Bismarck: A Life

by Jonathan Steinberg

  Disraeli was delighted to find ‘all the ladies are reading my novels from the Empress downwards. The ladies are generally reading Henrietta Temple, which being a “love story” and written forty years ago, is hardly becoming an Envoy Extraordinary.’33 Odo Russell found, as he wrote in a letter to the Foreign Office, that even the Chancellor ‘is deeply interested in Lord Beaconsfield’s novels which he is reading once again. Prince Bismarck informed Monsier de St. Vallier that, while he read novels, his mind enjoyed perfect rest, because it ceased to govern Germany for the time being—but that if he did not write novels, it was because the government of Germany required the whole of his undivided creative powers.’34

  No doubt Bismarck and Disraeli dominated the Congress of Berlin, and equally there is no doubt that Disraeli found Bismarck a fascinating and bizarre figure. Bismarck behaved in an unusual way to Disraeli as well. He called upon him, something he never did after he achieved his great status, and he invited him to a family dinner, a confidence accorded to literally no other foreign statesman. I am not even certain that Odo Russell ever enjoyed the intimacy of the Bismarck family. Here is Disraeli’s account of that memorable evening on 5 July 1878:

  I dined with Bismarck alone i.e. with his family who disappear after the repast, and then we talked and smoked, If you do not smoke under such circumstances, you look like a spy, taking down his conversation in your mind. Smoking in common puts him at ease. He asked me whether racing was much encouraged in England. I replied never more so … ‘Then,’ cried the Prince eagerly, ‘there never will be socialism in England. You are a happy country. You are safe as long as the people are devoted to racing. Here a gentleman cannot ride down the street without twenty persons saying to themselves or each other, “Why has that fellow a horse, and I have not one?” In England the more horses a nobleman has, the more popular he is, So long as the English are devoted to racing, Socialism has no chance with you.’ This gives you as slight idea of the style of his conversation. His views on all subjects are original, but there is no strain, no effort at paradox. He talks as Montaigne writes. When he heard about Cyprus, he said ‘you have done a wise thing. This is progress. It will be popular; a nation likes progress’. His idea of progress was evidently seizing something. He said he looked upon our relinquishment of the Ionian Isles as the first sign of our decadence. Cyprus put us all right again.35

  Bismarck ran the Congress of Berlin entirely by himself. He used three languages interchangeably—English, French, and German—and composed the necessary documents in French either by hand or in dictation. He managed to get the business done in twenty sessions and negotiated a package of compromises. Britain gained Cyprus, a reduction of the size of Bulgaria, preservation of Turkish sovereignty over Macedonia and the Mediterranean coast. In other words, Russia could not affect the supply route to India. The straits remained under Turkish control. Russia received Bessarabia, Kars, Ardahan, and Batum but none of that satisfied the Pan-Slav groups and the Russian imperialists. As a compensation, the Austrians gained control of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Sandjak of Novi-Bazar. Bismarck had rearranged south-eastern Europe, avoided war, and increased his own and the prestige of the German Empire. In diplomatic matters he negotiated, cajoled, discussed, and compromised, all the forms of behaviour that he showed so rarely in domestic affairs. But in the end he had opted not to support Russia in order to maintain his impartiality and the Tsar and the court were offended.

  After the glamour of the Congress he had to return to domestic affairs. During the summer at Bad Kissingen, he met Cardinal Aloisi Masella on a regular basis from 30 July to 16 August, but the negotiations with the Catholic church got nowhere. As he wrote to Falk on 8 August, ‘The Pope does not have the least influence on the Centre Party’ but he wanted nobody to know that. As he continued, ‘In my opinion the uncertainty must be maintained as long as possible. The belief in an approaching reconciliation between state and curia will unquestionably be beneficial for the conduct of the curia, the Centre and the liberal parties.’36

  On 9 September 1878 the new Reichstag met for the first time. A chastened and smaller National Liberal Party had already agreed to the adoption of a law against subversion. The question was only how severe to make it. A week later Bismarck returned to Berlin for the first reading of the Anti-Socialist Law.37 One of the first speakers was none other than Hans von Kleist-Retzow, who made a fierce attack on Social Democracy and accused them of high treason:

  I stick to the view that the whole of Social Democracy is the way to high treason, that they carry out the work of moles, they undermine the foundations of the state. Are then the things you do, the battle songs you sing on the streets—the Marseillaise of the future, just childrens’ games, are they lesser preparations as if somebody bought powder or shot? …

  As Kleist finished, the Reich Chancellor came down from the ministers’ platform and went over to the old friend. Much moved, Bismarck reached out his hand and carried out before the whole country an act of reconciliation. Kleist too was deeply moved. Two days later he directed a thank you note to his old and now re-found friend:

  Let me just before I go off thank you with all my heart that you recently gave me your hand after so long and so painful a separation. With great joy I see in the gesture an expression of your wish to restore the old friendship and familial band and the previous traffic between our houses.38

  The friendship never returned to the old basis and Kleist rarely saw Bismarck except in and around the House of Lords. It mattered very much to von Kleist; did it matter to Bismarck? He had lost his dear ‘Mot’, John Lothrop Motley, who died in London on 29 May 1877. He rarely saw ‘Flesch’, Alexander von Keyserlingk, the other college friend, whose scientific interests Bismarck did not share and whose estate lay in distant Latvia, then part of the Russian Empire. He began more and more to feel lonely and isolated.

  On 23 September Bismarck left Berlin for Varzin but had to return because the committee on the socialist law had been unable to agree on the appeals procedures.39 From 9 to 15 October a fierce debate raged on the question of civil rights. Eduard Lasker fought a last ditch battle to preserve the constitutional rights of the Socialists. On 11 October he found an unexpected ally. Ludwig Windthorst rose to make one of his great speeches:

  ‘Conservative’ means to conserve the given, legitimate institutions in State and Church. It does not mean to arm a government with omnipotence, with which it can modify those institutions at will. So long as you confuse conservatism with Polizeiwirtschaft [a police state] an alliance with you is certainly unthinkable.40

  Windthorst’s courageous stand at the head of a conservative Catholic Party reflected a position he had always held—that the defence of Catholic rights in the Kulturkampf covered all rights, the rights of everybody, Jews, Catholics, Socialists, or Atheists. The consistency, integrity, and sheer courage with which Windthorst fought Bismarck’s authoritarianism and violations of the law, often against the reactionary instincts of his own parliamentary party, deserve to be better known and honoured in the Federal Republic of Germany than they are. Even Lasker gave in under the pressure of what he saw as public opinion and confessed that ‘contempt for the laws should no longer be tolerated and the Deputies were almost challenged to vote for an exceptional law.’41 On 19 October 1878 the Reichstag passed the Anti-Socialist Law with 221 to 149 votes. The German Conservatives, Free Conservatives, and National Liberals created a pact to see the law through. The government had to accept a Lasker amendment in second reading that the law would in the first instance only last until September 1881 (2½ years).42 The law contained severe restrictions: ‘Paragraph 1. Associations which through Social Democratic, Socialist or Communist activities intend to overthrow the existing state and social order are to be forbidden.’ Paragraph 9 outlawed public meetings which urged the overthrow of state and society and paragraph 11 outlawed publications which did the same. A variety of other measures added to the burdens on the Socialist organizations.43 Bism
arck blamed his new Minister of the Interior, yet another Eulenburg, cousin Botho Count zu Eulenburg (1831–1912), for the fact that the law continued to allow citizens to vote for socialists and did not take away rights of railways workers and other state employees to do so. Bismarck told Lucius, ‘I do not believe it possible to let citizens, legally proven to be socialists, retain the right to vote, the right to stand for election and the pleasure and privilege of sitting in the Reichstag.’44

  Before the vote on the Anti-Socialist Law on 17 October 1878, a group of deputies from three parties—87 from the Centre, 36 conservatives, and 27 liberals, amounting to 204 in total or a majority of the 397 Reichstag members—had formed ‘The Economic Association of the Reichstag’. It was chaired by Friedrich von Varnbüler from Württemberg, a long-time advocate of tariff protection. The Association showed that there was now a clear majority in favour of the abolition of free trade. This was the second great alteration in German politics. No bill had been introduced and details had to be worked out but the sense of the House was now clear.45

  On 23 October Bismarck left Berlin and returned to Friedrichsruh. On the way, Tiedemann noted that Bismarck hid the beer bottles from which he had been drinking under the table in the train every time it halted at a station. He explained to Tiedemann that the public should not be disillusioned about their Chancellor.46 On 9 November Bismarck wrote to Emperor William I to apologize for his absence at the Landtag:

  My health leaves much to be desired. I need for some time absolute rest, which I have not been able to enjoy for years past; I hope to find it at Friedrichsruh while the Landtag is sitting, and will not let my own weakness interfere with the gladness with which I hear through Lehndorff of your Majesty’s returning strength.47

  As mentioned earlier, Pflanze did the sums and found that between 14 May 1875 and the end of November 1878, of 1,275 total days, Bismarck spent 772 either at his estates or at spas, or more than two years away from Berlin.48 The remarkable thing is how little rest Bismarck actually took when not in Berlin. He wrote memoranda, he saw ministers, he drafted legislation, and planted articles in the official press. For example, on 6 November official newspapers attacked the Centre for its failure to welcome peace moves between Leo XIII and Bismarck. The Provincial Correspondence wrote:

  This striking behaviour is only understandable through the character, composition and leadership of the Centre Party, which for years has posed as the representative of the clerical interests of German Catholics but which in reality pursues purely political ends which have nothing to do with the real interests of the Roman Catholic Church.49

  For the next few years Bismarck tried to drive wedges into the crack between the Curia in Rome and the Centre Party in Germany and in the Reichstag. The crack existed. The Centre refused to act as the agent of the Vatican and demanded an autonomy which the Curia found difficult to accept. Bismarck sensed that tension and had the cunning to try to exploit it. Windthorst had the cunning to cut off the move before the crack widened. In response to the new campaign by Bismarck Windthorst introduced a bill on 11 December 1878 to allow those religious orders still on German soil to stay and for the reinstatement of Articles 15, 16, and 18 of the Reich Constitution, which protected civil rights of Catholics. Windthorst knew that Lasker and the Left Liberals would support the move and the Bishops and the Centre would form a solid phalanx behind such an unexceptionable bill. After all, how could a few convents and monasteries undermine Bismarck’s mighty Reich? And if Bismarck blocked such a modest and reasonable bill, the Roman Curia would drop its private negotiations and fall in behind the Centre Party. Windthorst played Bismarck’s game as quickly and flexibly as the Chancellor could. He had a marvellous facility for exploiting the weakness of the Church in the Kulturkampf to embarrass Bismarck and encourage the Catholic faithful.

  The approaching end of the Kulturkampf and the election of 1878 had ended Bismarck’s need for Liberal votes. Now he could introduce protection. On 12 November 1878 he proposed that the Bundesrat create a Tariff Commission to prepare new legislation. In December Bleichröder, who visited Friedrichsruh regularly, told Bismarck and Tiedemann that his English correspondents informed him that American competition had begun to have a serious effect on English monetary policy and that it was likely that the UK would also soon adopt tariffs. On 15 December the official press published the news that Bismarck had sent the text of a set of requirements for tariffs to the Bundesrat. Bismarck declared in the Reichstag that the Reich income should in future come from indirect taxes rather than direct ones. Tariffs would allow financial reform, since indirect taxes ‘were less burdensome than direct ones’ and since ‘other states surround themselves with customs barriers it seems to me justified … that German products have a small advantage over foreign ones.’50 These two standard arguments for protection had become Bismarck’s policy even though as opposition papers quickly pointed out, Bismarck had in 1875 wanted most of the state’s income to come from ‘income tax from the really rich people’.51 The opposition stressed the fact that indirect taxes have a regressive effect, a penny on a loaf of bread costs the poor man a larger share of his income than the same penny on a loaf purchased by a rich man.

  Bismarck was in fighting mood, as he told Tiedemann on 11 January 1879,

  if his ideas on tax and tariff policy meet serious resistance among the Prussian ministers, he will travel to Berlin, call a meeting of the State Ministry and put to them the future of the cabinet. If the gentlemen will not go along with him, so he will ask them to look for other employment and will form a ministry with new cabinet officers from lower ranks if necessary. The Emperor agrees with him.52

  He also sent a draft bill to the Bundesrat to make sure that punishment of excesses in speeches in the Reichstag be introduced, the so-called Maulkorbgesetz (the muzzle law). The Prussian Landtag took up the issue and Lasker spoke for the majority when he said ‘freedom of speech is untouchable and must remain so and expressed the confidence that the Reichstag will know how to preserve it’.53 Even Bismarck could not introduce restrictions on free speech in the Reichstag and the motion failed.

  On 19 January Max von Forckenbeck (1821–92), president of the Reichstag, wrote to Franz Freiherr Schenk von Stauffenberg (1834–1901), the leader of the Bavarian Liberals about his anxieties. Forckenbeck and Stauffenberg were the two ministers whom Bennigsen had wanted to bring with him into Bismarck’s cabinet. Both were far too liberal for the Chancellor. Forckenbeck he called ‘dark red’.54 Forckenbeck’s letter sums up the change that had been going on:

  The Bismarck system is developing with fearsome speed just as I always feared. Universal military conscription, unlimited and excessive indirect taxes, a disciplined and degraded Reichstag, and a public opinion ruined and made powerless by the struggle between all material interests—that is certainly the politics of popular impotence, the end of any possible development towards constitutional freedom, and at the same time a terrible danger for the entire Reich and the new imperial monarchy. Is the National Liberal party a suitable instrument to combat such dangers with its present politics, its present programme and its present composition? Will we not be led deeper and deeper into the quagmire? Has pure opposition not become a duty?55

  Ludwig Bamberger took a cynical view of Bismarck’s motives in introducing tariffs and in a diary entry just dated 1879 he speculated that self-interest played a big role:

  The progress of Bismarck’s thinking arrived at protective tariffs from the protection of agriculture. The industrial tariffs served as a mere pretext. Among agrarian tariffs the tariff on lumber came at the head of the list. He is, after all, proprietor of woods. Senator Plessing from Hamburg who substituted for Krüger in the Federal Council was astonished by the exuberance of Bismarck when it came to this subject. He took part personally in all the negotiations, was inexhaustible in his speeches, knew his way through the most minute details of the lumber trade like an office clerk. According to the Senator’s account, the axe rages i
n the woods of Lauenburg and huge piles of timber have piled up in the warehouse. … Bismarck asked his own advisers, those whom he trusts, to send the final draft of the tariff bill to Bad Kissingen where he made corrections in his own hand in the rates on the various categories of timber products.56

  Later in February he lost another of his old friends. On 27 February 1879 Albrecht von Roon died, age 76. Robert Lucius von Ballhausen assessed the man whom he had known well:

  Roon was the perfect type of the severe, dutiful, conscientious, Prussian. He was endowed with very high intellectual abilities, great talent for organization, an unshakeable determination, strength of will. In manner, occasionally rash, off-putting but genuine through and through.57

  Roon had an inner integrity and decency which high office, fame, and success never spoiled or corrupted. Bismarck owed him a greater debt than to any other figure in his career. Roon’s persistence with the King from 1859 to 1862 secured Bismarck the chance to become Minister-President in the ‘Conflict Time’ and his loyalty through their relationship allowed Bismarck to become what he did. In bad health and very tired, Roon answered Bismarck’s call to become Minister-President of Prussia in 1872—to allow Bismarck to indulge himself in hysterical hypochondria. Here is Bismarck’s verdict.