2 - Aristocratize the Masses: From Berlin to Frankfurt to Marburg (1890–1893)

Summary

EISNER STARTED WORK AT THE HEROLD in January 1890. His duties were to gather news, file reports for dissemination to newspapers throughout Europe, and write lead stories. He covered sessions of the Reichstag, the powerless popular national assembly commonly characterized as a debating club, and the equally farcical Prussian Landtag. The issue of the day was Kaiser Wilhelm's new course, the defining component of which was Weltpolitik, described by Walther Rathenau as a “dilettante foreign policy.” Bismarck had never seen the need for Germany to look overseas for colonies when Poland lay so near, but Wilhelm, obsessed with national prestige and supported by wealthy interest groups such as the Pan-German League (Alldeutscher Verband), the Navy League (Flottenverein), and the Colonial League (Kolonialverein), was determined to secure Germany's place in the sun. Years earlier in 1881 Bismarck had unwittingly drafted his own pink slip when he remarked that he had no interest in colonial expansion. Although he softened his stance in the mid-1880s to accommodate public opinion, his commitment was never more than halfhearted. Consequently, Wilhelm dismissed the septuagenarian icon, demanding, receiving, and accepting Bismarck's resignation between 17 and 20 March 1890.

Eisner was assigned to cover the chancellor's departure from the capital on the twenty-ninth, one of a select group of journalists to ride with the old man as far as the Spandau station on his return to Friedrichsruh. The Herold's new retainer recalled the crowd that serenaded Bismarck at Berlin's main station, his banter with reporters who stood on the desolate platform at Spandau, the stern face of “the great misanthrope,” and the indifference of workers boarding the train to Berlin. Eisner was surprised to see two days later how his account had been sentimentalized in a major foreign paper: “Gone was the rigidity of injured pride, and the melancholy exile's two great tears streamed like silvery pearls.”

Eisner and Lisbeth Hendrich became engaged in mid-autumn 1890. Much of his leisure time was spent in Berlin's libraries researching his articles and reading the yet obscure Friedrich Nietzsche. Struggling against the allure of Nietzsche's “anarchy of the elect,” Eisner began to cast a critique.