Eva Giloi,Monarchy,Myth,and Material Culture in Germany,1750–1950

Reviewed by: Heidi Mehrkens, University of St Andrews, UK

Porcelain tea cups and golden snuff boxes not only equipped the average nineteenth-century royal household, but, from a certain perspective, can also be understood as carriers of political messages, closely linked to the representation of the dynasties. Either held in high esteem as a subject's inherited family treasure or publicly presented in a museum's collection to satisfy visitors' demands, royal relics were often to be found in the public sphere, far from the cupboards and private studies of the royal families. Here the ‘social life of things’ contributed to shaping images of monarchy.

Eva Giloi has written a dense reception history of monarchy through material culture that helps to illuminate aspects of the cultural history of monarchy. Focusing on the Hohenzollern dynasty, the study analyses the circulation of objects as well as of their symbolic narratives in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Prussia and twentieth-century Germany: how did contemporaries collect and consume royal memorabilia? To what extent were these objects used to express attitudes towards political authority? Under what circumstances did private objects of devotion turn into a national heritage? The book offers an innovative perspective on the relationship between subjects and rulers and highlights specific expressions of Prussian-German ‘loyalism’ or, in the words of Hubertus Büschel, nuances of ‘the subjects’ love’ (Untertanenliebe).

The reader gets to know various groups dealing with relics while offering, negotiating, or refusing certain narratives linked to them in order to breathe meaning into the social framework of the monarchy. Mainly, the study examines middle-class and noble relic collectors and their mutual – sometimes symbolic or even imagined – relationship with monarchs. The burgher who owned a flute Frederick the Great had played on could be saved from financial ruin by selling it. Equally important, it could serve as an object of admiration for the family and their guests. Moreover, in offering the relic as a gift to a monarch, the donator actively shaped or even constructed royal legends, not always corresponding to the political myth the monarch himself intended to invoke. This was the case with Queen Luise's relics given to Wilhelm I, creating the narrative of a sentimental mother-son-dyad that survived even the death of the German Emperor. Giloi provides an insight into how the Hohenzollern princes comparatively slowly turned to actively moulding the royal image by using press, photography or spectacles to gain public support for their regime – their last monarch Wilhelm II being the first to undertake this with enormous energy.

The developments in consumer and leisure cultures made it easier to access the world of collecting royal memorabilia as well as to approach the increasingly visible monarch. The emergence of mass media, accompanied by profound changes in visual culture and technology, fostered a celebrity culture. The social practice of collecting and consuming (royal) goods can be understood as an increasing part of the everyday life of the middle classes; in the 1870s it had become common behaviour to buy a signed photograph of Wilhelm I for one's private album.

Giloi also introduces the directors of museums as protagonists in the circulation of material culture: in buying and collecting objects and presenting them to create a sentimental or martial cult of the monarchy. The Berlin Kunstkammer or Hohenzollern Museum were important scenes of exhibiting royal myths on behalf of the ruler on the throne. It can be shown how visitors accepted or rejected the presentation of objects according to their attitudes towards sovereign power.

This elegantly written work, overall an excellent piece of scholarship, clearly focuses on nineteenth-century history; its source base is particularly rich for the period after 1850. Readers should not be misled by the title stretching the research to 1950 – the period after 1914 is merely addressed in a concluding chapter. The book's merit lies in examining how the middle-class public as well as the monarchy acted in order to exert influence on the royal image. The Sonderweg theory, stating that in the nineteenth century the German middle classes were manipulated from above in order to repress democratic reform, has been widely debated since the 1980s. Many scholars now argue for the nobility rather tending to imitate the middle classes than for a German bourgeoisie hindered in their social, economic and political progress by spinelessly imitating the nobility. Underpinning this study is the view that neither a ‘feudalization’ of the bourgeoisie nor a ‘bourgeoisification’ of the aristocracy alone can explain in detail this highly complex relationship. Using both perspectives can be a useful approach in order to better understand the long-lasting charisma of the monarchy.