Abstract
When Bismarck welded together a united Germany in 1871, the new nation state lacked a cohesive national identity and continued to lack one for some time. This was perhaps clearest at the symbolic level. Although Bismarck has a reputation for manipulating nationalist liberals into supporting the new empire, he clearly avoided cultivating symbols of German national identity. Following unification, he delayed Berlin’s architectural and monumental transformation into the national capital, forestalling the construction of a central emblem of Germany’s newly centralized national identity, the imperial parliament (Reichstag). Both Bismarck and Wilhelm I satisfied themselves with Berlin as it stood, preferring