Customer Reviews

Gold and Iron

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The first major work expounding on Bismarck's pecuniary relationship with the prominent Prussian banker Gerson von Bleichroder, Gold and Iron is truly a seminal study about the rise of the German nation. It splendidly explores the creation of the Prusso-Germanic empire through the lens of Bismarck, its architect, and Bleichroder, his Jewish financier.

Bleichroder became useful to Bismarck in many ways. He was embroiled in affaires d'Etat as well as Bismarck's affaires de famille. He managed the Chancellor's personal portfolio, helped finance wars against Denmark and Austria, and served as an intermediary for the massive indemnity levied against the French in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War. Bleichroder's remarkable and long-running relationship with the Rothschilds made his services doubly worthwhile to both Bismarck and Germany. However, Stern makes the poignant observation that while Bleichroder's success won him access to the corridors of power everywhere, his very success prevented him from being truly free. He became a kind of Tantalus, always seeking out recognition and confirmation of his accomplishments without really attaining what he was reaching for: a position at parity, if not becoming primus inter pares, vis-à-vis his peers and contemporaries.

Ponderous the book may be, but readers who are deeply interested in the political economy of Europe and in the crucial role played by embattled financiers in the rise of empires will be exceedingly enlightened--and entertained--by this monumental tome.

That's how heavy this 600 page history of the Prussian unification of Germany is! This study is so gravely massive, so chock-full of info and insights, that I'm sorely tempted to say: "Go ahead! Read it! I double-dare you!" It's taken me several months, with some prolonged stagnations in airport lounges, to finish it, and I'm not the slowest reader in juvenile hall. It's almost as indigestible as gold and a lot less malleable than iron. It's not at all badly written or poorly organized; it's just long, stolid, detailed, insistent, and dry. The writing reminds me a good deal of the American historian David Hackett Fischer; if either author were paid by the word, Bill Gates would need to borrow pocket money from them. Honestly, I had to treat each chapter as a separate volume, and give myself a concentration break between them.

If I haven't discouraged you from considering this book yet, let me say that it's also one of the most impressive feats of historiography that I've encountered in many years. It's well worth the work, assuming you have any interest in the history of Germany, or of European Jewry, or of political power in action. The "gold" in the title stands for the plutocratic banker Gerson Bleichröder, while the "iron" represents Bismark, the Iron Chancellor whose political and military tactics led to the unification of Germany in the last third of the 19th Century. Structurally, the book is a kind of parallel biography of the two men, who were indispensable to each other for most of their careers. Bismark's life and thought have been an entire industry for historians since his first political victories, but Bleichröder's role in Bismark's successes and rare failures has been neglected to the point of erasure. That historical amnesia was the starting point of Fritz Stern's investigations, when Stern became aware of the vast archive of the Banker's correspondence with the Chancellor and other personages of the era. It's a risky over-simplification of Stern's analysis to say that Bleichröder and his "gold" were necessary adjuncts to Bismark's accomplishments, but this book goes a long way to justify that hypothesis. Bleichröder was Bismark's personal financial manager, his "ear" to the world of finance both in Germany and elsewhere, his almost constant advisor and his favorite "behind-the-throne" manipulator, and perhaps as close to a 'friend' as the imperious Prince could have. Their 'atomic weights' as gold and iron are metaphorically inappropriate, in that Bismark's Iron always overbalanced and outweighed all the Gold of the richest financier in Germany.

How politics and finance melded in the alloy of 19th C Germany is the chief subject of the book. Bismark's career began in a financially backward feudal society of land-proud Junkers, the most reactionary society of western/central Europe, and ended in the rapidly industrializing, militarily overbearing Germany that sought to rival England and overwhelm France in the race to colonialism that led to World War I. If any single individual of the 19th C "made history", it was Bismark. So at least all historians of Germany have maintained. But then, to what degree was Bleichröder (and by extension the whole world of finance) essential to that process of societal reconstruction? Stern offers very ample evidence that Bismark was more attentive to the raw power of money, both his own and the State's, than romantic German historians have supposed.

Bleichröder was a very smart banker, a man who took care of his own interests with as much opportunistic ruthlessness as Bismark himself, but he was also an ambitious Jew, a parvenu in a society that didn't like parvenus and especially not Jewish ones. He was perceived by most people, including perhaps Bismark, as "Bismark's court Jew." Whether he perceived himself as such is another of Fritz Stern's topics of inquiry. The lifetimes of these two powerful men, Iron and Gold, was simultaneously the era during which European Jews achieved their most rapid progress toward civic and social rights, toward assimilation and/or equality, yet also the era during which anti-semitism flared and raged most furiously, stoking the fires for the Holocaust of the 20th C. As rapid and as impressive as the rise of Bleichröder and his peers must have seemed, the reaction of envy and hatred makes Bleichröder's life story a stunning tragedy.

I need to confess that my knowledge of 19th C German history isn't vast. I have no means to challenge or criticize the contents of this book. I can only say that it convinces me by its sheer mass of data and by its thoroughness of analysis. Read also the earlier review by H. Schneider, a German by birth and language; it was he who alerted me to Stern, German-born but an immigrant to America in his youth.

I have previously reviewed other books by Fritz Stern, an American historian of German-Jewish descent, born in a part of Germany that is now a part of Poland. He is one of the most interesting writers on German history of the 19th-20th centuries, and he has a lot to say on the history of German Jews and German anti-semitism.
His huge monography on Bismarck and his Jewish banker Bleichroeder is a masterpiece of historical jig saw puzzling, and it tells a fascinating story.

We are looking at the high times of German imperial adolescence.
Stern loves to play with the stylistic pattern of pairs: Blood and Iron (said Bismarck). Or Coal and Iron (said Keynes, later). Or Gold and Iron (says Stern, still later).
More pairs: power & money, Junker & Jew, Bismarck & banker, old nobility & new presumptions, aristocrats & nouveaux riches.

Gerson Bleichroeder was the first Prussian Jew who got ennobled without prior conversion. To his world of Prussian power, he was a convenience & an embarrassment. In the relation of the two men, Bismarck was dominant and Bleichroeder useful. There is no doubt whatsoever about the primacy of politics over economics. The banker thirsted for respectability & acceptance. He cherished secrecy, but sought recognition.
His career embodied the ambivalence of Jewish success: needed, pampered, feted, maligned. Jews performed great economic feats, they were immeasurably useful and resented.

Bleichroeder dropped out of German historiography like a stone in water, leaving mainly ephemeral ripples (until Stern went after him). Even Bismarck did not mention him in the first two volumes of his memoirs. Historians would give Bismarck plenty of shelf space (thousands of dedicated publications) and Bleichroeder none. Apotheosis & oblivion.

This study was triggered by the appearance of a Bleichroeder letter archive in his former bank. Stern started his sleuthing work from there and then hit mother lodes in the archives of the Rothschilds and the Bismarcks. It is a remarkable job for its reconstruction of ignored informal structures in the politics of the time. It is a history of a social web. It is like a fat novel of the 19th century. (Do not think of Thomas Mann, more of his brother Heinrich, eg the Untertan, the Blue Angel.) It shows how the atmosphere of imperial Germany exuded sentimentalized self-righteousness, copious hypocrisy, distressing servility. It is a record of people sowing the wind, not knowing that later generations would reap the whirlwind.

The book is essential for students of German history. I wish Stern had applied more economics in its writing: I bet one could cut a third of the hulk without major damage to the message.

By the way, I remember that Harry Flashman had an encounter with Bismarck in one of the early Flashman volumes. Which one was that? (Flashman barely survived the meeting...)

Stern's magnificent work is one of the best pieces of historical research and writing of the last century. A strikingly original work, which transcends it specific topic, 'Gold & Iron' is a fascinating study of economics, politics and power and the relation between the three.

Required reading for any self-respecting student of history.

Instead of repeating other reviewers, I focus mostly on unmentioned content. This book focuses on the German Jew Gerson Bleichroeder, Bismarck's chief banker, and gives much insight into the situation facing Germany's Jews. Owing to the fact that I am a student of Polish history, I slant my review in that direction.

Note that Poland had been partitioned to Prussia, Russia, and Austria in the late 1700's. During the Russian-ruled Poles' unsuccessful January Insurrection (1863), Bismarck not only was willing to intervene on Russia's behalf, but he strongly opposed any reforms, by any ruling nation, that would give the subjugated Poles any freedom. Stern notes that: "Bismarck, like Marx, like most Germans, felt a peculiar fury against the Poles." (p. 29). As for Bleichroeder, "He shared Bismarck's harshness, and, like so many other Germans, the triumph of German arms instilled in him an uncritical admiration for power and a terrible respect for all things military." (p. 147).

The German-Jewish symbiosis, which led to a strong Prussia, all but ruled out a resurrected Polish state in the 1800's. This symbiosis is thus described by Stern: "The growth of Prussian power presented the Jews with great opportunities. By the alacrity with which they exploited these opportunities, they in turn accelerated Prussia's growth." (p. 19). "Lines between Germans and Jews were crossed: in friendship and in marriage." (p. 466). Also: "Bleichroeder...proved how profitable German-Jewish coexistence could be for both parties." (p. 464). Bleichroeder's experience can be generalized to German Jews in general: "Perhaps never before in Europe has a minority risen as fast or gone as far as did German Jews in the nineteenth century." (p. 498). For Poles, all this could only cement the image of Jews and Germans jointly profiting from the exploitation of Poles, and sharing a joint interest in preventing Poland from ever regaining her independence.

Stern provides facts and figures on how the German Jews prospered as a whole. (p. 499). This extended to Jews living in territories adjacent to, and overlapping with, Prussian-ruled Poland: "In many cities in Silesia, Jews constituted about 4 percent of the population and paid more than 20 percent of the taxes--an index of their disproportionate income." (p. 499).

Along with some other influential Jews, Bleichroeder was involved in railroad-building projects, some of which crossed occupied Poland, connecting the Russian and Prussian empires. (p. 253). The railroads benefited Poland's rulers, and were seen by Poles in that light.

This book once explicitly mentions how German Jews became both unwitting and witting tools of Bismarck's oppression of Prussian-ruled Poland. Stern writes: "A few months later Bleichroeder begged the king for support of a similar scheme in the Prussian province of Posen [Poznan], which contained most of Prussia's Polish subjects. The plan called for the establishment of an agricultural bank which by issuing shares would raise capital with which to buy land in order to sell it to peasants and tenants and to build roads and canals on behalf of local communities. In his petition Bleichroeder stressed that this project `aims at the strengthening of the Prussian-national element in the Grand Duchy of Posen.' Bleichroeder's petition has been cited as proof of his desire to promote the GERMANISIERUNG of Posen; it is also possible that he stressed that element in order to gain the king's support for a profitable venture." (p. 53). Regardless of Bleichroeder's exact motives, this influential Jew's active promotion of the aggressive Germanization of Polish lands could only antagonize Poles against both Jews and Germans.

On another subject, many German Jews came to believe that, as Jews advanced in German society and proved their usefulness to her, German anti-Semitism would die out. (e. g., p. 467). Instead, the Jewish successes led to a backlash. Jews were feared as "taking over" Germany. Racist theories that developed in the late 19th century contributed to the problem, although not all racists were anti-Semites and not all anti-Semites were racists. (p. 509). Already in the 1870's, Paul de Lagarde called for the extermination of the Jews. (p. 496). However, author Stern, a German Jew himself, concludes that, despite the popularity of anti-Semitism in many nations, "...anti-Semitism as a concerted effort to translate anti-Jewish sentiment into political action achieved importance principally in Germany and Austria." (p. 497). German nationalism grew more intolerant of minorities, and of pluralism in general, than did nationalistic movements in other nations. (p. 462).

An incident, which included a harsh German expulsion of both Polish gentiles and Polish Jews from the German prefect of Metz, prompted Stern to note the following: "There is an almost uncanny quality to the incident: At the birth of the new Empire, the first victims of chauvinistic brutality were Poles and Jews; they were also the last victims of a united Germany." (p. 147). [Stern published this in 1979, before the post-WWII partition of Germany into two nations had been reversed.]

A tremendous research job, revealing a lot about the way the world really worked. Bismarck was a bad, bad guy. My only complaint is that it got a little repetitive; editing out 10-15% of the text would make it much more readable.

A classic work, as is usual from Stern. Unfortunately, the Amazon entry is garbled. Bismarck's banker's name was Bleichr[o with unlaut]der.

The book gives you the idea that if you can find a banker who can finance you, you can build an empire, regardless of who you are, and what type of a nation you have!!