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Details
BISMARCK, Otto von (1815-1898). First Chancellor of Germany. Cabinet photograph signed ("Bismarck"), by Pilartz, Bad Kissingen (imprint on verso), inscription dated Friedrichsruh, 21 October 1890. 6½ x 4¼ in., including gilt-edged mount. Boldly signed on lower margin of recto. A fine, sepia-toned portrait of the "Iron Chancellor" with a flower on his lapel.
THE IRON CHANCELLOR IN HIS INVOLUNTARY RETIREMENT, sits for this fine photograph, which he signed just shortly after he was dismissed by the Kaiser and forced to relinquish power at age 75. Thirty years earlier, Bismarck rose to power as the unifier of a Prussian-dominated Germany. With the defeat of Austria in 1866, Germany became the dominant power on the continent, confirmed by its swift victory over France in 1871. German hegemony in central Europe, and an overseas empire, caused a series of diplomatic crises that Bismarck was able to defuse (most notably at the Congress of Berlin in 1878). But the new Kaiser Wilhelm II rejected Bismarck's warnings about the need for cautious diplomacy. Disenchanted with Bismarck's harsh, anti-socialist domestic program, the Kaiser dismissed him in the fall of 1890, and embarked on an aggressive naval expansion program that led to war in 1914. Bismarck retired to his estate at Friedrichsruh, near Hamburg, waiting and hoping in vain for a political comeback.
THE IRON CHANCELLOR IN HIS INVOLUNTARY RETIREMENT, sits for this fine photograph, which he signed just shortly after he was dismissed by the Kaiser and forced to relinquish power at age 75. Thirty years earlier, Bismarck rose to power as the unifier of a Prussian-dominated Germany. With the defeat of Austria in 1866, Germany became the dominant power on the continent, confirmed by its swift victory over France in 1871. German hegemony in central Europe, and an overseas empire, caused a series of diplomatic crises that Bismarck was able to defuse (most notably at the Congress of Berlin in 1878). But the new Kaiser Wilhelm II rejected Bismarck's warnings about the need for cautious diplomacy. Disenchanted with Bismarck's harsh, anti-socialist domestic program, the Kaiser dismissed him in the fall of 1890, and embarked on an aggressive naval expansion program that led to war in 1914. Bismarck retired to his estate at Friedrichsruh, near Hamburg, waiting and hoping in vain for a political comeback.