Bismarck and the Development of Germany: The Period of Unification, 1815-1871

By Otto Pflanze

This political history of Germany assesses Bismarck's role in the events which paved the way for the catastrophes of the twentieth century, showing how Bismarck first established the association between German nationalism, Prussian militarism, and Hohenzollern authoritarianism. The author is completing a second volume, "The Period of Consolidation, 1871-1890." Volume I has been awarded the McKnight Foundation Humanities Award.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Release date: Nov 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9780691221571

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

THE BISMARCK PROBLEM

ITH the exception of Napoleon, no other figure in modern European history has attracted as much interest as Otto von Bismarck. Since the first serious studies of the man and his career appeared sixty years ago, the size of the bibliography has reached staggering proportions.¹ Still the flood of books and articles continues with no sign of abatement. Bismarck and national unification have as great a fascination for Germans as do Lincoln and the civil war for Americans.

To non-Germans as well, the personality and achievement of the Junker genius have a magnetic attraction. His political career of almost half a century was one of the longest in the annals of statecraft. For nearly three decades of that time he was the dominant figure in German and European politics. Unexplored nooks and crannies, even whole rooms, are still being discovered in the edifice of his career. The wide range of his interests, the complexity of his mind, and his almost incredible skill at political invention and maneuver have made the subject difficult to exhaust.

By far the most important reason for continued interest, however, is the need to reassess the German past in view of the terrible tragedy of the twentieth century. In a book of essays dedicated to this theme Hans Kohn remarked that the process of rethinking German history centers rightly around the appreciation of Bismarck’s work. Reviewing the German catastrophe, Friedrich Meinecke, the dean of German historians, wrote sadly in 1945, The staggering course of the first, and still more the second world war no longer permits the question to be ignored whether the seeds of later evil were not already present in the Bismarckian Reich.²

During the last decade and a half, leading German historians have given their answers to the question Meinecke raised. No other issue has aroused such intense, even impassioned, interest among scholars in postwar Germany. But the replies have been mostly negative. In 1946 S. A. Kaehler set the tone by denouncing as legend, prejudice, propaganda the view that any connection existed between Frederick the Great, Bismarck, and Hitler. Without taking the opposite viewpoint, Franz Schnabel questioned the wisdom of the solution which Bismarck provided for the problem of German unity. A more lasting solution, he argued, would have been the federated central Europe advocated at the time by Constantin Frantz. By forcing Austria out of Germany in 1866, Bismarck prepared the way for the disintegration of the Hapsburg monarchy and hence the ultimate isolation and decline of Germany itself. Gerhard Ritter and Wilhelm Schüssler were quick to rebut this surprising thesis. The pressure of German nationalism, they assert, was irresistible; only the little-German Reich of 1871 was acceptable to the German people. In reply the Austrian historian, Heinrich Ritter von Srbik reiterated once more his lifelong defense of the concept of a united central Europe.³

Ritter, Schüssler, and Schnabel agree, nevertheless, that the great chancellor was the last master of the art of eighteenth-century cabinet diplomacy in an age increasingly dominated by national passions and crusading ideologies. According to Ritter, Bismarck had nothing to do with the nationalism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and its blind fanaticism. One cannot possibly stress that fact sharply enough. Schnabel is equally emphatic, maintaining that the Junker had nothing in common with the dictators of the nationalistic period and was completely devoid of that moderne Vaterländerei typical of the new national patriotism. Bismarck was not at all a man of national or popular ideas, writes Schüssler, but "a man of state and the reason of state . . . the man of pure Staatsräson."⁴

This is also the position of Hans Rothfels, who has long denied that the Bismarckian Reich could validly be called a national state. He believes this description applicable only to the western, not the eastern frontier, which included many Poles and excluded millions of Germans. He quotes with approval the view of a British historian, Sir Lewis Namier, that German aggressive nationalism derives from the much belauded Frankfurt parliament rather than from Bismarck and ‘Prussianism.’ While the great chancellor has been most frequently criticized for having created the German state in defiance of the dominant ideas of his age, this was in Rothfels’ opinion his greatest virtue. He is significant for our times precisely because he was alien to his own century and sought to disarm and confine those revolutionary forces which have since threatened our destruction. Walter Bussmann, author of the most recent general survey of the Bismarckian period, sees in Rothfels’ writings the most penetrating analysis of the subject.⁵

On the other hand, such lifelong students of Bismarck’s career as the late A. 0. Meyer and Otto Becker persisted in identifying him as a German patriot whose primary aim from the outset was national unification. To them the national character of the second Reich was self-evident. In this they followed the views of two earlier historians, Heinrich Fried jung and Erich Brandenburg, both of whom saw evidences of national purpose very early in his career. Another older school believed that he began as a Prussian patriot and made the transition to German nationalism fairly late. Richard Fester chose the year 1865, Erich Marcks 1866, Erich Eyck 1867. In the most recent biography Wilhelm Mommsen argues that Bismarck had no other purpose than establishment of Prussian hegemony over northern Germany and that the little-German Reich was the consequence of French imperialism. Its founder was an adherent of the national state only in a very limited sense.⁶

Only upon one point is there near unanimity : German scholars reject the interpretations of Erich Eyck and A. O. Meyer, authors of the most detailed scholarly biographies. Completed during the second world war, the two works are widely divergent in viewpoint. An émigré from the Hitler regime, Eyck wrote from the outlook of the nineteenth-century liberal opposition. While marvelling at Bismarck’s genius, Eyck criticized his actions at almost every turn of his career. Meyer’s view, on the other hand, is that of a conservative German nationalist, to whom Bismarck was the apex of German political achievement. There is a significant difference in the tone and temper of the German reaction to these works. While Eyck’s interpretation has aroused a sharp, even irritated, resporse, the old-fashioned, outmoded view of Meyer has generally been treated with tolerance.⁷

Most German scholars have been equally adamant in repudiating the view of Bismarck commonly held abroad : that of the iron chancellor or man of blood and iron. Schüssler, Otto Vossler, Leonhard von Muralt, and Gustav A. Rein have emphatically stressed that Bismarck, in stark contrast to Hitler, was moved by a sense of ethical responsibility, grounded in an intense religious faith and earnest submission to a personal, all-powerful God. This inner piety preserved him from the demonism of power.⁸ In an important work Ritter has striven to cleanse his reputation from the taint of militarism. Contrary to Moltke, the chancellor was opposed to preventive war. During the conflicts of 1864, 1866, and 1870, he insisted upon the supremacy of diplomatic over military strategy. His greatest service, Schüssler declared, was the erection of firm barriers against demands of the military for supremacy over political policy in wartime.⁹

With but few exceptions, therefore, Germany’s leading scholars have rejected the view that there was any direct relationship between the Bismarckian and Hitlerian Reichs.¹⁰ Later Meinecke himself appeared to retreat from his position of 1945. The Bismarckian Machtstaat, he concluded, was a geopolitical necessity for Germany. Ritter has detected an upsurge of Bismarck veneration; Bernhard Knauss writes of a certain tendency to re-popularize Bismarck by picturing him as the George Washington of German history; and Wilhelm Mommsen rejoices that a much more positive judgment of Bismarck has developed in recent years, while cautioning against too much of a good thing.¹¹ Comfort is found in the fact that the first German chancellor was not highly regarded by Nazi ideologists. Conservative historians have been inclined to trace the origins of the Nazi revolution to the breakdown of the old aristocratic society and bureaucratic state under the impact of liberal and democratic ideas and the emergence of the masses as a factor in politics. There is also a tendency to see these ideas and movements as importations from abroad, foreign influences which had a cancerous effect upon the sound organism of German society. It is assumed that the German Reich created by Bismarck and overturned in the revolution of 1918 was essentially a healthy institution whose destruction eliminated the most effective obstacle to the rise of totalitarianism.¹²

One of the purposes of this book is to question this assumption on grounds more valid than those previously advanced by critics of Bismarck. The history of Scandinavia, western Europe, and the Anglo-Saxon world shows that there is no necessary causal relationship between popular sovereignty and the rise of totalitarianism. It cannot be denied that Germany has been influenced for the worse by some unfortunate trends common to the whole of European civilization. But it is also true that during the last two centuries a cultural cleavage opened along the Rhine. In the development of her political attitudes and institutions Germany followed a course largely independent of the west.

The unique development of Germany began, of course, long before Bismarck. Its origin lay in the character of the Prussian political and military system, the late appearance of the German middle class, the subjection of church to state in the Lutheran faith, the link between authority and freedom in German political thought, the victory of historical over natural law, the idealization of the state and its power, and the German view of nationality as a matter of common culture rather than common citizenship.¹³

Because of Bismarck the gap widened still more. He compounded a new synthesis in German political attitudes between German nationalism, Prussian militarism, and Hohenzollern authoritarianism. Through the moral power of the German national idea he constructed a new and firmer basis for traditional autocratic and militaristic institutions in the emergent age of mass democracy. He legitimized and preserved for Germany the political system of mixed powers (that is, an authoritarian executive combined with a popular legislature) which elsewhere in western Europe was but a transitional stage in the growth of a liberal-democratic order. His career heightened the already dangerous adulation of power in Germany and accentuated the popular belief that what matters in the employment of power is success. He perpetuated in a far different age the Frederician tradition of the genius-statesman, unlimited in the last analysis by any constitutional restrictions and responsible alone to his own inner conscience for his conduct of public affairs.

Undoubtedly there was much in Bismarck’s statesmanship reminiscent of the political style of the eighteenth century. The diplomatists of the age of reason did not seek to remake the world in the image of their own religious or political faiths, but to strengthen the power and security of their states within the framework of the European equilibrium. The latter was regarded as the precondition of political stability and the protective mechanism which preserved the independence of the powers. Bismarck’s motives were those of raison d’état and arrondissement typical of eighteenth-century statecraft. His aim was not to unify the German cultural nation, but to expand the Prussian state within the limits of the European balance of power. Like Frederick the Great, he insisted upon the supremacy of political over military strategy. With Clausewitz he believed that war is properly but a continuation of diplomacy by other means.

The cabinet diplomacy of the eighteenth century was possible, however, only because of the relative homogeneity of social and political conditions in that age. Europe possessed a common political structure, a common political outlook, and a common ruling class. Monarchical government, the concept of divine right, and aristocratic rule were universal. While the status of the nobility depended upon the survival of the monarchical order, no international crusade was necessary to rescue that vested interest. England was the only exception to the general consensus, but the English revolution was not accompanied by a violent social upheaval, and furthermore it was not deliberately exported.

The French revolution and Napoleonic conquests disrupted this harmony and introduced a new era of crusading idealism in European politics. But the old order, while severely damaged, was by no means destroyed, and its restoration in the settlement of 1815 created the possibility of a return to classical diplomacy. For a time conservative doctrine and the fear of revolution delayed its reappearance. During the fifties, however, the drift toward realism in the European psyche brought about a revival of the eighteenth-century diplomatic style. In many respects Bismarck, Buol, and Gorchakov were closer to Kaunitz, Choiseul, and Frederick the Great than to Metternich, Alexander I, and Frederick William IV.

Nevertheless, it is utterly incorrect to depict Bismarck as a man out of his age, belonging more to the past than the future. The practice of cabinet diplomacy in the nineteenth century became increasingly difficult because of the erosion of its social and political foundation. Bismarck was one of the first to grasp that the emerging age of popular movements required a new kind of politics. No longer could the masses be ignored in the conduct of either domestic or foreign affairs. Whatever the ends of the statesman, war and foreign conquest required the moral approbation of a righteous cause. At home the doctrines of legitimacy and divine right no longer sufficed to justify authoritarian rule. If monarchical institutions were to endure in an age of dynamic economic and social change, they had to be rooted in the more fertile soil of national sentiment.

Bismarck was the political surgeon who amputated nationalism from liberalism and conservatism from legitimism. Following Louis Napoleon, he comprehended that nationalism and liberalism were not necessarily compatible and that the former might actually be converted into an anti-liberal force. It was only through Bismarck, Bertrand Russell shrewdly observed, that German patriotism became respectable and conservative, with the result that many men who had been liberal because they were patriots became conservative for the same reason. In the process German nationalism lost what remained of that humanitarian and cosmopolitan outlook which was its endowment from Herder and the ages of reason and romanticism.¹⁴ His exploitation of nationalism for imperialistic and authoritarian purposes is what makes Bismarck, like Napoleon III, a transitional figure between the politics of the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, between the age of aristocratic absolutism and that of authoritarian nationalism.

Moral forces provided Bismarck with means rather than ends, with objects to be manipulated rather than with guides for political action. What moved him was not the ideal of German national unity, but the quest for greater internal stability for the Hohenzollern monarchy and greater external power for Prussia in Europe. Had Austria been willing to continue the dual domination of Germany on a basis more favorable to Prussia, or had the constellation of European politics been less favorable for Prussian expansion, he would have followed a conservative course in foreign policy, co-operating with Austria and Russia against popular forces in Germany and Europe. Within Prussia he would have endeavored to outflank the liberal opposition by appealing to the artisan and proletarian classes through a policy of state socialism.

Nevertheless, it is doubtful that Bismarck would have been permanently satisfied to follow the conservative course. The radical, even revolutionary, one of alliance with German nationalism was more in keeping with his volcanic temperament and, furthermore, it promised the greater gains. At one stroke it provided a common solution to the double crisis he faced at home and abroad. It gave him the moral means with which to justify simultaneously the expansion of Prussia and the retention of Hohenzollern authority. Finally it enabled him to travel with the stream of time by steering into a current of great potential strength.

In stealing the national plank from the liberal platform Bismarck had a number of precedents to follow. Since 1806 the Prussian government had either preempted or appropriated much of the liberal program. The Stein-Hardenberg reforms, the Zollverein, the Prussian constitution of 1848-1850, and the free-trade treaty of 1862 pointed the way for his action. But the theft of the cause of national unity was the most persuasive act of all in reconciling the German liberals to authoritarian rule. It demonstrated with finality the truth of Bismarck’s statement to Napoleon that only the kings make revolution in Prussia.¹⁵

He owed his success in raiding the liberal program in large part to the absence of any genuine popular movement in Germany. Despite the remarkable changes in the economic and social structure of Germany during the late fifties, there was as little mass support for the liberal cause in the constitutional conflict of 1862-1866 as there had been during the later stages of the revolution in 1848. This weakness arose from the inadequate penetration of liberal ideals into the lower strata of German society, but also from the deliberate unwillingness of the liberals to look after the material needs of the working class. The alliance of the aristocratic and middle classes consummated by Bismarck in 1866 left the working class no other recourse than to find in proletarian socialism its spiritual home.

As an autonomous movement German nationalism was also patently lacking in vitality before 1870. For six decades German nationalists had been confronted with the challenging task of uniting a badly divided people, but only once, in 1848, did the ideal of national unity generate sufficient popular support for the attempt. Within weeks, however, the patriotic fervor evaporated. By May 1849 only a few were still willing to sacrifice for the cause. At other times only the external stimulus of a crisis with France (1813-1815, 1840, 1859, 1867, and 1870-1871) succeeded in bringing any life to the national movement. Only on two of these occasions (1813-1815 and 1870-1871) was anything accomplished, and this was due entirely to the leadership provided by the Prussian state, whose ministers exploited German nationalism for their own political ends. The achievements of 1864 and 1866 were attained by the Prussian state over the bitter opposition of the national movement. In 1864 the efforts of the Nationalverein through popular agitation to push through the claims of the Prince of Augustenburg to Schleswig-Holstein ended in complete failure, and in 1866 the nationalists could not prevent civil war over issues believed in the beginning to be alien to the national cause.

The common view of German nationalism as an irresistible current sweeping down the decades to fulfillment in 1870 is a fiction of nationalistic historians, derived from the hopes and aspirations of those kleindeutsch leaders, like Sybel and Treitschke, who were their intellectual forebears. Only under the stimulation provided by Bismarck for his own political ends did German nationalism begin to move the masses. It is a fact of fateful significance that German national sentiment could gain sufficient momentum to overcome the particularistic loyalties of the German people only in combination with Prussian militarism and Hohenzollern authoritarianism.

The lethargy of German nationalism before 1870 does indeed leave open to doubt the assumption that the Bismarckian Reich was the only possible solution to the German question. At Königgrätz, however, the concept of a unified national state, represented by Prussia, was completely victorious over the older concept of universal empire, represented by the Hapsburg monarchy. Under the Holy Roman Empire and the German Confederation the German people possessed no precise frontier delimiting the area of their political and cultural influence. For centuries their fate had been joined with that of the peoples of central Europe. By restricting their horizon, the decision of 1866 greatly accelerated the growth of that inverted national sentiment which was to devastate Europe in the twentieth century. The achievement of national self-determination by Italy and Germany accentuated the ambitions of the subject peoples of the Hapsburg monarchy to divest themselves of German leadership and assert their cultural and political autonomy. The ultimate consequence was the disintegration of central Europe into its many national components.¹⁶

Throughout Europe the constitutional system of mixed powers underwent changes in the nineteenth century which call into question its inherent stability as a governmental form. Either the power t the legislature penetrated the executive creating parliamentary government, or the reverse occurred with a consequent devitalization of parliamentary life. England, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and the Scandinavian countries experienced the former process. In Prussia the possibility of such a development arose during the constitutional conflict of the sixties. Owing to Bismarck’s genius the chance was lost and the contrary current set in. Through the victories of 1866 and 1870 the essential features of the Prussian system, with some diminution of parliamentary authority, were extended over the rest of Germany. Another important consequence was the disorganization of the major political parties. Bismarck’s manipulations fragmentized the party structure and reduced the possibility of stable majorities. His stark realism weakened the attraction of political ideals and exalted in German political attitudes the prestige of power at the cost of principle.

His undeniable sense of ethical responsibility is inadequate as a justification for Bismarck’s arbitrary actions. The possession of an active conscience, grounded in religious faith, is never a sufficient substitute for legal and institutional checks on the use of power. Although he deplored absolutism, Germany’s first chancellor demonstrated by his willingness to break the constitution that he recognized in the final analysis no higher authority than the expediency of power. The priority he gave to might over right in both domestic and foreign affairs established an unfortunate precedent in German history upon which men of other aims and other conscience were eventually to capitalize. It was the precedent of the man of titanic will, to whom success is the major criterion, who appears in a time of chaos and weakness to lead his people over seemingly insuperable obstacles to the promised land of internal stability and external power.

Bismarck himself was deeply skeptical of the capacity of individuals to shape history. But his own career shows that his pessimism was unjustified. To be sure, he did not create the forces with which he dealt. By manipulating, however, he altered them. The combinations he achieved became a historical influence of the first magnitude. Bismarck belongs to that category of men whom Hegel called world-historical individuals because through them the world is changed.

¹ Hajo Holborn, The Political Collapse of Europe (New York, 1951), p. 200. The best general survey of the literature is Walter Bussmann, Das Zeitalter Bismarcks in Leo Just, ed., Handbuch der deutschen Geschichte, III/3 (Constance, 1955).

² Hans Kohn, ed., German History: Some New German Views (London, 1954), p. 30; Friedrich Meinecke, Die Deutsche Katastrophe (Wiesbaden, 1946), p. 26. For reviews of the Bismarck controversy see Kohn, op.cit., pp. 11-43, and Andreas Dorpalen, The German Historians and Bismarck, Review of Politics,

XV

(1953), 53-67.

³ S. A. Kaehler, Vorurteile und Tatsachen (Hameln, 1949), pp. 27-35; Franz Schnabel, Bismarck und die Nationen, La Nouvelle Clio,

I-II

(1949-1950), 87-102, also in Europa und der Nationalismus, Bericht über das III. internationale Historiker-Treffen in Speyer—17. bis 20. Oktober 1949 (Baden-Baden, 1950), pp. 91-108; Gerhard Ritter, Grossdeutsch und Kleindeutsch im 19. Jahrhundert, in Walther Hubatsch, ed., Schicksalswege deutscher Vergangenheit, Festschrift für Siegfried A. Kaehler (Düsseldorf, 1950), pp. 177-201, and Das Bismarckproblem, Merkur,

IV

/1 (1950), 657-676; Wilhelm Schüssler, Noch einmal: Bismarck und die Nationen, La Nouvelle Clio,

I-II

(1949-1950), 432-455, and Um das Geschichtsbild (Gladbeck, 1953), pp. 102-122; Heinrich Ritter von Srbik, Die Bismarck-Kontroverse, Wort und Wahrheit,

V

/2 (1950), 918-931.

⁴ Gerhard Ritter, Europa und die deutsche Frage (Munich, 1948), pp. 69-108, Bismarckproblem, p. 673, Staatskunst und Kriegshandwerk, Das Problem des Militarismus in Deutschland (Munich, 1954),

I

, 302-329; Franz Schnabel, Bismarck und die Klassische Diplomatie, Aussenpolitik,

III

(1952), 635-642, and Das Problem Bismarck, Hochland,

XLII

(1949), 8-9; Schüssler, Geschichtsbild, pp. 120-121.

⁵ Hans Rothfels, Bismarck und der Osten (Leipzig, 1934), Bismarck und die Nationalitätenfragen des Ostens, Ostraum, Preussentum und Reichsgedanke in Königsberger Historische Forschungen,

VII

(Leipzig, 1935), Bismarck und das neunzehnte Jahrhundert, in Hubatsch, ed., S chicks als we ge, pp. 233-248, Bismarck und der Staat (Stuttgart, 1954), pp. xvii-xlviii, Zeitgeschichtliche Betrachtungen zum Problem der Realpolitik, in Richard Dietrich und Gerhard Oestreich, eds., Forschüngen zu Staat und Verfassung : Festgabe für Fritz Hartung (Berlin, 1958), pp. 526-529, Problems of a Bismarck Biography, Review of Politics,

IX

(1947), 362-380; Lewis Namier, 1848: The Revolution of the Intellectuals, in Proceedings of the British Academy,

XXX

(1944); Bussmann, Zeitalter Bismarcks, p. 247.

⁶ Arnold Oskar Meyer, Bismarck: Der Mensch und der Staatsmann (Stuttgart, 1949); Otto Becker, Bismarcks Ringen um Deutschlands Gestaltung (Heidelberg, 1958); Heinrich Friedjung, Der Kampf um die Vorherrschaft in Deutschland, 1859 bis 1866 (10th ed., Stuttgart, 1916),

I

, 141; Erich Brandenburg, Die Reichsgründung (2nd ed., Leipzig, 1922),

II

, 30-35, 78-79; Richard Fester, Biarritz, eine Bismarck-Studie, Deutsche Rundschau, Vol. 113 (1902), p. 236; Erich Marcks, Der Aufstieg des Reiches (Stuttgart, 1936),

II

, 274-275; Erich Eyck, Bismarck, Leben und Werk (Zurich, 1941-1944),

II

, 367; Wilhelm Mommsen, Bismarck, Ein politisches Lebensbild (Munich, 1959), pp. 167-168.

⁷ Rothfels, Problems, pp. 362-380; Schüssler, Geschichtsbild, pp. 101-102, 142-143; Schnabel, Problem, p. 406; Ritter, Bismarck-problem, pp. 659 ff.; Emil Franzel, Das Bismarck Bild in unserer Zeit, Neues Abendland,

V

(1950), 223-230; Wilhelm Mommsen, Der Kampf um das Bismarck-Bild, Universitas,

V

/1 (1950), 273-280; Leonhard von Muralt, Bismarcks Verantwortlichkeit (Göttingen, 1955), 218-220; Maximilian von Hagen, Das Bismarckbild der Gegenwart, Zeitschrift für Politik,

VI

(1959), 79-83; Joachim H. Knoll, Werk und Methode des Historikers Erich Eyck, Neue deutsche Hefte, Part 64 (1959), pp. 729-736.

⁸ Schüsslcr, Geschichtsbild, p. 139; Otto Vossler, Bismarcks Ethos," Historische Zeitschrift, Vol. 171 (1951), pp. 263-292; Muralt, Verantwortlichkeit, pp. 65-140; Gustav Adolf Rein, Die Revolution in der Politik Bismarcks (Göttingen, 1957), pp. 307-354. In 1943, however, Rein wrote of Hitler as the rescuer and benefactor of Europe. Europa und das Reich (Essen, 1943), p. 87.

⁹ Ritter, Staatskunst,

I

, 238-329; Schüssler, Geschichtsbild, p. 80; also Muralt, Verantwortlichkeit, p. 34.

¹⁰ Notable exceptions are the articles by Karl Buchheim, Alfred von Martin, Johann Albrecht von Rantzau, and Walter Hofer translated in Kohn, New German Views, pp. 44-64, 94-107, 157-174, 187-205, Werner Richter, Das Bild Bismarcks, Neue Rundschau, Vol. 63 (1952), pp. 43-63, and the brilliant but neglected article of Herbert Michaelis, Königgrätz, Eine geschichtliche Wende, Die Welt als Geschichte,

XII

(1952), 177-202. See also the remarkable work of Heinrich Heffter, Die deutsche Selbstverwaltung im 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 1950), whose scope is considerably greater than its title. The criticism of Robert Saitschick, a Swiss literator, is one-sided and misses the mark, Bismarck und das Schicksal des deutschen Volkes, Zur Psychologie und Geschichte der deutschen Frage (Basel, 1949). In a series of courageous articles Ludwig Dehio, editor of the Historische Zeitschrift, censured government policy and public temperament in the period of William II, but only by implication did his criticism extend to Bismarck and his work. Deutschland und die Weltpolitik im 20. Jahrhundert (Munich, 1955), translated as Germany and World Politics in the Twentieth Century (New York, 1959).

¹¹ Friedrich Meinecke, Irrwege in unserer Geschichte? Der Monat,

II

(1949-1950), 3-6, and the replies of Hajo Holborn and Geoffrey Barraclough, pp. 531-538, the former translated in Kohn, New German Views, pp. 206-212; Ritter, Bismarckproblem, p. 658; Bernhard Knauss, Neue Beiträge zum Bismarck-bild, Politische Studien,

X

(1959), 266-267; Wilhelm Mommsen, Der Kampf um das Bismarck Bild, Neue Politische Literatur,

IV

(1959), 210. Typical of the trend toward rehabilitation are the popular biography of Ludwig Reimers, Bismarck (two vols., Munich, 1956-1957), the diplomatic textbook of Friedrich Haselmayr, Diplomatische Geschichte des zweiten Reichs von 1871-1918 (3 vols., Munich, 1955-1957), the dramatized story of the dismissal by Richard Sexau, Kaiser oder Kanzler (5th ed., Berlin, 194?), and the similar, though not uncritical, work of Rudolf Baumgardt, Bismarck: Licht und Schatten eines Genies (Munich, 1951).

¹² Rothfels, Bismarck und das neunzehnte Jahrhundert, pp. 236 ff.; Ritter, Deutsche Frage, pp. 41 ff. This is also the general tendency of Muralt, Verantwortlichkeit (pp. 187-217) and Rein, Revolution in der Politik Bismarcks.

¹³ See Ernst Troeltsch, The Ideas of Natural Law and Humanity in World Politics, in Otto Gierke, Natural Law and the Theory of Society, 1500-1800 (Cambridge, 1934),

I

, 201-222; Fritz Fischer, Der deutsche Protestantismus und die Politik im 19. Jahrhundert, Historische Zeitschrift, Vol. 171 (1951), pp. 473-518; Hajo Holborn, Der deutsche Idealismus in sozialgeschichtlicher Beleuchtung, Historische Zeitschrift, Vol. 174 (1952), pp. 359-384; Leonard Krieger, The German Idea of Freedom (Boston, 1957); Jacques Droz, Concept français et concept allemand de l’idée de nationalité, in Europa und der Nationalismus, pp. 111-133; Hans Rothfels, Grundsätzliches zum Problem der Nationalität, Historische Zeitschrift, Vol. 174 (1952), pp. 339-358.

¹⁴ Bertrand Russell, Freedom versus Organization, 1814-1914 (New York, 1934), pp. 362, 368; Michaelis, Königgrätz, pp. 190 ff.

¹⁵ GW,

VIII

, 459.

¹⁶ Michaelis, Königgrätz, pp. 179-185.

BOOK ONE

THE YEARS OF PREPARATION 1815-1858

One cannot possibly make history, although one can always learn from it how one should lead the political life of a great people in accordance with their development and their historical destiny—

BISMARCK

in 1892

CHAPTER ONE

THE STREAM OF TIME

HE stream of time flows inexorably along. By plunging my hand into it, I am merely doing my duty. I do not expect thereby to change its course." This was the thought with which Bismarck began his career in the Prussian foreign service in 1851.¹ Four decades later, his view was still the same. To his many visitors in Friedrichsruh he was fond of saying: Man can neither create nor direct the stream of time. He can only travel upon it and steer with more or less skill and experience; he can suffer shipwreck and go aground and also arrive in safe harbors.² His political career was one of the most effective of all time. Yet he felt to the end comparatively helpless before the push of historical forces. Only by examining the character of those forces can one understand the course he steered and the destinations for which he aimed. What was the stream of time upon which Bismarck set sail?

In the early nineteenth century the currents of historical evolution in Europe were many and swift. The great cultural synthesis of the enlightenment was in rapid dissolution. Under the influence of economic change the traditional social order began to be replaced by new and antagonistic social classes. The clarity and unity of rationalist thought gave way to the murky depths and swirling eddies of romanticism. New centers of political and intellectual orientation appeared in liberalism, conservatism, nationalism, and, ultimately, socialism. Everywhere men grappled desperately for new principles in which to believe and new forms of organization with which to contain the growing complexities of modern life.

Like the Atlantic nations, Germany was affected by the movement of these many forces. But here they appeared in a different order and strength, and tended to flow in different channels. Through Bismarck, furthermore, they were to be molded and transformed, their relationships split apart and recombined. The power with which he accomplished this was that of the Prussian state.

1.

THE PRUSSIAN STATE

Prussia was largely the creation of a series of long-lived, energetic, and talented rulers. The character of both the state and its people was determined by the effort to create under difficult circumstances a power capable of asserting itself in European politics. The land was poor, sparse in resources and population, and without easily defensible frontiers. Security and growth alike required a standing army large in proportion to the population. Once created, this force was also useful for the suppression of feudal liberty within the state. During the same half century which saw the triumph of absolutism in France and its defeat in England, Elector Frederick William I suppressed the feudal estates in all his possessions. Whatever possibility there might have been for their development into modern representative institutions vanished.³

The growth of the army led inevitably to the creation of a state bureaucracy. Beginning with the conscription of soldiers and the collection of taxes, the agents of the monarchy assumed the function of building up the general economy. In a country possessing little commerce and urban life the state was compelled, if the financial burden of the army was to be borne, to play a positive role in raising the productive capacity and living standard of the population. During the century after 1640 the power and influence of the bureaucracy penetrated every aspect of Prussian society.

The character of this bureaucracy was permanently influenced by the nature of its origin. It was a rigorously trained and disciplined instrument for the transmission of royal authority. Until the end of the reign of Frederick the Great the king was the sole executive, acting through state secretaries whose function was not to formulate policy but to execute it. The system discouraged individual initiative and rewarded strict conformity. As early as the eighteenth century, university training and state examinations were required of civil servants; advancement came not through patronage, but through service. Dishonesty, disobedience, and independent action were strictly punished. The employment of retired generals and disabled or over-aged soldiers infused habits of military discipline.⁴

The machine-like character of the Prussian army and civil service had a lasting and unfortunate effect upon the mentality of the people. In an age of mercenary forces the Prussian army was much more closely identified with the population than in other countries. Although many foreigners served in all ranks, the officer corps was drawn largely from the Prussian nobility and the foot-soldiers from the native peasantry. Hence the spirit of cadaver obedience (Kadavergehorsam) drilled into the army carried over into the civilian population. The bureaucracy had a similar influence. The ex-soldiers in the lowest ranks, most frequently in contact with the public, added that harshness of tone and authoritarian manner thereafter typical of officialdom in Prussia and ultimately in Germany. The influence of army and bureaucracy upon the popular mind was all the greater because they lacked competition. There were no other organizations of comparable size in Prussian society. The day of big business lay in the future. Far from being a rival, the Lutheran church was actually part of the state administration.

The doctrines of Luther greatly increased the power of the authoritarian state in Germany. In his view the state was ordained by God to maintain order in an evil world, to protect the Christian few from the sinful majority. Luther was highly conscious of the corrupting nature of power and considered the state a worldly institution. But he denied the right of popular resistance against a tyrannical, even pagan, ruler. By placing its administration under the state, he made the church a vital prop of princely authority. By assigning to the state the functions of education and social welfare, he limited the role of the church to the propagation of faith.⁵

After Frederick the Great monarchical absolutism evolved into bureaucratic absolutism. None of his successors was able to monopolize the executive function. While the final power remained with the king, the actual administration of government gravitated into the hands of ministers. In military matters a similar migration of function was evident. During peacetime routine military administration came to be handled by officers immediate to the king. Even in wartime Frederick’s successors assumed only nominal command of the army.⁶

With the growth of an administrative apparatus the state came to be regarded as something apart from the person of the monarch. Frederick the Great contributed to this development with his famous dictum, I am the first servant of the state. By refusing to interfere in the judicial process in matters of private law he also helped create an independent judiciary. Thus he founded the important tradition that, if absolute, the Prussian government ought not to be arbitrary. Those who wield power must themselves be subject to the laws of the state and the natural norms of justice. This was the beginning of the German concept of the Rechtsstaat, the state governed by the rule of law.⁷

Socially the Prussian system was an alliance between the monarchy and Junker aristocracy. While subjecting them to the state, the Great Elector made important concessions to the nobles. In Brandenburg and Prussia they were permitted to carve out latifundia through the enserfdom of the peasants. They were largely exempt from taxation, and commoners were forbidden to purchase noble estates. The alliance was also evident in local government. Rural Prussia was governed by royal agents (Landräte) nominated by the county nobility, though responsible only to Berlin. On the latifundia Junker landlords retained the feudal right to govern peasants and burghers. They lived like kings in miniature, exploiting their powers of local government for their own economic advantage.⁸

More important still, the Junkers were the reservoir from which the Hohenzollern staffed the positions of command in both army and bureaucracy. Feudal vassalage was converted into the obligation and privilege of serving in the officer corps of the new army. Although commoners were not totally excluded, their number was held to about twelve percent of the whole, and they were restricted to the less desirable branches. In the civil service the picture was similar. Under Frederick the Great the aristocrats were given a practical monopoly of the bureaucratic hierarchy. Without luck and exceptional talent burghers had little chance of advancement to the highest posts.⁹

The Prussian system, it is argued, did not differ essentially from that of the rest of Europe in the eighteenth century.¹⁰ If not in kind, it did differ in quality, which is the significant point. Enlightened despotism was a farce in Russia, a failure in Austria, and untried in France. In the Prussia of Frederick the Great, however, it was a brilliant success. No other country possessed the same requisite combination of a genius-ruler, malleable population, and cooperative nobility. In France the nobles had been stripped of all but wealth and social prestige. But in Prussia they retained their traditional military and political functions as well. On every level they were integrated into the state apparatus, adding to rather than detracting from its total strength.

In foreign policy, it is also maintained, Prussia did not vary from the standard pattern. It was an age of dynastic wars in which rulers were accustomed to gamble provinces and peoples at the stroke of a pen. Undivided by ideology, they switched their alliances readily in search of political advantage. For that age, in fact, the Hohenzollern were not remarkably aggressive. Geography involved them, often involuntarily, in wars initiated by the great powers. Their territorial gains were not made by an all-conquering army, but by skillful maneuver, timely investment of force, and the ability and fortune to emerge on the winning side.

There was but one highly important exception: the surprise attack on Austria and conquest of Silesia in 1740. To retain the prize Frederick the Great was compelled to fight three hard wars, the last of which brought him to the brink of defeat. Far from convincing him of the value of aggressive war, this experience taught Frederick the value of a rational and limited foreign policy based on the actual needs of the state and the European equilibrium.¹¹ For posterity, however, the lesson was different. His genius and his success aroused the popular imagination and gave to his one great Machiavellian deed an aura of respectability which was to endure. By contrast the foreign policy of French absolutism ended in serious defeats and financial catastrophe. Through Frederick the Great the Prussian military tradition acquired an offensive edge which not even the debacle of 1806 could dull.¹² Bismarck was to be its heir.

2.

THE STATE AND FREEDOM

That the Prussian military and bureaucratic state entered the nineteenth century without an internal challenge was due to the inadequate development of the German middle class. After a promising start in the late middle ages, trade remained stagnant until the end of the eighteenth century. Previously a center of commerce in Europe, Germany gravitated to the perimeter with the opening of the Atlantic trade routes. West of the Rhine, commercial progress created a wealthy and numerous bourgeoisie eager to attack the ramparts of monarchical power and aristocratic privilege. In the theories of natural right and social contract they found moral justification for their demands. But east of the Rhine the new entrepreneurial class was small and relatively uninfluential, outweighed by the larger class of patricians inhabiting the socially moribund towns.¹³

The strength of absolutism and the weakness of the middle class had a powerful effect upon the development of the German concept of freedom. On the two sides of the Rhine the common words and phrases of liberalism had different meanings, being based on different experiences. The word Libertät made its debut in the German language as an expression of the corporate rights of the princes against the emperor rather than of the natural rights of man. The progress of the princes toward absolutism passed as but an aspect of the assertion of their aristocratic rights in the empire. In this way the German idea of freedom became associated with the absolute state. Despite the many social and political changes which subsequently occurred, this association was never really dissolved.¹⁴

The stagnant character of the German middle class also had its influence upon German intellectual life. The period 1770-1830 was, to be sure, one of tremendous intellectual activity on the part of the German bourgeoisie. It was the age of Kant, Herder, Goethe, Schiller, and Hegel. The German idealists broke away from the ideas and models of the French and German enlightenment in search of a new philosophy and new forms in which to express it. Dissatisfied with the limits of rationalism, they sought to penetrate the secrets of existence through artistic intuition and imagination as well as reason. Characteristic of the movement was an intense humanism, a vital absorption in problems of individual growth and self-development.

Nevertheless, the German intellectuals were not the spokesmen of the middle-class from which they came, nor even closely identified with its interests. As academicians, many were state officials and hence part of the bureaucratic system. Others were rentiers with the leisure for intellectual pursuits. For the most part, the German idealists were non-political. Intent on cultivation of their intellectual and spiritual faculties, they ignored the mundane matters of politics and statecraft. While they valued freedom, it was freedom of spirit they had in mind, not the social and political freedom of the citizen.¹⁵

Among Germans, therefore, the word freedom acquired a double meaning: in the realm of the intellect it meant the freedom of the human spirit and in that of politics the freedom of absolute states. The fusion of these concepts was achieved in the organic theory, the foundations of which were laid by Herder. Revolting against the atomistic view of man and society in the enlightenment, Herder pointed out the organic individuality of national cultures. Each possessed a unique character (Volksgeist) determined by the peculiarities of its historical growth.¹⁶ What could be said of national cultures, it soon was realized, could also be said of the state. As a traditional institution, constructed by successive generations of the race, it too was an organism endowed with personality. As such it also had the power and right of self-realization. In exercising this right, the state asserted its freedom.

The final consequence of this development was the idealization of the state and its power. Since the state was an organism, it was believed to possess, like human beings, a spiritual essence and moral worth. Hence Hegel could describe it as the actually existing, realized moral life or the divine idea as it exists on earth. Christ died not only for men, declared the philosopher Adam Müller, but also for states.¹⁷ The consequence of this conception upon German political thinking was disastrous. In their search for a new religious orientation, the German idealists changed the arena of ethical and spiritual decisions in human history. The state replaced the church as the repository of moral values. Elsewhere in western Europe moral authority continued to reside in the Christian faith and the ethical norms of natural law, but in Germany it came to be identical with the state and the ruling power.¹⁸

3.

THE SPECTRUM OF GERMAN LIBERALISM

Because of the late development of her bourgeoisie, Germany did not have a liberal movement in the genuine sense of the word until the 1840’s. Not until the industrial revolution first began to affect the traditional social structure could a popular force develop to challenge, in some degree, the existing arrangements of society and government. Before that time liberalism was monopolized by intellectuals and progressive bureaucrats. The former sought to explicate it in the form of political philosophy and the latter to give it practical effect in the field of statecraft. The stamp which they gave to liberal thought through two generations of political life left an enduring mark upon the German conception of the free society.

The schizoid nature of German liberalism was apparent in the thought of its founder, Immanuel Kant. His belief in human equality, the dignity of man, the supremacy of law, and the theoretical right of popular sovereignty brought the German political tradition temporarily much closer to that of western Europe. His rigorous ethics of duty, nevertheless, had an unfortunate effect in conjunction with his insistence on the practical necessity of authoritarian government. It reinforced the Prussian tradition of obedience to authority. By seeking in politics the fusion of the two realms of flesh and spirit he brought to an end the tradition of their insularity. Within this fusion, however, he perpetuated the old dualism by coupling autocratic authority and human rights. Through his enormous influence upon educated Germans he funnelled the traditional German association of liberty and the absolute state into the nineteenth century.¹⁹

After Kant, German liberalism developed in three basic directions: bureaucratic, moderate, and radical. Of the three only the radical liberals found the link between traditional authority and human freedom incompatible and chose the latter. It will be shown, however, that radical liberalism was the weakest color in the liberal spectrum and faded into oblivion after 1848.

As a native product liberal reform first came to Germany after 1807 through the Prussian bureaucracy rather than through a popular revolutionary movement. The fundamental aim of Baron Stein and his fellow reformers was to strengthen the power of the state, not to establish the basic human rights. In order to liberate Prussia and Germany from French rule, they wished to arouse in the citizen a sense of identification with the state and hence a willingness to sacrifice for it. Despite other differences, both Stein and Hardenberg discerned no basic contradiction between monarchical authority and popular rights. They sought, in fact, an integral union of the two. They saw nothing wrong with the existing order, but wished only to modernize it.²⁰

What the reformers achieved reflected this moderate viewpoint. Although the serfs were freed and commoners given the right to acquire noble estates, the economic position of the nobility was actually strengthened and their power in local government remained unbroken. While the burghers were given a voice in urban government, no channel was constructed through which they might make their will and interests understood in the central government. Universal military service and a popular militia remained without their natural complement in universal suffrage and an elected parliament. Talent and achievement were made the basis of officer selection, but the officer corps remained in actual fact the monopoly of the aristocracy. Although promised, a constitution was never granted, and the government remained absolute both in theory and practice. The individual received greater economic and social freedom, but the masses retained the habits of obedience and subservience typical of the old regime.²¹

While the Prussian reforms demonstrated that an aristocratic bureaucracy was not impervious to liberal ideas, they also revealed that to a certain extent these ideas could be made compatible with the essential structure of the Prussian state and society. From the standpoint of what was to come, their true significance was the fact that they initiated that process of borrowing by which the old order was to empty the program and sap the appeal of the liberal cause. Although halted for a time on the political plane after 1815, this borrowing continued on the economic one. By adopting free trade for Prussia in 1818 and uniting most of Germany into a customs union (Zollverein) by 1834, the Prussian government began the absorption of economic liberalism. All of these reforms preserved the tradition of the bureaucratic state as the only source of political initiative in Prussian society. Political change, it appeared, was best achieved not against the state, but through it.²²

Moderate liberals were torn between faith and doubt in the capacity of existing monarchies to provide room for popular liberties. Hence they were in constant quest of philosophical systems and governmental structures capable of containing both extremes toward which they were attracted. The ways they chose depended upon their particular political experiences and whether the means of harmonization were found in rationalist or organic thought. Their proximity to France gave southwestern liberals greater interest in the natural-law concepts of the enlightenment. They did not, however, accept the concept of popular sovereignty from across the Rhine and found their ideal instead in the mixed constitutions of Baden, Württemberg, and Bavaria, combining an autocratic executive with a popular legislature. The classical liberals of the north, on the other hand, were nourished upon the organic theory and the validity of historical over natural law. Following Hegel, they deified the state and wanted popular representation only in corporate form.²³

Moderate liberals everywhere rejected absolutism and popular sovereignty alike and hence were confronted with the problem of how to fill the void which lay between. Their favorite solution was the concept of the Rechtsstaat which placed both monarch and subject under the rule of law. This became the most popular word in the whole lexicon of German liberalism. While those who used it meant different things by it, the term never lost its original function of reconciling authority and freedom. It defined as principle what was in reality but a shaky compromise between conflicting principles. In their timidity the moderates ignored the fact that the most fundamental issue in government is not who obeys the law, but who makes it.²⁴

Brought to life by the French revolution, German radical liberalism was after 1815 a vague and incoherent movement within the Burschenschaften, fraternal organizations founded to perpetuate the popular spirit of the war against Napoleon. The Karlsbad decrees of 1819 caused many students to turn away from politics. Under the leadership of Karl Follen a radical minority came to believe in the necessity of a democratic, unitarian republic to be achieved by revolutionary means. The radical Burschenschaftler remained, nevertheless, a small and ineffectual group, which finally dissolved after the revolution of 1830. During the next two decades the radical tradition was kept alive by the young Germans and young Hegelians. Both shared the burning desire to translate abstract ideals of human freedom into practical action. But they were composed of isolated literati and intellectuals on the fringe of German society. Many, like Heinrich Heine, Ludwig Börne, and Karl Marx, were abroad in exile. No more than the moderates did they represent a genuine popular force.²⁵

Not until the 1830’s and 1840’s was there sign of movement among the German masses. The Paris revolution of 1830 produced only a brief flurry of revolutionary activity in the smaller states. Thereafter the growth of capitalism and industry began to corrode the traditional economic and social structure. Stripped of the protection of the guild system, the artisan class was unable to meet the merciless competition of the new factories and machines. Freed from the protection, as well as the bonds, of serfdom, the landless peasantry became a rural proletariat, exploited and restless. The growing class of capitalistic entrepreneurs began to feel that wealth, rather than birth, should be the qualification for entry into the ruling elite.²⁶

In the mid-1840’s came economic depression and a series of crop failures. Hunger, disease, and death stalked the land. An uprising of Silesian weavers in 1844 was followed during the next three years by riots and demonstrations throughout Germany. In the larger towns radical agitators began to feed upon the social discontent of artisans and factory workers. Organizations sprouted and spread their branches across the country. Opposition deputies from many parliaments met periodically to discuss programs and tactics.²⁷

Everywhere in Germany there was unwonted activity. But for what ends? How solid was the liberal front? Did its ideals actually have the loyalty and understanding of the rioters and demonstrators who poured into the streets? These were vital questions which only the test of revolution could answer.

4.

THE VARIETIES OF CONSERVATISM

After 1789 the European nobility, attacked by the democratic doctrine of equality, was compelled to find an ideological justification for powers and privileges which had previously been taken for granted. In Germany the defenders of the aristocratic order found a convenient starting point in Edmund Burke’s view of the social contract as a partnership which may not be dissolved at the fancy of the living generation, for it is a partnership between the living, the dead, and the unborn. Each contract of each particular state, he wrote in Reflections on the Revolution in France, is but a clause in the great primeval contract of eternal society, linking the lower with the higher natures, connecting the visible and invisible world, according to a fixed compact sanctioned by the inviolable oath which holds all physical and all moral natures, each in their appointed place. This concept harmonized very well with the organic theory, which since Herder had become one of the central doctrines of romantic thought. Out of their union came the political philosophy of romantic conservatism.²⁸

The true law of nature, the conservatives maintained, was not based upon rational norms, but upon historical development. The valid structure of German society and government was the corporate one inherited from the middle ages, not the atomized society of liberalism or the centralized government of absolutism. State and society were integrally joined in a living body whose members were estates and corporations working together for the welfare and continued vitality of the whole. In the place of equality and individual freedom the conservatives praised the feudal system with its contractual rights, services, and dependencies. Whereas the rationalists had completed the divorce of theology from political theory begun by Machiavelli, the conservatives accomplished their remarriage. The traditional institutions of society were God’s handiwork and to do them violence was blasphemy. If the state was a vital organism, then it was, like all living beings, a creation of the divinity. Far from being merely the creation of men for the negative purpose of warding off evil, the state was instituted by God for the improvement of man’s moral virtue.²⁹

Like the liberals, however, the conservatives had an ambivalent attitude toward the state. While the absolute state had absorbed their independent political rights, its monarch was still the apex of the aristocratic social pyramid and its power the chief bulwark of the nobility against the rising pressure of new social classes. Hence the romantic conservatives were faced with the problem of reconciling the feudal system they admired with the absolute state which was its natural foe.

The philosophy of Karl Ludwig von Haller provided a solution. In contrast to the Jacobins, Haller maintained that the natural and therefore God-ordained condition of man was one of inequality and dependence, the stronger over the weaker. The microcosm of society was the family. As the father rules over wife and children, the master governs his servants, the landowner his peasants, the teacher his pupils, the leader his followers, the prince his subjects. The entire social fabric was woven from such dependent relationships based upon mutual duty and service more than upon force. The prince alone was independent, subject only to God. The state he ruled was simply the highest in a pyramid of contractual relationships, which were matters of private, not public law. Haller’s denial of the existence of public law was, in effect, a rejection of the modern state itself.³⁰

The models for Haller’s system were the patrician order of his native Berne and the patriarchal governments of the smaller principalities in Germany. But his most devoted following appeared in Prussia, for whose military state he had less sympathy. Two influential noblemen, the brothers Ludwig and Leopold von Gerlach, formed the Christian-Germanic circle to study and propagate his doctrine. In his Restauration der Staatswissenschaft they found an arsenal of ideas with which to defend the aristocratic order against absolutism and bureaucratic liberalism. Ludwig objected, however, to his deistic-naturalism, maintaining that legitimate monarchs governed by the grace of God, not by the right of the stronger. As the ruling caste, the nobility were carrying out God’s will, not merely acting according to a functioning natural law. The patrimonial state was a Christian state, its constitution the ten commandments.³¹

In the Stein-Hardenberg period an internal opposition began to develop in Prussia for the first time since the seventeenth century. It was not a bourgeois-liberal, but an aristocratic-conservative opposition, dedicated to the defense of specific aristocratic rights rather than general human rights. Its power and its chance rested, moreover, upon influence rather than numbers. The Gerlachs were close friends and advisers of the crown prince. When the latter ascended the throne in 1840 as Frederick William IV, Leopold, a general, became his personal adjutant and Ludwig, a career civil servant, was appointed president of the superior court of appeals in Magdeburg. In accord with romantic doctrine Frederick William finally summoned an estates general, the ill-fated united diet of 1847. Except for their attempt to recreate the Ständestaat of the middle ages, however, the romantic conservatives tended to avoid political change. Law was regarded as the expression of God’s will. To try to make it, rather than find it, was to violate the divine order.³²

Other Prussian conservatives, however, found Haller’s rejection of the modern state unrealistic and sought a doctrine more in harmony with the facts of political life. Ultimately one appeared in the philosophy of Friedrich Julius Stahl. A converted Bavarian Jew, Stahl was given a chair in the University of Berlin by Frederick William IV. In search of a way to harmonize unity and diversity in the world and to find absolute values in the flux of history, Stahl found his solution in the concept of personality. The highest principle of the world was a personal, creative being, the single source of all diversification and change. With this concept he was able to draw a parallel between the universe and the state. The supreme being expressed the unity of the world, the state that of its subjects. In monarchical systems the prince personified the state. The personal relationship between sovereign and subject was as necessary as that between God and man. Following Luther he believed the state was instituted by God to maintain order in a sinful world. To this end power was properly concentrated in the hands of the prince and not decentralized in a feudal hierarchy. In the Lutheran tradition he allowed only the rights of protest and passive resistance against tyranny.³³

No more than the romantic conservatives was Stahl an absolutist. While rejecting the organic theory as such, he believed in the necessity of an assembly of estates. By Stände, however, he meant the existing occupational groups into which society was naturally divided, not the medieval