Bismarck: A Life

by Jonathan Steinberg

  Count Brandenburg, indifferent to such anxieties, declared himself ready to take the presidency of the Council, and then the difficulty was to find him fit and acceptable colleagues. A list presented to the King contained my name also: as General Gerlach told me, the King had written in the margin ‘only to be employed when the bayonet governs unrestricted.’ Count Brandenburg himself said to me at Potsdam: ‘I have taken the matter in hand, but have scarcely looked into the newspapers; I am unacquainted with political matters, and can only carry my head to market. I want a mahout, a man in whom I trust and who tells me what I can do. I go into the matter like a child into the dark, and except Otto Manteuffel [then at the head of the Ministry of the Interior], know nobody who possesses previous training as well as my personal confidence.88

  The fate of the revolution in Prussia depended less on von Brandenburg but on another Prussian general, the flamboyant and clever ‘Papa Wrangel’. Friedrich Heinrich Ernst von Wrangel was born on 13 April 1784 in Stettin and died on 1 November 1877 in Berlin at the age of 93. In the Napoleonic Wars he had won the highest Prussian order, Pour le mérite. During the long peace years he distinguished himself as a dashing and effective cavalry officer. On 19 April 1848 the King gave him command of the Prussian army expeditionary force to go to Schleswig-Holstein and again he won a variety of notable engagements. After the armistice Wrangel returned to Berlin and on 13 September reported to the King who appointed him military governor of ‘the Marches’, the territory surrounding Berlin. He took up his headquarters in the royal palace in Charlottenburg and deployed 50,000 troops around the city. The scenario had already been established by Cavaignac and Radetzky, but Wrangel was shrewder and more dramatic. On 9 October he organized a military parade to the horror of von Pfuel who advised against it. Wrangel decided that it was high time Berlin saw some soldiers. With drums and flags the army marched from Charlottenburg into the heart of Berlin and drew a huge, cheering crowd.89 Wrangel spoke fluent Berlin dialect and made himself easily available to the crowd. The parade showed that the revolutionaries had lost support and that the army had regained its prestige especially when commanded by a witty, dialect-speaking, people’s general. Eleven days after Wrangel’s parade, Bismarck wrote to Johanna:

  Not the slightest sign of revolt here. But instead bitter feelings between workers and civil guard, which can bear good fruit. The workers cheer the King and the army and want the King to rule alone etc.90

  Meanwhile in Vienna, the Austrian government used force. On 6 October 1848 street fighting broke out and the court fled the city. On 26 October, under the command of General Alfred Prince zu Windisch-Graetz and the Croatian general Count Joseph Jelačić von Bužim, the Austrian army began to bombard the city and on 31 October stormed it with overwhelming numbers. Two thousand people died in the fighting and several prominent leaders, including Robert Blum, a deputy in the Frankfurt National Assembly, were executed by firing squad. Wrangel had done the same job with a parade and no casualties. The German revolution had run its course. On 9 November 1848 Count Brandenburg had decided to remove the Prussian National Assembly from Berlin as a first step to the occupation of the city by Wrangel’s troops.

  Bismarck had remained in Berlin to make himself as important as possible and seems to have managed that exercise, as he tells us in his memoirs:

  Early in the morning of November 9, General von Strotha, who had been appointed War Minister, came to me, sent by Brandenburg, in order to have the situation made clear to him. I did that as well as I could, and asked: ‘Are you ready?’ He answered with the rejoinder: ‘What dress has been decided upon?’ ‘Civilian dress,’ I replied. ‘That I don’t possess,’ said he. I provided him with a hired servant, and luckily, before the appointed hour, a suit was hunted up at a tailor’s. Various measures had been taken for the security of the ministers. First of all, in the theatre itself, besides a strong posse of police, about thirty of the best shots in the light infantry battalions of the guard were so disposed that they could appear in the body of the house and the galleries at a given signal; they were unerring marksmen, and could cover the ministers with their muskets if they were actually threatened. It was assumed that at the first shot all who were present would speedily vacate the body of the house. Corresponding precautions were taken at the windows of the theatre, and at various buildings in the Gendarmenmarkt, in order to protect the ministers from any possible hostile attack as they left the theatre; it was assumed that even large masses, meeting there, would scatter as soon as shots were fired.91

  None were and on the following day, 10 November 1848, General Wrangel occupied Berlin and put an end to the revolution in Prussia, as it turned out, for good. Now what was there for Bismarck? On the following day he wrote one of those disarmingly honest letters that still have the power to startle the reader:

  I sit here partly as a deputy of our knights’ association in Berlin and partly as a court and chamber intriguer. Up to now nothing much has happened except uninterrupted disarming of Berlin, through which as of now, after half of the districts have been searched, eighty to ninety percent of the weapons have been collected. Passive resistance turns out more and more to be cover for weakness. The military in addition to ensuring calm and order turns out to be popular and the number of the angry reduces itself to the fanatics, the rogues and the barricadists.92

  On the same day King Frederick William IV issued a proclamation, which contained a promise to grant the subjects a new constitution:

  Prussians! I give you once more my unbreakable assurance that you will not be injured in your constitutional rights, that it will be my most immediate effort to be a good constitutional King, and that we together will erect a stately and lasting structure under whose roof to the benefit of our Prussian and German Fatherland our descendents may enjoy in harmony the blessings of freedom for centuries to come. To that may God grant his blessing!93

  A few days later on 16 November, Bismarck wrote to Johanna:94

  Yesterday I was invited to dinner by the King. The Queen was English pleasant. I picked a piece of heather from her sewing table and send it to you so you won’t be jealous … Afterwards the King summoned me to an audience of about an hour in his cabinet or more accurately his bedroom, which is hardly larger than our little room. The Royals live together in the city palace and are rather cramped. Among other things he said, and instructed me to communicate it to all those well meaning persons, that he will hold to his promises, the right one and the silly ones, without question, without the slightest duplicity, but he intends to secure the rights of the Crown to the last consequence, as long as he has a single soldier and a toe-hold in Prussia.95

  Years later Bismarck told Lucius von Ballhausen his crushing assessment of the King: Frederick William IV had ‘an unsteady character … if one grabbed him, one came away with a handful of slime.’96

  On 5 December 1848 the Prussian National Assembly was dissolved and the King fulfilled his promise by ‘imposing’ a constitution on the country. Though it had been oktroyiert or ‘dictated’ from above, the king declared ‘as a consequence of the unusual situation which has arisen which made the planned agreement on the Constitution impossible,’97 the 1848 Constitution was by no means entirely reactionary. It stipulated that all Prussians were equal before the law (Article 4); had personal freedom guaranteed (Article 5); inviolability of their dwellings (Article 6); property was inviolable (Article 8); and religious freedom was guaranteed (Article 11); research and teaching were free (Article 17). Every male Prussian over the age of 24 who had lived in his community for six months and had not been declared ineligible by a court had the right to vote (Article 67). The lower house had 350 members (Article 66) who served for three years (Article 70). Every 250 voters selected one Elector (Article 68) and the Electors elected the Deputies in districts so organized that at least two deputies were elected per district (Article 69). An upper house of 180 members, elected for six years by provincial, county, and districts (Articles 62–5) c
ompleted the structure.

  On the other hand the core structure of the Prussian state had not been touched. In four articles, the fate of the ‘Iron Kingdom’ from 1848 to 1918 was sealed. The King exercised supreme command of the army (Article 44). He filled all posts in the same way in the remaining branches of the civil service insofar as the law had not prescribed an alternative (Article 45). The King had the right to declare war, make peace, and enter into treaties with foreign powers (Article 46). The King had the right to dissolve either of the Chambers (Article 49).98 Thus, the personnel and command of the army and civil service remained entirely in the hands of the King, who appointed and dismissed ministers and army officers alike, in effect, the spinal cord of the absolute regime. This constitutional structure, as amended by the Constitution of 1850, which eliminated equal suffrage and introduced a suffrage based on the income of the voter, remained in effect to 11 November 1918, when a republic replaced the monarchy.

  Among the other prerogatives of the Crown, according to §3 of the Order of 12 October 1854, was the unlimited right to name members of the House of Lords as a sign of ‘special All-Highest confidence’.99 As Hartwin Spenkuch shows in his account of the Prussian House of Lords, successive monarchs named 325 such members between 1854 and 1918. Membership of the House of Lords elevated all sorts of commoners into the service nobility of the new constitutional kingdom but also rewarded nobles who had served in royal office either in civil or military functions. The Prussian House of Lords resembled the modern British version much more than one might expect and in one respect exceeded any equivalent provision of the British House of Lords of today. Between 1854 and 1918, forty university professors received nominations from their institutions to be ‘presented’ to the King as peers and twenty-one other professors were directly named by the King himself. These academic peerages in Prussia might be compared not implausibly to life peerages for distinguished academics nominated by the British Prime Minister today but with the advantage that the universities themselves selected two-thirds of the candidates. Among the 61 were the theorist of the Christian State, F. J. Stahl (1802–61); the economists of the so-called ‘Historical School, Adolf Wagner (1835–1917) and Gustav Schmoller (1838–1917); and the classicist, Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorf (1848–1931).100

  From 5 December 1848 the rules of the political game in Prussia were changing in Bismarck’s favour. His conservative patrons would need his skills more than they had before and before all else he had to get himself elected to the new lower house, the Landtag. There was not much time. The voters would choose Electors on 22 January 1849 and the Electors would elect Deputies on 5 February. Four days after the imposition of the constitution, Bismarck wrote to his brother,

  From September on I have been like a shuttle-cock going back and forth between here and Berlin, Potsdam and Brandenburg … In general I flatter myself that I have poured pepper on the tails of the cowardly dogs and look back at my day’s work with satisfaction.101

  His friends in the Union for King and Fatherland formed an electoral committee and Bismarck joined Julius Stahl, Moritz August von Bethmann Hollweg, Hermann Wagener, and his university friend Karl von Savigny as a member. Their manifesto stated: ‘The political way of thinking which moves our Committee, is a unitary one and in many ways has sharper definition than among other fractions of the Conservative side. It consists of an absolute refusal to negotiate with the revolution.’102 Bismarck plunged with his customary energy into the electoral campaign, as he explained to his brother,

  In the electoral assemblies I declared myself for the recognition of the constitution, defence against anarchy, equality before the law (but against abolition of the nobility), equal distribution of tax according to income, so far as possible; election according to interests, and against the abolition of monetary rights without compensation, for strict press and club laws and that is how I intend to behave in the Landtag.103

  On 5 February 1849 Otto von Bismarck was elected to the Prussian Landtag from Teltow, in Brandenburg. Heinz von Kleist was elected from Belgard. General Leopold von Gerlach noted in his diary: ‘Of the reliable people, upon whom we can call, Bismarck, Kleist, and I will assume, Professor Keller, have been elected. It would be important to organize them as a counter-opposition.’104

  On 28 March 1849 the Frankfurt National Assembly adopted a constitution with universal, manhood suffrage and secret ballot and passed a resolution to offer the Imperial German Crown to Frederick William IV. On 3 April the King received the Frankfurt delegation led by the President of the Frankfurt Parliament, the Prussian Liberal Eduard von Simson. The meeting went badly. Frederick William IV received the ‘32 Crown Bearers’, as Leopold von Gerlach scornfully called them, in the Knights’ Hall of the Royal Palace, and told them with great courtesy that, though he was honoured by the offer of the Crown, he would have to see whether the German states accepted the constitution. At the reception that evening, the disappointed von Simson complained that the King had ‘nullified’ the Frankfurt Assembly, to which Leopold von Gerlach replied with satisfaction ‘that is a very correct observation’.105 The King wrote to his sister Charlotte, as the wife of the Tsar known as the Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna, later to be a great friend of Bismarck,

  You have read my reply to the man-donkey-dog-pig-and-cat-delegation from Frankfurt. It means in simple German: ‘Sirs You have not any right at all to offer me anything whatsoever. Ask, yes, you may ask, but give—No—for in order to give, you would first of all have to be in possession of something that can be given, and this is not the case!106

  Bismarck’s view of the Frankfurt crown was not much higher than the King’s. On 21 April 1849 Bismarck made an important speech in the Landtag on it:

  The Frankfurt crown may glitter brightly but the gold which lends authenticity to its sparkle must be won by melting down the Prussian crown and I have no confidence that the smelting will succeed with the form of this constitution.107

  Meanwhile Bismarck had settled into the parliamentary round as he told his brother,

  We are from the mornings at 9 in the expert committees, then plenary sessions, then after lunch in section meetings from 5 to 7 and then party meetings to 10 or 11. In between invitations, tedious visits to pay and to receive, intrigues and working on people and issues. Given my natural tendency to laziness, you will find my silences understandable. The sessions of every kind are the more exhausting because the first word tells you what the whole speech will contain like certain bad novels but you cannot leave because of the possibility of votes.

  He had moved to 71 Wilhemstrasse, ‘where it is a bit more expensive but then one doesn’t get involved in the pubs’.108

  In August of 1849, he was re-elected to the Prussian Landtag and lived in an inn with Hans von Kleist-Retzow. He wrote Johanna that he had considered taking a chamber garnie with him.

  He is for my lifestyle too tyrannical. He wakes me every morning before I want to get up and orders my coffee, so that it is cold when I get to it, suddenly draws Gossner’s Schatzkästchen [Little Chest of Treasures] out of his pocket and imposes morning prayer on me with hymn that he reads out. That is very nice but often untimely.109

  Nine days later on 17 August, he conceded defeat:

  I live with Hans here on the corner of the Taubenstrasse, 3 rooms and an alcove, very elegant but narrow, little holes, Hans’s bed full of bed-bugs, mine not, apparently they don’t like the way I taste. We pay 25 Reichsthaler a month.110

  Hans was now dragging him to Lutheran churches, and Bismarck groaned about it to Johanna:

  The singing in Protestant congregations really does not please me. I prefer a church with good church music played by people who know what they are doing and I like to have a church like the Tein church was inside with masses, priests in white vestments, in the fog of candles and incense, that is much worthier, don’t you think, Angela?111

  In September 1849 Bismarck went with his sister Malwine to Friedrichshain to visit the graveyard
of the revolutionaries killed in the March days.

  Yesterday I went with Malle to Friedrichshain and not even the dead could I forgive. My heart filled with bitterness at the piety for false gods around the graves of these murders, where every inscription boasts on the crosses of ‘Freedom and Justice’, a mockery of God and man … My heart swells with poison at what they have made of our Fatherland, these murderers with whose graves the Berliners worship as idols.112

  This rage at his ‘enemies’ would become more and more prominent as he got older and more powerful, and would take an increasing toll of his energies and health.

  The end of the Frankfurt Parliament brought a new and unexpected complication. Radowitz returned to Berlin on 22 April 1849, from Frankfurt, where he had been a deputy. Joseph Maria von Radowitz (1797–1853) had a story-book career, a young man from a Catholic Hungarian noble family, he arrived on Berlin in 1823 knowing nobody and on the run from his master, the Grand Duke of Hesse. Within a few years he had become an important member of the new Prussian General Staff, a close friend of the Crown Prince who later became Frederick William IV, a founding member along with Count Voss, the Gerlachs, and others of that group of the Berliner Wochenblatt, whose aim it was ‘to fight the false freedom of the revolution through the true freedom found in right order and never through absolutism, no matter in what guise it shows itself’.113 In other words, though Catholic, he had taken on the feudal and aristocratic ideology of the Neo-Pietists against revolution but also against Frederick the Great’s state absolutism. He rose to high rank in the army, published literary essays, and produced mathematical work as well. He wrote a memorandum on 20 November 1847 entitled ‘Germany and Frederick William IV’ in which he urged the King to take the lead in a federal, voluntary union of German states under Prussia, an effort which he always believed would have prevented the events of 1848. Only an unofficial, though powerful adviser of the King, he could not convince the ministers to pursue this course and after the March days he retired to an estate of his wife’s relatives in Mecklenburg where, rather to his surprise, he was elected a deputy to the Frankfurt Parliament from a Westphalian constituency.