The German Empire Is Proclaimed at Versailles
In the palace built to celebrate France's humiliation of Germany, Bismarck reverses the insult
Quick facts
- Location
- Hall of Mirrors, Palace of Versailles
- Date
- 18 January 1871
- New emperor
- Wilhelm I of Prussia
- Proclamation read by
- Otto von Bismarck
What happened
On 18 January 1871, with Paris still under German siege, the assembled German princes proclaimed King Wilhelm I of Prussia the first German Emperor (Kaiser) in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles, outside Paris. Otto von Bismarck read out the proclamation in a hall whose ceiling paintings had been commissioned by Louis XIV to celebrate his own past conquests of German territory, and the date was deliberately chosen to mark the 170th anniversary of the 1701 coronation of Frederick I as the first King of Prussia. The ceremony included a religious service at an altar set up in the middle of the hall, ending with the assembled princes and officers singing the hymn Nun danket alle Gott.
Why it matters
The proclamation completed the unification Bismarck had pursued through three wars, over Denmark, Austria, and France, and created the first German nation-state, a federal empire led by Prussia that would last until its own collapse at the end of the First World War in 1918. Holding the ceremony inside Versailles was a deliberate, symbolic reversal of France's earlier domination of German territory, one that would itself feed French resentment leading into the First World War.
How we know
The event is documented through the official proclamation text and through contemporary depictions, most famously Anton von Werner's painting of the scene, commissioned specifically to memorialize the ceremony and preserved along with its historical context by the German Historical Institute's document archive.
Sources
- Chateau de Versailles (official national museum). Proclamation of the German Empire, 1871 · Reputable sourceen.chateauversailles.fr · The domain "en.chateauversailles.fr" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- German History in Documents and Images (German Historical Institute). Anton von Werner, The Proclamation of the German Empire on January 18, 1871, in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles (Palace Version, 1877) · Primary source (author-declared)germanhistorydocs.org · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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