“For his successor, I shall take a younger man,” the Kaiser had announced as he prepared to replace sixty-three-year-old General Count Georg Leo von Caprivi. As it turned out, the third Chancellor of the German Empire, installed in October 1894, was Prince Chlodwig zu Hohenlohe who, on taking office, was seventy-five. Hohenlohe was not the Kaiser’s first choice. William had had in mind someone like Bernhard von Bülow, the ambitious forty-five-year-old Ambassador to Romania who had been enthusiastically recommended by Philip von Eulenburg. Bülow was eager to be exactly what the Kaiser wanted—“some one closer to me67... who will be mine alone”—but Eulenburg, William—and even Bülow—agreed that the time was not ripe. To present a façade of maturity and respectability, a man of more years would temporarily be necessary. Disappointed, the Kaiser had asked Eulenburg for suggestions. Eulenburg proposed Hohenlohe, a Bavarian Roman Catholic who had faithfully served Bismarck in the Diplomatic Service. The incumbent Governor General of the conquered provinces of Alsace-Lorraine was “a man neither conservative nor liberal,68 neither ritualist nor atheist, ultramontane nor progressive”—in short, a presentable stopgap who would not create conflict.
Hohenlohe stood at the summit of the German aristocracy. His brother Gustave, a cardinal, wielded great influence from his post in the Vatican. Hohenlohe’s wife, a Russian, had possessed immense estates, which she had been forced to sell when she had married Hohenlohe, a foreigner. He was related to the House of Coburg and thus to the royal family of England, as well as to the House of Schleswig-Holstein, thereby to William II’s wife, Dona. The Kaiser always referred to the new Chancellor as “Uncle,” speaking to him with the familiar du.
Before the proclamation of the Empire, Hohenlohe had been Minister-President of Bavaria. In 1874, following the Franco-Prussian War, Bismarck appointed him Ambassador to Paris with instructions to do what he could to improve relations with the defeated nation. Hohenlohe managed adequately for eleven years, and his departure from Paris was a result not of any success or failure on his part, but of Herbert von Bismarck’s ambition to become State Secretary. To make room at the top for Herbert, a number of ambassadorial appointments had to be reshuffled. “I’ve been trying69 to persuade my father for a year now to recall that hopeless idiot Hohenlohe from Paris,” Herbert told Holstein in April 1885. “I’m vainly trying70 to persuade my father to dismiss this utterly incompetent Ambassador,” he reported a few weeks later. Bismarck, persuaded by his son, suggested to Kaiser William I that Hohenlohe might move to Strasbourg to govern Alsace-Lorraine. The Kaiser approved, describing Hohenlohe as “a quiet man71 who never makes a mess of things.” Holstein’s opinion of Hohenlohe’s abilities was not high. “The Chancellor will never send72 a man of outstanding intelligence to Strasbourg.... Hohenlohe [is] obviously elated.... If only he knew that he was picked because they wanted a nonentity!”
Despite these unflattering assessments, Hohenlohe had served nine years in Strasbourg. When Kaiser William II asked him to become Chancellor, Hohenlohe was strongly disinclined and set down in writing the reasons he would be unsuitable:
1. Age, poor memory, illness73
2. Poor public speaker
3. Unfamiliar with Prussian laws and politics
4. Not a soldier
5. Insufficient means. I could probably manage without the Governor General’s salary, but not in Berlin. I shall be ruined.
6. My Russian connections
7. I have been in public life for thirty years, am seventy-five years old and do not wish to start something which I know will be too much for me.
These objections were overruled. Prince Hohenlohe was installed in office and served as Imperial Chancellor from 1894 to 1900.
Hohenlohe’s appraisal of his talent as an orator was shared in the Reichstag. Deputies were shocked when they first saw “his shrunken figure74 with the head bent over to one side.” The contrast with the first two chancellors, both tall, impressive men, was striking. His delivery of speeches was shy. When forced to parry an attack, he stammered out a few words read from a slip of paper handed to him by a subordinate. Hohenlohe himself was untroubled by these moments. “He felt such contempt75 for these parliamentary soap-boilers... [that] he came out of the Chamber in a pleasant, or at least a perfectly tranquil frame of mind,” said a friend. His general conduct of the Chancellorship was equally weary. Under Caprivi, the power of the Imperial Chancellorship had declined; Hohenlohe made no attempt to restore it to its former state. He did not wish to quarrel with the Emperor, with ministers, secretaries, or departments, and he never threatened to resign. It was a point of pride with him that, although he was not a soldier like his predecessor, he—unlike Caprivi—did not threaten the Emperor with resignation over every minor difference.
This was why Hohenlohe lasted as long as he did. Having overthrown Bismarck and shed Caprivi, William, at thirty-five, felt ready to rule. Eulenburg, who had encouraged the Kaiser, wrote to Holstein in December 1894: “I am convinced76 that the Guiding Hand of Providence lies behind this elemental and natural drive of the Kaiser’s to direct the affairs of the kingdom in person. Whether it will ruin us or save us I cannot say.” Although William continued to treat the elderly Chancellor with respect in public and to call him “Uncle” in private, he began to intervene in domestic and foreign affairs to an extent unknown in Caprivi’s time. Hohenlohe’s indifference to, almost cynical acceptance of, this demeaned status increased the Kaiser’s contempt and a cycle of humiliation began. In 1895, the Kaiser visited Bismarck at Friedrichsruh, an event of political significance; the Chancellor learned about it from the press. Hohenlohe, at Holstein’s insistence, had retained Marschall as State Secretary for Foreign Affairs. The Kaiser despised Marschall and treated him with even greater disrespect than he displayed toward the Chancellor. In December 1895, the Kaiser told the British Military Attaché in Berlin, Colonel Swaine, that he suspected Britain and Russia of agreeing behind his back to an Anglo-Russian condominium over Constantinople and the Turkish Empire; he then telegraphed all German ambassadors to be on the lookout for evidence. Marschall and the Foreign Office learned of this conversation and message only by chance, from the coder who was sending it. Marschall was shaken by the episode. “Things are going badly77 with His Majesty,” he wrote in his diary. “He interferes persistently in foreign policy. A monarch ought to have the last word, but His Majesty always wants to have the first, and this is a cardinal error.”
Holstein understood the relationship between the Kaiser’s absolutist beliefs and impulsive behavior in domestic policy, and his intervention in foreign policy. “Domestic politics make more noise,”78 he wrote to Marschall, “but the other is much more dangerous. The fact that H.M. is now mixing into that, fresh from the smoking room, may have consequences which will astound both him and yourself.” Hoping to block or at least to moderate the Kaiser’s intrusions, Holstein sat in his office writing letters. He wrote to Hohenlohe asking the Chancellor to resist the monarch’s more extravagant demands by employing the threat of resignation, at least occasionally. He wrote to Eulenburg and Bülow that he worried that the Kaiser’s reach for absolute power, unchecked by the Reichstag, and unguided by cautionary advice from a respected Chancellor, would lead Germany to disaster. Initially, he believed that he could enlist Eulenburg. “Hohenlohe’s back must be stiffened,”79 Holstein wrote to Eulenburg. “In Hohenlohe’s great compliance80 lies the overwhelming danger for the Kaiser, for it will actually strengthen his arbitrary tendencies.... When you deal with Hohenlohe, you must make a new man of him; you must advise him that... he must play the Chancellor of the Reich in dealing with the Kaiser. In reality, the old gentleman now behaves as though he were the second High Chamberlain of the Family.” On Christmas Day, 1895, Holstein appealed to Eulenburg again. The Chancellor must “make one last, vigorous effort81 to bring about a change,” by threatening to resign. “Remember that without this bitter medicine both the Kaiser and the Fatherland will meet with serious trouble.... ‘The Kais
er as his own Chancellor’ is a dangerous principle at the best of times. It is quite impossible with this impulsive and unhappily completely superficial ruler who has not the slightest idea of constitutional law, of political events, of diplomatic history and of how to deal with people.” Receiving these letters, Eulenburg noted wryly of the writer: “The Holstein of 1888,82 with his old Prussian loyalty to the Monarch, has certainly not turned in 1896 into an anti-monarchist, but he has become a parliamentarian.”
Holstein’s letters had little effect; Hohenlohe grew steadily weaker. Occasionally, he tried to moderate the Kaiser’s behavior: in March 1897, he wrote to William that the appointment of a committee on which the Kaiser had set his heart would be a diminution of the constitutional office of the Chancellor. “I know no constitution,”83 William shouted. “I only know what I will.” Hohenlohe, for once, argued back. “I felt it was my official responsibility,84 as Your Majesty’s supreme adviser, to express my view frankly,” he wrote to William. Preparing for his next audience with the Emperor, Hohenlohe decided to say: “If the word ‘constitutional’ gave offense, I regret that Your Majesty is not the Emperor of Russia. I am not the author of the constitution, but I am bound by it.”
William began talking of a coup d’état against the parliament. Waldersee, the former Chief of the Army General Staff, was summoned and told to be ready to assume the Chancellorship from Hohenlohe. “I know that you will do the job well85 if shooting becomes necessary,” William said to Waldersee. Hohenlohe understood his own position. “If the Kaiser wants86 to be his own Reich Chancellor, he will have to appoint a straw doll. I have no desire to be one,” he wrote. “If I cannot get the Kaiser’s consent to measures I regard as necessary, then I have no authority.... I cannot govern against public opinion as well as against the Kaiser. To govern against the Kaiser and the public is to hang in mid-air. That is impossible.”
Nevertheless, Hohenlohe remained. For the next three years, 1897–1900, William enjoyed the personal rule he had always sought. He dictated policy and supervised the preparation of legislation, sometimes even drafting bills himself. Hohenlohe, uninformed and uninvolved, was asked only to place his signature on state documents. Bülow, in 1898, described the Chancellor as “almost eighty years old,87 tired, ill, totally indolent, and completely passive.”
Chapter 6
“The Monster of the Labyrinth”
For sixteen years, from the fall of Bismarck in 1890 to his own forced retirement in 1906, Friedrich von Holstein played a principal role in making German foreign policy. Working beneath the surface at the Wilhelmstrasse, he was known as the “Éminence Grise,” the “Empire Jesuit,” and the “Monster of the Labyrinth.” Holstein preferred this anonymity. Twice, he refused elevation to State Secretary; it would have meant wasting time before the Reichstag, seeing foreign ambassadors, and consorting with men who could not comprehend the intricacy and beauty of the diplomatic web he was constantly, obsessively spinning. In all his years as Geheimrat (First Counselor) of the Political Department of the Foreign Ministry, Friedrich von Holstein met his sovereign, Kaiser William II, only twice.
Holstein had a melancholy childhood. Born in 1837 in Pomerania, he was the son of a Prussian nobleman and retired officer, who, having married into a wealthy family and lost his wife, then married the elder sister of his dead spouse. It was this second wife who at the age of forty-six gave birth to Fritz, her only child. Fritz’s mother became obsessive about his safety. During the revolutionary year of 1848, she took him out of Germany to protect him. He traveled with her and a tutor to France, Switzerland, and Italy, perfecting his mastery of French and Italian. At fifteen, he entered Berlin University to study law. After graduation, he applied for an army commission. He was rejected because of a “weak chest1 and general bodily weakness.” Humiliated, Holstein enrolled in the Prussian Civil Service.
In 1859, citing his skill at languages, Holstein applied for a transfer from the Civil Service to the Prussian Diplomatic Service. Bismarck, who had known his father, stepped in and arranged that Holstein be appointed attaché to the Prussian Ministry in St. Petersburg where Bismarck himself was Minister. Setting off by train in December 1860, Holstein endured three days in a sleigh when his train was blocked by snow. In the ice-bound capital on the Neva, Bismarck, “tall, erect, and unsmiling2... slightly bald with fair hair turning grey, sallow and not yet corpulent,” held out his hand and said, “You are welcome.”
Johanna von Bismarck immediately took the shy, awkward young man into her family, and Holstein was able to observe his patron at close range. Bismarck, although he lived simply, eschewing the court, society, and his fellow diplomats, behaved always as a man of importance. Returning to town one day from the Tsar’s suburban palace at Peterhof, Bismarck and Holstein arrived at the station as the train was about to leave. Seeing them, the trainmen shouted, “Hurry up!” and Holstein instinctively broke into a run. Reaching the carriage door, he looked behind and saw Bismarck, still some distance away, approaching with a slow and dignified tread. The train waited. Climbing aboard, Bismarck said, “I’d rather be late3 ten times over than have to run once.”
Holstein was miserable in St. Petersburg. Awkward, vain, and sensitive, he had never shared the camaraderie of regimental life common to most German, Russian, and other diplomats. He had little interest in women and light conversation, and did not blend into society. He came to dislike Russians, and his experience in the Tsar’s capital produced a lifelong antipathy to Russia. Leaving St. Petersburg, Holstein was sent to posts he preferred: Rio de Janeiro (on leave, he explored the jungle of the Amazon), Washington (from which he went west and hunted buffalo on the Great Plains), Florence, and Copenhagen. In 1871, he was again on Bismarck’s staff; this time in Versailles while German artillery hammered Paris and the Chancellor prepared to make peace with France and proclaim the German Empire. When peace came, Holstein—because of his familiarity with the treaty terms and his impeccable French—remained in Paris as Second Secretary of the German Embassy.
Here, he became caught in a scandal which affected his career. Bismarck was jealous of the ability and popularity of Count Harry von Arnim, the German Ambassador to Paris. Fearing that Arnim might one day be summoned home to replace him as Chancellor, Bismarck decided to remove this potential rival. Secretly, he assigned Holstein to find evidence of wrongdoing on Arnim’s part. Holstein found his ambassador’s signature on a payment of funds to a newspaper to run anti-Bismarck articles. He also discovered that Arnim had improperly removed a number of state documents from the Embassy. On a visit to Berlin, Arnim was arrested. At Arnim’s trial, Holstein was required to testify against his former chief. Arnim fought vigorously, supported by many members of the Prussian nobility. Convicted and sentenced to a year in prison, Arnim escaped to Switzerland, from where he launched a virulent attack on Bismarck and Holstein. Berlin society, unable to make explicit its feelings against the Chancellor, heaped wrath on Holstein and boycotted him from fashionable life. Holstein withdrew, permanently and absolutely, into his work. In 1876, he returned from Paris and settled behind a desk at No. 76 Wilhelmstrasse.
Holstein’s capacity for work was exceptional even by Prussian standards. From eight A.M. until late at night, he sat at his desk, tirelessly reading files and incoming memoranda, remembering everything, committing his thoughts to paper in the form of analysis, suggestions, corrections, and comprehensive, malicious gossip.
He remained Bismarck’s man. Bismarck had given him his start in the Diplomatic Service, Bismarck had used him in the Arnim affair, Bismarck brought him back to Berlin in 1876, and now Bismarck made Holstein his private listening post and backstairs operator at the Foreign Office. Holstein performed this service eagerly. He was devoted to the Chancellor, whom in his journals he called “The Chief.” He also served as Bismarck’s private secretary during extended visits at the Chancellor’s country estates, where he resumed his St. Petersburg role in the family as “Faithful Fritz.” He was one of the few m
en who never bored the Chancellor. Holstein knew when to speak and when to keep quiet. When he spoke, it was in stimulating, pithy language. When he wished, he could draw on a spiteful and petty sense of humor which Bismarck enjoyed. On these visits, Holstein renewed his acquaintance with the Chancellor’s sons, Herbert and Bill, whom he had known as adolescents in St. Petersburg and who now alternated with Holstein as their father’s personal secretary. Holstein’s friendship with Herbert became particularly close.
Holstein’s position as Bismarck’s favorite was an open secret at the Foreign Office, although the extent to which he enjoyed the Chancellor’s confidence and the ways in which he earned further confidence revealed themselves only gradually. Beginning in the early 1880s, Bismarck authorized him to carry on an extensive private correspondence, dealing directly with ambassadors, ministers, and others in German embassies around the world, enabling him to provide the Chancellor (and himself) with political and personal information which did not find its way into official diplomatic communications. Year after year, his private letters and telegrams—clever, analytical, probing—went out to embassies in London, Paris, St. Petersburg, Vienna, and Constantinople. The responses kept Holstein well informed of the talents and personal shortcomings of every member of the Diplomatic Corps, from veteran ambassadors to youthful attachés. Holstein carefully directed incoming information to points where it would do him the most good.
Holstein’s special position was unaffected by the superior office of State Secretary. In 1881, Holstein’s friend Paul von Hatzfeldt, whom Holstein described as “incredibly able intellectually,4 but... a weak nature destined to be dominated,” became State Secretary; Holstein was his principal advisor. In fact, in those years neither Hatzfeldt nor Holstein conceived German foreign policy; that was the prerogative of Bismarck whether he sat in the Chancellor’s Palace in Berlin or wandered among his oaks at Varzin. As Bismarck’s health declined after 1883 and his retreats to the country were prolonged, Holstein’s power increased. Because Bismarck rarely set foot in No. 76 Wilhelmstrasse, the presence of Holstein, the trusted agent, his suspicious eye watching every movement, was all the more valuable. From the beginning, Bismarck brushed off criticism of Holstein. “He is very sensitive,”5 the Chancellor told an earlier State Secretary, the elder Bernhard von Bülow. “I owe him many a useful warning, many a clever idea, and many a piece of good advice.” Later, when an important German diplomat complained about having to deal with Holstein, Prince Bismarck had told him coldly, “I see.6 Then I cannot help you. I must have one man on whom I can depend entirely and that is Holstein.” Herbert Bismarck shared his father’s warm appraisal of “Faithful Fritz.” Bill Bismarck, the Chancellor’s younger son, was more skeptical. “You want to know what I think7 of Holstein?” he once replied to a question from the younger Bernhard von Bülow. “Well, that’s a complicated matter. Father thinks him exceptionally useful and places implicit faith in him. Mother spoils him and gives him the best bits at the table. As for me, I don’t deny his great talent, nor his brilliant French and English, or his quickness and cleverness.... But there are two things which do not please me about him. He suffers from an almost pathological delusion of persecution. As he is very sensitive and suspicious, this delusion is constantly finding new fuel. And so he is always stirring up my father who, in any case, is suspicious enough and always irritable with people....”
Dreadnought Page 19