Bismarck: A Life

by Jonathan Steinberg

  Early in January 1888 the well-informed General Waldersee wrote in his diary that the Bismarcks had begun to suspect that there were those who wanted to influence Prince William against him:

  We, including Albedyll, are agreed that the Chancellor is jealous of those people who want to alienate Prince William from his son Herbert. Here as so often he sees ghosts and goes ruthlessly after them … Given the tendency to revenge in the Bismarck family war will be waged on them all, if at first in a careful way.18

  On 3 February 1888 Bismarck published the text of the secret Austro-German treaty concluded on 7 October 1879. Waldersee noted it in his diary: ‘Today’s publication of the German-Austrian Alliance has caused an immense sensation. I hardly believe that overall situation will change much.’19 In fact, it made a significant difference. The Hungarian elite recognized to their relief that the treaty had an entirely defensive character, and the Russians saw to their dismay that the Treaty had them as its object. On 6 February Bismarck delivered one of his grand speeches on foreign policy in the Reichstag. The final paragraph whipped up the members of the Reichstag and led to such demonstrations in the street that Bismarck had trouble getting through the cheering crowds:

  We Germans fear God but otherwise nothing in the world and that fear of God is what has let us love peace and cultivate it. Whoever breaks the peace will soon convince himself that the pugnacious love of the Fatherland of the then weak, small and exhausted Prussia which called the entire population to the colours, has today become the common possession of the entire German nation and that whoever attacks the German nation in any way will find it uniformly armed and every soldier with the firm belief in his heart: God will be with us.20

  On 9 March 1888 William I, German Emperor and King of Prussia, died a few weeks short of his 91st birthday. The old King had for more than twenty-five years supported Bismarck in both senses of the word, approving his work and policy as well as tolerating his increasingly impossible and irrational behaviour. He had been well rewarded for that support. In 1859, he became Regent of a small, not very powerful German kingdom and by the time of his death it had become the greatest and most powerful state in Europe. He had become an Emperor and seen his beloved Prussian army win three brilliant military campaigns. The King’s contribution may not be obvious but it was essential to that success. He let Moltke command his armies and Bismarck run his state. He recognized early that fate had given him the greatest military strategist and the most developed political genius of modern times and to them he entrusted his fate, that of his dynasty and his people. He worked hard, read government papers and always had well-founded opinions on subjects but he never let his own views, even when he knew they were correct, as they often were, overrule Bismarck’s policies. He had a strong sense of loyalty, a virtue his Chancellor completely lacked, and rewarded many of those whom Bismarck had savaged. He refused to let his favourite ministers go just because Bismarck had suddenly turned against them. He was a kind, decent, honourable, and unpretentious man, in effect the only kind of King who would and could have tolerated life with Otto von Bismarck. William I made Bismarck’s career possible and his longevity made it into an institution.

  His death confronted Bismarck with the drastic possibility that the new Emperor would simply dismiss him. As in September 1862, after the ‘Blood and Iron’ speech, on 11 March 1888 he boarded the new Emperor’s train at Leipzig, who ‘repeatedly embraced and kissed him’.21 The next day, the Emperor Frederick wrote a two-page memorandum on constitutional issues, which began with the following introduction:

  My dear Prince,

  On assuming power, I feel the necessity of addressing you, the long-tried, first servant of my father, who now rests in God. You have been the faithful and brave adviser who gave shape to the aims of his policy, and secured their successful realization. I and my House are and remain most grateful to you.22

  Bismarck realized that he now had nothing to fear. On 13 March, the next day, he told the Prussian Cabinet,

  I feel relieved of the great concern I had that I would have to fight with a dying man against inappropriate intentions to the point of demanding my release from office. Everything is going easily and pleasantly with his majesty, like a jeu de roulette. … The Kaiser wishes to make no changes at all in the cabinet, neither do I. This is no time to change course. In view of his earlier utterances in younger years, there was reason to fear he would pursue all kinds of deviant aims—but I do not fear that any more.23

  Others were less pleased. The new Emperor rewarded some of his faithful friends and Waldersee disliked what he saw. He deplored the names on the new honours list:

  Among the first acts of government in the new reign was the granting of the Order of the Black Eagle to the Empress and to the Minister Friedberg … Friedberg has been for a long time a friend and in many affairs an adviser of the Crown Prince and Princess. He has the reputation among Liberals as being one of them and is of Jewish origin. I believe in fact was a Jew himself. The decoration stakes out a programme. It reveals the effort to make them popular with Liberals and Jews. The Ministers Puttkamer, Maybach and Lucius were passed over by the decoration of Friedberg …24

  The great chronicler of Prussian life, the novelist Theodor Fontane, exploded at the Liberal newspapers which dared to suggest that the new Emperor might graciously allow Bismarck to continue in office. On 14 March 1888 Fontane wrote to his wife Martha to express his rage:

  After the greatest political achievement in a millennium (for Frederick’s was smaller and Napoleon’s more fleeting) to have to be told by a Jewish rascal, behind whom unfortunately many, many stand: he was only a ‘servant’ and can, if he is nice and polite, remain in his servant’s position. Unheard of! Frightful! … Now they will all creep out of their swamps and holes and make their monkey business with him and tell him that it serves him right.25

  Two days later the old Emperor was laid to rest. The Empress Frederick, as she was now styled, described the day vividly in a letter to her mother, Queen Victoria:

  All went off well, there was no hitch in spite of the bitter cold weather—sharp frost and deep snow. The public was respectful and silent; there were no great crowds. The service I thought rather conventional, stiff and cold; the singing was very good … The hearse was very simple indeed … It is an inestimable blessing to be relieved of the thraldom and tyranny which was exercised over us in the poor Emperor’s name, as now the right thing can be done for Fritz’s health. But oh—if it is not too late, too late.26

  Waldersee had become genuinely alarmed for his position. Bismarck had begun a press campaign to get him out of Berlin and to break his links to others, as yet unknown to him, who had been intriguing against him. Waldersee went to see the new Crown Prince William and opened his heart.

  The conversation turned to the Chancellor, and I took the occasion to turn it to the attacks on me in the press and to the Chancellor’s intention to remove me from Berlin. The Prince said to me very confidently that I can be reassured on that point. He would stick to the rule that nobody should be moved from his post and not allow the Chancellor to interfere in military matters. I referred explicitly to this danger, which is, in fact, very real. Thank God, the Prince understands the situation very well.27

  On 21 March Bismarck had a rude shock. Frederick III refused to sign a two-year extension to the anti-socialist act, and a bill to make Reichstag elections every five years instead of three. Bismarck, of course, threatened to resign, because ‘the existence of the cabinet is most seriously in question’. Bismarck summoned his carriage and drove to Charlottenburg in person, where he was received by the Empress. He explained that a bill passed by the Reichstag could not be subject to an Imperial veto. The Kaiser had no such power. The Empress Frederick went into the Emperor’s bedroom and came out with the signature on the two bills. With his paranoid misogyny, he blamed the Empress and her three ladies-in-waiting, Anna von Helmholtz, Baroness von Stockmar, and Henriette Schrader, who, he believe
d, had conspired to intervene between the Emperor and his cabinet.28 The only incident in Bismarck’s long career of rage and revenge crazier than this was his accusation that the Reichstag stenographers had ganged up to undermine him.

  While Bismarck blamed nefarious ‘feminine intrigues’. Waldersee saw the Jews as the real culprits. He knew, as always, exactly what had happened and blamed Frederick III, not the women of the household, for the crisis. The real culprits were the Liberals, that is, the Jews, who had voted against both reactionary bills in the Reichstag:

  The opponents of the two laws were the ‘enemies of the Reich’. One can easily see in what direction the Emperor would have taken us, had he been healthy … Jewish circles have been unusually active, in order to gain some advantage for themselves out of it all. Even liberal people take the view that the Progressive Party to which the Jewish circles belong has operated in an unbelievably stupid way. The Crown Prince will have an easy time finishing those people off.29

  Waldersee believed that ‘World Jewry’ had initiated a conspiracy to defame and undermine the Crown Prince William. The fact that the Crown Prince and Princess had become enthusiastic congregants of Court Preacher Stoecker and showed that in public had inflamed the press:

  In the whole hostile press the word has gone out to make the Crown Prince unpopular … Foreign newspapers achieve amazing things. The Jew papers, above all Die Neue Freie Presse and Pester Lloyd, make the running. Every time they drag Stoecker in, often naturally Puttkamer, and from time to time I get mentioned. In general attacks against me seem to have rather slowed down lately.30

  On 4 April 1888 Moltke rejected the Kaiser’s request to give Waldersee command of an Army Corps, in effect, to reduce his malign influence on his son by sending Waldersee to a remote posting. Moltke told Waldersee:

  I see that my powers are declining. I can in any case not continue my position for much longer. It would, therefore, be nonsense to take you away, when it will not be a year before you are back here and this time as Chief of the General Staff.31

  On 15 June 1888 Frederick III, German Emperor and King of Prussia, died in Berlin. Philipp Eulenburg’s father described the scenes from the palace after the Emperor’s death in a letter to his son written on 17 June 1888:

  The Empress is beside herself. Kessel heard her not only weeping but screaming. She said to him on one occasion, ‘what will become of me at my age without a home?’ … He says that with all the grief that he feels, he also feels relief to be freed from an unnatural, artificial English intrigue, and that he can now think and be honestly himself. Tomorrow at 10 is the funeral and by 12 it will all be over. Many wreaths have arrived from regiments but more from the Jews. There is a whole room full of Bleichröder, Schwabach, Heimann etc.32

  Within three months, three generations had passed across the stage of German history. William I, born in 1797, Frederick III born in 1831, and now William II born in 1859, all Emperors one after another. Frederick’s illness and death have always been a great ‘might have been’ in German history. Had he arrived healthy and strong, would the course of events have been different? Obviously the question has no answer but one thing can be said definitely—the mid-century generation, Frederick’s contemporaries, never came to power with him. Instead an uncivil, illiberal, unsteady, and insecure 29-year-old came to the throne and the ‘lost generation’ of the German mid-century never came to power.

  The struggle of the generations had, however, another long-term effect, as Christopher Clark argues in his biography of Emperor William II. The great age of the old Emperor, his reactionary views, and the absolute power he exercised over the royal family weakened the power of the young Prince’s parents over him in ways that made an alliance between the old and young a reality, the great hope that the Bismarck family cherished. In October 1886, the Prince, then 27 years old, explained the situation to Herbert von Bismarck, who then passed on the substance to his father:

  The prince … said that the unprecedented circumstance of there being three adult generations in the ruling family made things difficult for his father: in every other case, in ruling and other families, the father had the authority and the son was financially dependent upon him. But he [Prince Wilhelm] was not under his father’s authority, he received not a penny from his father, since everything derived from the head of the family, he was independent of his father … that was, of course, unpleasant for his Imperial Highness [the Crown Prince].33

  Clark argues that this alliance of old and young had foreign and domestic significance. The Prussian Kingdom, as a ‘state in the middle’, had always been torn between the Western powers, France and Great Britain, and the Russian option. William I had been a ‘Russian’ in sympathy, tied to the Romanovs by bonds of family and by his natural reactionary instincts; Frederick III and Victoria represented England, liberalism, and the hated Jews, who embodied all those aspects of a commercial and open society that the old Kaiser and most of his entourage disliked. Bismarck who belonged to neither camp, made it possible for the old Emperor to gratify his instincts just enough to keep him happy but never tied his foreign policy or the German Reich to a pro-Russian line, quite the opposite. He considered the English option at various stages but got too little encouragement from Disraeli and the Tories and none whatever from the Liberals whose leader William Ewart Gladstone embodied everything he detested about Liberalism save that he happened to be a devout Anglican rather than a Jew. Now Bismarck had to cope with a headstrong young man who from the beginning intended to rule in his own name and not as an agent of the great Bismarck. He shared most of Bismarck’s values but he had too much of the irrationalism, showiness, and ambivalence about the new industrial society which the younger members of the Prussian ruling class, his contemporaries, also shared, to be a comfortable master for the old man of Friedrichsruh.

  William II became the most controversial figure of modern German history and gave his name—Wilhelm—to a period in that history, the Wilhelmine era, 1888 to 1918, in the way that his grandmother Queen Victoria gave her name to the era 1837 to 1901. And rightly so. His flamboyance, his aggressive speeches, his public image and dress, his quick wit and capacity to create slogans, the exaggeration of his uniforms and his bellicosity, all those aspects came to embody the period of explosive economic and military growth that the German Empire unfolded from the 1890s to the First World War. He led Germany when it went to war in 1914 and his abdication on 10 November 1918 cleared the way for the armistice. Many in Germany and almost everybody abroad blamed him for the First World War and ‘hang the Kaiser’ was a popular slogan in the British ‘khaki’ election of 1918.

  William II was born on 27 January 1859. During a traumatic birth, his left arm was damaged and he could never use it properly in later life. In May 1870 the Crown Princess wrote to Queen Victoria: ‘Wilhelm begins to feel being behind much smaller boys in every exercise of the body—he cannot run fast because he has no balance, nor ride nor climb nor cut his food.’34 He had a very strict tutor who used brutal methods to get him to overcome his disability and to excel intellectually. His mother wanted him to ‘be something of what our beloved Papa was, a real grandson of his, in soul and intellect, a grandson of yours’.35 What effect this combination of physical handicap and high maternal expectations had on the young Prince has attracted the attention of psychologists and psychiatrists, including Freud. William’s impulsiveness, outbursts of brutality, and changes of mood made many fear that he would not be able to rule steadily. His mother wanted him to understand the lives of ordinary people, so his tutor took him to see the poor and later he became the first Hohenzollern to attend an ordinary school, a gymnasium in Kassel, and to spend a few years at university. Like Bismarck he never had a proper Prussian upbringing, no Kadettenanstalt, as a small boy and Christopher Clark speculates that as a result he never ‘internalized the habits of self-subordination and discipline that a fully Prussian military education was designed to instill’.36 He rebelled against his parents�
�� values (perfectly normal) and sought solace in his grandfather (not unusual either) but, since his grandfather happened to be Emperor of Germany, a soldier by avocation, a reactionary in politics and the uncle of the Tsar Alexander II, young William had an alternative political model. He did his military service and became a caricature of the young Junker officer in a posh regiment complete with the language, demeanour, and prejudices.

  On the other hand, he fell for the romanticism and myth-making of Phili Eulenburg and his song-cycles, not the sort of material that Botho von Rienäcker and the other guards officers described by Fontane knew anything about. He was intelligent, charming, and interested in modern technology but had a quick temper and a cruel sense of humour. The Bismarcks had done everything to win him over and cultivate him as a tame and flexible Emperor but by June 1887, they had begun to doubt whether it would work. Holstein recorded a conversation with Herbert on the subject:

  I was very struck by a talk I had two days ago with Herbert about Prince Wilhelm … The Prince had no staying power—he simply wanted to be amused. And all that really interested him in army life was wearing a handsome uniform and marching through the streets to music. He fancied himself as Frederick the Great, but had neither his gifts nor his knowledge. And Frederick the Great, as a young man, had ceaselessly worked and exercised his intellect, whereas Prince Wilhelm allowed his talents to deteriorate by constantly consorting with Potsdam lieutenants. And as cold as a block of ice. Convinced from the start that people only exist to be used—either for work or amusement—and that even then they only do duty for a given period, after which they may be cast aside … I found Herbert’s changed attitude towards Prince Wilhelm particularly interesting psychologically in that it revealed that he does not enjoy the status with the Prince which he desired and imagined he had.37