‘It is a monument to honour and not just decoration of the building’: Wilhelm’s Politics of History

Not with Wilhelm II or Friedrich III but with Wilhelm I was a Borussian politics of history initiated for the Hohenzollern monarchy. This chapter shows how the first Kaiser developed such a politics of history before becoming German emperor and continued this after 1871. In form and content, his two successors followed his lead. This chapter demonstrates this for two categories: authorized biographies of him and altering the political topography of Berlin. For the former, this chapter reveals how Wilhelm drew on Louis Schneider and Oskar Meding to write biographies of him, which he proofread and corrected, portraying him as a loyal son of his parents Friedrich Wilhelm III and Luise, a victorious military monarch and caring emperor for his people. For the latter, this chapter demonstrates how Wilhelm used museums and monuments to project a Borussian interpretation of Prussian-German history and a monarchical understanding of the new nation-state. It makes clear that Wilhelm was instrumental in turning the city’s arsenal into a museum for the dynasty and the army, in the construction of Berlin’s Siegessäule by having the final say of its design, and the equestrian statues for his father, and brother, Friedrich Wilhelm IV.