DEM DEUTSCHEN VOLKE, “To the German People.” Although the idea for the inscription dates to 1892, it has only been there since 1916—since the middle of World War I. It is not entirely clear who proposed the inscription, or who blocked it, but the notion of “the German people” did imply a democratic understanding of the empire’s legitimacy, one by no means universally shared in a German Empire that was, legally speaking, a union of princes. The inability to agree on that or any other phrase meant that the stone surface remained blank until mobilization for total war gave a new and less
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