Why Germany shouldn’t cancel Bismarck

What’s in a name? On the face of it, the Bismarck-Zimmer in Berlin’s Foreign Ministry building looks like just another boring conference room: functional office furniture, bland bureaucratic décor – an ideal forum for those tedious, conscientious meetings at which German politicians and diplomats excel.

However, that nondescript committee room has now become headline news in Germany, after the Bundesrepublik’s Foreign Ministry announced it would henceforth be renamed the Saal der Deutschen Einheit, or the Hall of German Unity (the ‘Tag der Deutschen Einheit’, the Day of German Unity, on 3October, is the day when Germans celebrate the Reunification of 1990).

Is this a sign that Germany is turning against Otto von Bismarck, the architect of Germany’s original unification in 1871? After all, this hasn’t happened in isolation. Germany’s biggest Bismarck statue, in Hamburg, became a focus for street protests, prompting Hamburg’s Ministry of Culture & Media to begin a process of ‘contextualisation’ (whatever that means) of his memorial.