12 Days and Half a Century

Versailles, January 18, 1871: In the Hall of Mirrors of the famous castle of the French Kings the German Empire is proclaimed. Its development was characterized by immense economic dynamism with extensive political standstill, democratic learning processes and authoritarian incrustation, groundbreaking social reforms and the most intense social conflicts. In twelve chapters, each of which is based on the events of a particular day, Christoph Nonn illuminates this fascinatingly colourful epoch and evokes the life the contemporaries who designed it. For example, the artist Anton von Werner, who painted the Emperor's Proclamation several times, Julie Bebel, who confidently took the place of her husband August in politics as well as in the joint turnery workshop, when he was once again in prison, or the shoemaker Wilhelm Voigt, who as the "Captain of Köpenick" made a fool of a town and thus made a nation laugh.