Bismarck: A Life [Tapa dura]

I was really looking forward to reading this book. It had received a great review in "The New York Times Book Review", and it sounded so good, that I pre-ordered it from Amazon that same Sunday. In addition, this is a period of history I have become interested in lately and it sounded perfect.

Bismarck is truly a disappointment and it fails on many levels. As a previous Amazon reviewer noted, the author doesn't like or admire Bismarck. Steinberg literally calls Bismarck "monstrous" at one point in the book. All of Bismarck's triumphs are mitigated with a remark, implying it was an unintended consequence or someone else would have done better or sooner or faster. All of Bismarck's failures and weaknesses are thoroughly examined, and these traits are then parceled out among Prussian society. It is ironic then that the picture Steinberg paints of Bismarck is strikingly similar to the life of Winston Churchill.

The book is difficult to read. The relentlessly negative tone gives the narrative a ponderous feel. The text is not well organized. Characters come and go nearly at random. For example, Ludwig Windthorst is introduced and developed on pages 272-4, ca. 1867 and then dropped like a stone on p.275, not to return for another twenty years. On top of this, Steinberg is not very skilled at setting up the context of particular events. (I had to resort to Wikipedia several times to understand things.) Non-Prussian characters are only sketchily treated. There are no maps in book. The author jumps excessively back and forth in time. For one amazing passage, in the space of two pages (p. 142-143), the author moves from ca. 1858, forward to Nazi Germany, recedes back to 1846, and then forward to 1848. Things advance to 1850, and, following a quick hop back to 1847, the narrative returns to 1858. The effect is that time and space become relative.

The blurriness is deliberate. Steinberg wants to be right, and furthermore, he wants the reader to know that he is right. A great deal of Steinberg's analysis relies on the sophism of "The Law of Unintended Consequences." This truly becomes annoying. Can Steinberg really have expected Bismarck to have been omniscient or not act at all? The author telegraphs all the important punches in the book thereby eliminating the narrative of some much needed drama and precious continuity. One can almost imagine him jumping up and down like a know-it-all high-school nerd, yelling, "See! Here's where he makes that mistake I told you two pages ago that he would make!" Only rarely have I observed the phase, "The attentive reader will have noticed ..." and it is hardly the mark of a secure writer. But Steinberg uses it several times to make some fairly obvious points which the reader indeed had noticed. The attentive reader will also notice several other agendas at play in the book.

Overall, this book is too poor a read for a causal or introductory reader to find enjoyable. It is too biased for anyone not already familiar with the subject to read unquestioningly. There are numerous small details the author apparently has unearthed, so this book could be used as a source book to track those down. Otherwise, this book is not worth reading.

I have read four biographies of Bismarck and consider him one of the two or three most fascinating and important people in the 19th century--and almost as significant in the 20th century insofar as he created several of the mechanisms that would ultimately produce the two world wars. I was therefore very excited to see the appearance of this volume and the very good early reviews it received.

Reading the thing, however, has brought real disappointment. The book is not devoid of insights; Steinberg does an unusually good job, for instance, explaining why Bismarck was so focused on securing the German hinterland as a hedge against Austrian intrigue and in showing how he turned the working classes against the middle-class liberal movement. But one must read a lot of pages to find such gems, considerably more than in other biographies of great statesmen and women. There is also the problem Kissinger noted: Steinberg's obvious contempt for Bismarck, which colors his treatment of the subject. Many readers would doubtless reach the same conclusion, but surely they should be given the opportunity to do so from an independent examination of the evidence rather than being told constantly what to think.

Stylistically, the book is turgid. Steinberg includes scores of long quotations from other books--often two or three paragraph-length excerpts on a single page--and many of these don't really support his argument. The reader thus finds himself saying, "okay, but why is this quotation here at all?" and then going back to rediscover the point that the author was previously trying to make. For a few pages midway through the book I tried in frustration to skip the long quotations and follow only Steinberg's actual text in the hope of finding a more coherent thread. But there was none; the author had simply lost his narrative direction, a problem that occurs several times. The book also includes bizarre digressions. At one point, for instance, he chases the wild goose of Ferdinand Lassalle (the leader of the Prussian working classes) and his love affairs, then digresses further into Lassalle's visit to Karl Marx's residence and the extent to which Marx's wife wanted to impress the visitor. Steinberg then asks "does one catch the whiff of jealousy in Marx's attitude to Lassalle?" Well, sure, but what does all of this have to do with Bismarck? Then there is Steinberg's annoying habit of injecting himself into the narrative. "My reading of the sources suggests . . .," "my hunch is that . . .," etc., are phrases that needlessly shift attention away from the subject and to the author. Once or twice may be tolerable, but to do this dozens of times is remarkably self-indulgent.

I gave Steinberg two stars because of his occasional insights. I would have loved to give him five, but this biography is too difficult to read given the limited contribution it makes to the existing literature.

A disfavorable examination of the life of the most famous Prussian statesman. While I found Professor Steinberg's book interesting I could not help but think the author overplayed the dysfunctional aspects of the Iron Chancellor. After all, Bismarck did create a major European state and was widely acknowledged as the most powerful and talented master of the diplomatic game. He simply could not have been the total moral and personal failure that is portrayed here. And if he was, why did "kindly" Kaiser Wilhelm I keep him around?

Professor Steinberg's main focus is on the personal, both physical and psychological, side of his subject. For example, much ink is spilled on Bismarck's eating habits while the effects of the introduction of worker health benefits are given little attention.

While I am skeptical of some of the author's strong conclusions, nonetheless this is a book all students of modern Europe, and especially Germany, should read.

Correction for next edition: principal for principle, on page 135 in reference to mode of transportation.