Station: [7] Assassination Attempt on the Emperor (No. 45)

Before you is a crystal pendant containing buckshot. The piece appears unremarkable. For Wilhelm I, however, it held great personal significance.

The pendant commemorates an assassination attempt on the Emperor on June 2, 1878. It was already the third attempt on his life. One Sunday, the 81-year-old Emperor was riding in an open carriage along Berlin’s Unter den Linden boulevard. There, he was struck by buckshot in the head, arm, and back.

The shots were fired by farmer Karl Nobiling, who was considered mentally unstable. He fired from the window of a house, using a double charge of buckshot.

There were very concrete reasons why Wilhelm survived the attack. The thick coat he wore over his uniform that day protected him. His spiked helmet also saved his life. Thus, this assassination attempt did not mark the end of an emperor, but became an event with political consequences.

Otto von Bismarck also knew how to use this assassination attempt to his advantage. The Reichstag was dissolved. New elections were held on July 30, 1878. These elections went down in history as the “assassination elections.”

That is precisely why this small object is so remarkable. It tells not only of an attack on a single person; it also illustrates how closely personal fate and politics were intertwined in this instance. So there is far more to this unassuming pendant than one might suspect at first glance.