John Lothrop Motley, George Bancroft and Andrew Dickson White

The American connection: John Lothrop Motley, George Bancroft and Andrew Dickson White. Eminent Americans and Otto von Bismarck

von JONATHAN STEINBERG

Relations between Bismarck and the United States of America offer us on the occasion of his 200th birthday a chance to see an aspect of his character that – unlike so much else in his nature – has little of the complexity and ambiguity which makes him so hard to assess and understand. As his neighbor and friend, Hildegard von Spitzemberg confided to her diary on 4 January 1888: »Die scheinbaren Widersprü- che in dieser machtvollen Persönlichkeit sind von einem intensiven Zauber, der immer aufs neue verstrickt.«1 In the case of Bismarck’s relationship to individual Americans, to the United States Ministers in Berlin – with one exception – and to the United States in general the- re was no ambiguity. He liked the company of Americans and enjoyed talking English with them. As Moritz Busch noted, at Varzin there were more pictures of Americans than any other nationality: »In der Stube hingen die Bilder von Grant, Washington und Hamilton …wohl ein Zeichen der Zuneigung, die die tüchtigen Eigenschaften der Ame- rikaner, ihr Realismus, der gleichwohl der Ideale nicht ermangelt, und den Opfermut für solche nicht ausschließt, ihre jugendliche kühne und doch zugleich weitschauende Konzeption bei öffentlichen und priva- ten Unternehmungen und ihr dreistes und beharrliches Draufgehen auf Schwierigkeiten dem Fürsten einflößten und er mir gegenüber widerholt äußerte.«2 When »Theo« Wangemann, Thomas Edison’s European represen- tative, visited Bismarck in Friedrichsruh on the 7th of October 1889,

1 Cited in: Jonathan Steinberg, Bismarck. Magier der Macht. Berlin 2012, 641. 2 Cited in: Louis Leo Snyder, Die persönlichen und politischen Beziehungen Bis- marcks zu Amerikanern. Phil. Diss. Universität Frankfurt am Main. Darmstadt 1932, 81.

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Bismarck chose an old American folksong as the first item to be recor- ded on the new cylinders of the Edison recording machine.3 In good old colony times, When we lived under the King, Three roguish chaps fell into mishaps Because they could not sing. John Lothrop Motley, Bismarck’s undergraduate roommate at Göt- tingen and Berlin, must have taught it to Bismarck, or sung it in pubs. Fifty years later the Reich Chancellor recalled it and began the recor- ding session with it. In the interviews with American newspapers that accompanied Wangeman’s trip, all noted how well the Chancellor spoke of America and things American. Motley was Bismarck’s introduction to America. For two years in Göttingen and Berlin, he shared rooms with Otto von Bismarck and published Morton’s Hope after he got back to Boston in 1835. The book is a novel in which his remarkable friend appears as Otto von Rabenmark and in one scene Motley encounters Bismarck, who had been behaving like a belligerent clown in the streets of Göttingen challenging any and every passing student to a duel. When they go back to Bismarck’s rooms, he throws off his mountebank clothes and tells the startled Morton that he does that to get »a reputation«, be- cause, as he puts it: »I intend to lead my companions here, as I intend to lead them in after-life. You see I am a very rational sort of person now and you would hardly take me for the crazy mountebank you met in the street half-an hour ago. But then I see that this is the way to obtain superiority.«4 By the late 1850s Bismarck’s friend had become famous. When Motley returned from Boston in 1858 for two years in London, his history of the Dutch Revolt had become a bestseller in Britain. As his daughter wrote, »his fame as a successful author was there before him, and he became the object of many attentions«. Invitations from the Prime Minister Lord Palmerston and Lady Palmerston, and from the

3 Stephan Puille, Fürst Bismarck und Graf Moltke vor dem Aufnahmetrichter. Der Edison-Phonograph in Europa, http://www.cylinder.de/deeplink_resource_bis- marck.html, zuletzt aufgerufen am 19.02.2016; ders., Die Entdeckung der Stim- me Otto von Bismarcks, in: »A clever instrument«. Der Edison-Phonograph und die Tonaufnahme Otto von Bismarcks vom 7. Oktober 1889. Hrsg. von Ulrich Lappenküper. Friedrichsruh 2012, 9-33, 33; Rob Cowen, Restored Edison Re- cords Revive Giants of 19th-Century Germany, http://www.nytimes. com/2012/01/31/science/bismarcks-voice-among-restored-edison-recordings. html?_r=0 (abgerufen am 19. Februar 2016). 4 Cited in: Jonathan Steinberg, Bismarck. A Life. Oxford 2011, 41.

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