Bülow now came under increasing pressure from Wilhelm to modify the general orientation of his policies. Most importantly, there were signs that Wilhelm was no longer willing to practise the self-restraint required to placate the Centre Party. The Kaiser’s decision to appoint the vehemently Protestant Hohenlohe-Langenburg to the head of the colonial department antagonized the Centre, whose leadership wished, among other things, to see Catholic candidates for administrative office and Catholic missions in the German colonies more equitably treated by the colonial authorities. It was characteristic of the new mood that the minister of war, von Einem, needlessly enraged the Centre deputies in January 1906 with a declaration in defence of duelling within the officer corps. This refusal by the emperor to collude in the parliamentary conciliation of the Centre came at an exceptionally awkward time for Bülow. Since the national elections of 1903, the Centre Party had begun, under a new generation of younger and more populist leaders, to exploit more assertively the influence it enjoyed as the dominant non-socialist party in the Reichstag.30 When Bülow had broached the subject of urgently needed tax reforms in 1905, the Centre joined the parties of the Left in blocking the chancellor’s proposals. In 1906 the Centre also led the way in criticizing the government’s handling of colonial policy and expenditure, with the result that various proposals for the creation of a larger and more independent colonial administration were rejected by the Reichstag.
The heightened tempo of imperial intervention and the damage done to Bülow’s parliamentary support threatened to bring back the general paralysis of the late Hohenlohe years, when the chancellor, disregarded by parliament and unsupported by the emperor, had drifted in a political limbo between the two. Under the strain of these pressures, Bülow collapsed in the Reichstag on 5 April 1906 and withdrew for a summer of convalescence to his holiday refuge on the island of Norderney; he remained there until October. But Wilhelm kept up the pressure, castigating the Centre, calling for firmer measures against the SPD, and insisting on the retention in office of the unpopular Hohenlohe-Langenburg.By September 1906 he clearly felt that Bülow had become dispensable and was openly discussing a possible successor with the new state secretary for foreign affairs, Heinrich von Tschirschky.31 In August 1906 he even asked Graf Monts, the German ambassador in Rome, whether he would be willing to take over as Bülow’s successor (Monts refused and Bülow returned to Berlin soon thereafter).32 These events demonstrate how easily the emperor could still rock the political boat with haphazard interventions. They remind us of how misleading it would be to see Wilhelm as a ‘shadow-Kaiser’ holding formal and ceremonial authority but lacking the means to exercise political power. In 1905–6, as in the 1890s, the crown’s control over senior appointments remained a crucial, if unpredictable and intermittent, factor in the German constitution.
It is striking, on the other hand, how slight the broader impact of these imperial interventions appears to have been, even within the sphere of the senior executive. Wilhelm still had no consistent domestic political programme, beyond a desire to emancipate the government from the influence of the Centre and restore its links with the national middle ground he had been seeking without much success since the beginning of his reign. The decision to convene a Crown Council was largely symbolic; it was not followed up, and thus did not inaugurate an era of consistent monarchical intervention in the affairs of government; it was above all an adversarial tactic, a shot across Bülow’s bows. Wilhelm’s insistence upon an uncompromising anti-socialist policy did prompt a hardening in Bülow’s tone (at least in public), but there was no concerted move against the Social Democrats. As for the controversial Hohenlohe-Langenburg, Bülow succeeded, with Lucanus’s help, in levering him out of the Colonial Office in August 1906. It proved easy to persuade the monarch to accept as Hohenlohe’s successor the very different Bernhard Dernburg, a bank director of Jewish descent and left-liberal political affiliation who enjoyed widespread respect in the Reichstag.33
Bülow emerged victorious in a further clash over the Prussian minister of agriculture, General Viktor von Podbielski. During the summer of 1906, Podbielski came under attack from the press over his indirect involvement in a corruption scandal, and, determined to limit the damage to the government’s reputation, Bülow pressured him to resign. But Podbielski refused to go and in this he was supported by Wilhelm, who took the factually correct view that Podbielski had committed no serious wrong (a commission subsequently cleared the minister of improper conduct). Bülow’s arguments with the monarch failed to persuade the latter that resignation was called for, and the crisis gradually escalated into a stand-off between the monarch on the one hand, and the chancellor and his ministers on the other. As in the Köller crisis of the mid-1890s (see above), Wilhelm saw this ministerial intransigence as a serious challenge to his constitutional right to appoint and dismiss ministers as he pleased. He was forced, nevertheless, to back down. On 11 November 1906 an imperial order was issued for Podbielski’s dismissal.34
Just as the dispute over Podbielski’s tenure in office was being resolved, the government’s conflict with the Reichstag – and specifically with the Centre – over colonial expenditure entered a critical phase. In the course of suppressing the uprising in South-west Africa – with genocidal consequences for the inhabitants of the region – the government had been forced to spend more than its meagre revenues from matricular contributions, customs income and consumption taxes allowed for.35 The government was thus obliged, late in November 1906, to seek the Reichstag’s retroactive ratification of the extra-budgetary costs incurred. The ensuing debate set the scene for a comprehensive attack by the Centre that culminated in a Reichstag resolution to the effect that parliamentary co-determination in colonial policy be extended. The dispute thus escalated into an unprecedented – if ultimately unsuccessful – challenge by the legislature to the prerogatives of the executive.36
The debates of winter 1906 also touched on the constitutional role of the emperor, for it was Wilhelm who had overruled Bülow, the chief of the General Staff, the minister of war and the director of the Colonial Office in sending Lieutenant-General Trotha to South-West Africa to replace the local commander Leutwein, and had thereby helped to expand and intensify the conflict there.37 Whereas the Centre demanded the immediate reduction of the military contingent in South-west Africa and insisted upon the observance of budgetary probity, defenders of the monarchical prerogative rejected all such claims on the grounds that it was the emperor who had the exclusive right of decision in matters pertaining to the defence of Reich territories. Wilhelm had reluctantly acquiesced in Bülow’s decision to seek an amnesty from the parliament over expenditure for the China expedition of 1900, but he was now strongly disinclined to make any concessions over the sensitive issue of the crown’s extra-parliamentary military command functions. It was clear in any case that the current Reichstag, with its combative oppositional majority, would withhold its assent for the budget now being proposed by the government. Bülow saw his chance and took the precaution of obtaining an order of dissolution from Wilhelm before the second reading. After the chancellor had rejected defence budget cuts proposed by the Centre on the grounds that ‘it is a prerogative of the Kaiser to decide upon the requirements of the military’,38 the budget was put to the vote and rejected. Bülow duly read aloud the Kaiser’s order of dissolution.
The election campaign that followed was fought by the Bülow government along ‘national’ lines, on the issues raised by the deadlock over colonial policy. It generated a dramatic rise in the rate of voter participation across the empire, but did not succeed in herding voters away from the Centre – indeed it added five Reichstag mandates to the party’s parliamentary membership (bringing it to a total of 105). But the campaign of 1907 did substantially reduce the Centre’s influence by trimming back the number of socialist deputies from seventy-nine to forty-three. Within the German five-party system, this small redistribution of mandates was just sufficient to yield a new go
vernmental majority composed chiefly of National Liberals, Conservatives, Free Conservatives and Left Liberals. Together with the Protestant anti-socialist splinter parties the ‘Bülow Bloc’, as it came to be known, commanded 216 of the 395 votes in the Reichstag.39 Wilhelm welcomed the re-emergence of a majoritarian ‘national’ coalition and rejoiced at the damage done to the Social Democrats, which he thought signalled the advent of a ‘completely new propitious era’.40 The fact that the electoral campaign had failed to prevent an increase in Centre mandates – a problem that later dogged the chancellor’s efforts to govern through the ‘Bloc’ – appears to have escaped his notice.
Bülow’s endgame
How did these developments affect the balance of power between the emperor and his chancellor? Historians have disagreed over Bülow’s political aims during and after the crisis of December 1906. In a series of articles published in the 1970s and 1980s, Terence Cole argued that the dissolution of 1906 marked ‘the beginning of Bülow’s campaign to place the government of Germany on a new footing’ and thereby relativize the political authority of the emperor.41 In her influential study of the high politics of the Bülow chancellorship, Katherine Lerman argued, by contrast, that Bülow lacked longer-term political objectives of any kind and was temperamentally incapable of offering a principled challenge to the authority of the emperor.42
We need not adjudicate in this dispute over Bülow’s objectives; our concern is with the actual balance of political influence between the emperor and his inscrutable chancellor in the aftermath of the crisis of 1905–7. Whether or not Bülow had in mind a lasting constitutional transformation of the German political system – and there is little reason to suppose that he did – one thing is clear: he remained determined to restore and strengthen his own position by all means available. As the new Reichstag settled in, the chancellor began purging the ministry of unreliable elements (Studt, Posadowsky), just as he had done in 1901.43 Bülow also engaged in a power struggle with the state secretary for foreign affairs, Tschirschky, who was known to be critical of the chancellor’s foreign policy.44 Bülow perceived Tschirschky as an imperial favourite, whose purpose was to undermine the chancellor’s control over foreign policy. The reality was that Tschirschky was an ‘emperor’s man’, but not one who followed the emperor’s bidding. It soon became apparent that the state secretary aspired to political independence and had no desire to play the role of ‘compliant tool’.45 In January 1907 he caused an upset by informing Wilhelm and Bülow of a new treaty with Denmark only when it was ready to be signed. Six months later he permanently damaged his position with the emperor by making commitments to the French on a delicate matter of diplomatic representation without first consulting either the emperor or the chancellor.46 Here again, as so often in the past, the practice of imperial favouritism failed to translate into real power for the emperor. Bülow had little difficulty levering Tschirschky out of office and moving him to the German embassy in Vienna in the autumn of 1907.
However, it cannot be said that Bülow succeeded in restoring the position of relative independence within the executive that he had enjoyed in the early years of his chancellorship. After the damaging clashes of 1905–6, his determination to avoid direct conflict with the emperor was greater than ever, and his freedom of action correspondingly circumscribed. More importantly, Bülow’s capacity to manipulate Wilhelm directly – a crucial factor in his earlier successes – had declined; the emperor was now less trustful of the chancellor and therefore less prone to respond uncritically to his promptings. This was apparent in the negotiations over who would succeed Tschirschky in September 1907, during which Bülow failed to steer Wilhelm away from his own preferred candidate, Wilhelm von Schön, ‘a courtier and society man of the worst kind’.47
In seeking to restore his damaged power position, Bülow resorted to two remedies. The first was a press campaign designed to neutralize the influence of ‘irresponsible’ elements in the imperial entourage and, above all, of his old friend Philipp Eulenburg, whom he now perceived as a dangerous intriguer and rival. Bülow had long been seeking to put some distance between the Kaiser and his best-loved adviser, and the beginning of the Bülow chancellorship coincided with a dramatic, if temporary, decline in Eulenburg’s influence and a fall in the frequency of his meetings with the emperor. But as the relationship between Wilhelm and Bülow grew more strained, Eulenburg reappeared on the scene, accompanying the emperor on his summer cruises and offering a sounding board for his complaints against the chancellor. In retrospect it is clear that Eulenburg was not intriguing against Bülow and that he remained personally loyal to the chancellor, but at the time there were rumours to the contrary, and it can hardly have escaped Bülow’s attention that Eulenburg’s proximity to the throne varied in inverse proportion to his own.
In the autumn of 1906, during the first great crisis of Bülow’s chancellorship, Maximilian Harden, editor of the critical journal Die Zukunft, launched a swingeing attack upon the ‘secret camarilla’ that advised and influenced the emperor from behind the scenes. Using information passed to him by Holstein, Bismarck in earlier years, and possibly also by Bülow, Harden’s press campaign skilfully exploited the homosexuality of Eulenburg and other members of the emperor’s circle. The string of libel trials that followed exposed to the eyes of a gawping bourgeois public an exotic world of high-camp, aristocratic, courtly playfulness, in which high-ranking officers went by feminine nicknames and the Kaiser was known as ‘the sweety’ (das Liebchen). Eulenburg insisted under oath (with Clintonian delicacy) that he had never ‘engaged in punishable acts under the terms of §175 of the Imperial Constitution’ but the damage was done.48
The Eulenburg scandal thrived on a potent mix of anti-absolutism and middle-class homophobia. Harden did not himself share the animus of many of his readers against homosexuals – indeed he defended a number of other prominent homosexual men whose private lives had come under public scrutiny – but he exploited the powerful emotional force field that surrounded the topic in most middle-class milieus in order to contaminate the idea of ‘personal rule’ with visceral negative associations. What emerged from the scandal was an image of the Kaiser as encircled and manipulated by a sinister circle of ‘sycophants, who put aside considerations of duty, honour and conviction in order to keep basking in the sun of All-Highest favour’.49 It damaged the reputation of the sovereign and it deprived Wilhelm permanently of the company and advice of his old friend (Eulenburg retreated to his Liebenberg estate and never saw the emperor again).
Bülow may genuinely have believed reports that Eulenburg was working against him,50 but he must also have recognized that a public campaign against irresponsible elements and the personal rule associated with them would ultimately bolster his own position and strengthen his hand against the Kaiser without requiring a direct confrontation – Bulow himself refused to inform Wilhelm of the scandal as it unfolded and the news had to be broken to him late in the day by the crown prince. As Terence Cole has put it: ‘the man who began the chancellorship with an attitude of almost obsequious servility towards the Kaiser ended by mounting a campaign of almost treasonous proportions against him’.51
The press campaign and the chain of libel trials to which it gave rise resulted in the public annihilation of Eulenburg and a number of other prominent individuals associated with his circle, including one of the Kaiser’s favourite adjutants. In the longer run, it also hurt Bülow himself: Wilhelm was indignant and embarrassed at the revelations and appalled at the chancellor’s failure to keep him informed of such a sensitive matter; he soon enough suspected that Bülow was personally implicated in their inception. Moreover, as the focus of the scandal broadened, the chancellor himself became a target of attacks by the press. And Bülow’s involvement in the conspiracy against Eulenburg proved self-defeating in a further, paradoxical, way, for it destroyed the one influential figure close to the Kaiser who had consistently spoken up for Bülow.52
In addition to dep
loying the press against the entourage and encouraging public criticism of monarchical interference in the business of goverment, Bülow sought to consolidate his position by forging a new kind of relationship with the parliamentary majority known after the elections of 1907 as the ‘Bülow Bloc’. Bülow hoped that the Bloc, with its combination of conservative, liberal, agrarian and industrial interests, might evolve into a permanent feature of the political landscape. This idea appealed to Wilhelm as well, for the Bloc evoked obvious parallels with the Cartel created out of the last election of the Bismarck chancellorship. Like the Cartel, however, the Bloc proved fragile – by the autumn of 1907, the parties within had begun to quarrel with each other over stock exchange deregulation and the lifting of Reich restrictions on political associations. More serious was the deep divide over taxation policy. The conservatives remained opposed to any form of tax that would hurt the interests of property owners and favoured indirect over direct taxation; the liberals opposed indirect taxation on the grounds that it placed the lion’s share of the tax burden on the shoulders of the mass of the population.53
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