In the meantime elections for the Prussian National Assembly had been declared. The franchise was indirect. Voters elected a college of electors who in turn voted for the deputies. All adult males were eligible to vote if they were not on relief and had resided in the same place for six months. In a letter to his brother on 19 April, Bismarck reported:
I have little or no chance to be elected. I don’t know whether to rejoice or be annoyed about that. It’s a matter of conscience to campaign with all my energy. If it does not succeed, I shall lay myself down in my big easy chair with the satisfaction of having done my bit and spend two to six months sitting around under conditions more agreeable than in the Landtag.66
The elections had an electrifying effect on the newly enfranchised peasants and artisans who flocked to the meetings that preceded the elections. Habits of subservience fell off their backs like old clothes and a not insignificant number of middle-class radicals joined them to stir up passions and make careers. The new Prussian cabinet led by David Hansemann and Ludolf Camphausen pursued a combination of liberal economic policies and constitutional proprieties but did little or nothing for grievances of artisans and peasants who wanted guaranteed security, not watered-down Adam Smith. At the same time that voters elected deputies to the new Prussian Landtag, they also chose representatives for the so-called German Pre-Parliament, a kind of constitutional convention for Germany as whole. This led to a second cleavage among supporters of the new order, between those who remained essentially Prussian or Bavarian or Saxon—revolutions had occurred in all thirty-nine German states—and those who wanted to see their state ‘go up’, in Hegelian language, into the new united Germany.
A coherent account of the revolutions of 1848 requires unusual narrative skills. There was no single revolution but many and often different ones. The events themselves occurred among states and within states. Within a state like Germany thirty-nine revolutions broke out in big kingdoms like Prussia or Bavaria and in tiny German state-lets like the Principalities of Reuss older line and Reuss younger line, one of which was ruled by Heinrich the XX and the other by Heinrich the LXII (this is not a misprint).67 The Habsburg Monarchy had revolutions in almost as many places as there were national identities but in particular in the German, Czech, Hungarian, Italian, and Polish cities and in some rural areas where serfdom, the robot, still existed. The attempt to create a German national state foundered quickly on the disagreement about what Germany included. The Habsburg Empire had German and non-German states. Each kingdom, dukedom, principality, or city had its feudal constitution and special relationship to its King, Prince, Duke, Count, Margrave, Landgrave, or Lord. The German nationalists who wanted a ‘Greater Germany’ laid claim to historic German territories such as Bohemia and Moravia which had non-German majorities. The German national state had to include the ‘eternally united’ Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, though only Holstein was a member of the German Confederation both had the King of Denmark as their sovereign. Frictions developed between classes and regions, between entrepreneurs and workers, between anxious artisans who wanted to restrict entry to skilled trades and doctrinaire liberals who applied principles of free markets to all closed corporations. The disintegration of millennial forest and field rights affected Bismarck and his social class who faced the loss of small privileges like the right to a tenth of honey harvests from peasant hives.
Fighting broke out all over Europe as nationalists tried to force the creation of their new states. Charles Albert, King of Piedmont, under the banner l’Italia farà da se (Italy will make itself) sent his army into neighbouring Lombardy where radical republicans fought against the Piedmontese and against the Imperial forces of Habsburg rule. To the west and to the east two great powers escaped the turmoil, Great Britain because it already had liberalism, capitalism, a constitution, and a middle class (though it was a close call and radicals in 1848 like the Reverend Frederick Maurice expected the revolution any day) and Russia which had none of those things.
Twenty-five years of censorship came to an end overnight and radicals, conservatives, and liberals of every hue began to make speeches, print flyers, and found newspapers. The sheer kaleidoscopic complexity of places, persons, issues, heritages, trades, traditions, conflicts, and overlapping jurisdictions bewildered contemporaries and continues to baffle historians who have first to understand the events and then describe them.
The kings and princes had suffered a collective loss of nerve but, as the first shock wave died down, they gradually noticed that they still had their armies, which, though furious and humiliated at their failure to quell the mob, were intact and often, as in the case of Prussia, outside the turbulent capital city. The Austrian armies in northern Italy began to regain control of Lombardy and Venetia and on 17 June suppressed the Czech revolt in Prague. From 23 to 26 June General Cavaignac put down the workers’ revolt in Paris in the so-called ‘June days’. On 24 and 25 July Marshall Radetzky decisively defeated the Piedmontese army of Charles Albert and restored Austrian rule in northern Italy. The old order began to gain confidence.
In Prussia, the conservatives around the Gerlachs had begun their domestic counter-revolution within days of the King’s surrender to the crowd by creating a ministère occulte, a secret shadow government, lodged inside the royal establishment, also known as the ‘camarilla’. Since the new constitutional arrangements had not altered the King’s powers of command over the army, the Gerlach brothers became the moving spirits in the creation of the new secret structure. General Leopold von Gerlach and his brother Senior Judge Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach were the key figures along with various royal adjutants-general and the ministers of the royal household. As Hans-Joachim Schoeps writes of Leopold von Gerlach,
as a result of the close personal friendship with Frederick William IV—a deep spiritual bond linked them—Gerlach had a strong influence over all Prussian policy after 1848. He was frequently sent on smaller diplomatic missions. In the daily coffee report his counsel and judgement counted for more than the minister-presidents in office … Since, on the other hand, the men in the intimate royal circle had no lust for power—Gerlach was much too scrupulous for that—a complete lack of organization distinguishes the Camarilla as its most striking feature.68
The key feature of the royal government then and in presidential government in those states where it exists today is the social space of power. If you see the King or President every day, especially if you see him alone, you have power irrespective of the title of your office or its place in the hierarchy. Leopold von Gerlach had coffee with the King every day. He had power.
In 1850 or 1851 Leopold von Gerlach became the President of the Berlin Society for the Promotion of Christianity among the Jews, functioning exactly as the founder General Job von Witzleben did before him. The date is uncertain because the Annual Reports of the Society for 1850 and 1851 are missing.69 Like General Job von Witzleben, who combined Christian vocation and office as Adjutant-General, Leopold von Gerlach did exactly the same thing. Anti-Semitism continued to be institutionalized at the top of Prussian society and the prominence of Jews among revolutionary leaders deepened it. Von der Marwitz had said it prophetically in 1811, liberalism meant that ‘our old, venerable Brandenburg-Prussia will become a new-fangled Jewish state’.70
On 21 June Bismarck told his brother that he was going to Potsdam for a few days of ‘political intrigues’. On 3 July he wrote to Alexander von Below-Hohendorff:
Last week I was in Potsdam and found the high and highest personalities more decisive and much clearer about their position than one would have thought given all that has happened. I also was able to assure myself through sight of a confidential letter from the Tsar that the danger of war with Russia is completely imaginary, as long as civil war does not break out here and our ruler does not call for Russian help. The rest by word of mouth.71
On the same day, 21 June 1848, the ‘Society for King and Fatherland’ was founded, a semi-clandestine association
of Junker landlords, not more than ten or twenty in each province, who would, by joining other organizations without acknowledging the existence of the Society itself, influence local people and report to the central committee in Berlin on the atmosphere in the country at large. There was a public committee and a secret one which Ludwig von Gerlach directed.72
The camarilla recognized that secret and royal influences would not be enough. They had to do other, more overt, political things. Above all, they needed their own newspaper. Before 1848 there had been talk of one but nothing had come of it. Now in the new more democratic era, the conservatives needed a journalistic voice. Bernhard von Bismarck described the difficulties they faced:
Although the financial situation and credit of the estate owners stood on wobbly foundations and mine most of all, I succeeded nevertheless through my words, my writing and my example in collecting money to support the conservative press. Through a letter of credit for several thousand thalers which I, my brother and Kleist-Retzow put up to pay the guarantee deposit, we covered the initial expense. Otherwise the paper might well have gone under shortly after it first appeared.73
On 1 July 1848 the Neue Preussische Zeitung appeared for the first time. Because of the iron cross on its masthead, it became known as the Kreuzzeitung. Bismarck took an intense interest in the fledgling paper. He wrote for it and also sent the new editor Hermann Wagener regular comments on it. Here are two from its first days. In July of 1848 he received his first copy and wrote to Wagener to express his delight that a new paper had appeared but complained that
there are not enough ads. In our rural remoteness ads are a necessity. The women cannot exist without them and in any case the survival of a newspaper rests on the fees from advertising. New papers can help themselves by reprinting the notices in the established papers and so by means of appearance eventually create the reality of an important information paper … Births, deaths, weddings announcements must be taken over from the Spener-Vossische in my view in full, if necessary without phrases. You cannot imagine how many women read papers only for the notices and if they do not find them, forbid their husbands to buy the paper.74
In early September Gerlach noted in his diary that Bismarck ‘offers himself almost as a minister … a very active and intelligent adjutant for our Camarilla headquarters’.75 Gerlach’s dominance over an entire generation of young conservatives like Wagener, Kleist-Retzow, and Schede rested on his immense personal authority as a legal mind and a judge but also on the extraordinary, almost saintly, qualities of his Christian faith. Bismarck never quite belonged among these disciples. He had not been a Referendar in Gerlach’s superior provincial court nor could he share Gerlach’s comprehensive application of Christian principles to the state.76
In the autumn of 1848, Bismarck needed Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, who helped to set up and direct the camarilla as a political force. Gerlach wrote a column called Review every month in the Kreuzzeitung and the Reviewer became the most widely read and most influential voice on the Right. He never failed to startle readers as in his October 1848 column in which he argued, ‘we cannot oppose Revolution only with repressive and security measures, we must always have ideas of justice.’77 Since his brother Leopold had coffee in private with the King every day, Bismarck reckoned that the brothers Gerlach would be his road to power, and they were.
On 12 July the German Confederation in Frankfurt, which had continued to function alongside the revolutionary German National Assembly, decided to cease meeting but it did so in a way that would affect Bismarck’s career. It did not announce ‘the end of its existence’ but instead ‘the end of its previous activity’.78 When the revolution finally ended, the Austrians could call it back out of its temporary suspension and resume their dominance of the German political structure. That would mean, if Prussia agreed, that there would have to be again a Prussian representative to the Bundestag, the job which Bismarck eventually got.
The Prussian national assembly had debated in July the abolition of all manorial rights and, as a result, in Bismarck’s neighbourhood the counterrevolution became still more active. On 24 July an organization for the representation of the great landowners had been founded called the Verein zur Wahrung der Interessen des Grundbesitzes und zur Förderung des Wohlstands aller Klassen (Association for the Protection of the Interests of Landownership and for the Promotion of the Prosperity of all Classes). Although the country aristocracy dominated it, some 26 per cent of the landowners were non-noble. The leading figures were mostly from Brandenburg and their names are already familiar to us: Ernst von Bülow-Cummerow, Hans von Kleist-Retzow, Alexander von Below, and Otto von Bismarck. When the first annual general meeting of members gathered on 18 August, some 200 to 300 men showed up including smallholders and peasants. Since the long name hardly rolled off the tongue, the organizers shortened it to the Verein zum Schutz des Eigentums (the Association to Protect Property) and the journalists immediately called it ‘the Junker Parliament’. Although only 34 years old, Hans von Kleist was elected President. Leopold von Gerlach recorded in his diary for 10 December 1855: ‘It was the basis and the beginning of the later mighty party which saved the country.’79 On 22 August 1848 Ludwig von Gerlach addressed the Junker Parliament and gave for the first time his Christian justification for the preservation of manorial rights:
Property is itself a political concept, an office bestowed by God, in order to preserve his law and the Kingdom of his Law; only in association with the duties which arise from it is property holy. As mere means of enjoyment it is not holy but dirty. Communism correctly rejects property without duties. For that reason we may not surrender the threatened rights—patronage [of church and school], police [estate constables], the legal jurisdiction [estate owners as judges]; for these are more duties than rights.80
Bismarck had been tireless in organizing and furthering the Association. He had once again shown his political skills and energy. He wrote to Hermann Wagener on 25 August and put his own, rather different, interpretation on the Gerlach version of noblesse oblige:
It is a criterion of nobility that it serves the country for nothing. To be able to do that it must have its own wealth, from which it can live; otherwise the thing simply will not work. As result we have to be as materialistic as necessary to defend our material rights.81
Not quite what von Gerlach had in mind. In the midst of the Junker Parliament, on 21 August 1848, the Bismarcks’ first child, Marie, was born and Hans von Kleist-Retzow became her godfather.82
In the great world beyond Brandenburg, international and national forces had begun to contain, and ultimately crush, the German Revolutions of 1848–9. The day after Bismarck wrote to Hermann Wagener, 26 August 1848, under pressure from Britain and Russia, the Prussian government, whose army had been fighting a quixotic campaign against Denmark for the liberation of the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, agreed to sign an armistice with Denmark without consulting the German National Assembly, whose agent in theory Prussia had been. This betrayal of the national cause made clear the evident fact that Frankfurt as capital of the new Germany had no executive force of its own. When on 16 September the National Assembly in Frankfurt ratified the armistice—they could hardly do otherwise—rioting broke out in the street and two deputies, Auerswald and Lichnowsky, were murdered by the mob. The Prussian army entered the city and restored order.83
The loss of prestige in the National Assembly affected the Prussian National Assembly in a similar way. On 11 September 1848 the Liberal Prussian Auerswald-Hansemann ministry resigned. The King hesitated. Could he do away with liberals altogether? Bismarck went to Berlin where His Majesty received him and even apparently considered appointing him to office. The King opted for General Adolf von Pfuel, who was 69 when appointed Minister-President of Prussia and had been until 18 March 1848 the military governor of Berlin. Pfuel had been a close childhood friend of the poet and writer Heinrich von Kleist, had been a regular at the Jewish salon of Rahel Varnhagen von Ense, an
d had an unusual reputation. Though a Prussian Junker of Mark Brandenburg stock, he had genuine liberal sympathies. He tried to keep to the agreements of March 1848 but failed to gain the King’s support as the conflict between Crown and Parliament, stirred up and forced by the Gerlachs, sharpened.84 On 23 September 1848 Bismarck wrote to Johanna:
Either the government shows itself to be weak like its predecessors and gives way, something that I am working against, or it does its duty in which case I do not doubt for a minute that on Monday evening or Tuesday blood will flow. I had not thought the Democrats would be bold enough to accept battle but their whole attitude suggests that they will. Poles, Frankfurter, loafers, freebooters, all sorts of scum, have again appeared. They reckon that the troops will back out, probably through the speeches of a few unsatisfied chatterboxes who thus mislead the troops. I think they are wrong. I have no reason to stay here and tempt God to protect me, for which I have no claim. I shall bring my person to safety tomorrow.85
In spite of his letter, Bismarck stayed in Berlin, though in what capacity beyond busybody cannot easily be established. He went here and there, saw this one and that, and generally made sure that he could not be ignored. It seems that he seriously expected to be nominated to high office in the near future and that, in fact, turned out to be quite correct. In Berlin the camarilla had gradually won the King to its views. In early September 1848 Leopold von Gerlach suggested the establishment of a ‘military ministry to be headed by a general’, which would finally put down the revolution in Prussia. His brother Ludwig told Leopold on 29 September 1848 that the time had come for such a ministry composed of General Count Brandenburg, a member of the royal family, with Otto von Bismarck, Hans Hugo von Kleist-Retzow, and the Prince of Prussia as ‘generalissimo’.86 By 6 October 1848 the camarilla had convinced the King to appoint Brandenburg. Friedrich Wilhelm Count von Brandenburg (1792–1850) was the third and youngest of the three generals who reclaimed Berlin from revolution. Brandenburg, who had grown up in the home of the Minister of the Royal Household, von Massow, must have known Frederick William IV as a child. He had many virtues but no acquaintance with politics whatever when on 2 November 1848 Frederick William IV appointed him to succeed von Pfuel.87 Bismarck recalled his helplessness:
Bismarck: A Life Page 13
