The Financial Times,1. / 2. 9. 90

... It should be said at the outset that only half the 1,100 exhibits directly concern the Iron Chancellor; the others put him in context, and explain the exhibition's title. The organiser, Marie-Louise von Plessen, has anchored his great achievement, unifying Germany under Prussian leadership, firmly in European history. Indeed the exhibition was planned with 1992 in mind rather than 1990 (the centenary of Bismarcks' fall from power). The only change the events of the last few months brought about was to make it easier to get exhibits from East Germany. From the beginning, as historical adviser Lothar Gall puts it, "our object has been to step out of Bismarcks shadow." ...
This exhibition does not fall victim to the Bismarck myth. Mounted by the German Historical Museum, an institution set up three years ago when it was criticised as being superfluous, it fully justifies that body's existence. It is both comprehensive and a model of condensation. Its coolness and balance demonstrate political maturity at a time when Germany is experiencing real unity from below, not military unification imposed from above. There is no nationalist hubris here.
For a non-German visitor it also goes some way towards dispelling a counter-myth, that of Bismarck as bogeyman. He was not notably more unscrupulous than most of the politicians of his day. Admittedly he made use of war to achieve his ends, but so did Napoleon III. He pulled the wool over his opponents' eyes, but so did Disraeli. And if the super-Prussia he created eventually brought about two world wars, can he be blamed?
He was undoubtedly a great man, with a great man's faults; but one comes away from this exhibition with respect, even affection, for the "hysterical colossus", as Thomas Mann dubbed him, with his love of the country, his happy marriage and his heroic appetite. Mutatis mutandis, there is something
almost Churchillian about him.

Victor Price