File:Alfred von Kiderlen-Waechter signature.jpg

Identifier: menaroundkaiserm00wilerich (find matches)
Title: Men around the Kaiser; the makers of modern Germany
Year: 1913 (1910s)
Authors: Wile, Frederic William, 1873-1941
Subjects: William II, German Emperor, 1859-1941 Germany -- Biography Germany -- Politics and government 1888-1918 Germany -- Intellectual life
Publisher: Philadelphia, Lippincott
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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sts have of recent years been soassiduously cultivated, should synchronise with thealmost simultaneous deaths of Germanys greatestspecialists on Near Eastern affairs—Baron Marschallvon Bieberstein and Herr von Kiderlen-Waechter.Without sinning on the side of triteness it can beasserted that their loss was almost irreparable.At the psychological moment of their departure,when the incalculable possibilities of the BalkanWar monopolised Europes attention, it was as ifthe German political army had lost its entireIntelligence Department at one blow. Kiderlen—the hyphenated name of the lateForeign Secretary was seldom used—had been incharge of the Auswartiges Ami only two years anda half when stricken down in the early hours of1913 ; but he had been a positive factor in Germanysforeign affairs for a generation. In the first twogreat European crises of the present century—theBosnian annexation of 1909, and the Moroccoimbroglio of 1911—the bluff, rotund Wiirtemberger,246 • 3 o •
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VON KIDERLEN-WAECHTER whose diplomatic schoolmaster was Bismarck, playedthe leading role. From the Bosnian incident heemerged triumphant. Morocco added no lustreto his fame, but he survived it brilliantly, and hisstar was steadily, even rapidly, in the ascendantwhen his end came. Rapprochement with Englandwas the ideal to which his ebbing energies were beingdevoted. He did not believe that Anglo-Germanrivalries must end in Armageddon. The Enghsh,he said to a friend, only a few weeks before hisdeath, are much too shrewd business people notto realise, finally, that neither they nor we can profitfrom the present state of affairs. You may be surean understanding will come, no matter who isAmbassador in London ! Kiderlens last publicutterance was a brief, but telling, statement in theReichstag recording the gratifying intimacywhich had sprung up between the British andGerman Governments in connection with the Balkanturmoil. When Herr von Kiderlen was summoned to theGerman Foreign Office in

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