Bismarck Quotes

“The worldwide crisis ushered in a period of slow growth and falling prices which continued from 1873 to 1896/7 and has been called the ‘Great Depression’.”
― Jonathan Steinberg, Bismarck: A Life

“None of these definitions completely describes Bismarck’s authority. As a royal servant, he fits Weber’s first category: his power rested on tradition, ‘the authority of the “eternal yesterday”’. As a”
― Jonathan Steinberg, Bismarck: A Life

“official edition of his papers omitted) and had only tenuous claims to the uniforms he always wore—to the embarrassment or fury of ‘real’ soldiers. As one of the so-called ‘demi-gods’ on General Moltke’s staff, Lieutenant Colonel Bronsart von Schellendorf, wrote in 1870, ‘The civil servant in the cuirassier jacket becomes more impudent every day.’2 He had a ‘von’ in his name and came from a ‘good’ old Prussian family but, as the historian Treitschke wrote in 1862, he was apparently no more than a ‘shallow country-squire’.3 He had the pride of his social rank but understood that many occupied higher rungs than he. One of his staff recalled an instance: Most”
― Jonathan Steinberg, Bismarck: A Life

“He had no military credentials. He had served briefly and very unwillingly in a”
― Jonathan Steinberg, Bismarck: A Life

“How astonished are those who hear”
― Jonathan Steinberg, Bismarck: A Life

“In March of 1890 one did. His public speeches lacked all the characteristics that we would normally call charismatic. In”
― Jonathan Steinberg, Bismarck: A Life

“The two essential elements in Bismarck’s career had fallen into place: the certainty that he could master political bodies and the favour of the King. From September 1847 to March 1890 he always had both. When he lost the latter, he lost power. He never had any other foundation for his achievements.”
― Jonathan Steinberg, Bismarck: A Life

“Apparently in spite of his bombastic speech from the throne eleven months earlier, he had discovered there was a ‘power on earth that [could] transform the natural relationship between prince and people … into a conventional constitutional relationship’—fear.”
― Jonathan Steinberg, Bismarck: A Life