The Modernity of the Unmodern? The German Emperor in the Constitution of the Kaiserreich

Abstract

The chapter discusses the development of the emperor’s constitutional position, from its roots in the formulation of the ‘presidency’ of a German confederation to the first German Kaiser in 1871. The central argument of this chapter is that it was not primarily ‘the weakness’ of the last emperor’s position (and that of his chancellors after 1890) but the paradoxical constitutional status of the emperor as head of state that made possible the development of a strong Beamtenstaat and the emancipation of the Reichstag. Paradoxically the bombastic façade of the new nationalist Wilhelmine emperorship was intertwined with the growing importance of the emperor’s constitutional function as head of a rational, bureaucratic and modernizing state.