The Kaiser, who always had a warm relationship with Baron von Windthorst, whose decades long defence of German Catholics, Poles, Jews, and other minorities against the Iron Chancellor have since attracted high praise and comparisons to Irish nationalist statesmen Daniel O'Connell and Charles Stewart Parnell, was furious to hear about Bismarck's plans for coalition talks with the Centre Party only after they had already begun.

Bismarck, forced for the first time in his career into a crisis that he could not twist to his own advantage, wrote a blistering letter of resignation, decrying the Monarchy's involvement in both foreign and domestic policy.

With Bismarck's dismissal, the Russians allegedly expected a reversal of policy in Berlin, so they quickly negotiated a military alliance with the Third French Republic, beginning a process that by 1914 largely isolated Germany.

Sulzberger for the book The Fall of Eagles, Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia, grandson and heir of Kaiser Wilhelm II, further commented, "Bismarck was certainly our greatest statesman, but he had very bad manners and he became increasingly overbearing with age.

"[5] Subsequent Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow continued to implement legislation at the last Kaiser's insistence that favored industrial worker's rights to organized labor and collective bargaining, while still opposing Marxist ideas.

In an Oscar-worthy performance, Voigt bluffed a group of Imperial German Army enlisted men into placing the Mayor of Köpenick and city treasurer of under arrest for political corruption.

The most successful World War I flying aces such as Max Immelmann, Oswald Boelcke, Manfred von Richthofen, Werner Voss, and Karl Allmenröder, were regarded as national heroes and, if they fell, as martyrs.

Their fellow World War I flying ace Hermann Göring was once similarly regarded, until his heroic image was first tarnished and then destroyed completely by his role in later chapters of German history.

The gravesites of Oswald Boelcke and Manfred von Richthofen, on the other hand, remain sites of secular pilgrimage for both officers and enlisted men of the 21st century Air Force of the Federal Republic of Germany, which regards both World War I flying aces as their founding fathers.

For example, the 1900-1902 manhunt for Mathias Kneißl, a peasant outlaw, copkiller, and poacher in the Dachau District of Kingdom of Bavaria witnessed the local Bavarian peasantry overwhelmingly cheering him on as a John Dillinger-style folk anti-hero.

What was worse, police corruption was considered so common in the region that Kneißl's slaying of two cops during a Wild West-style gunfight on 30 November 1900 made him very popular, long after his capture, trial, and execution for their murders in 1902.

"[8] In 1891, the Imperial Capital of Berlin witnessed the birth of organized crime in Germany in the form of oath bound secret societies for former convicts called the Ringvereine (Sporting Clubs").

The Ringvereine often carried romantic sounding names such as Immertreu ("Forever True"), Felsenfest ("Firm as a Rock"), Nordpiraten ("Northern Pirates"), and Apachenblut ("Apache Bloods") and completely dominated both racketeering, prostitution, and the illegal drug trade of Berlin.

Only the secret police forces of Nazism and postwar Stalinism, who shot both real and suspected Ringverein members en masse and sent many others to concentration camps without requiring the niceties of evidence, broke the Sporting Clubs' power.

[9][10][11][12] In a December 1931 conversation in Frankfurt with journalist Heinrich Simon, Harry Graf Kessler was asked for the reasons why, despite being a descendant of the German nobility, he embraced the concept of Republicanism and opposed the post-1918 restoration of the House of Hohenzollern.

Among many other examples of the power and influence the George-Kreis wielded over Germany cultural and literary life, the scholarly and editorial skills of one member, Norbert von Hellingrath, were singlehandedly responsible for the revival of interest in the German romantic poet Friedrich Hölderlin, who had died unrecognized following decades of incarceration in a tower at Tübingen following a mental breakdown in 1806.

Jeremy Adler has written that war poet and playwright August Stramm, who began publishing his poetry in early 1914, treated, "language like a physical material" and, "honed down syntax to its bare essentials."

"[14] Adler has also written that August Stramm's "essential innovation (still too little recognized in Germany) was to create a new, non-representational kind of poetry," which is, "comparable," to Pablo Picasso's creation of abstract art and to Arnold Schoenberg's revolution in the writing of Classical music.

"[20][21] Tragically and in an added parallel to the many other nations experiencing similar cultural ferment during the same era, many of Germany's most gifted and innovative poets, writers, artists, and intellectuals were soon to die prematurely upon the battlefields of the Great War.

First, riots broke out in the Imperial Capital, the last Kaiser announced his intention to divert troops from the battlefield to restore order, and found to his shock that he had lost the support of the Generals, who all demanded his immediate abdication.

In 1968 Der Spiegel reported that in a survey of their readers by Quick magazine about who would be the most honorable person to become President of the Federal Republic of Germany, the last Kaiser's grandson and heir, Prince Louis Ferdinand, the only one of twelve candidates who was not a politician, won with 39.8% before Carlo Schmid and Ludwig Erhard.

Sulzberger for the book The Fall of Eagles, Prince Louis Ferdinand further expressed a deep sense of admiration for the informal bicycle monarchy and crowned republic style favored and used by the Dutch, Belgian, and Scandinavian royal families.

Praising how vehicles carrying the King or Queen would stop and wait at traffic lights, Louis Ferdinand stated that if the House of Hohenzollern were ever restored to the German throne during his lifetime, this same informality was a quality he fully intended to emulate.

For example, the rebuilding of cities in the former East Germany which remained devastated by World War II bombing raids has often involved the reconstruction of demolished historic buildings from the German Empire or even earlier.

It remains an annual site of secular pilgrimage on the anniversary of the last Kaiser's death, which are organized by German monarchist organisations, such as Cologne-based Tradition und Leben, whose members often attend wearing period costumes.

[24] In August 2011, despite the desire of both the bride and groom to keep things modest and low key, "Germany's own Royal wedding" between Prince George Friedrich of Prussia, the last Kaiser's great-great grandson and heir, and Princess Sophie of Isenburg was televised live and widely covered by the German news media.

The Patriotic Union, whose members included doctors, police officers, at least one judge, and many active duty German armed forces personnel, sought to violently overthrow the government of the Federal Republic and place Prince Henrich XIII of the House of Reuß upon the throne as the new Kaiser of a Fourth Reich.

"[33] German left wing politicians' and law enforcement's claims that the survival of democracy was in danger, however, drew contemptuous mockery by the conservative press in both Germany and Switzerland.