaving the French and the British green with envy. German archaeologists never looked back, increasing their theoretical and practical knowledge while actively participating in German foreign policy. Like their British and French counterparts they took to working alongside the military as spies, gathering intelligence and keeping their government informed of the local political situation while unearthing the treasures of ancient Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, Mesopotamia and Greece. Interest in the cultures of the Nile delta reached new heights during the Suez Canal project, which led to the creation of the Egyptian Museum, a fantastic collection which still houses the breathtaking bust of Nefertiti discovered by Ludwig Borchardt at Tell al-Amarna in 1912. The Islamic Museum was founded during the construction of the railroad line to Mecca. The eighth-century palace of Mshatta which had stood in the way was summarily torn down, but in 1903 the sultan of the crumbling Ottoman empire, keen to ingratiate himself with the Kaiser, presented Berlin with the lavish 45-metre rock facade. The Pergamon Museum was named after the extraordinary Pergamon Altar. The city had once rivalled Athens in the ancient world, but it had been forgotten by westerners for over 300 years until the German archaeologist Carl Humann rediscovered it in 1878. He spent thirty years excavating and reconstructing the massive line of stone columns which includes a huge frieze depicting Zeus fighting the giants for Mount Olympus. The Market Gate of Miletus, built by the wealthy citizens of the city in AD 120 under Hadrian, soon joined the Pergamon Altar with its giant two-tiered Corinthian marble columns. This fabulous gate had once greeted traders from all civilization, but the structure had collapsed in an earthquake around the year 1000 and was only excavated and transported to Berlin in 1905.¹¹⁰ The Middle East Department was built to contain the fantastic Ishtar Gate of Babylon, which was built at the height of Nebuchadnezzar’s influence in 580 BC, and it still dazzles visitors with its brilliant blue-glazed tiles and mosaics of glorious mythical animals.

      Berlin produced other pioneers as well: in 1873 Heinrich Schliemann discovered the ancient city of Troy. He dug through precious layers looking for the city of King Priamos, and discovered a fabulous cache of exquisite gold jewellery, later modelled by his wife Sophie in one of the most famous photographs of the century. The find changed fashion trends all over Europe, much as did Carter’s later discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings, and there was no well-dressed Berlin lady in the Gründerjahre (the years following the foundation of the empire) who did not have at least one piece of gold jewellery inspired by Priamos’ treasure. The Trojan hoard was thought to have melted in the fires of the Second World War; in fact it had been stored in the Zoo bunker in 1945 and was stolen by Soviet troops. It has recently turned up in Russia along with dozens of other treasures and was shown in a magnificent exhibition at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.

      The sight of all the colonial artefacts in the heart of the Mark Brandenburg helped to reinforce the idea that Berlin was now a great and powerful capital, and the Kaiser encouraged these sentiments by building outlandish monuments of his own. Since 1871 Berliners had been swept along by the tide of nationalism and militarism which was reflected in the Kaiserkult or ‘Cult of the Kaiser’. Busts and statues of Bismarck and William, von Roon and von Moltke, including the three enormous works which still stand forlornly on the Grosser Stern, had sprung up like mushrooms; over fifty statues of Bismarck had been raised by 1890 alone, and new versions were reproduced in glass or bronze for household use. Everything from schnapps to pickled herring was named after the Iron Chancellor, while grown men swooned at the thought of living in Bismarck’s city; Hermann Bahr wrote in 1884: ‘even today my heart beat quickens when I remember how I stepped off at the Anhalter Bahnhof: to be in the same city as Bismarck, to breathe the same air … here [where he] wanders amongst the people!’ Children were taught about the greatness of the Kaiser; when the sun was shining Berliners called it ‘Kaiser weather’, and bourgeois children were dressed up in military outfits and Hussars’ hats. When William II began to build up his navy little boys were squeezed into dark-blue sailor suits complete with gold buttons and caps with SMS Rügen or SMS Helgoland emblazoned across their brims. During his 1897 visit Rubinstein was amazed to see that over half the men of Berlin had copied the Kaiser and ‘enthusiastically adopted the

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