ABSTRACT
Bismarck offered his resignation to Wilhelm II on 18 March 1890 after 28 years as first Prussian Prime Minister and then German chancellor. The young Kaiser had no hesitation in accepting. Indeed, he had twice requested Bismarck’s resignation letter and was becoming impatient. Ever since the accession of Wilhelm II the Kaiser and chancellor had been boxing for positions. The precipitating factor in Bismarck’s fall from office was his apparent intention to engineer a constitutional crisis over the renewal of anti-socialist legislation but the longer term cause was Bismarck’s increasingly anachronistic policies and his inability to conceive of a future German state without himself at the helm.
