Dreadnought
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At six P.M. the Crown Council assembled. William, unaware of the earlier meeting, explained his proposals. Instead of repressing socialists, he wanted to win them over. He had nothing extravagant in mind; simply limitations on hours, restriction of labor by women and children, inspection of factories to check on working conditions. He complained that German employers were squeezing their workers like lemons and letting old people rot on a dunghill. Unless something was done, he said, he would become the king of the beggars. William pointed out that the day of the meeting, January 24, was the birthday of Frederick the Great; three days later, January 27, his own birthday followed. If the ministers agreed quickly, the Kaiser could issue a dramatic birthday proclamation which would bring glory to the crown. Bismarck listened and later condemned “the practical aimlessness of the scheme56 and its pretentious and exalted tone.” In Council, he warned that “the increased expectations57 and the insatiable covetousness of the Socialist classes would destroy the kingdom.... His Majesty and the Reichstag were speaking of the protection of labor, but as a matter of fact it was a question of the compulsion of labor, the compulsion to work less.” The ministers spoke one by one. All, as they had promised the Chancellor they would do, said that the Kaiser’s proposals needed more time for consideration.
The Council turned to the repressive antisocialist bill before the Reichstag. William wished to moderate it by eliminating the state’s power to eject troublesome socialists from their homes. Bismarck opposed the Kaiser. He said that the sooner the government took a firm stand, the less bloodshed there would be, but that ultimately, these social questions would have to be decided by force. If the Reichstag rejected the antisocialist bill, he wished to go back to his beginnings and use force. He would tear up the constitution and abolish the Reichstag and universal suffrage. He talked confidently of industrial disturbances, strikes, and civil war. “The waves will mount higher,”58 he predicted; then “blood and iron” would rule again.
William pleaded that he did not wish to begin his reign by shooting his subjects. He appealed to the ministers, but they, not daring in Bismarck’s presence to challenge him, meekly supported the Chancellor. What the young Emperor might do if they failed to support him, they did not know. What Bismarck would do if they opposed him, they knew exactly: he would destroy them. There was little William could do, and he left the Council dismayed and angry. “They are not my ministers,”59 he said. “They are Bismarck’s.”
Bismarck had won a Pyrrhic victory. Between Kaiser and Chancellor, youth and age, the battle lines were drawn. The Kaiser had been humiliated; the old man had displayed his supremacy all too clearly. Bismarck sensed this; the following day a Chancellory official found him in tears lying on his office sofa. In the days that followed, he attempted to compromise. At the next meeting of the ministerial council, he agreed that the Kaiser should issue a proclamation declaring his interest in the welfare of the working class. William was also allowed to invite the European powers to an international conference in Berlin on labor and social problems.
William, only partially mollified, opened a campaign to win over the ministers one by one by receiving each individually every week to hear his report. This tactic alarmed Bismarck, who reacted by trying to control contacts between the Kaiser and the ministers more tightly than ever. He instructed Chancellory clerks to find an old decree, dating from 1852, which forbade Prussian ministers from speaking to the King except in the presence of the Minister-President. On February 18, 1890, Bismarck reissued this regulation. Prussian ministers were ordered to “cease all direct correspondence60 with His Majesty, with the Bundesrat and the Reichstag.... Draft proposals must be sent to me for approval. Similarly, oral declarations to the Bundesrat or Reichstag are not to be made without my express approval.” In his suspicion, the Chancellor was setting himself a Herculean task. At seventy-five, he would have to approve the Bundesrat agenda every day, chair all Bundesrat meetings, sign every order and bill in person, and approve every statement made by all government officials. Bismarck also refused to put his signature on the Kaiser’s labor-protection proclamation when it was issued. Secretly, the Chancellor attempted to damage William’s pet scheme, the international labor conference to be held in Berlin. He appeared uninvited at the French Embassy and proposed to the Ambassador that France should avoid the conference. “The Chancellor has unambiguously taken sides61 against his sovereign,” the Ambassador hurriedly reported to Paris.
On February 20, Bismarck’s coalition suffered heavy losses in elections for the Reichstag. Normally, Bismarck would have ignored this fact; as long as he possessed the confidence of the King-Emperor, he could continue to rule. Now, knowing that he was losing that confidence, Bismarck was in difficulty. He set about arranging new combinations in the Reichstag. At one point, he appeared before the Council and threatened to resign as Minister-President of Prussia and remain only as Imperial Chancellor. To his dismay, the ministers all agreed and one, Karl von Bötticher, the Interior Minister, made an eloquent farewell speech. Bismarck was enraged when, on March 9, the Kaiser summoned Bötticher and bestowed on him the Order of the Black Eagle, Prussia’s highest decoration, usually reserved for royal persons. William, in turn, was infuriated to learn that Bismarck had attempted to draw Ludwig Windthorst, leader of the Catholic Center Party, into a new Bismarckian coalition, without consulting or even informing the Kaiser. Windthorst was an old enemy of the Chancellor; the interview on March 12 was a measure of Bismarck’s desperation. Windthorst knew it; when he left the Chancellor’s office after a conversation of an hour and a half, he said, “I am just leaving the political deathbed62 of a great man.”
On March 14, William sent Bismarck a message that he proposed to call on him the following morning at the Foreign Minister’s (Herbert’s) residence. The Kaiser’s message failed to reach the Chancellor before he went to bed. On Saturday the fifteenth, Bismarck was awakened at nine o’clock with the news that the Kaiser was waiting for him at Herbert’s villa. Bismarck, accustomed to sleeping late, then having a cup of tea, a warm bath, and a massage in order to prepare himself for the day, hurriedly got out of bed, dressed, and walked in a cold rain through the garden of the Chancellor’s palace to Herbert’s villa. Both men were in a bad humor; William had waited twenty-five minutes for the Chancellor’s appearance; Bismarck complained that he had known nothing of the interview until twenty-five minutes before, when he had been awakened. “So?” said the Kaiser. “I gave the order yesterday63 afternoon.” The Chancellor told William what the Kaiser already knew: that Windthorst had called on him. “Well, of course you had him thrown out-of-doors,”64 William flared. How dare the Chancellor attempt to make secret arrangements with an opposition leader without the Emperor’s knowledge? Bismarck replied that, as Chancellor, he must be free to meet party leaders and said that he had received Windthorst as any gentleman had the right to receive friends in his home. “Not even when your sovereign commands it?”65 William demanded. “The power of my sovereign ends at the door to my wife’s drawing room,” Bismarck retorted so angrily that “it was all Bismarck could do to refrain from throwing an ink pot at my head,” William said later. William demanded that the reissued order of 1852 forbidding ministerial access to himself in the Chancellor’s absence be repealed. “How can I rule66 without discussing things with my ministers if you spend most of the year at Friedrichsruh?” he asked.
The conversation turned to Russia. William earlier had declared his intention of visiting Tsar Alexander III again soon; Bismarck now advised against it because, he said, he had received reports proving that the Tsar was unfriendly to the young Kaiser. Here, Bismarck played a trick. He picked up his dispatch case, fumbled with some papers, appeared to think better of it, and shoved them back into the case. William demanded to see the papers. Bismarck demurred, saying that it would be better if he did not. William insisted, reached out, and took the papers from the Chancellor’s case. He found himself reading a confidential dispatch from St. Petersburg w
hich included a report that the Tsar had described the German Emperor as “un garçon mal élevé67 et de mauvais foi” (“a badly-brought-up young man of bad faith”). Bismarck watched implacably, as William, humiliated, returned the paper and stalked back to his carriage.
It was the end and both men knew it. Three times the Kaiser sent emissaries to Bismarck requesting either cancellation of the 1852 order or the Chancellor’s resignation. Bismarck refused and did not resign. On March 17, William sent a note, openly passed through departmental offices, complaining to Bismarck that he had not been informed of certain Russian troop movements: “I must greatly deplore68 the fact that I have received so few of the reports. You ought to have drawn my attention long ago to the terrible danger threatening.” Bismarck now had the excuse he sought: the Kaiser was interfering in foreign policy and talking of war with Russia. On March 18, he sent in his resignation. Two days later, the official gazette published the Kaiser’s letter of acceptance: “With deep emotion,69 I have perceived... that you are determined to retire from the offices which you have filled for many years with incomparable results. I had hoped that I should not be obliged to... part with you in our lifetime.... I confer upon you the dignity of Duke of Lauenburg. I will also have my life-size portrait sent to you.... I appoint you General Field Marshal [in the army].” Bismarck took these honors with cynical humor. The Kaiser had stated ill health to be a reason for the Chancellor’s resignation: “I am in better health70 than I have been in for years past.” William gave him a grant of money; Bismarck compared it to an envelope given to the postman at Christmas. As for the new dukedom: “I will use it71 when I am traveling incognito.” Foreign ambassadors were informed that the resignation was due to ill health.fn3 William telegraphed to Hinzpeter, “I am as miserable72 as if I had again lost my grandfather. But what God wills must be borne.... The position of officer of the watch on the ship of state has fallen to me. The course remains the same. Full steam ahead!”fn4
Bismarck left Berlin quickly. He filled three hundred packing cases with state papers and shipped thirteen thousand bottles of wine from the Chancellory cellar to Friedrichsruh. He paid a final call on his old enemy, the Empress Frederick. She asked whether there was anything she could do. “I ask only for sympathy,”74 he replied. On March 28, he visited the Royal Museum at Charlottenburg to lay roses on the grave of William I. “I have bid farewell75 to my old master,” he said. The roses were taken from the massive floral tributes which his own admirers had sent to him. On March 29, Bismarck departed the capital. Crowds lined the streets to the station; he was seen off by a guard of honor, Imperial and Prussian ministers, generals, and ambassadors. Only the Kaiser was missing. As his train rolled out of the station, Bismarck leaned back in his seat and said wryly, “A state funeral76 with full honors.”
Bismarck returned to Varzin, where he filled his diaries with the words “bored” and “tired.” Ahead, on the day of his resignation, stretched eight more years of life. After forty years in state service and twenty-eight years of supreme power, it was difficult for him to believe that this was the end. The German Empire was his handiwork; he had created it and administered it throughout its existence. It was inconceivable to him that it could function without him. For a long time, he dreamed of being recalled, of making a triumphal return. He talked of those whom he would dismiss when he was restored to power. His return would not result from any winning-over of public opinion, but because of an appeal from the Kaiser; this was the only path allowed by the constitution he had written. But the Kaiser had no such intention and remained aloof. In June 1892, Prince Hohenlohe, Governor General of Alsace-Lorraine, told the Kaiser that people feared that Bismarck would return. William laughed. “They can make their minds easy,”77 he said. “He will not return.”
Out of power, Bismarck remained a factor in German politics. He spoke freely about William II’s inexperience and volatility. For a while, Bismarck, on removing coins from his pocket, always turned the Kaiser’s likeness to the table—“so that I will not have to see78 that false face.” In 1891, he was elected by a Hanoverian constituency to the Reichstag. He never took his seat, explaining that he did not own a house in Berlin and was too old to live in a hotel. Eventually, he established an outlet for his views by contributing unsigned, but unmistakably authored, articles to Hamburg newspapers. These articles, widely read and often highly indiscreet, hammered at the foolishness of the Kaiser and the blunders of his successors. He worked spasmodically on his autobiography, spinning and respinning tales until his assistant, dutifully transcribing Bismarck’s words, had no idea where truth lay.
In May 1892, Herbert Bismarck became engaged to a Hungarian noblewoman, Countess Hoyos. Kaiser William telegraphed his congratulations and Bismarck decided to attend the wedding, which was to be held in Vienna. He requested an audience with Emperor Franz Josef. The new German Chancellor, however, worried about the possible ramifications of Bismarck’s appearance in Vienna and forbade the German Ambassador to attend the wedding. “We have not doubted79 for an instant that ovations will be prepared for the Prince in Vienna,” Caprivi wrote. “We cannot prevent that but we must avoid the participation of the German Embassy in festivities that will be accompanied by demonstrations where one cannot tell whether they are meant as more pro-Bismarck or contra-Kaiser William.” The Kaiser himself went further. In a private letter to Franz Josef he wrote: “He has planned an audience80 with you as the main event on his program. While most insolently ignoring my court and the Empress, he takes himself to Dresden and Vienna in order to parade himself there in the role of the grand old man. In the interest of myself and of my government, therefore, I should like to beg you as a true friend not to render the situation in the country more difficult for me by receiving this rebellious subject before he has approached me and said his Peccavi.” William’s letter made it impossible for Franz Josef to receive Bismarck and, during his stay in Vienna, the former Chancellor was ignored by Viennese society. No representatives of the Austrian court or the diplomatic corps attended Herbert’s wedding. Bismarck was enraged. On his return from Vienna, he was cheered by crowds along his route. In Kissingen and Jena, he made speeches, declaring that, in writing the Reich constitution, he had given too much power to the crown.
In 1893, Bismarck, then seventy-eight, fell seriously ill with influenza and shingles. The Kaiser telegraphed sympathetically and sent Count Kuno von Moltke of his staff to Varzin bearing a personal letter along with a bottle of the finest Rhenish wine from the Imperial cellars. While there, Moltke also invited Bismarck to visit Berlin to help celebrate the Kaiser’s birthday. News of Bismarck’s acceptance raised fears in many government ministries that the former Chancellor might be returning to power. At noon on January 22, 1894, the fallen Titan made his triumphal return to the capital. Prince Henry of Prussia met him at the station and embraced and kissed him. A squadron of Cuirassier Guards escorted him through streets lined with cheering crowds, under balconies crowded with nervous government officials. At the palace, he mounted the steps, leaning on Herbert’s arm. While the Kaiser received him, crowds outside repeatedly sang “Die Wacht am Rhein” and “Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles.”
Bismarck had come to Berlin hoping that this was the beginning of his return to power, or, at the least, expecting to be consulted about political affairs. Nothing of the sort occurred. Bismarck did not see Caprivi, the Chancellor; Marschall, the State Secretary for Foreign Affairs; or Holstein, the First Counselor of the Foreign Office. At the formal dinner that evening, Bismarck sat next to the Kaiser with Herbert and Bill nearby, but William kept the talk firmly on trivialities. Bismarck, it was said, was treated like visiting royalty, not as a source of political wisdom. On February 19, the Kaiser returned the visit by coming to Friedrichsruh. Again, there was no talk of politics.
Near the end of 1894, Johanna died quietly at Varzin. Bismarck left the estate and moved permanently to Friedrichsruh. The Kaiser arrived to celebrate his eightieth birthday in April
1895, a visit which produced a memorable photograph of Bismarck, standing awkwardly and leaning on his cane because of pain in his joints, still towering over the youthful Kaiser. On this birthday, Bismarck received many congratulations but the German Reichstag refused to participate. This surliness and ingratitude moved the French Ambassador—representing a nation which had little reason to honor Bismarck—to say, “Whatever the Germans may say or do,81 they will never be a great people.”
Bismarck’s move to Friedrichsruh marked a final separation from his Junker origins. He had long before risen above purely Prussian concerns for preserving caste privileges, agrarian interests, and the supremacy of the army. Now, close to the cosmopolitan prosperity of the great commercial port of Hamburg, he glimpsed the future of the Germany he had created. Bernhard von Bülow described how Bismarck at eighty was taken to see the port of Hamburg: “He stopped when he set foot82 on a giant steamboat, looked at the ship for a long time, at the many steamers lying in the vicinity, at the docks and huge cranes, at the mighty picture presented by the harbor, and said at last, ‘I am stirred and moved. Yes, this is a new age—a new world.’”
The quarrel between Bismarck and the Kaiser flared again in 1896 when the former Chancellor revealed in a Hamburg newspaper the previous existence of the secret Reinsurance Treaty with Russia and attacked William for refusing to renew it in 1890. William, infuriated, announced his intention to imprison Bismarck for treason in Berlin’s Spandau Prison. Prince von Hohenlohe, then Chancellor, talked the Kaiser out of it, pointing out that the minimum sentence for treason was two years’ hard labor, which would certainly kill the eighty-one-year-old Bismarck. Then would come the question of the funeral. The Kaiser certainly would wish to arrange and attend this event. “Would it be worthy83 of so great a monarch to have the funeral cortège of the first and most famous Imperial Chancellor proceed from a second-rate fortress such as Spandau?” William ended his threats.