Gold and Iron: Bismarck, Bleichröder and the Building of the German Empire by Fritz Stern

Gold and Iron: Bismarck, Bleichröder and the Building of the German Empire Reviews

• 
  Jan-Maat

  I was more than a bit disappointed in this book which refused to settle on one theme or argument, but instead preferred to suggest half a dozen or more theses without ever exploring one of them fully. I wondered if in the end if Stern had been too close to his subject, and if that had all been too much for him. Stern writes towards the end of this book that Bleichroder had been more German than he was Jewish.
  
  No doubt a book could be written about what it meant to Fritz Stern to be Jewish, and what it meant to him to be German, and why one should be more one than another, and why it was inappropriate for one person in history; Gershon Bleichroder to be more German than Jewish. And this is precisely the problem. If we allow that one can define precisely Jewishness and Germanness, and if for the sake of the argument we will accept that Gershon Bleichroder was more German than Jewish, then to my mind the question is why he reached that position, why that was natural and proper for him. Instead I am left only with the sense of Fritz Stern finding it inappropriate. My sense is that Stern was, in this case, too close psychologically to his subject and could not study him with enough objectivity, Stern's immediate ancestors had converted from Judaism to Protestantism, but still were too Jew-ish to safely remain in Nazi-Germany, I wonder if a certain sense of loss of part of his own heritage affected how Stern understood Bleichroder. Because for Stern. Bleichroder was a man desperate to belong to a society that would never fully accept him. At the end of the chapter on Romania Stern comments that Bleichroder was active in campaigning for Jewish rights in Romania - where under the constitution only Christians could become citizens - while remaining blind to anti-Jewish prejudice in Germany. Maybe that is true, or maybe Bleichroder was more aware of such prejudices on a day to day basis than we, or even Fritz Stern writing in the 1970s, can or could imagine. For me Stern was writing about the future of German Jews rather than about the lived experience of a German Jew in the second half of the nineteenth century.
  
  Ok, aside from that, this is not a biography of Gerson Bleichroder who remains an obscure figure - curiously so in a book of almost 700 pages of text. His grandfather migrated to Berlin, he was a grave digger but married well. His son worked on a small scale in Berlin as a banker sometimes on behalf of the mighty Rothschilds. We are told nothing of Gerson's education or his induction into business. His wife's name is mentioned, but Stern doesn't tell us anything about her. From the 1850s Bleichroder was personal banker to Otto von Bismarck, Prussian ambassador to Frankfurt am Main, and then to St.Petersburg (which curiously Stern presents as a downwards step), before he ended up as Prussian Prime Minister. The main interest in this, Stern tells us, was that Bleichroder's relationship with Bismarck was largely written out of history and the book was meant to remedy that. Stern was able to drawn upon some of Bleichroder's personal but not business correspondence preserved in the Rothschild archives. If as Stern says Power and politics were the governing passions of Bismarck's life Bleichroder seems to have been though a pure money man with in Stern's account no particular interest outside of business, their's is an odd couple story.
  
  
  Stern's book is divided into three parts. The first deals with the rise of Bismarck and Bleichroder, the wars that Prussia fought against Denmark, Austria, & then France. The twist in Stern's account is Bleichroder's role in financing these wars - by-passing the Prussian parliament whose liberal majority was opposed to the (meta?)-conservative Bismarck. Unfortunately Stern doesn't put this on the context of the Prussian state finances or even the financing of the Prussian army so reading the book one can't say but for the role of Bleichroder Bismarck wouldn't have been able to win wars, unify Germany from above on a kleindeutschland model ie excluding or exclusive of German speaking areas under Hapsburg rule. The Grossdeutschland model was unification including them, or even survive as Prussian Prime-Minister. Equally we don't see this on the context of Bleichroder's banking, we don't get to know how much of a risk he took or how difficult it was for him to arrange the financing - since his banking peers were generally opposed to financing wars.
  
  The second and longest part of the book deals with the period from 1871 to Bleichroder's death. Here for example we see Bleichroder's involvement in a railway project in Romania, and in a different chapter in colonial enterprises in Samoa. But because we don't see this in the context of his banking as a whole we have no idea if Bleichroder was taking a particular risk for political reasons in getting involved in these projects, or if he was spreading his investments about to maximise his returns. Indeed once a business reaches a certain size relative to the economy in which it operates it's affairs are going to have political implications. I didn't see Stern pull the facts of Bleichroder's activities into a statement of their meaning or significance.
  
  The third and shortest part addresses issues of anti-Semitism. The middle chapter of this raised the quality of the book as a whole in my estimation. 1879 saw the creation of 'scientific' anti-Semitism, Stern calls this new anti-Semitism, Stern doesn't analyse it as a phenomenon, which is fair enough, just as a fact, however he doesn't or can't tell us whether or not Bleichroder experienced more or a similar level of anti-Semitism after the emergence of the new anti-Semitism. Bleichroder was an extremely wealthy man, and closely connected to Bismarck - Stern regards the two as friends, he was certainly abused as a proxy for Bismarck while in was in power, while the circle around the future Kaiser Wilhelm II was more anti-Semitic than that around his father or grandfather, Bleichroder was an unusual figure who in Stern's view had a desire to be more socially integrated into the social elite which conflicted with the increasing unfriendly attitudes of that elite - and so this book can't tell us much about the position of Jews in Germany in the late nineteenth century other than these would have been glass ceilings. Here again I felt the want of comparison with other prominent Jewish figures in other countries - how unusual or typical was his experience, was it part of a European trend or a specifically German one? If I was dissatisfied with the limits to Stern's discussion, it certainly made me think and wonder when or how far Jewish people, or of Jewish heritage, specifically in public life could get without running into anti-Semitic abuse, slights, or aggression. Stern suggests that anti-Semitism is a form of anti-liberalism - he may be drawing on Hofstader
  the paranoid style in american politics here and anti-Semitism here as a reaction to modernism, though one might also think of it having a relationship to different conceptions of the state and of state citizenship. Though perhaps this is all moot, as Stern shows there was plenty of hostility towards Jews in Romania in the 1870s and 80s even though there was not much modernism or Liberalism to be found there at that time.
  
  At a certain point I had to realise that this book isn't a biography, a study, a reassessment, or a history, but effectively a collection of closely related essays that in part overlapped, or less a study than a collection of essays chronologically arranged. I found it thought provoking in many places, equally I was frustrated in many places because Stern did not provide the wide context of look for comparisons, and always I felt the drum beat of a sub-text that this was about Fritz Stern and his family. It was perhaps in near equal parts irritating and stimulating, avoiding contexts and present interesting angles on familiar topics. And never enough about railways.
  
  One fascinating theme was the role of bankers as providing back channel information - for instance Bleichroder was through his banking contacts able to tell Bismarck that the Austrians were financially unable to back up their sabre rattling in the 1860s with military action. I can see the potential for a broader financial history of the nineteenth century, Stern shows that Italian integration into the French financial system made it impossible for Italy to politically orientate itself with Germany and Austria for long. Equally French money privately invested into Russia played a role in moving those states into what was ideologically the strangest alliance of two states. this emphases the weakness of Germany's position after unification in 1871. It had military power, but not the commensurate economic strength to support Bismarck's political ambitions.
  
  The book was always interesting about Bismarck's conservatism, or 'conservatism' which ignored the conservative assumptions and attitudes of the Prussian aristocracy, no he would not respect the Hapsburgs, no he would not respect the dynasty of the Kings of Hannover - who cares if they were the oldest noble family in Germany. Yes he would buy a huge estate, and while it was mostly forestland, he would invest in papermills to process timber into money.
  
  I also got from this book the sense that anti-Jewish prejudice is not something natural, but a tradition that has to be nurtured, and taught, it has a structure, it is not something random, but conscious.
  
  There is still huge potential for studying nineteenth century politics from the perspective of banking and finance, the interrelation of political will and the ability to finance it, or not. Stern's book shows the potential for new understandings and the possibilities of much further research.
• 
  Tammy

  One can’t escape the feeling when reading this book that it is an important historical work. It is an intricate exploration of the complex relationship between Otto von Bismark (the “iron”) and his Jewish banker Gerson Bleichroder (the “gold”).
  
  For those (like myself) woefully uninitiated in the machinations of Germany during the Franco-Prussian war or Bismark’s long tenure as Germany’s chancellor, this tome is tough reading. Stern writes with the imbedded assumption that the reader is well aware of the historical events that form the context of Bismark and Bleichroder’s relationship – much as an author of Lincoln may assume readers know the political and social contexts of the Civil War. Needless to say, I often found myself over my head.
  
  That being said, there is much of interest in this book about the incubation of anti-Semitism in German society that would ultimately manifest itself in the horrors of WWII. In some ways, the determined drive to settle the ‘Jewish question’ during the reign of the Nazis isn’t all that surprising given the politics of the previous decades. My naïveté with regards to the viciousness and relentlessness of anti-Semitism was dispelled by this book. The drive of the insecurely powerful to preserve hegemony seems distressingly embedded in the human psyche. Left to its own devices, genocide is the end result.
  
  Ironically, Bleichroder’s wealth and political connections afforded by the position as Bismark’s banker, gave him unprecedented power in German society. He was said to be the richest man in Berlin. As a Jew, it was that power which made him despised and reviled. He never truly received the acceptance and recognition he longed for. Yet his loyalty to his country never faltered. He always believed that his government would never let its most loyal citizens be destroyed. He did not live long enough to see how wrong he was.
  
• 
  Horza

  Old school-history, so not the breeziest or concise of reads - a pretty solid grasp of post 1848 European history is a must. This is effectively a history of the Second Reich told as a biography of two men and when Fritz isn't plunging into the Byzantine world of railway consortia and Prussian real estate it works wonderfully well. In the relationship between these two men Stern sees in miniature the tragedy of German and Jewish history and he tells this story with verve and mastery.
• 
  Mark Merritt

  This book, like others have mentioned in their reviews, is “old school” in the sense that it is well researched, heavily footnoted, and has few illustrations. But it’s a great read, and that in the end is what counts. Like today, High Finance and politics are (and we’re) hand in hand. And the author does a great job showing this relationship, which was both professional and personal.
  
  It’s sad though, as you see the beginnings of German Anti Semitism and we all know (or should know…) where this leads.
  
  All that being said, this book has ignited my interest in the German 2nd Reich, and I’ll be reading more books on the subject.
• 
  Spencer Wilson

  Very enlightening and informative but a bit tedious to read.
• 
  Frank Stein

  This book has some of the most extravagant positive reviews I've ever seen. An "extraordinary book," said the Washington Post; "A terrifying masterpiece" said the Listener; "I cannot paise this book too highly" said Hugh Trevor-Roper in the London Times. The Economist said it was akin to the great 19th century novels.
  
  I cannot say I found it to be that, except insofar as some of those wordier novels seemed to forget their purpose in a whirl of subplots and secondary characters. The author has indeed done incredible research for this book, showing how the German-Jewish banker Gerson Bleichroder (1822-1893) was an intimate, associate, and indispensable ally of Otto von Bismarck throughout the latter's career. Bleichroder in many ways performed the traditional services of a German "court jew," but he was also the preeminent example of 19th century capitalism and international diplomacy. He worked with Bismarck to finance the 1866 Austro-Prussian War despite the opposition of Parliament, supervised the 1870 French indemnity, managed Bismarck's own money, and generally acted as a go-between for many of the foreign bankers and politicians of Europe who wanted to talk to Bismarck, and, helped Bismarck talk to them. Besides his eventual German ennoblement, he also was given an Order by the Russian Czar, and became a counsel to the British in Germany. His work trying to protect the Romanian Jews as part of the Congress of Berlin in 1878, where the European allies conditioned that state joining the family of nations on equal treatment of its Jewish population, demonstrates both his power and his willingness to use it, even if it sometimes conflicted with his financial interests.
  
  Bleichroder was, like many of his friends and contemporaries (Raphael von Erlanger, Moritz von Goldschmidt, August Belmont) a former offshoot of the Rothschild house who managed to attain his own prominence. His father had been a court banker, but Gerson turned the House into one of the most prominent in Europe. Like the Rothschilds, he was often concerned with foreign sovereign debt (of Russia, of Egypt, of France), but he also used his closeness to Bismarck to play that market based on Bismarck's peculiar perspective, just as Bismarck used his account at Bleichroders to gain his own advantage in that market and others. By looking at Bismarck's account at Bleichroder's, and how he bought and sold his bonds around political crises, or how his timber and foundry interests influenced his switch to protectionism in the late 1870s, one gets a sense of the interconnectedness of the personal and political in this era.
  
  But this book's wandering tale leaves it not so much hard to follow as tedious, especially when few chapters have any clear point or argument, just a broad subject ("The World of Banking and Diplomacy"), and when they are liberally sprinkled with pages of jejune analysis. The fact that on page 472 one gets the opening "Bleichroder's beginnings were relatively uncomplicated," and then a perfunctory first mention of his marriage, leaves the reader a little baffled, especially for a book that looks so closely at the personal lives of many of its characters. That the entire last third of the book is devoted to a somewhat separate examination of Bleichroder's Jewishness, even though that had been a constant theme throughout the previous two-thirds of the book, also seems downright odd.
  
  In sum, the book unearthed a previously essential personality in the 19th century, one who helped the rise of the German Empire and demonstrated the limits of Jewish life in that empire. It is an indeed an odd and even stirring tale, if one can just dive beneath the morass of maundering verbiage.
• 
  Royce

  佩服作者從浩瀚如海的資料中儘量客觀地梳理俾斯麥與布萊希羅德的事蹟與關係，猶太銀行家的強欲和卑躬屈膝與帝國首相擅於操控人性和算計，同床異夢的道德虛偽和社會意識型態在陰謀與搏鬥中墮落的畫面，在後半部份被呈現得更為生動和諷刺。不過還是感覺內容有點混亂。
• 
  John Ward

  One of the best history books I’ve ever read.
• 
  Xiang Li

  从金融角度写政治 或者说高层政治的金融生活 虽然硬 但是有趣 另外对犹太和反犹的论述很开眼界
• 
  Peter Walker

  Whilst this is a detailed account of the times and the relationship between Bismarck and Bleichroeder, I just ran out of puff so to speak. Too much - one just want's the characters off the stage earlier in history!
• 
  J Y

  I'm writing a paper on the Methodology of this book, so I might have something interesting to say about it in about two months. This is the second time I've read it.
• 
  Stephen

  Purchased from Chamblin's 5/6/13