During his father’s illness, William’s relationship with his mother deteriorated and he had nasty spats with her, one of which the Crown Princess described in a letter to Queen Victoria:
You ask how Willy was when he was here! He was as rude, as disagreeable and as impertinent to me as possible when he arrived, but I pitched into him with, I am afraid, considerable violence, and he became quite nice and gentle and amiable (for him)—at least quite natural, and we got on very well. He began with saying he would not go out walking with me ‘because he was too busy—he had to speak to the doctors.’ I said the doctors had to report to me and not to him, upon which he said he had ‘Emperor’s orders’ to insist upon the right thing, to see that the doctors were not interfered with, and to report to the Emperor about his Papa! I said it was not necessary, as we always reported to the Emperor ourselves. He spoke before others and half turning his back to me, so I said I would go and tell his father how he behaved and ask that he should be forbidden the house—and walked away. Upon which he sent Ct Radolinsky flying after me to say he had not meant to be rude and begged me not to say anything to Fritz.38
William’s reaction to his mother became increasingly bitter and on 12 April 1888 he wrote to Eulenburg to express ‘the shame for the sunken prestige of our once so high and untouchable House … That our family’s shield should be spattered and the Reich brought to the edge of ruin by an English princess who happens to be my mother is the worst of all.’39
On 15 June 1888 Frederick III died and William now assumed his new role. At once the new camarilla came under fire from the well-informed press. Waldersee hastened to cover his flank by visiting Bismarck in July 1888 and had
an interesting afternoon with the Chancellor. He was his old self. We drank two bottles of Grünhäuser and had a very agreeable conversation. … With regard to France he asked whether it would not be useful for us to violate Belgian neutrality in order to march through Belgium. I explained to him that I would advise against that but did think it would be extremely helpful if the French marched through Belgium.40
This remarkable conversation on the violation of Belgian neutrality took place three years before the first sketch of the Schlieffen Plan was drawn up in the German General Staff, a plan for a two-front war against Russia and France that involved in the first version a violation of both Belgian and Dutch neutrality. The plan foresaw a gigantic encircling movement by the German army to come into France from the north and cut the French army off from Paris. It is extraordinary that the idea came from Bismarck not the soldiers. Had the Chancellor considered the diplomatic consequences of such an attack? That Great Britain, a guarantor of Belgian neutrality, would be forced to join France, as, indeed, happened in 1914? That Germany would reap a whirlwind of hatred and contempt for its violation of the rights of peaceful, small states?
William II began his reign with a variety of visits abroad, where he made a very bad impression. In November 1888 he visited Rome for an audience with the Pope and a state visit to the Italian Kingdom. On 17 November Ludwig Bamberger summed it up as ‘in short, a total fiasco’. He had received a letter from his old friend, the novelist Heinrich Homberger (1832–1890), which told the story:
Now, all voices agree, that He did not please. ‘Unripe, impolite, ruthless, bad manners’. When he came back from the Vatican, he described what happened during the visit at the court table with all sorts of bad jokes and made fun of the Pope. Further, with the young Crown Prince of Italy, an eighteen-year-old who had in the Roman way been largely educated in a cloister, he used ‘des discours lestes’, asked questions which made the poor lad red with shame. That he took no interest in art or antiquities was held against him.41
In addition to his gaucheries abroad, he showed hostility to Catholics and Jews at home. In September 1888 the ever watchful Waldersee recorded in his diary that the Kaiser ‘could not bear Jews’ and ‘often stated’ this.42 Nor was this a superficial attitude. John Röhl, the author of the great multi-volume life of Kaiser William II, writes that the Kaiser’s ‘animosity towards Jews, recorded in such marginalia and also in Waldersee’s diary, was anything but peripheral; it formed a key element of his thinking.’43
The inevitable clash between the young Kaiser and the old Chancellor gradually emerged in early 1889. On 14 January the Kaiser opened the Landtag in the White Hall of the Palace. He announced that a draft bill for reform of the income tax in Prussia would be forthcoming to ‘lighten the burden on the less well off’.44 Since Bismarck had not entirely approved the proposal and certainly not the direction it took, tensions emerged within the cabinet and between Bismarck and the Kaiser, who had begun to think of himself as ‘the King of the Poor’. This self-image would be put to the test when on 3 May 1889 the Ruhr miners began a strike which spread to the Saar, Saxony, and Silesia. The strikers demanded eight-hour shifts underground including transport down and up from the shaft, a 15 per cent wage increase, an end to prolonged shifts, and better working conditions. From 14 to 20 May there were 7,000 on strike in Upper Silesia, 13,000 in Lower Silesia, 10,000 in Saxony, in the Saar and Aachen 20,000, and in the Ruhr district 90,000 of the 120,000 employed. The government sent in so many troops to the Ruhr basin that the Nationalzeitung joked it looked the spring manoeuvres.45 The panic and arrogance of the coal barons annoyed the army chiefs. On 11 May General Emil Albedyll (1824–97), formerly head of the Military Cabinet and now commander of the VII Corps stationed in Münster,46 sent a message to Chief of the General Staff Waldersee:
Every ten minutes I get a telegram announcing the overthrow of everything if immediate military help does not come, and absolutely nothing has happened which might look even remotely like damage to property.47
The Kaiser on 6 May 1889 ordered local authorities in strike areas to report directly to him. He also tried to force owners to raise wages immediately without consultation with Bismarck. On 7 May three miners were killed by police fire and on 12 May at a meeting of the Prussian cabinet William II suddenly appeared unexpectedly and unannounced his intention to preside over the strike discussion. After the Kaiser left, Bismarck said to his colleagues: ‘The young master has Frederick William I’s conception of his authority and power, and it is necessary to protect him from excessive zeal in this regard.’48 Bismarck’s reaction reflected his tactical approach more generally. He said on 25 May that in his view it would ‘be useful if the settlement of the strikes and its unfortunate after-effects were not too smoothly and quickly resolved, the latter in particular to make the liberal bourgeoisie feel it.’ He wanted to use the strikes to remind the liberals how useful the anti-socialist law would be after all. So, above all, no rush to conciliate the strikers.49 He was not at all fussed by the strikes but the Kaiser’s tendency to govern by himself without consultation made him uneasy.
The mounting tensions between the Kaiser and the government led Bismarck—unusually for him in high summer—to return on 10 August to Berlin. On 17 August Bismarck presided at a cabinet meeting and discussed the issue of strikes:
If the mine administration should no longer have the freedom to dismiss a worker without the consequence of a general strike, that would mean the establishment of mass rule, which would present a great danger for public life.50
On 20 August Bismarck left Berlin but went to Friedrichsruh, which was, of course, nearer Berlin. On 9 October Bismarck returned to Berlin to welcome Tsar Alexander III on an official visit and three days later, on 12 October, the following conversation between them took place:
ALEXANDER III: Are you sure of your position with the young Kaiser?
BISMARCK: I am certain of the confidence of Kaiser William II and I do not believe that he would ever dismiss me against my will.
ALEXANDER III: It would give me great pleasure if your optimism were to be fully confirmed.51
The last act of the great drama began on 1 December when 3,000 miners in Essen gathered to protest against employers’ blacklists which had locked them out of employment. U
nluckily for Bismarck, Hans Hermann Berlepsch (1843–1926), a rare Liberal at the top of the provincial government system, was Superior President of the administration of the Rhine Province. Berlepsch had been involved in the strike movement from the beginning and had seen and got to know workers well. He had become convinced that the workers were part ‘of a great historical movement which cannot be suppressed with force’.52 He convinced the employers to lift the blacklist and reinstate the sacked workers. Bismarck was distinctly unhappy with that decision but, as usual, he was away in Friedrichsruh and unable to reverse it. In fact, even Bismarck’s personal assistant, Franz Johannes Rottenburg, who had replaced Christoph Tiedemann in 1881, believed that a ‘new course’ in social policy would be needed and later he caused a scandal as Curator of the University of Bonn in his inaugural lecture by advocating official recognition of the Social Democratic Party, for which he was investigated by the police.53 Bismarck’s deputy, Karl Heinrich von Boetticher, as his biographer describes him, was ‘the model civil servant, shrewd, adroit and agreeable in manner. It was his good fortune to be persona grata with Bismarck and William II.’54 But not for long, because Bismarck refused to accept their advice. On 19 December Rottenburg informed Boetticher that the ‘Chief’ had rejected conciliation and Berlepsch’s policy. Bismarck had ordered that Boetticher draft an Immediatbericht (a direct report for William II) in which he wanted it said that:
We are cultivating in the workers a great danger that will ultimately be felt not only at the polls but also in the army. The efforts of the workers to obtain ever more pay for ever less work has no limits … If we let the mistake they [Berlepsch and the local authorities—JS] began (i.e. mediation in favour of workers) exert an influence, its consequences can only be corrected later by hard and perhaps bloody disciplinary measures (harte und vielleicht blutige Massnahmen).55
On the same day, Albert Maybach, the Minister of Trade, and Herrfurth, the Minister of the Interior, ordered the provincial authorities to cease conferring with labour representatives. This was more or less the opposite of the Kaiser’s intentions, as events would soon show.
On 24 January 1890 Bismarck returned to Berlin for a Crown Council in something of a hurry because the Kaiser, without informing him, had called one for that evening at 6 p.m. Neither Bismarck nor his son had any idea why the Council had been called. When on 23 January 1890 Herbert asked for an audience, the Kaiser granted it and explained that the Council had been called because he wished to put his ideas on ‘the handling of the labour question to the ministers; if your father wishes to take part, I shall be very pleased.’56 Herbert sent a telegram to urge his father to come to Berlin as soon as possible. Bismarck had to rise early, something he hated and made him irritable. He took an early train, which arrived at 1.50 p.m. At 3.00 he met the cabinet, at 5.30 the Kaiser alone, and at 6 p.m. the Kaiser chaired the Crown Council. Holstein, who had been in bed on Tuesday, 23 January, with influenza, had received a visit from Herbert Bismarck, who was in a great state of agitation. Holstein told him his opinion and then with a pencil sent him the same views in writing, dated 24 January, the day of the fateful Crown Council. He warned Herbert not to push the Kaiser too hard. The letter did no good, for that very afternoon the session of the Imperial Council took place at which sparks really flew for the first time.57
A few days later, he wrote a full account of the fateful Council to Phili Eulenburg. The Kaiser opened the Council by saying that the anti-socialist law would certainly pass without the expulsion paragraphs and then added that ‘it would be lamentable if I were to colour the beginning of my reign with blood … I cannot and will not be forced into such a situation.’ Bismarck then announced that
under the circumstances he had no choice but to submit his resignation since he could not accept the views of His Majesty. The declaration was brief and without any attention to the Kaiser’s arguments. The Kaiser then asked each minister individually for his view; all declared that they shared the Chancellor’s view. The Kaiser then gave in … He behaved with admirable self-control and was right not let the Chancellor go. He must take a personal stance which is not identical with that of the ruler. In addition, Kaiser, Chancellor, Ministers, Bundesrat, Cartel, Parties are all in a dreadful mood.58
Lucius wrote in his diary that ‘we parted with our differences unresolved, with the feeling that an irreparable breach had occurred between sovereign and chancellor. His Majesty exerted himself to be friendly toward the prince, but he was boiling. At any rate he possesses great self-control.’59 The next day, as expected, the anti-socialist law was rejected in the Reichstag by 169 to 99 and thus would expire on 30 September 1890, unless a new bill were introduced in the next Reichstag after the February elections.
Bismarck had become seriously worried now about his position and suddenly called on his ‘enemies’ for help. On 18 February 1890 Bismarck visited Waldersee, who was not at home so he left his card. Waldersee was astonished, as he wrote in his diary: ‘The chancellor wanted to visit me! I didn’t trust my ears when I heard that. For years he has made no visits whatever, and now he drives to me and the Field Marshall [Moltke—JS] in order to call. He is indeed becoming weak.’60 At the same time Bismarck requested an audience with the Empress Frederick, which she refused. If he wanted to call, it ought to be a social call and hence with the Princess. Bismarck had no choice but to agree. Victoria was even more startled than Waldersee, as she wrote to her mother, the day after the visit on 19 February:
Prince Bismarck and his wife came to see me yesterday. He spoke a long while on the subject of William’s newest coup! He also spoke of retiring soon, as he could not keep pace with innovations so suddenly resolved on and carried out in such a hurry and on the advice of people he thought in no way competent to give it. I dare say he quite means what he says in this instance but I do not suppose his resignation would be accepted … I thought Prince Bismarck looked remarkably strong and well and inclined to take things philosophically.61
Baroness Stockmar, who had lady-in-waiting duty that day, passed on to ‘neighbour’ (their agreed code-names) Ludwig Bamberger some more of the conversation. Apparently the Empress Frederick had asked Bismarck whether he had composed the February Decrees which he claimed (implausibly) to have edited to make them less ‘impossible’. Frau von Stockmar continued:
Bismarck had made it clear that he intended to go. William took counsel from any and everybody, without listening to him. It was all vanity; he wanted to be a great world historical monarch … Bismarck saw the time coming when he will be ignored and denied. As Victoria asked, ‘what is then to be done?’ He answered, ‘Majesty if you meet me later in a salon, be gracious enough to greet me …’62
While the Empress and Bismarck gossiped like old friends, Germany went to the polls, and the results were fully as bad as National Liberals had feared. It is just possible that Bismarck hoped for such an outcome, because it would make him irreplaceable, and that might be why he refused to remove the expulsion clause from the anti-socialist bill. Voter participation fell to 71 per cent and was thus lower than the crisis election of 1887. The election was a disaster for the Cartel Parties, which lost 85 seats. The Socialists raised their vote to 19.7 per cent (about 1.4 million votes) and became for the first time the strongest party in terms of votes.63 The ‘enemies of the Reich’ now controlled its parliament; 106 Centre deputies plus 35 Socialists and 66 Progressives gave a majority of 207 of the 397 seats in total, easily enough to put an end to the anti-Socialist Law and frustrate reactionary military bills.
On 2 March 1890 Bismarck startled the Prussian State Ministry with a new and daring plan. He intended to introduce into the Reichstag an anti-Socialist law far more stringent than the one the old Kartell-dominated Reichstag had rejected five weeks earlier. Social Democratic ‘agitators’ would be banned from voting and from standing in elections and could be summarily exiled. The inevitable rejection would lead to a dissolution and a conflict election, very like the scenario in Prussia in
1862, which gave him power in the first place. There would be elections in which radicals and Socialists would gain until Bismarck announced a new electoral law with an end to universal suffrage. Since the German Empire rested on an alliance of princes and not of states, Bismarck declared, according to the minutes of the meeting ‘the princes … could decide, if need be, to withdraw from the joint treaty. In this way it would be possible to free oneself from the Reichstag if the results of the elections continued to be bad.’64 The authentic Bismarck stands revealed here. Domination mattered and nothing else. He would destroy the Reichstag rather than surrender power.
On 5 March William II went to the annual dinner of the Brandenburg provincial estates and gave the toast: ‘Those who want to help me are heartily welcome, whoever they are, but those who oppose me in this work I shall crush.’65 Both the Kaiser and Bismarck had now begun to use violent language and plan for extreme situations. Holstein wrote that ‘the present preference of His Highness for extreme situations is a sign of the irritability of old age. Earlier in spite of his decisiveness he was the most superior statesman there has ever been.’66 Waldersee had another and much more profound explanation for Bismarck’s behaviour. In an entry for 5 March 1890, which the editor of the Waldersee diary omitted, he wrote that Bismarck
cannot leave because he is afraid of his successor and of the anger which will be unleashed in many whom he has oppressed, lied to and deceived … he has a very bad character; he has not hesitated to disclaim his friends and those who have helped him most; lying has become a habit with him; he has made use of his official position to enrich himself on a colossal scale and has had his sons promoted with unbelievable ruthlessness although no one thinks them competent!67
Waldersee made two mistakes in that assessment. He had always lied from his earliest childhood, and he had not the least fear of any successor. He wanted absolute dominance and would do anything to retain it. In fact Bismarck had begun to play his combinations as he always had. As Paul Kayser (1845–98), head of the Colonial Department in the Foreign Office and one of the camarilla, said of Bismarck’s plan to cause a crisis in the Reichstag, it was ‘the most masterful move in the whole game of chess: it means checkmate for the king.’68 After all, Bismarck would be able to claim that the trouble lay not with him but the new master who refused to accept realities. Bismarck had engineered the defeat of the Cartel by refusing to compromise on the expulsion clause to please the National Liberals. They, not he, had paid the price in a huge electoral defeat and he still had his room to manoeuvre. Now he had to steer a big Army bill through and renew the anti-socialist law. His Minister of War, Julius Verdy du Vernois, who had been one of the three ‘demi-gods’ of 1870, contemplated offering the hostile Reichstag two-year compulsory service in exchange for the passage of the bill, an irony of history, for it was precisely that compromise which Bismarck wanted to offer the Landtag in October 1862, that the King had vetoed.
Bismarck: A Life Page 60
