Wilhelmstrasse
English
Etymology
Borrowed from German Wilhelmstraße, from the name of Prussian King Frederick William I (Friedrich Wilhelm I.) + Straße (“street”).
Proper noun
Wilhelmstrasse
- A thoroughfare in central Berlin, formerly the location of the German Chancellery and Foreign Office.
- (metonymically, historical after 1945) The German government or Foreign Office.
- 1911, The Fortnightly Review, volume 96, page 638:
- The immediate effect, however, was that all the ingenious calculations of the Wilhelmstrasse came clattering to the ground like a house of cards.
- 1956, Carlile Aylmer Macartney, October Fifteenth: A History of Modern Hungary, 1929–1945, volume 1, page 139:
- As von Neurath once told an Austrian diplomat: “It was the view of the Wilhelmstrasse that as soon as the Reich held Austria, Hungary would eat out of its hand.”
- 1974, George B. Leon, Greece and the Great Powers, 1914–1917, page 334:
- The Wilhelmstrasse was faced with a serious dilemma over the Greek question, for no easy solution could be found that would satisfy both Athens and Germany’s allies.
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