Bernhard Fürst von Bülow

Bernhard Fürst von Bülow (1849 - 1929) embodied like no other the irrepressible sense of strength and the megalomania of the Wilhelmine era. With the applause of Kaiser Wilhelm II and his contemporaries, he set himself and the German Reich great world-historical goals and broke down against them without ever wanting to admit it. Its name is associated with the call for the"place in the sun". This metaphor aptly described Germany's claim to world power, which was linked to unprecedented armament efforts at sea. It was to prove to be a great fate for the Germans that in the first decade of the 20th century, Prince Bülow was at the head of the Reich, a man who basically cannot be considered a statesman. Bülow's shortcomings were primarily in the foreign policy sector, where he operated with astonishing short-sightedness, in strange contradiction to his ambitious goals as a world power. Fundamental misjudgments of the foreign policy environment led to disastrous wrong decisions and these in turn to exclusion from the concert of powers, which was perceived in the Reich as unbearable political isolation.

a book