Germany in the Age of Bismarck

W. M. Simon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000393521
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire de l'Allemagne

Originally published in 1968, this was the first time that a comprehensive selection of documents on Germany in the Age of Bismarck had been made available to students and other readers in the English language. The documents were chosen to illuminate not only Bismarck's own personality and policies but also the nature of the problems he faced and the reactions of his contemporaries. The substantial introduction serves as a general background and guide to the documents, which are in the form of letters, essays, polemics, speeches, and memoirs, produced in the period itself. They allow the student to obtain a genuine first-hand insight into the workings of minds and institutions in Germany during three of the most eventful decades of her history.

PART I:
THE AGE OF BISMARCK

1
Introductory: Prussia and Germany in 1862

OTTO VON BISMARCK, who became Prime Minister of Prussia in September 1862, had been bom in 1815, the year in which Europe at the Congress of Vienna settled its affairs as best it could after the storms and turmoil aroused by the French Revolution and the régime and military campaigns of Napoleon I. To understand the nature and the problems of Prussia and Germany when Bismarck assumed control—for that matter to understand Bismarck himself—some attention must unavoidably be paid, first of all, to the years between his birth and his elevation to power.¹

1 I cannot avoid referring here to my Germany: a Brief History, New York, 1966, London, 1967, which is inevitably reflected in this background sketch. The main body of the present essay, on the other hand, is not only considerably more detailed than the pages there devoted to the age of Bismarck but also completely rewritten and brought up to date.

A considerable number of German problems did not, in fact, confront the Congress of Vienna save that it ratified or tacitly accepted situations and solutions already existing, found, or imposed. Napoleon had finally given the coup de grace to die long tottering Holy Roman Empire, whose endemic weakness since the Middle Ages had contributed so much to the historic disunity of Germany. By nearly common consent the Empire and its institutions were not restored, though the Congress of Vienna was faced with the problem of replacing it. Napoleon had also decreed the abolition of all the ecclesiastical states of Germany and of most of the small secular territories too, and their absorption into the larger kingdoms and duchies; again, the disappearance of this legacy of German disunity was regretted by few except the deposed rulers, and the vanished sovereignties were not restored. Still, over thirty states remained; but of these, two had in the course of the eighteenth century emerged as definitely superior in power and influence to the rest, Austria and Prussia. This was a position that inevitably implied some degree of rivalry, latent or overt, for leadership in Germany, and in 1815 the Austrian statesman Count Mettemich, in whose capital the Congress of Vienna met, had just stolen a march on Prussia by winning the friendship of the states of south Germany, particularly Bavaria.

In these south German states, the beneficiaries of Napoleon’s reorganization, and in some other states as well, the preceding decade had seen a good deal of domestic reform in the direction of ‘enlightened absolutism’ and Napoleonic centralized government. In Prussia also there had been a movement in this direction, but it had proved so far largely abortive in the areas of politics and administration, and Prussia remained in practice an absolute state, in which the monarchy ruled by means of a strong and interlocking army and civil service, and with the support of a very large element of the petty nobility (Junker). These were in reality nothing more than (often impoverished) squires or country gentry, and their prominence reflected the overwhelmingly agrarian nature of the Prussian economy.

The unsuccessful reform movement in Prussia, as well as the successful ones elsewhere, bore witness to a new intellectual ferment stimulated in Germany by the French Revolution and by Napoleon’s conquests. Where even intellectuals had in the eighteenth century mostly acquiesced in, if not indeed supported, the social and political status quo, there was now, within the still small middle class and among the higher civil servants, widespread dissatisfaction with the traditional semi-absolutist, semi-feudal pattern of public life in Germany. This dissatisfaction, usually based on an awareness of the various alternatives recently evolved in France, could be associated either (especially in Napoleon’s client states in south Germany) with pro-French sentiments or (especially in Prussia) with violent anti-French nationalism. The latter combination was particularly antipathetic to Mettemich, who was indeed opposed to nationalism in any form because the Austrian Empire was a multi-national state which, as Mettemich saw it, was in danger of disintegrating if nationalist agitation were allowed. Since in Austria’s great rival, Prussia, nationalism seemed to be allied with reform, Mettemich concluded that Austria could not afford to have reform agitation either. Above all, he was concerned that Prussia must not be allowed to place herself at the head of any movement toward political integration or unification in Germany, since that would attract the loyalty of Germanspeaking elements in Austria away from the Habsburg dynasty and from the historic Danubian state.

Since Mettemich had succeeded in allying himself with the south German states, who also feared Prussian domination of Germany, and since the non-German states represented at Vienna also disliked the idea of an effectively united Germany, there could be only one answer to the question of what to put in the place of the defunct Holy Roman Empire: another loose organization. This was the nature of the German Confederation (Bund) that emerged from the Congress largely to Mettemich’s specifications. But from almost any point of view it was a distinct improvement on the old Empire, and it forms, indeed, part of the evidence that, whatever his limitations, Mettemich was by far the most intelligent and even the most imaginative German statesman of his day. Any attempt at imposing on Germany a degree of structural unity much tighter than that of the Bund would have brought the rivalry between Austria and Prussia to a head instead of allowing them to co-exist, in Mettemich’s phrase, in ‘peaceful dualism’.

This is not to say that all was sweetness and light in Germany after 1815. Mettemich was reviled by all those who, under the stimulus of a rapidly growing nationalism, longed for German political unity, and also in many reforming and progressive circles, particularly in Prussia. In the larger states of south Germany—Bavaria, Württemberg, Baden—the energies of both conservatives and liberals (this word was just coming into use) tended to be concentrated on affairs within their borders. Within four years of the end of the war, all these states had been furnished with new constitutions, issued from above by the grace of the prince. In this respect as well as in their contents, these constitutions resembled the famous Charter granted in 1814 by Louis XVni: as in France, monarchy voluntarily limited itself by creating representative assemblies elected on a narrowly restricted franchise and equipped with circumscribed powers. Sovereignty remained with the monarch, and the ministers remained responsible to him. This was not parliamentary government, but at least there were parliaments in which deputies could freely talk politics, which had been the original purpose even of the English parliament—admittedly a long time ago. Here the South German liberals could, if they wished, urge policies on the government and press for greater powers for themselves. Here the ministers could expound their own and their sovereign’s intentions and actions. Almost all could agree, at least, to reject Mettemich’s view that elected assemblies were ruled out by the terms of the Act setting up the Confederation. Mettemich would have preferred a return to the more traditional type of assembly on feudal lines. Not even these appeared in the states of northwest Germany. Liberated from Napoleonic rule, their populations were immediately subjected to the full weight of ancien-régime absolutism at its worst.

In Prussia, as we saw, absolutism had suffered only slight inroads at the hands of the reform movement. Encouraged by a promise of a constitution extracted from the king in 1815, the reformers renewed their efforts, but within four years it was clear that they had failed again to effect any significant changes. The reasons for their failure were many and complex; the result is easier to assess. Just at the time when constitutionalism was advancing in south Germany, Prussia reverted to unreconstructed bureaucratic and militaristic absolutism. The institutions and the political and social climate of Prussia for the next hundred years were determined in 1819. The failure of the reform movement disappointed all those liberals, not only in Prussia but throughout Germany, who were looking to a politically rejuvenated Prussia to provide leadership in Germany.

To Mettemich, on the other hand, the fall of the reformers was welcome; indeed he had connived at it. He had far more to fear, on all counts, from a liberal Prussia than from a liberal Baden. Needless to say, the Habsburg Empire itself experienced no resurgence of a reform movement after 1815. The career of Joseph II operated as a permanent cautionary tale against attempts to centralize, let alone to Germanize, the machinery of government. Indeed, among the changes which Mettemich vainly urged on his emperor was a measure of administrative decentralization to the provinces. If Mettemich here again demonstrated his perspicacity by seeing that such a move might assuage some of the nationalist discontent, it remains true, on the other hand, that his political acumen, though more sensitive than anyone else’s, was in the long run not quite far-sighted enough. His anticipation that liberalism would involve nationalism, with the corollary that therefore liberalism must be suppressed, was an unfortunate brand of self-fulfilling prophecy. It caused liberals to react strongly against Mettemich and all his works, including the Bund, and to adopt the cause of a unitary and constitutional national state. It therefore tended to call to life the very alliance between liberalism and nationalism that Mettemich above all feared.

The danger, however, did not immediately seem very great, since the liberal movement spent most of the 1820s licking its wounds and concentrating on the development and consolidation of territorial constitutionalism. But after 1830 and the revolutions in France and Belgium the German liberals took new heart, and the movement increased both in size and in activity. Here a caution is in order, for the word ‘liberal’, then as now, covered a multitude of sins or virtues, depending on the point of view. What liberals had in common was, roughly speaking, an interest in limiting the powers of the executive by means of representative assemblies with a view, in part, to protecting the freedom of the individual against arbitrary interference. Within this general framework there was room for much variety. Liberalism could take its stand, as for the most part it did in south Germany and in the Prussian Rhineland province (which had been a part of France for twenty years), on the Enlightenment, Natural Law, the doctrine of human rationality, and French models; or (more usually in north and east Germany) it could adopt the more historically conditioned perspective of J. G. Herder, or even of Edmund Burke, and prefer the English precedent. Liberalism could be cautious and conservative, or it could be radical and even republican. In Germany it was weighted heavily toward the former. Neither Montesquieu’s doctrine of the separation of powers nor Rousseau’s doctrine of popular sovereignty made much headway. German liberals were respectful toward princes and not very active even on behalf of the introduction of responsible government. They aimed not so much to participate in government as to restrict the scope of government.

It is, nevertheless, true to say that after 1830 and especially after 1840 liberalism gradually developed more momentum. This was particularly evident in the revival of interest in German unity, in what was coming to be called the ‘German question’. For the first time the idea was mooted that Austro-Prussian rivalry might be overcome and unity achieved by excluding Austria altogether and giving Prussia the unchallenged leadership of Germany. But this notion remained academic in both senses: it was discussed at all mainly by small groups of intellectuals; and its realization was in any event still dependent on Prussia first making herself over into a constitutional state. Of this there was little enough sign, despite the hopes centred on Frederick William IV on his accession in 1840. What did take place especially after 1840 and especially in the Rhineland, was a significant economic resurgence after the depression of the early post-war years. This development was due to such factors as the lifting of legal restrictions on the sale of land which had been one of the few positive achievements of the reform movement in Prussia, the building of the first railways, and above all the customs union (Zoilvereiri) which, on Prussian initiative, removed many obstacles to trade within Germany. This economic revival, while changing agricultural life too, had its most important social and political effects in the numerically small commercial and industrial sectors. For the first time in Germany the middle class, formerly made up almost entirely of professional men, contained a considerable proportion of businessmen. The conviction held by many of them that the bourgeoisie ought to have political rights commensurate with their economic status was, indeed, a principal source of strength for the growing liberal movement.

The Zollverein was probably as important in its psychological effects as in its immediate economic ones, if not more so. It broke down not only traditional barriers against commercial activity but also many traditional habits of thought on many subjects. Rapid change began to seem to many people a natural rather than an unnatural state of affairs. Novelty revealed its attractions to weigh against its dangers. The year 1840 is therefore often taken as a landmark in the cultural as well as in the political and social history of Germany. Of course, dates in this field can only be convenient symbols, indicating no more than general tendencies. Thus the great philosopher G. W. F. Hegel, who had dominated not merely the universities but intellectual life in Germany generally until his death in 1831, remained the towering influence on German thought even after 1840 and into the age of Bismarck, where we shall concern ourselves with him again. The principal challenges to Hegel had come from historians (especially the young Leopold Ranke) and theologians (above all Friedrich Schleiermacher). These were two of the liveliest disciplines at German universities. History was enjoying a considerable boom, encouraged by the Romantic movement; theological and ecclesiastical issues had by no means lost their interest or importance. The natural sciences, however, were also coming into prominence again, supported by as well as supporting the new industry and technology.

Unfortunately, novelty and change usually leave some groups in society behind, often through no fault of their own. This was the situation in Germany in the 1840s of the artisans and other independent workers who on the one hand were affected by the decline of the traditional guild system (hastened in many states by government intervention) and on the other hand were not part of the new industrial system. Since such men still outnumbered factory workers by perhaps two to one, their feeling of discontent and insecurity was by no means negligible. But the entire urban population of Germany in 1848 was in turn still outnumbered in about the same ratio by the country dwellers; and among certain groups of peasants, though mainly among the relatively more prosperous ones, there were also some rumblings of dissatisfaction. The revolutions of 1848 in Germany can therefore not be attributed to economic misery or explained in terms of a ‘class struggle’. It would be at any rate closer to the truth to see them as the coming of age of German liberalism. It was the liberals, nourished by the opportunities for political activity in some of the states since 1815, and fortified by the economic revival, who led the revolutions and espoused the cause of the less fortunate. But their solution to social problems was political; only very few of them really came to grips with the details of the economic situation. Moreover, their political solution stopped short of giving the classes below them any political power or influence of their own; like bourgeois liberals everywhere, they saw themselves as the political representatives of the whole Third Estate. The radicals who went beyond liberal constitutionalism to press for republican democracy were very few.

When, therefore, in March 1948, the liberals to their great surprise found themselves, owing to the sudden weakness of rulers intimidated by the February Revolution in France, in charge of all the governments of Germany, nothing was more natural than that they should graft bourgeois constitutionalism on to the existing monarchical structure. Nothing was more natural, either, than that, most conspicuously in Austria and Prussia, they should before long counsel moderation and even align themselves with the forces of counterrevolution in order to guard against the danger, more imagined than real, of power passing to the masses. This tactic, however, played into the hands of the princes, who had never done more than pay lip-service to the liberal cause anyway. Frederick William IV of Prussia in particular had never understood such notions as responsible government, let alone been willing to put them into practice. Moreover, even at the height of liberal power, in the spring and summer of 1848, the king had retained control of the army; and when at the end of the year he made up his mind to put an end to all the liberal nonsense and sent a detachment of troops to evict the elected National Assembly from its meeting-place there was nothing the liberals could do about it. There had always been something unreal about their ascendancy, just as there had been something unreal about the March revolutions themselves.

The same air of shadow-boxing can, in the light of hindsight at any rate, be seen to have hung over the German liberals’ deliberations on the question of German unity. The fault lay not so much with the liberals who dominated the Frankfurt parliament, elected to frame a constitution for a united Germany, who were entirely determined to proceed in a practical and realistic manner, but rather with the nature of the problem, which was no easier to solve in 1848 than it had been before. The liberals took it quite for granted that a united Germany must be a monarchy; but where were they to find a monarch? The Habsburg emperor, who was still the natural choice, and his ministers would have nothing to do with any project for a united Germany which would include the German-speaking parts of Austria without the rest. When the Frankfurt liberals reluctantly fell back upon the expedient of excludi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• General Introduction
• Preface
• Contents
• Part I: The Age of Bismarck
• Part II: Selected Documents
• A note on further reading
• Table of sources of documents and abbreviations used
• Index to the Introduction