Mitteleuropa in the Age of William II

Abstract

A pause to look back at this point in the Mitteleuropa story reveals several major developments. A strong, common German national feeling manifested itself in the heart of Europe. Hopes for complete political unification suffered severe defeat at the hands of Bismarck. What was left of grossdeutsch idealism lived on in the nebulous sense of a cultural community or was transmuted into the radical-conservative ideologies of Lagarde, von Schönerer, and the Pan-German agitation that took strength from these two sources. The Austrian-Germans were excluded from the German national consummation and faced a rising tide of Magyar and Slavic self-assertion. The Reich-Germans shifted the foci of their interests from German Middle Europe to their own political union and confidently asserted their burgeoning economic strength in the world at large. Now we stand in the Wilhelmian Era and need to evaluate its spirit and political objectives in relation to Mitteleuropa.