When Herbert Bismarck became State Secretary in 1885, Holstein’s special status and warm relationship with the Bismarcks, father and son, did not change. He continued to occupy an office adjoining that of the State Secretary, wading through a sea of reports from embassies and legations, writing his own memoranda, appearing unbidden, at his own discretion, through a private, unlocked door, at Herbert’s desk. As time went on, Holstein’s daily contact with Herbert made him increasingly critical of his old friend’s arrogant, boorish behavior.
Holstein’s defense against those with whom he felt uncomfortable was to withdraw. After Herbert’s rifle-shooting incident in the garden of the Reichschancellory, Holstein wrote to a cousin: “I have described this scene8... because it explains to you a good deal about myself.... With rough types like Herbert and his family, there is only one way of avoiding the alternative between degradation and conflict, namely to withdraw on one’s own accord. That is what I have done, and at first it gave me rather a jolt. But when I see how others are treated I am glad I made a clean break. I hardly think that he would shoot through my window.”
Gradually, the First Counselor began to oppose the Chancellor’s conduct of foreign policy. Bismarck’s policy had always been to keep in step with Russia; Herbert was encouraging this relationship to an extent which Holstein thought dangerous. Since his days in St. Petersburg, Holstein had not liked Russians. Now he felt that expansion of Russian power and increase in Russian prestige must be prevented. He urged maximum support of Austria. Through Hatzfeldt, who had been transferred to London, he tried to stir up British antagonism toward Russia. At first, Holstein refused to admit even to himself that he was attempting to thwart the Chancellor’s policy. His explanation was that he was simply establishing a counterweight to Herbert’s excessive pro-Russianism and that he, not Herbert, was conducting policy in accordance with the real intentions of the Chancellor. “I have sometimes gone beyond9 the intentions of the Big Chief, have occasionally even used my ways of reaching his goals,” he told his journal. But by early 1886, with Herbert in the State Secretaryship, Holstein was alarmed. “For the first time in twenty-five years,10 I mistrust Bismarck’s foreign policy,” he wrote on January 13, 1886. “The old man is led by his son and the son is led by vanity and the Russian embassy.” Holstein vigorously opposed the secret Reinsurance Treaty of 1887, concluded with Tsar Alexander III behind the backs of the Austrian Emperor, the German Reichstag, and the Foreign Office bureaucracy. To Holstein, this network of interlocking alliances stemmed primarily from an old man’s love of intrigue. Holstein’s opposition was not hidden from either Bismarck, but father and son both believed that, whatever his opinions on policy, “Faithful Fritz” would continue personally loyal. When the younger Bülow once asked Herbert how he could tolerate Holstein’s anti-Russian prejudice, Herbert smiled and said, “Holstein has once and for all11 a jester’s privilege.”
Holstein foresaw the coming clash between the restless young Kaiser William and the aging Chancellor. Increasingly, the calculating First Counselor began to correspond with Count Philip von Eulenburg, the Kaiser’s friend. Through Eulenburg, he also was linked with young Bernhard von Bülow, son of the former State Secretary of the 1870s. By the time Bismarck fell, Holstein had made his own arrangements. He was offered the State Secretaryship and turned it down; he proposed Marschall instead. There were objections that with a new and inexperienced Chancellor and a new and inexperienced State Secretary, German foreign policy would founder. Holstein assured all worriers that the foreign policy of the Empire was in safe and experienced hands. He meant his own.
Neither Caprivi nor Marschall spoke French, the universal language of diplomacy, and they could not communicate easily with foreign ambassadors. Caprivi was honest and stubborn and Marschall gradually acquired confidence, but even two years later, in 1892, the Austrian Ambassador declared that without Holstein’s approval, neither Chancellor nor Foreign Minister would make a move.
The decision not to renew the Reinsurance Treaty, the capstone of Bismarck’s great arch of secret diplomacy, threw the retired Chancellor into a rage. The result, he predicted accurately, would be to force an isolated Russia into the arms of an isolated France. Within his circle, he rumbled threats to reveal that the secret treaty had existed, undermining Austrian confidence in German fidelity. (Bismarck made good on this threat in 1896; by that time it made little difference.) Holstein’s switch in allegiance and his part in the nonrenewal of the treaty were never forgiven. Herbert, especially, regarded “Faithful Fritz” as a traitor. During the week after the resignation of both Bismarcks, when Holstein had gone to the files and brought the secret treaty to Caprivi, Herbert, still moving his belongings out of the building, flew into a rage. He sent for Holstein. “You have been guilty of something12 which in past circumstances I should have obliged to punish most severely. All I can say is that you have been in too big a hurry to regard me as a back number.” Soon after, when Herbert met Holstein on the stairs, he gave his former friend a deep bow and passed without a word. After Herbert’s departure, tension between the two men grew, reaching an intense, mutual enmity. For many years after Prince Bismarck’s dismissal, when Berlin was divided into the Court Party and the Bismarck Party, Holstein was a target of lively hatred by the latter without ever involving himself with the former. Until Prince Bismarck’s death in 1897, Holstein’s frantic concern was to prevent any reconciliation between the Kaiser and the Bismarcks. In any Bismarck restoration, Holstein knew, the first head to roll would be his own.
Otto and Herbert von Bismarck did not return. Year after year, Friedrich von Holstein sat at his desk in his little room on the ground floor at No. 76 Wilhelmstrasse. He unlocked the door himself in the morning, took his seat, and began a day which would last at least twelve hours. He worked slowly and deliberately, hampered as time passed by the growth of cataracts. He was disturbed only by messengers, who knocked softly, entered bowing, deposited or picked up documents, and departed noiselessly. Time passed and his routine never varied. Sitting at this desk, he watched Imperial chancellors come and go, state secretaries relieve each other, ministers and ambassadors march past. He alone remained. Never seen, he became a legend. Chancellors and state secretaries were dependent on him. He did everything for them, drafting their reports to the Emperor, writing their speeches, sending their dispatches, preparing memoranda, never relinquishing his own secret correspondence authorized years before by Bismarck, sharing it with no one. His memory astonished and terrified Foreign Office clerks; he knew what every document contained, what action had been taken, where every piece of paper was filed.
Holstein paused at midday for half an hour, when he ate a light lunch sent over from the Hôtel du Rome. At nine P.M., he turned off his desk lamp, which had a heavy red shade to protect his eyes, locked his door, and walked to a side entrance of the Restaurant Borchardt, No. 48 Französischstrasse. Here, a private room was held for him. Holstein was a gourmet and lover of fine wine. His instructions to the kitchen were as careful and precise as the orders he issued to diplomats; the chef and headwaiter appeared before him with as much apprehension as the clerks at the Wilhelmstrasse. Toward midnight, he ordered a cab. Other guests were delayed to permit him to pass down the hall and into the street alone.
Over the years, the social boycott of Holstein collapsed. Handsomely crested invitations began to arrive, but Holstein imposed his own boycott on society. Living in solitude in three small rooms in the Grossbeerenstrasse, he extended hospitality by inviting people to small supper parties at Borchardt, or, to show particular favor, to accompany him on one of his favorite long walks through the countryside around Berlin. The Kaiser and the Court were included in Holstein’s boycott. On the Emperor’s birthday, a huge reception massed all the dignitaries of the government and all the foreign ambassadors at the Berlin Palace. Naturally, First Counselor Baron von Holstein was always invited. The answer was always the same: “Geheimrat Holstein begs to be excused.13 He does not pos
sess court dress.” So reclusive was Holstein that in 1893, when William II had been on the throne for five years, he had not met Holstein. “I hear that I have an excellent official14 in the Foreign Office, Herr von Holstein,” the Kaiser said one day to the Austrian Ambassador. “Unfortunately, I haven’t yet succeeded in making his acquaintance.” Holstein wished to maintain this distance. Once, hearing that the Kaiser was coming to the Foreign Office, Holstein hastily invited Baron Hermann von Eckardstein, a German diplomat assigned to London, temporarily in Berlin, to join him for lunch. Over the meal, Holstein talked for three hours, then strolled with his guest to Unter den Linden and asked a policeman whether the Kaiser had driven past. Learning that he had not, Holstein continued to walk with Eckardstein for another hour, then sent the younger man ahead to the Foreign Office to be sure the coast was clear. Ultimately, in November 1904, after William had been on the throne for sixteen years, he finally met Holstein socially. Bülow, then Chancellor, arranged a dinner. When they met, William talked about duck hunting.
In this fashion, the “Gray Eminence” and “Empire Jesuit” ruled his secret empire. Dedicated to work, worshipping power, he was furtive, crotchety, and suspicious. His mind was brilliant and complex—and also cantankerous. The more natural and obvious a thing was, the more Holstein suspected it. In his memoirs, Eckardstein recalled: “How often has it happened15 in important negotiations which he had himself initiated and in which he was personally interested, that I have been instructed to break off as soon as it appeared that the other party was ready to meet his wishes. I found that as a rule I could reckon on Holstein being willing only so long as the other side was unwilling.” Holstein’s web encompassed the whole of German diplomacy. He expanded his private espionage system, encouraging officials anxious to further their careers to keep him supplied with the sort of personal information on their superiors and colleagues which they knew Holstein liked and could use. He was master of malicious gossip and gleefully passed along poisonous innuendo. Holstein himself was easily offended; when excited in this way, he never looked anyone in the eye and made spasmodic clenching movements with the fingers of his right hand. He never forgave slights or insults. “The fellow didn’t bow to me16 today,” he would complain, refusing to accept the excuses that the offender had been across the street, was shortsighted, and had been looking in the opposite direction. Once offended, he was relentlessly vindictive. “As I perceive you are working... against me,”17 he once said to Philip Eulenburg, “I shall be obliged to show my claws in some way.” Even the Kaiser was not exempt from Holstein’s demand for absolute loyalty: “If His Majesty does nothing18 against... [a Foreign Ministry official whom Holstein disliked], he ranges himself with my enemy.” The extreme to which Holstein could go was illustrated by his treatment of Johann Maria von Radowitz, who served as German Ambassador to Turkey and Spain. When Radowitz accepted a Star to wear on his breast on the same honors list which produced for Holstein only a Cross to be worn around the neck, Holstein never forgave Radowitz and followed his career with pathological hatred. “His rage was all the more senseless,”19 Bülow noted, “because since the Arnim case, Holstein has never been out in society, never put on a decoration, and does not even possess evening dress.”
Holstein’s influence on foreign policy remained powerful until his fall in 1906. Philip Eulenburg gave Holstein credit: “Neither Caprivi, nor Hohenlohe,20 nor Bülow ever promulgated an edict on even the most insignificant political matter without Holstein putting in an oar. Caprivi’s and Hohenlohe’s foreign policy was pure Holstein.” The reason, Eulenburg explained, was that “Holstein’s great talents21 [were considered] to be indispensable. No one could replace his understanding of complex questions of international importance.... In the Emperor’s and the Government’s interests, he had to be humored, as one humors a bad-tempered, erratic, positively dangerous sporting dog for the sake of his good nose.”
Bülow, working closely with Holstein for nine years as State Secretary and Chancellor, treated the First Counselor warily. “The situation [at the Wilhelmstrasse] was made more difficult22 for me by the intrigues of Holstein,” he sighed. “With all his unusual qualities, [he] was an incomparable intriguer... filled with pathological mistrust.” Bülow also used a canine simile: “Holstein was like the watchdog23 which is very good at protecting the house against thieves and burglars, but of which one can never be sure whether he will bite his master’s legs.” In his Memoirs, Bülow chose a fiercer beast: “In his blind and petty hatred,24 old Geheimrat von Holstein, who for over thirty years had stood closer to the great Prince [Bismarck] than most others, seemed to me a cunning wolf who ought to be behind bars and not at liberty.” Eulenburg’s description was cruelest: “Bülow and I25 used to call him the ‘weasel,’ for that animal never stops until it has slaughtered the whole henhouse.”
Holstein believed in a cautiously friendly German policy toward Britain. He shared the view of his old preceptor, Bismarck, that Germany, situated between France and Russia, must concern itself with the balance of power between the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria, and Italy and the emerging anti-German Dual Alliance of France and Russia. Someday, Britain might be persuaded to join the Triple Alliance. In the interim, it was enough for Britain to maintain its Splendid Isolation. Holstein did not consider the possibility that Britain might join Germany’s enemies; the antagonisms between Britain and France, and Britain and Russia were so deep that the First Counselor could not imagine that they could ever be bridged.
Accommodation with Britain assured German predominance in Europe, but also required moderation of German ambitions overseas. Germany must not alarm and provoke Great Britain by an aggressive colonial policy or by an extravagant increase in the size of the German Navy. In the 1870s and 1880s, Britain had assisted in the training of the small German fleet; in the 1880s Britain had endorsed Bismarck’s brief excursion into colonialism. In overseas trade, German ships and traders enjoyed the protection of the Royal Navy and access to British colonial markets. Holstein saw no need to push for more.
It was on Holstein’s advice that Caprivi, soon after becoming Chancellor, wrote a warm personal note to Lord Salisbury saying that he looked forward to friendly relations and close cooperation with the British Prime Minister. The German government, wary of a return to power of Gladstone and the Liberals, wished “to keep in mind the need26 to lighten Lord Salisbury’s task to make possible his retention in office,” Caprivi wrote at the same time to Hatzfeldt in London. Hohenlohe’s advent as Chancellor did not affect either German policy towards England or Holstein’s influence at the Wilhelmstrasse. Before 1897, nothing occurred to change his belief that Britain would never join France and Russia; British antagonism towards those powers remained too strong.
Chapter 7
Bülow and Weltmacht
Germany, in the first twenty years after the proclamation of the Empire, grew steadily in population and economic strength. Then, suddenly, beginning in the 1890s, the German population and industrial base exploded upwards. In 1871, the population of Great Britain (including Ireland) was 31 million; the new German Empire contained 41 million people. Twenty years later, in 1891, Britain’s population had grown to 38 million, Germany’s to 49 million. Then the growth rates changed. The number of Britons mounted to 41 million in 1901 and 45 million in 1911. But the German population soared to 56 million in 1900 and 65 million in 1910. The comparison with France is even more stark: between 1891 and 1910, while the Reich’s population was swelling from 49 million to 65 million, the French population rose from 37 million to 39 million.
Coal- and steel-production figures were equally dramatic. In 1871, British coal dominated world markets with production of 112 million tons a year; Germany, the world’s second-largest producer of coal, mined 34 million tons. By 1890, German coal production was half of Britain’s; by 1913 it was equal. Steel production, an essential component of heavy industry and war, offered still more striking contrasts. In 1890, Britain prod
uced 3.6 million tons of steel a year, Germany about two thirds of that. In 1896, German steel production first exceeded Great Britain’s. In 1914, Germany (14 million tons) produced more than twice as much steel as Britain (6.5 million tons).
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