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BISMARCK'S SPEECHES: TABLE OF CONTENTS #1. THE CRISIS OF THE PRUSSIAN CONSTITUTION, 1862/63. #2. BISMARCK ON THE EVE OF WAR WITH AUSTRIA. #3. THE INDEMNITY BILL OF 1866 AND THE BIRTH OF NATIONAL LIBERALISM. #4. THE OUTBREAK OF THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR, JULY 1871. #5. THE ANNEXATION OF ALSACE-LORRAINE (1871). #6. THE KULTURKAMPF. #7. BISMARCK'S RESPONSE TO SOCIALISM: THE CARROT AND THE STICK. #8. COLONIALISM.
#1. THE CRISIS OF THE PRUSSIAN CONSTITUTION,
1862/63:
a) Election Manifesto of the Progressive
Party, March 14, 1862:
In 1861 Prussia's King William I decided to double the size of
the army, but this reform encountered sharp opposition from the new
Progressive Party in the Prussian House of Representatives.
The Crown proceeded with army reform by shifting sums voted for
other purposes to the military, so in March 1862 the House of Representatives
passed a law requiring the precise definition of the purpose of each
expenditure in the budget. King
William called for new elections, and the Progressives' electoral manifesto
is reprinted below.
[Source: Felix Salomon, ed., Die deutschen Parteiprogramme (Leipzig,
1907) I: 56-60 (trans. Bill Patch)]. ______________________________________
After the election of last fall we could hope that the ministry,
supported by the progressive consciousness of the people, would adopt
a more emphatic policy in keeping with the needs of our fatherland,
a policy of maintaining our place of honor among the nations of Europe.
We can no longer hope this.
It is all the more necessary for parliament to assert the constitutional
rights of the people independently and resolutely, regardless of the
desires of the leading statesmen. The
House of Representatives can achieve little in legislation and administration
at the moment. Its influence on these areas is slight. Its effort to influence is regarded with jealousy
and mistrust. But it has decisive
power in its control over the finances of the country. Here it has the inescapable duty to exercise
this control to the best of its ability, not to allow it to become an
empty form but to employ it in such a way as to accomplish other reform.
The government still expects to see its will alone decide, still
behaves according to the absolutist formula of refusing to make any
concession to parliament, recognizing no limitation on its judgment,
demanding always that the other side yield...
We could not delay in this matter.
For one thing, the government's bill on budget control threatened
to render permanent our inadequate control over the grant of funds. For another, we could no longer delay a final determination on the
army budget without making permanent the excessive military expenditures
and three-year term of service, which hinder all improvement in any
other area. We believe that
the general obligation to military service and the complete development
of the people's capacity to defend itself can only be achieved if, in
addition to other savings, we lighten the burden on both money and manpower
by reducing the term of service in the infantry to two years....
The constitution is not worth much if it only serves to procure
money and soldiers in greater quantity than was ever possible without
it in the past. We believe that
those who bring the Crown and the people into conflict do a disservice
to both. We believe that the true interests of both
parties in Prussia coincide completely, and that one does not oppose
the monarchy when one feels compelled to reject one of its government's
demand
...The ministers have appealed to the populace to elect new representatives
to express its opinion. We hope
for an unambiguous expression of the same....
There's only one issue, not to abandon the constitutional rights
without which representatives cannot fulfill the duties of their mandate.
We are convinced that the government pursues a course that is
neither beneficial nor in touch with the views and will of the people
when it burdens the economic forces of the country with excessive new
military expenditures, when it prevents the free development of intellectual
and material interests that could strengthen the nation, and especially
when it fails to offer any popular and national policy that might compensate
for such excessive burdens with successes.
We hope that the Prussian people will display that prudence and
persistence which are the foremost political virtues and guarantee victory
in this conflict, which not only jeopardizes our hopes for rapid and
secure progress, but also the constitutional rights already won.
Confident in the future, we hope to see emerge from this election
a majority of men who dutifully defend the rights of the people, men
who, in these days of decision, preserve undiminished that constitutional
foundation without which the banner of progress combined with legal
order cannot be unfurled. A defeat for this foundation would be a disaster
for Prussia and all Germany. Remember
the loud agreement which we secured in the last elections from all portions
of the German fatherland, which also support the measures of the legislature
today. Eyes everywhere are eagerly
watching for the result. The
enemies of Prussia hope for a paralyzing continuation of the dispute.
The German people, however, which may well be
divided from the Prussian government but never again from the Prussian
people, knows that Prussia's future lies in the development of liberty,
and that this must be secured in Prussia for all of Germany.
The current of public opinion favors this development, and the
Prussian people has an opportunity to accomplish something for the progress
of Europe. The greatness of
this cause demands that every friend of the fatherland do whatever he
can to promote success, so that a disastrous retreat can be prevented,
so that the old cry of victory can soon ring out again—an energetic
Charge! ______________________________________
b) Bismarck's early speeches to the
Prussian House of Representatives:
The elections of May 1862 gave the liberal opposition a solid
majority, and the House refused to approve any budget until the King
rescinded his expansion of the army.
In September a desperate King William appointed as prime minister
the strong-willed professional diplomat, Otto von Bismarck; two of his
early, unsuccessful efforts to promote compromise with the House follow.
[Source: Lothar Gall, ed., Bismarck. Die grossen Reden (Berlin: Ullstein, 1981),
pp. 62-63, 66-76 (trans. Bill Patch).] ______________________________________
SPEECH OF SEPTEMBER 30, 1862:
Germany does not look to Prussia's liberalism but to its power. Bavaria, Württemberg, Baden may indulge liberal
impulses, but nobody will cast them in Prussia's role for that reason.
Prussia must gather its forces and maintain them for the favorable
moment, which has already been missed several times.
The borders established for Prussia at the Vienna Congress are
not favorable for the healthy life of the state.
The great issues of the day are not decided through speeches
and majority resolutions--that was the great error of 1848 and 1849--but
through blood and iron.
[After attacks from the Progressives, Bismarck returned to the
podium.]
I must protest that I would never seek foreign conflicts just
to get over domestic difficulties; that would be frivolous. I was speaking of conflicts that we could not avoid, even though
we do not seek them.
SPEECH OF JANUARY 27, 1863:
In this address [parliament's annual address to the Crown], the
House of Representatives defends rights that it either does not possess
at all or at least does not possess alone.
Gentlemen, if you had the right unilaterally to determine the
final form of the budget in its total sum and its details, if you had
the right to demand that His Majesty the King discharge those ministers
who do not enjoy your confidence, if you had the right to determine
the size and organization of the army through your resolutions on the
budget, if you had the right...to regulate the relations between the
executive power, the government of the state and its officials---then
you would actually possess the complete power to govern this country....
I therefore feel justified in summing up the practical meaning
of your address in the following words:
“With this address the Royal House of Hohenzollern is summoned
to surrender its constitutional powers of government, so that they can
be transferred to the majority of this House.” (Great commotion, mixed with calls:
Quite right!)
...You claim, in particular, that Article 99 of the constitution
has been violated. Article 99
states, if I remember correctly: "All revenues and expenditures
of the state must be assessed each year in advance and written down
in the state budget." If the next sentence were to read: "This
[budget] is determined each year by the House of Representatives,"
then the complaints in your address would be completely justified, then
the constitution would be violated. But the text of Article 99 reads: "This state budget is established
each year by law." Article
62 says with absolute clarity how a law is made. It says that every law, hence also budget laws,
comes into being through the agreement of the Crown with both houses.
The article expressly states, moreover, that the House of Peers
has the right to reject any budget sent up by the second house that
it does not like.
Each of these three rights [to reject a budget] is unlimited
in theory, the one as strong as the next.
If the three powers cannot reach agreement, the constitution
lacks any provision for determining which must give way.
In earlier discussions people glossed over this difficulty. Reasoning by analogy with other countries, whose constitution and
laws, however, are not promulgated in Prussia and have no validity,
they claimed that the difficulty could easily be resolved through the
submission of the other two powers to the House of Representatives,
that, if the Crown and House of Representatives could not agree on a
budget, the Crown must not only submit to the House of Representatives
and discharge those ministers who did not enjoy its confidence, but
also, if the House of Peers did not agree with the Representatives,
to compel it through mass appointments [of new Peers] to adopt the standpoint
of the House of Representatives. In this way the sole sovereignty of the House of Representatives
would be established, but such sole sovereignty is not the constitutional
law of Prussia. The constitution
consistently adheres to the principle of balance among the three legislating
powers in all questions, including budgetary legislation. None of these powers can compel another to
submit. The constitution thereby
points toward the path of compromise and reconciliation. An experienced constitutional statesman has said that all of constitutional
life is one long series of compromises. If compromise is thwarted because one of the
powers insists on implementing its views with doctrinaire absolutism,
then the series of compromises is interrupted, and conflicts take their
place. And conflicts quickly become contests of power,
since the life of the state cannot stand still; whoever holds power
goes ahead according to his views, because the life of the state cannot
stand still for even one minute....
We will of course have difficulty agreeing on who is responsible
in the present case for the failure to achieve compromise.
I remind you that, after the dissolution of the previous House
of Representatives, the Crown voluntarily made substantial concessions. It reduced the budget by several millions and
voluntarily dropped the tax surcharge of 25%. (Commotion.) At your request the government made
a considerable effort to define budget items more specifically. Your response to this bid for an understanding
consisted of a resolution in September, against which I do not hesitate
to raise the charge of misuse of power that you raise against us in
your address. You exploited
your right to approve the budget by passing a resolution whose implementation
would be completely impossible without making Prussia defenseless, (Commotion.) without wasting all the funds already
spent on the [military] reform and starting all over again next year.
You demanded that His Majesty the King...discharge half of the
infantry, a third of the cavalry, 119 battalions---I don't know how
many regiments....
You expect the Crown to yield; we expect you to yield. The government is convinced that it is now your turn to make concessions,
and unless you do, we will hardly be able to come out of this conflict.
The House of Peers rejected the budget voted by you as completely
inadequate for the needs of the state, and the Royal Government agrees
with it completely.... That we have a gap in the constitution here
is no new discovery.... I will
not explore this theory further. For
me it is enough to know that the state must exist.... Necessity alone dictates here; the government has paid heed to this
necessity, and not even you would demand that we stop paying interest
[on state bonds] or the salaries of officials.
I emphatically deny now as before that this condition is contrary
to the constitution. I am also
sure that your view is not shared by any of the thousands of officials,
who have also sworn an oath to the constitution.
None of these officials has refused to work with the government;
none has declared that he refuses to accept his salary as of January
1....
It is a curious coincidence, that the debate over this manifesto
that is supposed to be handed to our royal lord occurs on the birthday
of the youngest heir apparent [King William's grandson, the later Kaiser
William II]. This coincidence, gentlemen, reinforces our
determination to stand up for the rights of the monarchy, for the rights
of the heirs to His Majesty. The
Prussian monarchy has not yet fulfilled its mission; it is not yet ready
to become a mere ornament on your constitutional edifice, not yet ready
to serve as a dead cog in the machinery of parliamentary government.
[When Bismarck left the chamber, a widely respected moderate,
Count Schwerin, summarized Bismarck's thesis as "Might makes right,
you can say what you want, but we hold the power in our hands, so we
will implement our theory." To
a cheering assembly, Schwerin added that this was no foundation for
an enduring monarchy, and that the historic motto of the House of Hohenzollern
was quite different: "Right comes before might: Justitia
fundamentum regnorum!" Bismarck
soon returned to correct this "misunderstanding".]
I've been told that the previous speaker understood me to say:
Might makes right! I really
don't remember any such utterance, (Emphatic contradiction.) and despite your expression of disbelief
for my rectification, I appeal to your own memory, which, if it is as
good as mine, will tell you that I simply said the following: I advised
you to seek compromise, because in the absence of compromise conflicts
must arise; conflicts become questions of power; and, since the life
of the state cannot stand still for one moment, whoever possesses power
will then be compelled to use it. (Great commotion.) I never said that was desirable.
I do not ask for an impartial judgment from you; (Hear, hear! from the left.) I just want the minutes to rectify
what has been misunderstood. (Outcry: Adjourn! Adjourn!)
In 1869 a French journalist published the following account of
an interview granted him by Bismarck on June 4, 1866, just after Bismarck
had proposed a new German Confederation with a national parliament elected
on the basis of universal manhood suffrage, and just before the Seven
Weeks’ War removed the last obstacle to such plans. [Source: Frederick Hollyday, ed., Bismarck:
Great Lives Observed (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970),
pp. 27-31.] __________________________________
[Question:] “Your Excellency,” I said to him, “I
have made it my business to inform... the French public of all that
happens in Germany. Permit me,
therefore, to speak to you with complete freedom. I will confess that today, in its foreign policy,
Prussia appears to be tending toward goals eminently sympathetic to
the French nation, to wit: Italy definitely freed from Austria, and
Germany constituted on the basis of universal suffrage. But is not the contradiction between your Prussian policy and your
German policy flagrant? You
proclaim a national parliament as the sole fountain-head from which
Germany can emerge rejuvenated..., and at the same time, you treat the
second chamber at Berlin [i.e., the Prussian House of Representatives]
in the manner of Louis XIV, when he entered the parlement of
Paris, whip in hand. We do not admit in France that the marriage
between absolutism and democracy is possible...”
[Answer:] “Well done!”
Bismarck replied, “You get to the bottom of things.
I know I enjoy the same unpopularity in France as I do in Germany. Everywhere I alone am held responsible for a situation I did not
make, but which was imposed upon me as upon you. I am the scapegoat of public opinion, but I torment myself little
about that. With a perfectly
tranquil conscience, I pursue a goal which I believe useful to my country
and to Germany. As for the means,
for want of others, I make use of those that are offered to me. There are many things to say about the Prussian domestic situation.
In order to judge it impartially, it is necessary to study and
to know thoroughly the special character of the men of this country.
While today France and Italy each form a great social body animated
by a common spirit and a common feeling, in Germany, on the contrary,
it is individualism which dominates.
Here each one lives apart in his little corner, with his own
opinion, among his wife and children, always distrusting the government
as well as his neighbor, judging everything from his personal point
of view, but never from the viewpoint of all.
The feeling of individualism and the need of contradiction are
developed in the German to an inconceivable degree.
Show him an open door—rather than going through it, he is
bent upon wanting to open a hole in the wall beside it.
Also, whatever it does, no government will ever be popular in
Prussia. The greatest number will always parade the opposite opinion. It is condemned to be perpetually contradicted
by the moderates and decried and spit upon by fanatics by that fact
alone that it is the government and that it places itself as an authority
opposed to the individual. That
has been the common fate of all regimes which have followed one another
since the commencement of the dynasty.
Our politicians have given no more mercy to liberal ministers
than to reactionary ministers....
“They acclaimed,” he added, “Frederick the Great’s
victories, but at his death they rubbed their hands joyfully at seeing
themselves freed of this tyrant. Beside this antagonism, however, exists a profound
attachment to the dynasty. No
sovereign, no minister, no government can win the favor of Prussian
individualism, but all cry from the bottom of their hearts: ‘Long
live the King!’ and they obey when the King commands.”
[Question:] “There are those, however, Your Excellency,
who say that discontent might approach rebellion.”
[Answer:] “The government has never had to fear that, and
it does not fear that. Our revolutionaries are not so terrible.
Their hostility is especially vented in epithets against the
Minister, but they respect the King. It is I alone who has done all the evil, and
they bear a grudge against me alone for it.
With a little more impartiality, perhaps they would realize that
I would not have acted differently because I was not able to. In the present German situation and in face of Austria, we had to
have an army before anything else.
In Prussia, it is the only tractable force....
“The Prussian who got his arm broken on a barricade... would
re-enter his dwelling sheepishly, and would be treated as an idiot by
his wife, but in the army he is an admirable soldier, and he fights
like a lion for his country’s honor. Evident though it is, a fault-finding politician
does not wish at all to recognize this necessity of a great armed force,
imposed by circumstances. As
for me, I cannot hesitate; I am, in my family, in my education, the
King’s man before everything.
Now the King holds to the military organization as to his crown,
because he judges it indispensable in his soul and his conscience.
Therefore, no one is able to make him surrender or compromise
that. At his age—he is seventy—and with
his traditions, one becomes obstinate in his ideas, especially in the
case where one believes them good.
Besides, on the subject of the army, I completely share his viewpoint.
“Sixteen years ago, I was living as a country gentleman
when the sovereign’s will designated me Prussian envoy to the Frankfurt
Diet. I had been raised in admiration—I could say the cult—of
Austrian policy. I did not need
a great deal of time to lose my youthful illusions with regard to Austria,
and I became its declared enemy. The
abasement of my country, Germany sacrificed to foreign interests, a
cunning and perfidious policy—all that was not designed to please
me. I did not know that the
future would call upon me to play a role, but since that epoch I conceived
the idea whose realization I pursue today, that of removing Germany
from Austrian pressure, at least the part of German y united to Prussian
destinies in spirit, religion, customs, and interests—North Germany....
All the opposition with which I have had to struggle in Prussia
has been unable to prevent me from devoting my body and soul to this
idea: North Germany constituted in its logical and natural form under
the aegis of Prussia. In order to achieve that goal, I have braved everything: exile and
even the scaffold. And I told
the Crown Prince, who, in his education and inclinations, is by preference
a man of parliamentary government: ‘What does it matter if I am
hanged, provided that my hangman’s rope binds your throne solidly
to Germany!’”
[Question:] “May I also ask you, Your Excellency, how you
intend to reconcile the free mission of a national parliament with the
rigorous treatment which the Berlin chamber has suffered?
How, above all, are you able to persuade the King, the representative
of divine right, to accept universal suffrage, which is the democratic
principle par excellence?”
[Answer:] Bismarck replied to me spiritedly: “It is a victory
won after four years of struggle! When
the King summoned me four years ago the situation was most difficult. His Majesty placed a long list of liberal concessions before my
eyes, but none of them to be expected in the military question. I said to the King: ‘I accept, and the
more the government can show itself to be liberal, the better it will
be.’ The Chamber was obstinate on the one hand and
the crown on the other. In this
conflict, I followed the King. My
veneration for him, all my past, all my family traditions, made it my
duty. But that I am, by nature
or policy, the adversary of national representation, the born enemy
of parliamentary government, is an entirely gratuitous assumption. I did not wish to disassociate myself from
the King in fighting the Berlin chamber, at that time when the Berlin
chamber placed itself athwart a policy which imposed itself on Prussia
as a necessity of the first order.
But no one has the right of directing to me that insult that
I think of hoaxing Germany with my parliamentary project.
The day when—my task complete—my duties toward my sovereign
accord ill with my duties as a statesman, I will be able to take the
course of effacing myself without it being necessary for me to disavow
my labors.” #3. THE INDEMNITY BILL OF 1866 AND
THE BIRTH OF NATIONAL LIBERALISM:
Following the victory over Austria,
Bismarck sought to terminate the government’s struggle with the
Prussian House of Representatives by presenting an “Indemnity Bill,”
which passed by a vote of 230:75 on September 3, 1866, as a majority
even of the delegates of the Progressive Party decided to support it.
The Progressives who supported this bill eventually founded a
new “National Liberal Party” in 1867, which endorsed the federal
constitutions written by Bismarck in 1867 and 1871. [Source: Lothar Gall, ed., Bismarck. Die großen Reden (Frankfurt/M: Ullstein,
1981), pp. 78-80; and Hans Fenske, ed., Quellen zum politischen Denken
der Deutschen im 19. Und 20. Jahrhundert: Der Weg zur Reichsgründung,
1850-1870 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1977),
pp. 328-37 (trans. Bill Patch).] __________________________________ THE INDEMNITY BILL:
ARTICLE 1. The government
is granted indemnity for all administrative acts undertaken since the
beginning of the year 1862 without a legally established state budget,
on the condition that the Landtag approves the accounts presented by
the government for this period.
ARTICLE 2. The government
is authorized to expend up to 154 million Taler on administration
for the year 1866.
BISMARCK (House speech of September
1):
The more honestly the royal government desires peace, the more
its members feel obliged to refrain from any discussion of past criticisms.... Remember the lesson from foreign affairs, that
peace can hardly ever be concluded if one demands as a precondition
that one of the parties confess: “Now I see that I acted unjustly.” We desire peace, not because we are incapable
of carrying on this domestic struggle; on the contrary, the tide is
now flowing in our direction more than it did some years ago. Nor do we desire peace in order to evade possible
future criminal prosecution; I do not believe that we will be indicted,
and even if that happened, I do not believe that we would be convicted,
and in any case, many reproaches have been made against this ministry,
but never the reproach of fearfulness! (Laughter.) We desire peace because in our opinion
the fatherland needs it at the present moment more than it did before. We desire it and seek it also because we believe
that we can now attain it; we would have sought it earlier, if we could
have hoped earlier to find it. Now
we believe that we can find it because you have perceived that the royal
government stand closer to the goals that a majority of you also support
than you thought a few years ago, stands closer than you had reason
to believe because of the silence of the government about many things
that had to be kept quiet. (Bravo!) For this reason we believe that we
can find peace and seek it honestly; we have extended the hand to you,
and the committee’s proposal [i.e., the Indemnity Bill] gives us
the guarantee that you will grasp that hand.
We will then approach all problems that remain to be solved together
with you in partnership; I do not by any means exclude from these problems
improvements in our domestic affairs, in line with the promises made
in our constitution. (Lively Bravo from all sides.) Only together can we solve them, as
we both seek with good will to serve the same fatherland, without casting
doubt on the honesty of the other. (Bravo!)
But in this moment the problems of foreign policy are not yet
solved; the dazzling successes of the army have in a sense raised the
stakes of the game, we have more to lose than before, but the game is
by no means won as yet; the more firmly we hold together at home, the
more certain we are to win it. If you study conditions abroad, if you study
the Vienna newspapers, especially those which are commonly thought to
represent the views of the imperial government, you will find the same
expressions of hatred and anger toward Prussia that could be found before
the war and contributed not a little to making that war a necessity
for the imperial government, which it could not have avoided even if
it had wanted to. If you study the behavior of the peoples of
southern Germany, as they are represented in the armies, you will find
that a spirit of reconciliation and acknowledgment of shared tasks for
all Germany is certainly not present as long as Bavarian troops on railroad
cars treacherously fire on Prussian officers.
If you examine the attitude of the various foreign governments
toward the institutions that must be established [for the new North
German Confederation], it is satisfactory with some and hostile with
others, but you will certainly find hardly any power in Europe that
offers benevolent support for the construction of this new common life
for Germany.... Therefore, gentlemen,
our task is not yet accomplished, and it demands unity from the whole
country in word and deed.
Even though it has often been said, “What the sword has
won, the pen has lost,” I have complete confidence that we will
never hear it said, What the sword and pen have won, has been destroyed
by this rostrum! (Lively Bravo!)
OTTO MICHAELIS (House speech of September
1 for the bill):
It is a painful feeling for me to be defending my position primarily
against my own party colleagues, i.e., against those with whom I have
struggled for the same goal of creating a constitutional regime in Prussia
on a liberal foundation and creating German unity under Prussia’s
leadership. But I appeal to everyone here to stop talking
about any ‘renunciation of the goal for which we have struggled.’ Let’s stop talking about the ‘surrender
of the rights of the people.’
You know very well that I am still every bit as dedicated as
you are to the cause for which we have struggled, and that I no more
intend to surrender the rights of the people than you do.
We only disagree about the ways in which we can achieve these
goals most effectively and quickly-- and it should be possible to disagree
about that without mutual vilification....
We have decided that we can best promote the further constitutional
development of Prussia by participating actively in the fulfillment
of the great tasks that this state must undertake. (Bravo! Quite right!) Gentlemen! The rights of the people are not a beautiful medallion to be packed
away in a box of legal deductions, sealed shut with negative votes. The rights of the people that are entrusted
to us are a lever for promoting the welfare of the people and further
developing the Prussian state, a lever that we must set into motion. (Bravo! Quite right!)
FRIEDRICH HARKORT (House speech of
September 1 against the bill):
Everyone now speaks of reconciliation and confidence.
Gentlemen, allow me to speak frankly: I consider these empty
phrases if they are not backed up with deeds.
I ask, is the whole reconciliation confined to this one indemnity? Should not the cabinet request a whole series
of indemnities, before any genuine reconciliation can occur? The Minister of Justice should come here and
say: There will be no more rigged juries assembled for a special purpose, (Voice from the Polish delegation:
Hear, hear!) and no civil servant loyal to the constitution
will have his career ruined because of the votes he casts in this House;
he should also declare that the majesty of the law will be restored
in Prussia unstained. The Minister
of the Interior needs to come here to declare that freedom of speech
will be respected, that the police campaign of harassment against liberal
newspapers will end. [He should
declare:] “I will no longer restrict freedom of association to
the bare minimum, and I will no longer negate the rights of municipal
self-government by refusing to confirm in office the mayors elected
in the cities.” He should
assure us that a man’s home will be his castle, that wastebaskets
will no longer be searched in the hope of piecing together fragments
of paper that might reveal some minor crime. If that happens, if all the cabinet ministers
come here and honestly declare, Yes, genuine peace between the government
and the people is more important to the Crown that one army corps more
or less---then we can forgive and forget all that has happened. Until then, gentlemen, please don’t be
too trusting!
EDUARD LASKER (House speech of September
3 for the bill):
The distinction has been made between freedom and unity. I for one say, and this is my deep conviction, that we will never
attain freedom until the unity of Germany has been achieved. (Quite right!) What is the source of all freedom?
The source of all freedom is the security of the state.
You have spoken of the happy island that has been able to regulate
its constitutional affairs so well....
England could not merely attain but also preserve its freedom
only because it has always been secure from external attack.
But in a state as exposed to foreign attack as Germany, there
is no way to avoid heavy burdens from excessive military costs, no way
to prevent the military caste from occupying the highest rank, no way
to prevent the interests of the army from superseding all others and
detracting from all civilian occupations and branches of business activity,
until that country is completely unified. Only when Germany has attained complete unity
can freedom be won, and not just for Germany but for all Europe. Until then we remain subject to the worst enemy
of freedom, an armed peace. A
secure state of peace will only come when Italy from the one side and
Germany from the other form solid states and unified nations capable
of suppressing French ambition forever.
Then all countries will find the leisure to delve into themselves
and occupy themselves with those tasks most pleasing to humanity.
DECLARATION BY 24 REPRESENTATIVES (including
Michaelis and Lasker), PUBLISHED IN OCTOBER 1866):
We held that our most urgent task in the extraordinary session
[of parliament] was to muster complete support from the country’s
representatives for the government’s foreign policy.
We regarded the vigorously conducted war and its successes as
a happy beginning for a genuine unification of the German fatherland. The expansion of Prussia and the subordination of the North under
Prussian leadership are permanently established; the separation from
the South should only be temporary and not last longer than is required
by external constraints. Dangers
can easily be discerned which threaten, now and in the future, the advance
that we desire and even the goal that we have already achieved.
In the face of them, it was the most sacred duty of the people’s
representatives to show the whole world at the first and at every following
opportunity that any government in Prussia can count on their support,
as long as it strives to promote German unity against foreign intervention
and domestic special interests, and to strengthen all of Germany. The conduct of military and foreign affairs by the leadership of
the current government has undeniably earned our trust that its striving
is directed toward these goals.
The grave conflict of recent years was incompatible with any
such demonstration [of support for the government], incompatible with
the most urgent needs of the fatherland; because of it there could be
no consensus between the government and the people’s representatives
and no active support for the government by the Landtag.
Fortunately, the deeds of the people in arms and the achievements
of government policy completely eliminated some of the causes of this
dispute, and others became less important.
The vote for indemnity was a recognition of what had happened
and prepared the way for an active role for the country’s representatives. ______________________________________
The impression soon spread on the Left that the National Liberals
had sunk into servility toward Bismarck.
This attitude is expressed in the following satirical offering
published in the socialist newspaper, the Dresdner Volksbote,
on December 15, 1872. [Source: Heiner Grote, Sozialdemokratie
und Religion. Eine Dokumentation
für die Jahre 1863 bis 1875 (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1968), p. 184.]
The National Liberal
Lord’s Prayer
Our Prince Bismarck,
Thou who art in Varzin, hallowed by Thy name.
Come Thou into our session.
Thy will be done, in the House of Representatives as in the Reichstag. Give us this day our daily lecture, and forgive
us our speeches, as we forgive those of the House of Lords. Lead us not into the temptation of legislating,
but deliver us from all real progress. For Thine is the Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory forever.
Amen.
#4.
THE OUTBREAK OF THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR, JULY 1871:
In his memoirs Bismarck offered the following explanation of
his decision to edit the Ems Dispatch in such a way as to arouse German
public opinion against France and goad Napoleon III into declaring war. [Source: Otto von Bismarck, Bismarck:
The Man and the Statesman, trans. A.J. Butler, 2 vols. (New York:
Harper, 1899), II: 57-62, 96-101.] ______________________________________
I took it as assured that war with France would necessarily have
to be waged on the road to our further national development, for our
development at home as well as the extension beyond the Main, and that
we must keep this eventuality in sight in all our domestic as well as
in our foreign relations. In some aggrandisement of Prussia in North
Germany Louis Napoleon saw not only no danger to France, but a means
against the unification and national development of Germany; he believed
that the non-Prussian portions of Germany would then feel a greater
need of French support. He cherished
reminiscenses of the confederation of the Rhine, and wished to hinder
development in the direction of a United Germany.
He believed that he could do this because he did not realize
the national drift of the time, and judged the situation in accordance
with his schoolboy reminiscences of South Germany, and from diplomatic
reports which were only based on ministerial moods and sporadic dynastic
feeling. I was convinced that a United Germany was only a question of time,
that the North German Confederation was only the first step in its solution;
but that the enmity of France and perhaps of Russia, Austria’s
need of revenge for 1866, and the King’s Prussian and dynastic
particularism must not be called too soon into the lists.
I did not doubt that a Franco-German war must take place before
the construction of a United Germany could be realised. I was at that time preoccupied with the idea of delaying the outbreak
of this war until our fighting strength should be increased....
I at no time regarded a war with France as a simple matter, considered
quite apart from the possible allies that France might find in Austria’s
thirst for revenge, or in Russia’s desire for a balance of power. My strenuous efforts to postpone the outbreak
of war until the effect of our military legislation and our military
training could be thoroughly developed in all portions of the country
which had been newly joined to Prussia, were therefore quite reasonable;
and this aim of mine was not even approximately reached in the Luxembourg
question in 1867. Each year’s postponement of the war would
add 100,000 trained soldiers to our army.
In the attitude I took up toward the King on the question of
the bill of indemnity, and in dealing with the question of the constitution
in the Prussian Diet, I felt the urgent necessity of letting other countries
see no trace of actual or prospective obstacles consequent on our internal
condition; I wished to offer them the spectacle of a united national
sentiment; and the more so inasmuch as it was impossible to judge what
allies France would have on her side in a war against us....
Not only my apprehensions, but the public opinion of Europe considered
that a league of Italy with France and Austria was not outside the bounds
of probability....
[Bismarck discusses the invitation to Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern
to become King of Spain, and his intense disappointment when King William
decided in response to French threats early in July 1870 to discourage
his cousin from accepting this offer.]
I conversed with the Minister of War, von Roon:
we had got our slap in the face from France, and had been reduced,
by our complaisance, to look like seekers of a quarrel if we entered
upon war, the only way in which we could wipe away the stain. My position was now untenable, solely because, during his course
at the baths [at Bad Ems], the King under pressure of threats, had given
audience to the French ambassador for four consecutive days, and had
exposed his royal person to insolent treatment from this foreign agent
without ministerial assistance....
Having decided to resign, in spite of the remonstrances which
Roon made against it, I invited him and Moltke to dine with me alone
on the 13th, and communicated to them at table my views....
Both were greatly depressed, and reproached me indirectly with
selfishly availing myself of my greater facility for withdrawing from
service. I maintained the position that I could not
offer up my sense of honour to politics, that both of them, being professional
soldiers and consequently without freedom of choice, need not take the
same point of view as a responsible Foreign Minister. During our conversation I was informed that a telegram from Ems...
was being deciphered. When the
copy was handed to me it showed that Abeken [a councillor in the Foreign
Office] had drawn up and signed the telegram at his Majesty's command,
and I read it out to my guests, whose dejection was so great that they
turned away from food and drink. On
a repeated examination of the document I lingered upon the authorisation
of his Majesty, which included a command, immediately to communicate
Benedetti's fresh demand and its rejection both to our ambassadors and
to the press. I put a few questions to Moltke as to the extent
of his confidence in the state of our preparations, especially as to
the time they would still require in order to meet this sudden risk
of war. He answered that if there was to be war he
expected no advantage to us by deferring its outbreak; ...he regarded
a rapid outbreak as, on the whole, more favourable to us than delay.
[Bismarck insists that France’s attitude was utterly unreasonable,
and that nationalist sentiment was surging upward in all the German
states.] All these considerations, conscious and unconscious,
strengthened my opinion that war could be avoided only at the cost of
the honour of Prussia and the national confidence in it. Under this conviction I made use of the royal
authorisation, communicated to me through Abeken, to publish the contents
of the telegram; and in the presence of my two guests I reduced the
telegram by striking out words, but without adding or altering, to the
following form:
After the news of the renunciation of the hereditary Prince of
Hohenzollern had been officially communicated to the imperial government
of France by the royal government of Spain, the French ambassador at
Ems further demanded of his Majesty the King that he would authorise
him to telegraph to Paris that his Majesty the King bound himself for
all future time never again to give his consent if the Hohenzollerns
should renew their candidature. His Majesty the King thereupon decided not
to receive the French ambassador again, and sent to tell him through
the aide-de-camp on duty that his Majesty had nothing further to communicate
to the ambassador.
The difference in the effect of the
abbreviated text to the Ems telegram as compared with that produced
by the original was not the result of stronger words but of the form,
which made this announcement appear decisive, while Abeken's version
would only have been regarded as a fragment of a negotiation still pending,
and to be continued at Berlin.
[1]
"His Majesty writes to me: 'Count Benedetti spoke to me on the promenade, in order to demand from
me, finally in a very importunate manner, that I should authorise him
to telegraph at once that I bound myself for all future time never again
to give my consent if the Hohenzollerns should renew their candidature. I refused at last somewhat sternly, as it is
neither right nor possible to undertake engagements of this kind à
tout jamais. Naturally,
I told him that I had as yet received no news, and as he was earlier
informed about Paris and Madrid than myself, he could clearly see that
my government once more had no hand in the matter.'
His Majesty has since received a letter from the Prince.
His Majesty having told Count Benedetti that he was awaiting
news from the Prince, has decided, with reference to the above demand,
upon the representation of Count Eulenburg and myself, not to receive
Count Benedetti again, but only to let him be informed through an aide-de-camp: That his Majesty had now received from the
Prince confirmation of the news which Benedetti had already received
from Paris, and had nothing further to say to the ambassador. His Majesty leaves it to your Excellency whether
Benedetti's fresh demand and its rejection should not be at once communicated
both to our ambassadors and to the press."
After I had read out the concentrated edition to my two guests,
Moltke remarked: "Now it has a different ring; it sounded
before like a parley; now it is like a flourish in answer to a challenge." I went on to explain: "If in execution of his Majesty's order
I at once communicate this text, which contains no alteration in or
addition to the telegram, not only to the newspapers, but also by telegraph
to all our embassies, it will be known in Paris before midnight, and
not only on account of its contents, but also on account of the manner
of its distribution, will have the effect of a red rag upon the Gallic
bull. Fight we must if we do not want to act the part of the vanquished
without a battle. Success, however,
essentially depends upon the impression which the origination of the
war makes upon us and others; it is important that we should be the
party attacked...”
#5.
THE ANNEXATION OF ALSACE-LORRAINE (1871):
Bismarck justified the decision to annex Alsace-Lorraine before
the new Reichstag on May 2, 1871. Note
the ingenuity with which he interprets the very fact that Alsatians
were rioting against the imposition of German rule as evidence that
they were truly German; note too Bismarck’s dim view of the Communards
of Paris, an attitude foreshadowing his later decision to demand an
Anti-Socialist Law. [Source: Lothar Gall, ed., Bismarck: Die großen Reden (Frankfurt/M: Ullstein,
1981), pp. 100-13 (trans. Bill Patch).] ______________________________________
If we transport ourselves back a year—or more exactly, ten
months—then we can say to ourselves that Germany was united in
its love of peace; there was hardly any German who did not desire peace
with France, as long as it could be maintained with honor.
Those morbid exceptions, who perhaps wanted war in the hope that
their own native country would be defeated, are not worthy of the name;
I do not count them among the Germans! Bravo! I repeat that Germans unanimously wanted
peace. But when the war was
forced on us, when we were compelled to take up arms in our defense,
they were just as unanimous in demanding, if God granted us victory,
that we should seek guarantees that would discourage repetition of a
similar war and make our defense easier should one nevertheless recur.
Everyone remembers that there has hardly been a single generation
among our ancestors for three hundred years which was not compelled
to draw the sword against France, and everyone knows that the reason
why we missed all earlier opportunities to secure better protection
to the west after previous victoroies was that we won the victory in
association with allies whose interests diverged from our own.
Everyone was therefore determined to devote themselves to securing
the future of our children if we now won a victory independently, relying
solely on our own sword and our good cause.
...I cannot more strikingly characterize the position in which
we find ourselves, in which South Germany especially finds itself, than
to relate a conversation with an intelligent South German sovereign
when Germany was pressed to take the side of the western powers in the
eastern war [i.e., the Crimean War of 1854], without it being his government’s
conviction that it had an independent interest in waging war.
I can also name him; it was the late King William of Württemberg. He said to me: “I share your view that we have no interest
in meddling in this war, that no German interest is concerned there
worth the trouble of spilling German blood.
But if we should fall out with the western powers over that,
if it should go that far, count on my vote in the Diet until the time
when war breaks out. Then the affair assumes another dimension.
As well as any other, I am determined to maintain
the obligations which I assume. But
take care not to judge men other than they are. Give us Strasbourg, and we will be united for
all eventualities, but as long as Strasbourg is a sally port for a power
which is continuously armed, I must fear that my country will be inundated
by foreign troops before the German Confederation comes to my assistance. I would not reflect an instant about eating
the hard bread of an exile in your camp, but my subjects would write
to me. They would be crushed
by contributions to obtain an alteration of my decision. I don’t know what I would do; I don’t know whether all
the people would be firm enough. But
the knot lies in Strasbourg, for as long as it is not German, it will
always be a hindrance to South German y giving itself, without reservation,
to German unity, to a German national policy....
I believe everything said in this case taken from life; I have
nothing to add to it. The wedge
which the corner of Alsace at Wissembourg shoves into Germany separates
South Germany more effectively from North Germany than the political
line of the Main, and it required a great deal of determination, of
national enthusiasm and devotion among our South German allies to disregard
this imminent danger, which would arise from a well conducted campaign
by France, not to hesitate for a moment in regarding North Germany’s
danger as its own, to strike quickly and advance in common with us. |