Kaiser Wilhelm II

by Christopher Clark

  Where did all this leave the German emperor? In view of his position under the stridently monarchical constitution of Prussia, and the virtually unchallenged dominance of the Prussian executive within the imperial system, the potential power of the Prusso-German Crown was vast. He straddled, in a more absolute and personal sense than the chancellor, who could always retire from office, the line between the imperial government and the most powerful federal state. Under Article 18 of the constitution, the emperor had the power to nominate and to dismiss Reich officials; the same applied, under the Prussian constitution, to the powerful Prussian bureaucracy. He was commander-in-chief of the army and the navy in war and in peace with full powers of appointment and dismissal (Arts. 53 and 63). His assent was required for the passage of Prussian and – through the influence of his delegates in the Federal Council – of imperial legislation. And he possessed, in the form of the Civil and Military Cabinets, staff structures that served him personally and were not responsible to parliament, an institutional power base of his own. Dominic Lieven has compared this extensive apparatus, which processed huge quantities of paperwork, with the very different situation in Russia, where the tsar, who had neither a personal secretariat nor a private secretary, stamped his own envelopes and communicated with staff and ministers through hand-written notes.10

  2. Otto von Bismarck shaped Wilhelm’s political outlook more than any other political figure. He towered over the Kaiser’s family life in childhood and youth and remained a power to be reckoned with after his departure from office in 1890. Bismarck’s posthumous reputation – powerfully captured in this photograph of a massive stone likeness by the sculptor Hugo Lederer (seen here on the right) – overshadowed Wilhelm’s reign.

  As the warlord of the era of unification, Wilhelm I enjoyed a unique personal prestige. However, as long as the system was so single-handedly managed by the chancellor, the political potential of the Prusso-imperial crown was bound to remain largely unexplored. It would not be true to say that Wilhelm I was a negligible figure. His East German biographer, Karl-Heinz Börner, has warned against seeing the first Kaiser as a ‘shadow figure in the system of German Bonapartism’.11 He did sometimes assert himself against Bismarck, and he made sure that he was always well informed about developments in all policy areas. Until the end of his reign, Wilhelm I clung to the right of final decision. A royal decree of 1882 to the Prussian Ministry of State insisted on the king’s right ‘to steer the government and policies of Prussia according to his own judgement’. Acts of government were, ultimately, acts of the (Prussian) king ‘from whose decision they originate, and who expresses his opinion and will constitutionally through them’.12

  Nevertheless, it is clear that a man with Bismarck’s unrivalled skill in manipulating the slippery imperial and Prussian systems could make himself virtually indispensable to the emperor, and students of the relationship between the two men have generally stressed Bismarck’s capacity to press, woo, bully and cajole the Kaiser into agreement on most issues of importance. Wilhelm I frequently put up with political moves that went against his own instincts. He had not wanted the war with Austria, he disliked the liberal flavour of German politics in the decade after 1871, and he disapproved of Bismarck’s political campaign against the Catholics. When direct confrontations did occur, Bismarck could unleash the full force of his personality, pressing his arguments home with tears, rages and threats of resignation. It was these scenes, which the Kaiser found almost intolerable, that moved him to make the famous observation: ‘Es ist schwer, unter Bismarck Kaiser zu sein’ (It is hard being emperor under Bismarck). There was probably no false modesty in the emperor’s observation, on another occasion, that ‘he is more important than I’.13

  The balance of power between chancellor and king-emperor cannot be considered in isolation from the other institutional power centres; it depended upon a range of external factors, of which the most important was the attitude of the majority in the Reichstag. A chancellor with strong parliamentary support could negotiate with his monarch from a correspondingly strong position. A hostile Reichstag, on the other hand, diminished the chancellor’s usefulness as a political manager and reinforced his dependence upon the sovereign, as Bismarck discovered during the years 1881–6. It is not coincidental that Bismarck’s fall from power under Wilhelm II came shortly after the collapse of the Bismarckian majority ‘Cartel’ in the Reichstag elections of February 1890.

  The Reichstag was, after the Federal Council and the Prussian-German Crown, the third corner of the empire’s constitutional triangle. Whereas the Federal Council symbolized the qualified autonomy of the member states, the Reichstag represented the massed male electorate of the German nation-state. As princely appointees, the delegates to the Federal Council represented the dynastic principle; by contrast, the Reichstag, elected every three years (every five years after 1885) by universal male adult franchise was among the most democratic legislatures on the European continent. The assent of the Reichstag was required for the passage of bills into law, and, contrary to the claim made in some textbooks, it had the power to initiate legislation. Its right to scrutinize and pass imperial budgets provided it with a means of bargaining with, and checking the ambitions of, the executive. On the other hand, the power of the Reichstag to determine political outcomes was seriously limited by the fact that the chancellor did not depend for his tenure in office on majority support. The German parliament, by contrast with the British, did not possess the power to eject governments through a vote of no confidence. The difference was neatly symbolized by a significant procedural difference: whereas the British sovereign went (and goes) to the House of Commons for the opening of a new parliament, German Reichstag delegates were summoned to the palace for the same ceremony.

  The Reichstag came to contain a complex array of partisan groups, and managing the passage of legislation through it became the most demanding and exasperating political task of the imperial chancellor (made even more difficult by the need to balance Prussian and imperial parliamentary interests). And while the power of the Reichstag to set the political agenda remained limited, there is widespread agreement among historians that the Wilhelmine era witnessed what David Blackbourn has called ‘the growing legitimacy of parliamentary politics’.14 An important factor in this development was the provision under Article 22 of the imperial constitution that the Reichstag’s proceedings in open session should always be truthfully published. This permitted some parliamentary leaders to emerge as national figures and allowed the politically interested public to participate – at least as spectators – in the great debates of the day. Further evidence of the parliament’s growing de facto authority is furnished by the swelling volume of business conducted in Reichstag committees and the growing importance of party leaders and committee experts from the factions in the decision-making process.

  What generalizations can we draw from this brief survey of the German imperial system? It was, as some of its most distinguished analysts have observed, a ‘system of skirted decisions’, an ‘unfinished’ constitution or an ‘unfinished federalism’. The loose and ill-coordinated relationship between the various power centres and the evolutionary character of the system have made it difficult for historians to assess with any precision how power was distributed within it. Whereas one historian has argued, for example, that the Wilhelmine era witnessed the gradual ‘parliamentarization’ of the Prusso-German constitution, others have emphasized the ‘dictatorial Bonapartist’, or the ‘authoritarian’ character of the regime.15 For the purposes of the present study, we need merely emphasize that it was a system in constant motion, subject to renegotiation, characterized by internal irresolution and contradiction, and by a shifting distribution of power among its key offices and institutions. This inevitably had implications for the role of the emperor-king. How would his office evolve after the departure of the chancellor? Bismarck had succeeded, with difficulty, in imposing his will on the unwieldy apparatus of the German co
nstitution. Would the young emperor who boasted that he would be his own chancellor succeed in doing the same?

  Kaiser vs chancellor

  Even before Wilhelm’s accession to the throne, it was clear to perceptive contemporaries with a knowledge of both men that the cohabitation in power of the young emperor and the 73-year-old chancellor was not going to be easy. It was a matter of personalities, Count Waldersee observed in conversation with Holstein in November 1887. The elderly reigning Kaiser was virtually indifferent to questions of image and did not mind being effaced in the public eye by Bismarck. ‘But when Prince Wilhelm is Kaiser he will insist on appearing as the man who really rules – that is why I do not think he and the chancellor will agree for long.’16 Certainly the conflicts of autumn 1887 did not bode well. The Stoecker affair was followed by a less public but damaging dispute between Wilhelm and Bismarck over a declaration the prince planned to circulate to the federal sovereigns upon his accession. Bismarck took issue with the timing and the content of the document and managed to persuade Wilhelm to burn it.17 And, as we saw, the winter of 1887–8 brought further differences over foreign policy.

  In spite of these ominous signs, the accession on 15 June 1888 was followed by a period of calm cooperation between the elderly chancellor and the new monarch. They managed to agree on a number of important personnel decisions. Wilhelm and Bismarck were seen together at parliamentary dinners for government-friendly Reichstag factions. Court Chaplain Stoecker was asked, in a cool ultimatum from the emperor, to choose between political activity and clerical office (Bismarck had long claimed that Stoecker’s combination of the two was dangerous and unacceptable). Wilhelm even broke with tradition by using the official government bulletin (Reichsanzeiger) to dissociate himself from the anti-Bismarckian agitation of the ultra-conservative press, condemning the political vituperation of the Kreuzzeitung and declaring that ‘His Majesty [would] permit no party to present itself as possessing the imperial ear.’18 All of this was a reassuring public signal of the emperor’s commitment to the liberal–conservative Reichstag ‘Cartel’ that Bismarck had forged in the elections of 1887. The flirtation with clerical and ultra-conservative elements that had so alarmed the chancellor during the Stoecker affair was a thing of the past. A better courtier than he cared to admit, Bismarck now struck an unexpected truce with his former enemy, the wily Count Waldersee, whose influence with Wilhelm was at its apogee. In July 1888 the Austrian ambassador reported: ‘The intimacy of the present ruler with the first counsellor of the crown is so close that it is scarcely capable of improvement. There is a veritable honeymoon of respect, affection, trust and understanding.’19

  But the honeymoon was not to last. It quickly emerged that the two men had very different views on key areas of domestic policy (foreign policy is discussed in chapter 5). Of these, the most important concerned the state’s role in the regulation of labour relations in the German empire. Wilhelm had hardly occupied the throne for ten months when the German economy was hit by a massive wave of industrial strikes. They began early in May 1889 in the northern Ruhr basin, the chief heartland of German mining and heavy industry, and spread across the Ruhr region to Aachen, the Saar basin, Saxony and Silesia. By the middle of May 86 per cent of the Ruhr workforce was on strike. There were bloody clashes between strikers and government troops. Thereafter, the unrest rumbled on for nearly a year, bringing intermittent stoppages and violence.

  The chancellor’s stand over the labour question in 1889–90 was the endgame of his career, and it exemplifies the complexities of his technique as a politician. In cabinet and Crown Council meetings as well as in private audiences with the emperor, Bismarck argued that state action to satisfy labour grievances would encourage Social Democracy and render Prussian industry less competitive in the international markets. Regulating female and child labour, legislating for Sunday rest and setting maximum working hours would also, the chancellor somewhat disingenuously argued, hamper the liberty of the employee to work as and when he or she wished.20 Bismarck seems to have had a range of options in mind. He had long taken the view that harsh repression was the only means by which the state could meet the challenge of the Social Democratic movement. If the strikes and turbulence were allowed to continue with minimum state intervention, this would weaken Reichstag resistance to the new and more repressive anti-socialist law favoured by the chancellor (the old anti-socialist law was due to expire in September 1889). If this tactic failed, there remained the extreme option of a coup d’état with the risk of ensuing civil war. In such difficult and unpredictable circumstances, it was foreseeable that Bismarck would possibly emerge, much as he had during the Prussian constitutional crisis of 1862, as the only figure capable of maintaining the ship of state on an even keel.21

  By contrast with Bismarck, who blamed the current troubles on the workers’ greed and Social Democracy, Wilhelm took the view that capital, rather than labour, bore the brunt of the responsibility and ought therefore to carry the costs of restoring social peace. Wilhelm’s grasp of economics was rudimentary, but he was aware that the boom in orders generated by an upswing in the business cycle since 1887 had raised the profits of the mine-owners and the expectations of their workers. On 11 May, only four days after first receiving news of the troubles, he ordered the governor-general of Westphalia to ‘force’ the managers and directors of the coal companies to raise wages; they should be threatened with the withdrawal of all government troops in the area if they refused to do so. ‘When the villas of the wealthy owners and directors were set on fire, they would soon give in,’ he declared at a cabinet meeting on 12 May where he turned up unannounced to present his views.22 In November the Prussian Minister for Agriculture, Robert Lucius von Ballhausen, heard Wilhelm declare that ‘a great deal has to be done to prevent capital from consuming labour’, since most industrialists ‘exploit workers ruthlessly and ruin them’.23

  Wilhelm believed that the responsibility for mediation in such disputes lay ultimately with the sovereign, since German workers were ‘his subjects’ with a legitimate claim to his care. In the middle of May 1889 he received delegations of miners and pit-owners and warned both sides to avoid placing excessive demands on the other. It was an unprecedented gesture that earned him surprised respect from broad sections of the German public and helped to pave the way towards a negotiated resolution of the dispute.24 The Kaiser continued throughout 1889 to insist that government take the lead in seeing that wages were raised and the rights of workers (Sunday rest, restrictions on hours and on female and child labour) protected through legislation. ‘I regard it as my duty,’ he declared on returning from a trip to Constantinople in November, ‘to intervene […] and to ensure that the people are not oppressed and do not strike.’25 Wilhelm’s initiatives in this area have met with a sceptical reception from historians, who have seen his interest in the social question as a screen for other less lofty concerns, such as the monarch’s quest for popularity or his deluded wish to be a ‘king of the beggars’ in the style of Frederick the Great. It is worth citing at length the following passage – which is fairly representative of the literature – from Lamar Cecil’s fine biography:

  Humanitarian instincts, which were absent from his character, did not form the base of his concern for the labouring poor. Even in youth, there was a coldness about Wilhelm’s character, one frequently noted by those who knew him well, and it appeared with particular brutality in the utter lack of feeling with which he disposed of those who had once been his friends or servants. It is hard to imagine that a man so notoriously callous in his emotions about individuals he knew well would have had a much more compassionate feeling about his subjects at large. The Empress Friedrich, whose charity to the downtrodden was broad and genuine, doubted that her son had ever been really troubled about the poor and their problems.26

  Several aspects of this passage deserve comment. In the light of the embittered relations between the two, we should, of course, be sceptical of any account by the dowa
ger empress of her son’s ‘true’ motives. Moreover, the implication that a commitment to state intervention in the social sector must be founded on personal ‘warmth’ in order to qualify as sincere is problematic. A distinction should be drawn between the sentimental philanthropy of Wilhelm’s mother – which reflected mid-century Victorian liberal sensibilities – and the very different, protectionist-era, statist paternalism that shaped Wilhelm’s outlook. Bismarck’s last decade in office had seen the establishment under the chancellor’s auspices of Europe’s most progressive system of social insurance; and on acceding to office, Wilhelm had promised in his throne speech before the Reichstag to take up the programme of ameliorative legislation inaugurated by Bismarck and his grandfather in 1881.27

  Ironically, then, Wilhelm was Bismarck’s (over)enthusiastic pupil when he clashed with the chancellor over the limits of state provision in the sphere of labour relations. His education under Georg Hinzpeter had consistently emphasized the social responsibilities of the monarch (in 1889 Hinzpeter emerged as one of the Kaiser’s key advisers on the labour problem). A further influence was Hans Hermann von Berlepsch, Prussian minister of trade from 1890 until 1896, whose views on labour policy embodied the reform-conservative concept of a ‘social monarchy’ characterized by the sovereign’s active mediation in social questions.28 Wilhelm’s initiatives in this area thus had roots both in his own biography and in the political economy of the late-nineteenth-century German empire. In any case, it is important not to see the dispute as hinging on a purely personal initiative by the monarch. The unprecedented scale of the strike wave of 1889–90 had shocked and confused the Prussian authorities. Disputes over how to handle labour unrest were not confined to the political executive; they ran, as Otto Pflanze has shown, right through the administrative structure. At provincial level, as in Berlin, officials found it difficult to agree on the causes of the problem or its appropriate treatment.29 Nor was this a uniquely German problem.