Bismarck: A Life

by Jonathan Steinberg

  The separatists in the South German kingdoms tried to sabotage the new Reich and the Kings of Saxony and Württemberg dragged their feet. Bismarck engineered the next and very effective step. On the 17th the assembled Princes sent King William a petition to tell him that they had all agreed on the Imperial crown and on the next day, 18 December 1870, Dr Eduard Simson, President of the North German Reichstag led a delegation to petition the King to accept the title of Emperor. The King, much moved, read out a reply which Bismarck had composed and accepted the offer.171

  The matter now moved to the parliaments of the south German states. In Württemberg and Baden, the measure passed easily but in Bavaria opposition grew. On 11 January the debate began. The Patriot Party denounced Prussia and its militarism. A fierce debate followed and on 21 January the motion passed with the necessary majority but by a margin of only two votes.172

  The 18th of January 1871 had been chosen as the ceremonial day for the proclamation of the new Reich. The date recalled the day in 1701 when the Hohenzollern dynasty at last became royal. The Elector Frederick III of Brandenburg became Frederick I, King in Prussia (in 1713 the important ‘of’ replaced ‘in). The coronation of 1701 was the most glorious and expensive ceremony ever celebrated in that frugal state up to that point.173 As 18 January 1871 approached, Bismarck ran into an infuriating new difficulty. The King insisted on the title of Emperor of Germany, not German Emperor, which Bismarck had painfully secured from the Reichstag and the German princes. The King stubbornly refused to concede the traditional grandeur of Emperor of Germany for the threadbare German Emperor. The Crown Prince on 16 January found his father

  excited, disturbed and anxious beyond all belief; he says himself that his inclination to look on the dark side of things has in these truly critical days notably increased … Von Schleinitz, the Minister of the Household, has arrived; nevertheless, again today nothing whatever has been settled, and I cannot yet get any inkling of what exactly is going to be done the 18th January. Nothing can be quietly thought out and arranged here, for either decisions are indefinitely postponed or else they are slurred over.174

  The next day matters came to a head, as the Crown Prince wrote in his diary:

  In the afternoon a meeting was held at the King’s quarters, which Count Bismarck, Minister of the Household von Schleinitz and I attended. When Count Bismarck met von Schleinitz in the ante-room, he told him pretty sharply he really did not understand what the Federal Chancellor in conjunction with the Minister of the Household would have to discuss with the King. In an over-heated room the discussion dragged on for three hours over the title the Emperor was to bear, the appellation of the heir to the throne, the relation of the Royal family, the Court and Army to the Emperor, etc. With regard to the Imperial title, Count Bismarck admitted that in the discussions as to conditions, the Bavarian Deputies and Plenipotentiaries had already refused to agree to the designation ‘Emperor of Germany’, and that finally to please them, but all the same without consulting his Majesty, he had substituted that of ‘German Emperor’. This designation, with which no special idea is connected, was as little to the King’s liking as it was to mine, and we did all we possibly could to secure the ‘of Germany’ in lieu of it; however, Count Bismarck stuck to his point, that, as this title would be adopted simply to secure a combination with the Bavarians … in the greatest agitation he [the King—JS] went on to say he could not describe to us the despairing mood he was in, as tomorrow he must bid farewell to the old Prussia to which he alone clung and always would cling. At this point sobs and tears interrupted his words.175

  The 18th of January 1871 dawned grey and lowering but as the honour guards marched beneath the King’s window a ray of sunlight came through which lifted the King’s black mood. The ceremony took place in the Palace of Versailles in the Hall of Mirrors and an overflow into the Salon de la Paix. A simple field altar had been erected on a platform in the well of the hall at which the King stood covered in all his orders and decorations. Paul Bronsart von Schellendorf observed with amusement, that ‘the improvised altar stood right next to a naked Venus, a relationship which in the Palace of Versailles cannot easily be avoided.’176

  Many of the officers, including the Crown Prince, could not get into gala and appeared in service boots and field dress. No rehearsal had been possible and the order to the men ‘off helmets for prayer’ had been forgotten, which the Crown Prince remembered at the last moment and gave out loud. Chaplain Rogge, pastor in Potsdam and Roon’s brother-in-law, gave ‘a rather tactless and tedious historical religious disquisition’. After the ‘Te Deum’ and a simple address by the King, William I, followed by the assembled princes, moved back to a special platform, where they stood on either side of the King:

  Count Bismarck came forward, looking in the grimmest of humours, and read out in an expressionless business-like way and without any trace of warmth or feeling for the occasion, the address ‘to the German People’. At the words, ‘Enlarger of the Empire’, I noticed a quiver stir the whole assemblage, which otherwise stood there without a word. Then the Grand Duke of Baden came forward with unaffected, quiet dignity that is so peculiarly his and with uplifted hand cried in a loud voice: ‘Long live His Imperial Majesty the Emperor William!’ A thundering hurrah at least six times repeated shook the room, while the flags and standards waved over the head of the new Emperor of Germany [sic!—JS] and ‘Heil Dir im Siegerkranz’ rang out.177

  Thus Bismarck lived the moment of his greatest triumph, the proclamation of the German Empire, in a foul temper, clear to everybody in the Hall of Mirrors. As Lucius von Ballhausen heard from Bismarck later, ‘His Majesty took the opposition to the latter title so badly [German Emperor] that on the day of the proclamation of the Empire, he cut him completely.’178 Nor were the princes assembled full of joy. Prince Otto of Bavaria, heir to the throne, said: ‘I cannot even describe to you how infinitely sad and hurt I felt during the ceremony … Everything was so cold, so proud, so glittering, so showy and swaggering and heartless and empty.’179 That evening, Bismarck returned from the ceremonial dinner, as Holstein recalled years later,

  I can still hear Prince Bismarck’s angry outburst on the evening of 18 July, when he spoke of the tactless sermon preached by pastor Rogge (Countess Roon’s brother). He had chosen a text which ran: ‘Come hither, ye Princes, and be chastised.’ Certainly not a happy choice. Bismarck said: ‘I’ve said to myself more than once, why can’t I get at this parson? Every speech from the throne has first to be considered word by word, yet this parson can say just what comes into his head.’ In lighter vein, by contrast, was Bismarck’s tale of how vain young Schwarzburg (nicknamed ‘Prince of Arcadia’) addressed the assembled royal personages with the words: ‘Greetings to you, fellow vassals’.180

  Nor was joy universal in the rest of the royal family. The row between the King and Bismarck had led to the peculiar situation that Queen Augusta had not been informed that she had been elevated to the rank of Empress, as Crown Princess Vicky wrote to Queen Victoria on 20 January:

  I was going to tell you by the Empress’ (Queen’s) own desire that she knew nothing whatever of the adoption of the Imperial title on the 18th nor of the Proclamation. The Emperor is so averse to the whole thing that he did not like it spoken of beforehand and no one else took the initiative of informing us here what was going to be done. Of course this was an embarrassing and awkward position for my mother-in-law—who resented the proceedings very much. I had a deal of difficulty in calming her down. She calls me to witness her having known nothing until the day came … You say you are glad that my Mama-in-law and I get on well now together. The wretchedness of my life when we do not, you do not know. I am only too glad when she will let me be on a comfortable footing with her. … I feel a deep pity for her as nature has given her a character and temper which must tend to unhappiness and Unbefriedigung wherever she be, and she had many a sore and bitter hour to go through during her life.181

  On 23 January Jules
Favre arrived at Versailles to negotiate the final capitulation of the French Republic, which Bismarck conducted absolutely on his own, with only a few technical advisers. The capitulation was signed on 28 January and the Prussian army now had to provision the starving city. Bismarck made that more difficult by his incalculable outbursts of rage, which nobody could escape. The peacemaker, Commissary-General Albrecht von Stosch, found himself accused of using state money to provision Paris. Bismarck had demanded that he be prosecuted for criminal negligence. Two days later Bismarck asked him to carry out the provisioning of Paris, as if nothing had happened.182 The Crown Prince despaired over the situation:

  Count Bismarck has won for himself the reputation of being the instigator of all the cruel reprisals we have, alas, been forced to carry out; they even say of him that he means to establish a reign of terror in Paris of quite another sort from what Gambetta’s was. Occasion is certainly given for such suppositions by the monstrous maxims and savage expressions one hears openly given utterance to here, and which his wife repeats in Berlin … so impossible is it to count on Count Bismarck and so fitful his policy that nobody can form a clear conception of his views, still less feel any confidence in his secret plans.183

  Paul Bronsart von Schellendorf had no doubt about Bismarck’s ‘secret plans’, as he wrote in his diary on 25 January 1871:

  General Moltke, whom posterity will recognize as one of the greatest field commanders of all time, falls victim to the ambition of a talented but inwardly base personality who knows no rest until he, as a modern major domus, has insured that all respectable existence in his environment has been crushed.184

  Now that the capitulation had been signed, the vexed issue of the French reparation payment began. On 8 February the Prussian State Ministry set the French reparations at 1 billion thaler (3 billion francs), 95 per cent of which was earmarked for the army. Otto Camphausen (1812–96), former President of the Seehandlung, who had become Bismarck’s Finance Minister in 1869, after he discarded ‘the Gold Uncle’ von der Heydt,185 made the claim very forcefully:

  The German nation had after all suffered so many additional losses in blood and material goods which are beyond all accounting that it is entirely justifiable to assess the price of the war generously and in addition to the estimated sum to demand an appropriate surcharge for the incalculable damages. The State Ministry concurred.186

  Bismarck, as usual, chose his own methods to accomplish the end and sent his private banker, Gerson Bleichröder, to act as intermediary with French financial circles and the new Republic. Bronsart found the presence of this Jew absolutely repellent and recorded two entries in his War Diary to give vent to his feeling:

  Now he [Bismarck] confers eagerly with the Jew Bleichröder, his banker, whom he lets come here for official discussions concerning the war indemnity to be demanded from Paris. One wonders for what purpose we have an institution like the Prussian State Bank if the Chancellor’s Privatjude and not one of its officials operates as adviser in state business … Bleichröder was at the General Staff this morning. In his buttonhole he wore an artistically arranged rosette of many colours which attested the Ritterschaft of many Christian orders. Like a true Jew he bragged about the private audiences he has had with the King, about his other exclusive connections, about the credit people like him and Rothschild can command etc. About the political situation and the inclinations of Count Bismarck he was sufficiently informed; now he wanted to enlist the help of the General Staff and gain access even to Count Moltke.

  On 26 February 1871 a preliminary peace between France and Germany was signed at Versailles. French reparations were set at 5 billion francs. Bleichröder wrote to the Crown Prince: ‘Count Bismarck would seem to have conducted himself during the negotiations with monstrous brusquerie and intentional rudeness, and by such behaviour to have shocked the Paris Rothschild who in the first instance addressed him in French.187 On 4 March 1871 The Economist commented on the reparations:

  to extract huge sums of money as the consequence of victory suggests a belief that money may be the object as well as the accidental reward of battle. A flavour of huckstering is introduced into the relations between States which degrades the character of statesmen, and is sure sooner or later to infect the character of the people.188

  On the last day of the Prussian stay in Versailles, the Crown Prince tried to convince Bismarck to nominate the Baden aristocrat, Freiherr von Roggenbach, Governor of Alsace. Bismarck, who undoubtedly knew through his many spies that Roggenbach had a close relationship to the Queen, naturally rejected the name. The Crown Prince, not inaccurately, concluded that Bismarck intended to appoint ‘only persons of a sort to carry out his orders directly and implicitly. I gathered the impression today more than ever that he means to play the “All-Powerful”, “the Richelieu” in these countries.’189

  The Emperor and the Crown Prince arrived in Potsdam on 17 March 1871 after a rapturous reception at every stop in Germany. The victory and the unification of Germany had dazzled the German people across the political spectrum. On 21 March the State Opening of the new Reichstag elected in early March took place. The occasion was unusually grand as befitting the first assembly of a united German parliament. Baroness Hildegard von Spitzemberg, as wife of the Württemberg envoy, had a good seat in the diplomatic balcony,

  where in very nice company we could watch the whole scene. In contrast to usual practice, Princes, Princesses and the Empress were arranged around the throne on the left and on the right … Just before the king came Moltke with the sword, Roon with the sceptre, Peuker with the Reich orb, Redern with the crown, Wrangel flanked by Kameke and Podbielski with the flag. The Kaiser was very moved as he began the speech from the throne, which was interrupted with lively bravos by the evidently excited assembly. It also struck me that the Kaiser removed his helmet before reading the speech, whereas he normally keeps his head covered. The entire ceremony was beautiful and gripping.190

  On the following day, the Emperor raised Bismarck to the status of prince (Fürst) and the next evening the Bismarck family entertained a grand gathering to mark the occasion and the Spitzembergs from next door attended the party.

  Carl and I in a large gathering of gentlemen at Bismarcks. On the day of the opening, the Kaiser ‘princed’ the count, which is all fine and good, but in order that it is not a gift borne by the Greeks there will have to be a corresponding endowment of which as yet not a sign. In house they consider the things quite calmly enough, the ‘Serene Highness’ seems to him as odd as it does to us.191

  Among the odder honours that Bismarck received in 1871 as national hero was the dedication to him of a fish. In Stralsund, the trader and brewer Johann Wiechmann had established a prosperous fish cannery. In 1853 he opened a store and in the backyard his wife Karoline pickled fresh, filleted Baltic herring and sold them in wooden boxes. Herr Wiechmann wrote to Bismarck on his birthday in 1871, presented him with a barrel of his best pickled herring, and humbly asked if he could call them ‘Bismarck Herrings’. The Prince generously agreed and this unusual and lasting monument to the great man joined the paperweights, statues, and portraits.192

  On 16 April 1871 the Reichstag approved the new Constitution, and the first phase of Bismarck’s great career had been concluded. The Genius-Statesman had transformed European politics and had unified Germany in eight and a half years more. And he had done by sheer force of personality, by his brilliance, ruthlessness, and flexibility of principle. He had again, as in 1866 ‘beaten them All!’

  9

  The Decline Begins: Liberals and Catholics

  The victory over France and the foundation of the new Reich marked the high point of Bismarck’s career. He had achieved the impossible and his genius and the cult of that genius had no limits. When he returned to Berlin in March 1871, he had become immortal, but he now faced a completely different challenge: to preserve his creation and to make it work. As a result, the second stage of Bismarck’s career has a completely different s
ubstance. His days filled up with the detail of government: tax rates, local government reorganization, unification of the legal system, factory inspection, educational regulations, the charges for postal transfers and packages, railroad finances, budgets and estimates. For the next nineteen years, more than twice as long as the unification period, the daily business of government occupied his time and energy. In it the same Bismarck operated with the same ruthlessness and lack of principle that had marked the heroic days but in different areas. Since he could never delegate authority, hated opposition, and considered—rightly—that he was smarter than everybody else, he ran into obstacles, both personal and material, at every stage. Nobody understood him, nobody carried out his wishes properly, and nobody could be trusted. He fell into a more or less continuous rage against everybody and everything.

  Preservation of his great achievement meant constant watchfulness for threats from abroad as well as enemies at home. The great powers had reason to fear the new Germany. Disraeli summed up their feelings in a prophetic speech from the opposition Front Bench on 2 February of 1871:

  The war represents the German revolution, a greater political event than the French revolution. I don’t say a greater, or as great a social event. What its social consequences may be are in the future. Not a single principle in the management of our foreign affairs, accepted by all statesmen for guidance up to six months ago, any longer exists. There is not a diplomatic tradition that has not been swept away. You have a new world, new influences at work, new and unknown dangers and objects with which to cope … The balance of power has been utterly destroyed, and the country that suffers most, and feels the effect of this great change most, is England.1

  The French and Austrians might well have contested the idea that England, which had not been defeated by Prussia, ‘suffers most, and feels the effect of this great change most’, but in a deeper sense, Disraeli was right. He saw a fundamental reality which the world would slowly and painfully understand. The Pax Britannica rested on the European Balance of Power. Metternich had known that and worked with Lord Castlereagh in 1814–15 to make sure that no one state gained too much from the defeat of Napoleon. Bismarck had destroyed that balance. Between 1871 and 1914 the German Empire would become an economic superpower. Its coal, steel, and iron production grew larger than the entire production of its continental rivals put together. Whereas in 1871 Germany and France had roughly the same population, by 1914 Germany had half again as many people, better educated, better disciplined, and more productive than any people in the world. In science, technology, industrial chemistry, electrical engineering, optical instruments, metallurgy, and many other areas, Germany had become the most advanced manufacturer anywhere. ‘Made in Germany’ meant the very highest quality. By 1914 the Reich had the most powerful army and had constructed the second largest navy. Germany had achieved a supremacy in Europe which only the French Empire of Napoleon had reached at a few moments but Germany had a much more powerful industrial and technological foundation.