Kaiser Wilhelm II
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The debate over Wilhelm’s psychiatric status continues with undiminished vitality. Drawing upon a strand of post-Freudian psychoanalytic theory known as ‘self psychology’, the American historian Thomas Kohut has recently intensified the focus on deficiencies in Wilhelm’s relations with his parents and particularly with his mother. Kohut finds that Wilhelm’s parents did not provide their eldest son with the ‘empathic care’, the ‘affirming and mirroring pride’ and the ‘optimal frustration’ of childish exhibitionism required to foster the maturation of a ‘cohesive and well-integrated self ’. Wilhelm consequently suffered throughout his adult life from the ‘disharmony or debility of the self ’ which is the hallmark of ‘narcissistic pathology’. The oversensitivity, craving for approbation and lack of ‘psychological coherence’ contemporaries frequently observed in Wilhelm as an adult are thus explained by reference to his early familial experience.60
A rather different approach to Wilhelm’s early psychological development has been adopted by the Anglo-German historian John Röhl. His study of Wilhelm’s youth, based on an unprecedentedly vast survey of the primary sources, found no evidence for the view that Wilhelm’s early maturation was disrupted by a deficiency of parental love. Röhl found, on the contrary, that the emotional tone in the crown prince’s household was unusually warm and affectionate by the standards of dynastic households at the time (a conclusion endorsed by Wilhelm’s American biographer Lamar Cecil). The origins of Wilhelm’s abnormality, Röhl argues, lay further back in the circumstances of his birth. In what must surely be the most prolonged excursion into the field of obstetrics ever printed in the pages of a history book, Röhl has reconstructed in detail the circumstances of the crown princess’s confinement and made a case for the view that Wilhelm was deprived of oxygen during delivery and was consequently born with a ‘minimal cerebral dysfunction’, a condition that has been linked in recent medical research with hypersensitivity, irritability and lack of concentration and objectivity in adults. It was this ‘organic psychosyndrome’, Röhl has suggested, that predisposed Wilhelm to a ‘secondary neuroticization’ brought on by the rigours of his childhood – the adventurous therapies deployed to enliven his paralysed arm, the ‘head-stretching machine’ used to straighten his neck, the rigours of the Hinzpeter regime and so on.61
Did abnormal character traits, whether congenital or acquired in childhood, render Wilhelm unfit to exercise power in a rational way? Do we need the diagnostic and symptomatic categories of psychoanalysis and neurology in order to make sense of the Kaiser’s comportment in power? These questions can obviously be addressed only in the light of the analysis of Wilhelm’s political career with which the remaining chapters of this book are concerned. For the moment, however, some cautionary notes are in order. First: as a means of accounting for behaviour, the psychoanalysis of dead persons is a fascinating but highly speculative exercise. The inherent difficulty of assessing the applicability of diagnostic categories (when is parental empathy ‘sufficient’?) is compounded by the ambiguous and sometimes even contradictory character of the sources. As for the argument from brain damage and ‘secondary neuroticization’, this depends upon diagnostic assumptions that remain – as John Röhl himself would concede – controversial in their field of origin. It also constrains us to rely exclusively on circumstantial evidence, since none of Wilhelm’s physicians observed signs of mental deficiency during his infancy or early childhood.
A further problem arises from the fact that the ‘madness’ of sovereigns has sometimes been a political rather than a strictly medical category. As Janet Hartley has observed, British ambassadors and statesmen were prone to regard Tsar Alexander I of Russia as deranged, but generally only when they suspected him of acting against British interests.62 In Wilhelm’s case, contemporary observers were aware that rumours circulating from the early 1890s about his mental health were politically motivated, although they did not deny that the Kaiser’s eccentric behaviour occasionally encouraged speculation along these lines.63 The ‘most successful political pamphlet of the Wilhelmine era’, a satirical essay published in 1894 by the left-liberal historian Ludwig Quidde, embedded its critique of the imperial monarchy in a ‘diagnosis’ of the Kaiser that drew on the fashionable buzz-words of contemporary neuroscience.64 It was not uncommon, moreover, for those who had praised the emperor’s forcefulness and firmness of character to impugn his mental health when they fell from political favour. The appeal to psychological instability was and is often prompted by disapproval or distaste at a particular mode of behaviour; the more or less stringent application of clinical criteria then follows as a post hoc rationalization. This helps to explain why the ‘diagnosis’ of Wilhelm II has historically tended to follow contemporary trends in popular science: ‘nervous debility’ in the 1890s; ‘dynastic degeneracy’ in the early Republican era; Freudian paradigms in the 1920s and periodically thereafter; ‘repressed homosexuality’ from the 1970s; neurology in the 1980s and now, in the gene-obsessed turn of the twenty-first century, ‘the gene of George III’ (i.e. porphyria).65
The explanatory strategies proposed by psychohistory and retrospective neuroscience have a further and perhaps more serious drawback: they tempt us away from explaining behaviour in terms of rationality and context. In a now famous study of Wilhelm’s psychological constitution, for example, John Röhl listed episodes which seem to support the claim that Wilhelm suffered from ‘caesarian madness’ (insane delusions about his own power and abilities). They included the following: Wilhelm once announced to a group of admirals, ‘All of you know nothing, I alone know something. I alone decide.’66 If we assume that the Kaiser was congenitally deranged then we will read these remarks literally, as evidence of a deluded world-view. But we could also read the same remarks situationally. The German Kaiser was surrounded by people (including military and naval personnel) whose expertise posed a threat to his personal authority over the many domains under his nominal control. One could thus interpret Wilhelm’s outburst (however ill-judged or unbecoming we may find it) as an assertion of executive political power in the face of technocratic or institutional authority. We will return in the chapters that follow to the important questions raised by Kohut and Röhl. But an effort will be made, wherever possible, to focus our interpretation of Wilhelm II’s behaviour in power upon an analysis of what was ‘rational’ in the light of the context.
2. Taking Power
Power and the constitution
How was power distributed within the German political system? How much of it rested with the German emperor? In order to answer these questions we should first examine the constitution of 16 April 1871 which defined the empire’s political institutions and the relationships between them. The imperial constitution that Wilhelm II undertook to ‘watch over and protect’1 in his throne speech to the Reichstag on 25 June 1888 was the product of a complex historical compromise. In the wake of a largely Prussian victory against France in 1870–71, the task of the new German imperial constitution was to share out power among a variety of interests. It is fairly clear that Bismarck himself was mainly concerned with consolidating and extending Prussian power. But this was obviously not a programme that had much appeal for the other German states, particularly the major south German territories – Baden, Württemberg and Bavaria. A compromise had thus to be achieved between the ambitions of the sovereign entities that had come together to form the German Reich and the need for some kind of central coordinating executive.
Unsurprisingly, the constitution that resulted was emphatically devolved in character. Indeed, it was not so much a constitution in the traditional sense as a treaty between those sovereign territories that had agreed to form the German empire.2 In accordance with the notion that the new Reich was really little more than a confederation of principalities (Fürstenbund), the German states continued to exchange ambassadors with one another – a fortunate arrangement as it turns out, since the reports compiled by the confederal envoys are now among the
best sources we possess for the study of political life in the new empire. Foreign powers, by the same logic, sent envoys not only to Berlin, but also to Dresden and Munich.
The extreme federalism of the constitution of 1871 is cast more sharply into relief if we compare it with the abortive imperial constitution drawn up by the liberal lawyers of the Frankfurt parliament in 1848–9. Whereas the Frankfurt constitution set down uniform political principles for the governments of all the individual states, the later document did not. Whereas the Frankfurt constitution envisaged the formation of a Reich Authority distinct from the member states, the sovereign authority under the constitution of 1871 was the Federal Council, consisting of ‘representatives of the members of the Federation’.3 The council determined what bills were to be brought before the Reichstag, its assent was required before bills could become law, and it was responsible for overseeing the execution of Reich legislation. Every member of the Federation had the right to propose bills and to have them debated in the council. The constitution of 1871 even announced (Art. 8) that the Federal Council would form from its own members a range of ‘permanent committees’ with responsibility for a variety of spheres, including foreign affairs, the army and fortresses, and naval matters.
The federal emphasis of the constitution inevitably had important consequences for the standing of the emperor. The authors of the constitution were clearly at pains not to accentuate the powers of the imperial office in a way that would offend federalist sensibilities. Here again, comparison with the Frankfurt constitution is instructive. Whereas the earlier document included a section entitled ‘The Head of the Reich’ which dealt exclusively with the imperial office, the constitution of 1871 carried no corresponding rubric. Instead, the powers of the emperor were set out in Section IV dealing with the presidency of the Federation and the Federal Council. Whereas the constitution of 1849 had stated bluntly that ‘the Kaiser declares war and concludes peace’, the later document added that he required the assent of the Federal Council to declare war, except where the territory of the Reich was under attack. Whereas the Frankfurt constitution granted the emperor the right to dissolve both chambers of parliament (Art. 79), the imperial constitution of 1871 specified (Art. 24) that the Federal Council had the power to dissolve the Reichstag, but must secure the assent of the emperor. Article 14 stipulated that the Federal Council could summon itself at any time when one third of its votes required it. The Kaiser, in other words, appeared to be one German prince among others, a primus inter pares, whose powers derived from his special position in the federal body, rather than from any claim to direct dominion over the territory of the Reich. It followed that his official designation was not ‘Emperor of Germany’, as Kaiser Wilhelm I would personally have preferred, but ‘German Emperor’. An uninitiated reader of the constitution of 1871 could be forgiven for drawing the conclusion that the Federal Council was the true seat, not only of sovereignty, but of political power in the German Empire.
But constitutions are often unreliable guides to political reality – one thinks of the ‘constitutions’ of the Eastern bloc states after 1945 – and the Reichsverfassung of 1871 was no exception. Despite the document’s many concessions to federalism on paper, most practical developments in German politics over the following decades tended to undermine the federal authority vested in the council. Although Chancellor Bismarck always insisted that Germany was and remained a Fürstenbund, the constitutional promise of the Federal Council was never fulfilled. There were various reasons for this. The first and most obvious was simply the overwhelming primacy, in military and territorial terms, of Prussia. Within the Federation, the state of Prussia, with 65 per cent of the surface area and 62 per cent of the population, enjoyed de facto hegemony. The Prussian army dwarfed the south German military establishments. The king of Prussia was also, as German emperor under Article 63 of the constitution, the supreme commander of the imperial armed forces, and Article 61 stipulated that the ‘whole Prussian military code’ was to be ‘introduced throughout the Reich without delay’. This made a nonsense of any federal pretensions to regulate military affairs through a ‘permanent committee’. Prussia’s dominance also made itself felt within the Federal Council. With the exception of the hanseatic city-states – Hamburg, Lübeck and Bremen – the lesser principalities in central and northern Germany were part of a Prussian clientele upon whom pressure could always be applied if necessary. Since Prussia in its own right possessed seventeen of the fifty-eight votes on the council, this made it highly unlikely that a coalition of other states would emerge that could oppose a Prussian motion.
In any case, it is unlikely that the Federal Council could ever have come to dominate the German political scene in the way that the federalists had hoped. The chancellor refused to concede to it any public role that might overlap with the special competence of the Prussian crown and of himself as its foremost servant. For example, he ensured that the federal Committee for Foreign Affairs remained a dead letter, despite the provisions of the constitution under Article 8. More importantly, the Federal Council lacked the kind of bureaucratic machinery necessary for the drafting of laws. This left it dependent upon the Prussian bureaucracy, with the result that the council came increasingly to function as a body of review for bills which had been formulated and debated by the Prussian ministry of state. A similar dilution of authority can be seen if one compares the role played by the council in the Reichstag dissolutions of 1878, 1887, 1893 and 1906. Far from launching the initiative on these occasions, the council became an increasingly compliant organ of imperial policy.4 Its subordinate role was even reflected in the political architecture of Berlin; lacking a building of its own, it was housed in the Imperial Chancellery.
The primacy of Prussia was further assured by the relative weakness of imperial administrative institutions. A Reich government of sorts did emerge during the 1870s as new departments were established to deal with the growing pressure of Reich business, and its role in preparing legislation grew in importance throughout the Wilhelmine era, but it remained implicated in and dependent upon the Prussian power structure. The heads of the Reich offices (Foreign Affairs, Interior, Justice, Postal Services, Railways, Treasury) were not ministers proper, but state secretaries of subordinate rank who answered directly to the chancellor. The Prussian bureaucracy was larger than the Reich’s and remained so until the outbreak of the First World War; moreover, most of the officials employed in the imperial administration were Prussians.
From the perspective of those who were expected to make the German system work, this Prussian/imperial dualism posed grave problems of political management. Notwithstanding the primacy of the largest member state, it was impossible for Prussian governments to formulate policy in Prussia itself without reference to the situation in the Reich as a whole. The most obvious reason for this was the fact that for much of the empire’s history the Prussian prime minister was also the imperial chancellor; he was thus responsible to two legislatures, the Prussian Landtag and the Imperial Parliament (Reichstag). These bodies were not only institutionally distinct, but also politically very different from one another. The Reichstag was elected on the basis of universal manhood suffrage and came to house an array of parties that reflected the considerable regional, confessional, ethnic and socio-economic diversity of the German nation. The Prussian Landtag was elected by a three-class franchise with an inbuilt bias in favour of property-owners whose effect was to guarantee the predominance of conservative and right-liberal forces. Since developments in Prussia could affect the attitude of the Reichstag parties and vice versa, the chancellor faced the difficult task of balancing the priorities of very different legislative forums.
Between 1871 and 1890, this uniquely complex political system was presided over by the towering figure of Otto von Bismarck-Schönhausen. The roots of Bismarck’s dominance lay partly in the potent combination of Prussian and Reich offices under his control. As Reich chancellor, he exercised direct authority over th
e imperial state secretaries; as Prussian minister president, he controlled the debates of the Prussian ministry; as Prussian foreign minister, he was responsible for casting Prussia’s seventeen votes in the Federal Council.5 This strategic location astride the line between the empire and its hegemonic member state was crucial to his political influence. ‘If you sever my Prussian root and make me solely an imperial minister,’ Bismarck told the Reichstag, ‘then I am as uninfluential as any other man.’6 Positioned at the fulcrum of Germany’s ‘unfinished federalism’, Bismarck came to enjoy control over virtually all aspects of government policy in Prussia and the empire.7
But the accumulation of offices alone cannot explain Bismarck’s uniquely decisive position in the German imperial system after 1871. Equally important were his status as the architect of the wars of unification, his reputation as a foreign minister of unparalleled skill and judgement, his unrivalled ability to second-guess and intimidate domestic opponents, his astuteness in exploiting public opinion, and his deftness in dealing with his royal master. ‘You have to have been there to know what power this man exercised over the world around him,’ recalled the left-liberal Ludwig Bamberger. ‘There was a time in which no one in Germany dared to say how far his will reached.’ It was not just that ‘his power was so rock-solid that everyone trembled before it’. It was also that he ‘determined the lines along which laws, institutions and, more importantly, attitudes developed’. Observers of all political stripes spoke variously of Bismarck’s ‘sole rule’, his ‘absolutism’, the ‘tyranny’ wielded by an ‘omnipotent’ Pomeranian ‘Jupiter’. Indeed, Hans-Ulrich Wehler, an historian not usually given to ‘personalistic’ modes of explanation, has invoked the Weberian concept of ‘charismatic power’ in an attempt to account for a plenitude of authority which cannot be reduced to the chancellor’s social background, offices and the values he espoused.8 Whether this term can properly be applied to Bismarck has been questioned by Wehler’s critics, but Bismarck’s exceptional political power and public prominence are beyond doubt.9