Bismarck: A Life

by Jonathan Steinberg

  The results could not have been better. The constituent Reichstag had 297 members, of whom Conservatives gained 63 and the German Reich Party (Bismarckians) 40, National Liberals 80, other Liberals 40, and the Progressives only 19.30 The Jewish radical Eduard Lasker defeated Albrecht von Roon for a Berlin electoral district by 4,781 to 1,765 votes.31 Almost half the members were aristocrats, including one royal prince, 4 non-royal princes, 2 dukes, 27 counts, and 21 barons. From now on Bismarck would play the sovereign German princes off against the people as he wrote to the government of Saxony, ‘there are always these alternatives: either to count completely and forever upon the governments now temporarily allied with us or to face the necessity of seeking our centre of gravity in parliament.’32 A close-fought battle took place for two months until, on 16 April, the Constitution as amended in various small ways was adopted by 230 to 53, and on 31 May 1867 the Prussian Landtag approved it. Bismarck had won again: there was no bill of rights, no independent judiciary, no responsible cabinet, and no remuneration of deputies. This victory, though less celebrated than Königgrätz, meant as much to Bismarck. He had unified millions of Germans in a new state and their elected representatives had sacrificed liberal rights taken for granted elsewhere without a serious fight. The new Germany retained all the worst features of Prussian semi-absolutism and placed them in the hands of Otto von Bismarck.

  Bismarck faced another problem in 1867 which complicated his daily life and which still plagues the hapless biographer who has to sketch the course of his activity. Bismarck had become by design the only administrative authority in a new state of 29,572,511 people,33 who needed thousands of items of legislation, administrative reforms, and changes. The railroads, postal systems, legal structures and codes, roads and canals, banks and currencies, factory inspections, schools, financial systems, universities, and technical colleges had to be made compatible with each other. He had made no provision for a federal cabinet and had no very clear idea how the office of Chancellor would work now that he had decided to combine it with the Presidency of the Prussian State Ministry. From 1867 to his fall from power in 1890 Bismarck’s life became an impossible struggle to control and direct everything that happened in his name. Stosch explained to his wife how Bismarck decided everything by himself in negotiating an armistice with the French after the Franco-Prussian war and this typical behaviour can be seen, multiplied dozens of times, in the diaries of all those who served under him:

  I had the opportunity to see Bismarck in action [in the peace negotiations—JS] and must say that I admire the energy of his views and actions. Very odd on the other hand was how he anxiously dismissed everybody from his side for the decisive negotiations except for those like myself whom he needed for technical questions. He sat alone opposite his opponent and roughed him up. The advantage is that the process goes quickly, the disadvantage that the agreement remains open to different interpretations. Then force must decide between them.34

  The most rapidly growing modern state in Europe could not be ruled by one genius-statesman but Bismarck refused to let anybody else try.

  In addition he had the problem of the identity and function of the Bundesrat or Federal Council. What was it? Was it a Senate, a sort of upper house of his new state? Or was it simply a talking shop for the smaller German states? On 21 July of 1867 he wrote a letter to his deputy in the Foreign Office, Hermann von Thile, which shows how the question of precedence between Prussia and the Bund had to be settled:

  I think it neither necessary nor desirable that the King should formally open the Bundesrat’s first session. It would give our colleagues in the Federation the impression that their state representatives were in the same category as a Prussian parliamentary body. In reality only the federal budget and the customs treaty should come before the Bundesrat, both already known realities, which need no All-Highest decisions.35

  The Bundesrat must not get ideas above its station and interfere with his policies.

  But the problem of the burden of office remained and on 10 August 1867 Bismarck proposed to the Reichstag the establishment of a Bundeskanzleramt (Office of the Federal Chancellor), ‘an organ in which the different administrative branches come together and find their focal point … [the office was] to prepare with the cooperation of the departments concerned those matters that are to be brought before the Bundesrat and the Reichstag by Prussia as leader and member of the North German Confederation.’36 At last Bismarck now had a Chancellor’s office with its own staff. He chose Rudolf Delbrück (1817–1903) to head the Office of the Federal Chancellor. Delbrück suited Bismarck because he had never been a minister and hence had no following in parliament. He had made a career as senior civil servant in the Ministry of Trade as an expert on customs union affairs. He described his expectations before Bismarck elevated him in these words:

  My relationship to the King and to Count Bismarck was of the sort that I could reckon on the possibility that after a few years I would become the successor to Count Itzenplitz in the Ministry of Trade. As Prussian Minister of Trade I would end my career. But it all turned out differently.37

  An office, that of Vice-Chancellor, had been created for him and approved by the new Reichstag on 12 August 1867. The Vice-Chancellor presided over the new Bundeskanzleramt, and represented the Chancellor as presiding officer of the Bundesrat in the Chancellor’s absence, which with the passing of time became more and more regular. The new Vice-Chancellor settled in at once and like an administrative dynamo began to regulate all the aspects of the new state. A steady stream of decrees issued from the new office—Bismarck called it ‘decree diarrhoea’.38 Delbrück understood in a way that nobody else ever did how to combine absolute bureaucratic efficiency with complete subservience to Bismarck’s will. Bismarck told the Grand Duke of Baden in 1870 that

  Delbrück is the one man of whom I can say that he is completely orientated in every aspect of his office and has an unusual ability to manage affairs and carry them out.39

  Delbrück soon became known as the ‘Vice-Bismarck’ but he was in fact completely unlike Bismarck which explains why he remained so long in the service of an autocrat. He worked without the need for personal recognition, refused a title, and served under Bismarck’s despotic personality smoothly. Between 1867 and 1870 Delbrück introduced the legislation to create a unified currency, a unified metric system, a unified system of free access to trades and crafts (Gewerbefreiheit), freedom of movement and settlement.40 Bismarck’s old friend and rival, Karl Friedrich von Savigny said that ‘the strength of Delbrück’s position is that he is only interested in the things Bismarck finds boring.’41

  The relationship between the ‘Vice-Bismarck’ and other officers was never easy. In February 1873 Stosch, though a General, was now head of the new Imperial Navy. He clashed with Bismarck and Delbück, as he wrote to the Crown Prince:

  I have had the misfortune to countersign an imperial order which was the Imperial Chancellor’s business. On the other hand, the Chancellor has interfered in my department through his deputy [Delbrück]. The conflict stemming from that led yesterday to a very stormy scene, when the State Ministry met for a so-called private session at the Imperial Chancellor’s. Before the beginning of the session Prince Bismarck invited me to his room, told me that I lacked every ministerial qualification and had to subordinate myself to him unconditionally no matter whom he employed as his representative. I replied with spirit and we both had flushed faces when we entered the session. Today I asked H.M. to make me the deputy of the Chancellor in naval matters, instead of Delbrück, or dismiss me.42

  Delbrück irritated Bismarck by consulting members of the State Ministry who happened to be Jews, as Lucius recorded:

  Yesterday noon the Princess had me fetched from a session. The Prince had had a conversation with Delbrück which left him excited and so annoyed that he could not sleep the entire night. I found him in bed but better and more vigorous than on the last occasion. ‘He lies here and cannot do anything and feels
that neither in the ministry nor in the Bundesrat has he adequate representation. Delbrück always confers with Friedberg, Friedenthal, Lasker, Wolffson, Bamberger, always with Jews which makes the legislative work worse’.43

  Circumstances forced Bismarck to work with the Liberal parties and that meant dealing with the Friedenthals, Friedbergs, Laskers, Bambergers, and Simons. He attacked them as Jews but they really annoyed him as opponents. Stosch noticed that tendency and on 18 August 1867 he wrote to Gustav Freytag, the novelist, to sum up his view of Bismarck’s position:

  The more Bismarck grows in stature the more uncomfortable for him are people who think and act for themselves. And the more nervous he becomes the more he fears abrasive personal contacts … Common personal weakness and little people irritate the great statesman often beyond the limit of the normal.44

  A ‘little person’ who gave Bismarck more trouble than anybody else, Ludwig Windthorst (1812–91), made his debut in national politics in the same month that Stosch wrote to Freytag. On 31 August 1867 the first election to the North German Reichstag took place and Ludwig Windthorst, a Hanoverian lawyer, was elected from the District Meppen-Lingen-Bentheim which he served for the next twenty-four years until his death. Margaret Lavinia Anderson declares that

  Ludwig Windthorst was Imperial Germany’s greatest parliamentarian. Considering his terms in the diet of the Kingdom of Hanover, he served thirty-five years in the various legislatures of his country. According to the reckoning of one deputy, he spoke 2,209 times in the Reichstag alone, more than any other member. His skill in debate was equaled by no other deputy; his tactical genius, only by Bismarck.45

  Central casting could not have found a person more different from Bismarck. Windthorst, a nearly blind, Hanoverian, Roman Catholic dwarf opposed the giant Protestant, Prussian Otto von Bismarck, with nothing but his quick wit. The Catholic politician Peter Reichensperger (1810–92), who served for more than thirty years in the Prussian Landtag and was elected with Windthorst to the North German Reichstag in 1867, served with him in the Reichstag until his death.46 Reichensperger wrote of him:

  Windthorst must be described as a parliamentary miracle. He alone was equal to Bismarck. With the finest antennae for all things political, he understood how to manoeuvre with a wonderful artistry.47

  His tiny gnome-like form, his ludicrous mouth, the great bottle-green spectacles shading the sightless eyes would in any case have made him conspicuous … his acerbic wit coupled with idiosyncratic views made him notorious. You never knew whether Windthorst was looking at you from over, under, or around his spectacles.48

  Windthorst had served in Hanoverian cabinets and in 1867 became the lawyer of the deposed King George V of Hanover (1819–78), for whom he negotiated a settlement with Prussia on Hanoverian royal assets. In the settlement the King received income from his capital of 16 million thaler in exchange for returning state funds he had sent to England during the war.49 Bismarck seized the royal assets and created the secret ‘Guelph Fund’, which he used for any purpose he chose. King George, a difficult and rigid man, refused to accept that he had been deposed and posed an awkward problem for his first cousin, Queen Victoria. On 17 August 1866 she wrote in German to Augusta, the Duchess of Cambridge, that she had ‘to consider her duty as an English woman, what I am first of all. I can only express my German sentiments by privately asking for possible indulgence and consideration for the Hanoverian royal family and their crown lands.’50 King George set up a court in exile in Hietzing outside Vienna and did what he could to annoy Bismarck. He created a Hanoverian Legion to fight for restoration and gave his blessing to the formation of a Hanoverian political party which between 1867 and 1914 sent a group of Hanoverian separatists to the Reichstag. Their numbers fluctuated between 4 in the elections of the 1870s and 10 or 11 in the 1880s.51

  Windthorst, though a Hanoverian, never joined the Guelph Party. Indeed at first he belonged to no party.52 In 1871 Deputy Braun of Waldenburg described Windthorst’s impact in his first years as a member of the Reichstag before he joined the Catholic Centre Party:

  There was once a fraction that consisted of only one member. It was the Meppen Fraction. [Laughter.] And this fraction made itself so felt, so often took the floor, and exercised such influence—to be sure, because of its high capacities—it was treated with such attention and politeness from all sides of the House, that it gave brilliant proof that minorities are respected here. [Laughter.] Deputy Windthorst then made a bow to the speaker which was returned by the latter. ‘I must say, if only because of this living example of our respect for minorities, that I regret most sincerely that this fraction has dissolved itself. [Great laughter.]53

  From the beginning, with his exquisite political sensibility, Windthorst foresaw what he would face. In a letter of 2 November 1867 to Matthias Deyman, he explained that he had decided to enter parliament where ‘the situation of the Holy Father might very easily come up for discussion’ but he rejected the option of Catholic withdrawal because ‘whichever way the locomotive goes, I ride with it in order—with time and opportunity—to halt it or else throw out the engineer and drive it myself.’54 In December 1867 the Liberal Deputy Falk described this remarkable figure at a royal reception for the newly elected North German Reichstag:

  As I entered the room where the guests were assembling, I noticed a little man in a black frock coat walking to and fro. He wore a star and from his neck hung a ribbon of an order unknown to me. I thought he might be a canon as his decorations seemed to indicate. His head was extremely large, his face quite ugly, while his whole appearance was striking.55

  Windthorst dominated the Reichstag and the Catholic Centre Party for twenty-four years without ever holding an office or aspiring to one. He held sway by the pure strength of his personality and in that he resembled Bismarck with the difference that he had principles and Bismarck had none. No better example of the ‘law of unintended consequences’ can be imagined than the way Bismarck’s brilliant coup of 1866—the decision to call a German parliament based on universal, direct, secret manhood suffrage—generated a mass, democratic Catholic opposition party by 1871 of 100 deputies with a tiny genius at its head. As a further ironic twist, Bismarck’s main opponents in the 1860s and early 1870s were Hanoverians who would never have been there had Bismarck not annexed the Kingdom of Hanover. As Georg von Vincke, Bismarck’s old enemy, observed in late 1867 to the Catholic deputy, August Reichensperger (1808–95):56

  Do you want to know who are the three cleverest men with us now? They are the three annexed Hanoverians. One is Bennigsen, who is very clever; the second is Miquel who is cleverer still; the third, however, is Windthorst, who is as clever as the other two together.57

  1868 opened with Bismarck still unable to make progress on the final unification of the North German Federation with the southern states and the institutional questions unsettled. In March 1868 Stosch wrote to the novelist Gustav Freytag about the need for a Reich Cabinet:

  With respect to Bismarck he will run himself into the ground in the growth of his internal power unless he is pulled back. Would you not be willing to float articles in the press in favour of a Reich cabinet? In our official battle for a Reich Minister of War Bismarck accepts that Roon is right, gives him all the powers but not the position. In the Ministry of Trade the situation is the same. A Reich minister of finance will be essential if burdens are to be fairly distributed. The burden of unity would be more easily borne.58

  Stosch was right but Bismarck never shared power if he could avoid it. His intolerance prevented Imperial Germany from having a proper cabinet and it went to its doom in the First World War with the defects that Bismarck imposed and intelligent contemporaries feared.

  In Prussia the proposition to impose schools to which both Protestant and Catholic children might go aroused the opposition of the Catholic Church. On 6 February 1868 Cardinal Count von Ledochowski, Archbishop of Posen and Gnesen, issued an edict to the clergy to warn the faithful to oppose the esta
blishment of the ‘simultaneous’ public schools (i.e. Protestant and Catholics together). Provincial President von Horn, prefect of Posen, had written to the Minister of Religion von Mühler to suggest that the government discipline the Cardinal. Bismarck intervened in this, as in everything, and forbade the Minister to comply:

  I cannot agree to that … No doubt the edict contains various points in the opinion of the Protestant provincial authorities and of Oberpräsident von Horn which ought not to be ignored, but it ought also not to be forgotten that Count Ledowchowski as a Catholic archbishop can hardly speak or write in any other sense. In my most respectful opinion the best thing would be to simply pass over the whole issue in silence and to take those practical actions on the aforesaid ground and views which the authorities think necessary.59

  Bismarck’s sensible answer—in effect, to let sleeping dogs lie—could not stop the inexorable progress towards a clash between church and state. If the war against France lay in Bismarck’s hands, the war against the Roman Catholic Church did not. It started with a powerful assault. On 29 June 1868 Pius IX issued invitations for a Vatican Council. The First Vatican Council became notorious to liberals everywhere in Europe because it resulted in the Declaration of Papal Infallibility. It marked the beginning of the Kulturkampf which dominated the first years of the politics of the united Germany of 1870. The so-called Kulturkampf had begun in Italy well before Bismarck took up the cudgels directly in the 1870s. The Italian Kingdom made clear its intention to have Rome as the capital of its new ‘national’ state and to impose separation of church and state when it did so. The battle of the church with the state over the ‘temporal power’ opened the first front in the Kulturkampf which led to clashes in Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Austria.