Berlin 1896: Wilhelm II, Georg Simmel and the Berliner Gewerbeausstellung

Abstract

For a long time, Germany’s role in the global exhibition networks was extraordinarily complex. Until the opening of EXPO 2000 in Hanover on 1 June 2000, it was largely overlooked that no universal or international exhibition comparable to those in London, Paris and most other West European capital cities had ever been held in Germany. Over the course of the nineteenth century, Germany participated with its own sections in exhibitions held in London (1851, 1862), Paris (1855, 1867), Vienna (1873), Melbourne (1888–89), Philadelphia (1876) and Chicago (1893), but did not take part in the two Paris expositions of 1878 and 1889. Moreover, with the exception of the Viennese Weltausstellung of 1873, no world exhibition proper ever took place in Germany or a German-speaking country. Thus, with the arrival of EXPO 2000, the only event of a similar scale, the long unnoticed and for the most part ignored Berliner Gewerbeausstellung (trade exhibition) of 1896, held on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the German Reich, aroused new public and academic interest, with its status suddenly upgraded from a ‘would-be world exposition’ to a direct precursor of the megaevent in Hanover.² Yet the Berlin trade exhibition can only be understood properly if situated in the context of the so-called Ausstellungs- or Weltausstellungsfrage, the German exhibition question. Under this heading, politicians, businessmen and self-proclaimed experts debated fiercely for over 35 years, from the late 1870s to the early 1910s, whether an international exposition should be organized in Germany, preferably in the capital, thus following the example set not only by Great Britain and France but also other great powers such as the United States.

Ausstellung is nich, wie meine Herren Berliner sagen.

(Wilhelm II to Chancellor Leo Graf von Caprivi)

1896 wurde Berlin zur Weltstadt. Bis dahin war es nur eine europäische Provinzstadt. Die Markscheide bildet die Gewerbeausstellung im Treptower Park.

(Eduard Spranger)¹