2023-01-03 08:00:00
An icon of German power and glory: the head of the Bismarck monument in Frankfurt-Höchst Photo: Marcus Kaufhold
The renaming of the Bismarck room in the Foreign Office has triggered a storm of outrage. But can the first chancellor of the empire really still be a role model for German foreign policy? A guest post.
A lack of historical awareness, misrepresentation of history and, of course, cancel culture: the knee-jerk criticism of the renaming of the Bismarck room in the Federal Foreign Office in Berlin was to be expected. The wood-panelled room in which the SED Politburo met until 1989 is now called the “Hall of German Unity”. The Bismarck portrait of Franz von Lenbach was removed; it may soon find its place in the Bonn AA branch, where there is still a Bismarck room. The large-scale allegations against Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and the heads of their house hardly contribute to a factual discussion of Otto von Bismarck, who is in fact connected with the history of the ministry in a special way. Not only was he the first Reich Chancellor of the nation state to determine its foreign policy from 1871, but he also owes its name to the Foreign Office, which, founded in 1870 as the “Foreign Office of the North German Confederation”, was not intended to be an independent ministry.
After second World War In 1951 the new Foreign Ministry of the Federal Republic was given its old name again. The designation reflected not only the West German state’s claim to be the legal successor to the defunct German Reich, but also, rather unintentionally, the fact that there was considerable personal continuity between the old and new offices. With the designation, one also wanted to stand out from the other ministries in a self-confident way – elsewhere in Bonn one spoke of “conceited”.
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