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Gold and Iron, Bismarck, Bleichröder and the Building of the German Empire - Fritz Stern epub

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Gold and Iron: Bismarck, Bleichröder and the Building of the German Empire - Fritz Stern [epub]

This is a book about Germans and Jews, about power and money. It is a book focused on Bismarck and Bleichröder, Junker and Jew, statesman and banker, collaborators for over thirty years. The setting is that of a Germany where two worlds clashed: the new world of capitalism and an earlier world with its ancient feudal ethos; gradually a new and broadened elite emerged, and Bismarck’s tie with Bleichröder epitomized that regrouping.

It is the story of the founding of the new German Empire, in whose midst a Jewish minority rose to embattled prominence. It is a record of events and of the interests and sentiments that shaped these events; it is a record largely told by contemporaries, in thousands of hitherto unused letters and documents. It is also the story of the fragility of that Empire and its ruler, of its hidden conflicts, and of the hypocrisy which allowed a glittering façade to cover the harsh and brutal facts below. The ambiguity of wealth—its threat to tradition and its promise of mobility—is part of this record, and so is the anguished ambiguity of Jewish success, so striking, so visible, so delusive. It is a study of a society in motion, and mobility was its essence and its trauma.

A recognized authority on modern Europe, Fritz Stern (1938–2016) was a Seth Low Professor of History and former provost at Columbia University. He held three degrees from Columbia, where he taught for over four decades. He also taught at Cornell, Yale, the Free University of Berlin, and the University of Konstanz in West Germany, and as Élie Halévy Professor at the Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques in Paris. He received a DLitt from Oxford in 1985 and the Leopold-Lucas Prize from the Evangelical-Theological Faculty of the University of Tübingen in 1984.

Paperback: 672 pages
Publisher: Vintage (September 12, 1979)

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