In Germany his [the Pope’s] success has been complete for all the bishops who voted against the new dogma in the Vatican Council now go cheerfully to prison and pay enormous fines and suffer martyrdom for that very infallibility they voted against 3 years ago and think they will go to heaven like skyrockets when they die for their trouble.75
History has no record of German Catholic bishops seen flying up to ‘heaven like skyrockets’ but it records the monstrous tally of damage to the structure and practice of the Roman Catholic Church and systematic violations of the Prussian Constitution. The anti-Catholic hysteria in many European countries belongs in its European setting. Bismarck’s campaign was not unique in itself but his violent temper, intolerance of opposition, and paranoia that secret forces had conspired to undermine his life’s work, made it more relentless. His rage drove him to exaggerate the threat from Catholic activities and to respond with very extreme measures. Prussia was never threatened by its Catholic population. Pius IX had no reason to overthrow the Hohenzollern Monarchy nor the means to do so. Bismarck made miserable the daily life of millions of Catholics. As Odo Russell wrote to his mother, ‘The demonic is stronger in him, than in any man I know.’76 Bismarck told Lady Emily Russell how he reacted to Windthorst and the Catholic Centre in the Reichstag:
When the Catholic Party cried ‘shame’ and shook their fists at him, his first instinct was to take the ink stand in front of him and fling it at them—his second instinct was to measure the distance, spring upon them and knock them down—his third impulse overcame the two first and he merely told them that ‘he felt contempt for them but was too civil to say so’.77
The bully, the dictator, and the ‘demonic’ combined in him with the self-pity and hypochondria to create a constant crisis of authority which he exploited for his own ends. Nobody believed him when he threatened to resign. Prince Hohenlohe-Schillingfürst recorded a conversation with the Liberal MP Eduard Lasker in November 1874 on Bismarck’s position in government:
Lasker … talked of Bismarck’s projects of retiring. He regards them as mere pretence and says that Bismarck is too much of a demon to let the reins out of his hands. To my remark that the situation was ominous on account of the feeling at Court, Lasker replied there was nothing to fear there. At the decisive moment no one would be willing to let Bismarck go, because they had no one to substitute for him. There were plenty of straw-men who imagined they could replace Bismarck, but the Kaiser would think twice before he put one of them in Bismarck’s office.78
Opponents, friends, and subordinates all remarked on Bismarck as ‘demonic’, a kind of uncanny, diabolic personal power over men and affairs. In these years of his greatest power, he believed that he could do anything. Roggenbach wrote to Stosch on 30 August 1874 that
nobody can hold out with the Reich Chancellor any more … As long as it’s just an outburst of raw, brutal moodiness and a result of the juice of the grape, it might be ignored … but it’s another matter when the method in madness and a specialization in dishonourable humiliation take place. Nobody knows better how to use avilir, puis détruire [humiliate then destroy] and to shatter his victim in the eye of the public through poisonous publications arranged at long distance and finally to expose him to the future fatal blow.79
His enemies, of which Roggenbach was certainly one, concentrated their criticism on his brutality and demonic qualities but they tended to ignore the sheer pressure that he had to face—admittedly, a stress he had helped to create. He ran by himself two governments, the German and the Prussian, faced two very different parliaments, and had to operate with two conflicting political agendas. Some issues that looked harmless at first developed into serious political crises. It was clear that local government in the enlarged Prussian kingdom needed reform. This subject had been on the agenda of successive Prussian governments since 1859 and had led to what Patrick Wagner in his study of the growth of state power and Junker resistance calls ‘the twelve year reform debate’.80 The conquests and annexations of 1866 and afterwards, the foundation of the Reich itself in 1870, had left a patchwork quilt of types of local government. It needed cleaning up, and for that Bismarck had to turn again to his Prussian cabinet, which still contained four holdovers from the ‘Conflict Ministry’: arch-conservatives Eulenburg, Selchow, Itzenplitz, and Roon. They became disorientated because Bismarck was never there. As early as September 1869 Itzenplitz wrote to him:
If you don’t come, we have to see how we get on by ourselves or go. How you intend to be Federal Chancellor and say goodbye to the Prussian State Ministry my simple head cannot grasp. That must be Roon’s view too and that must be why he has not answered. In true affection—even if I cannot grasp the above—as always your devoted Itzenplitz.81
Itzenplitz may have been a reactionary but he was a count, a gentleman, and Bismarck’s social equal.
On 23 March 1872 a new Prussian local government statute was submitted to the Landtag. It abolished the police and administrative powers of Rittergutsbesitzer, the owners of knightly estates, that is, estates like Bismarck-Schönhausen and the estates of literally everybody from Bismarck’s social class. The local government statute, which included an elected element on a three-class voting basis, passed the Chamber of Deputies 256 to 61. Estate owners and Landräte from eastern provinces including Bismarck’s own brother Bernhard, had voted against it.82 It would almost certainly fail in the Lords.
Eulenburg, the minster responsible for the legislation, wrote to Bismarck to ask for guidance. Bismarck had been in Varzin for months while this crisis festered. Indeed he told Moritz Blanckenburg that he intended to stay as long as possible, ‘until the filthy mess is so big, that I can push through everything’.83 In addition he saw the Local Government Reform, which was bound to create a constitutional crisis because of resistance in the House of Lords, as an opportunity to get rid of Eulenburg as Minister of the Interior. Moritz von Blanckenburg warned Hans von Kleist on 15 August 1872 that ‘Bismarck and Roon want to use the Local Government bill to topple Eulenburg. You know that. They will not identify themselves with draft of the Lower House.’84 On 22 October 1872 in the House of Lords two leading conservatives, Wilhelm Freiherr von Zedlitz und Neukrich (1811–80), whom a Catholic member of the Landtag, Ludwig Hammers (1822–1902) called ‘a very conservative landowner’,85 and Friedrich Stephan Count von Brühl confronted the government directly on the principle of inherited rights. Brühl put it bluntly: ‘If there is no longer any hereditary authority in the kingdom except the Crown, God preserve us from the threat that somebody lays hands on that too, the one last hereditary authority, and shakes it.’86 As Ludwig von Yorck had warned Prince William, sixty years earlier, ‘if your Royal Highness deprives me and my children of my rights, what is the basis of yours?’87 In desperation Eulenburg wrote to Bismarck on 25 October 1872, the frankest possible letter from a decent man, also a count and a gentleman, to his chief. I quote it at some length because here as in the case of Itzenplitz one sees the discomfort of the ministers under Bismarck:
Dear Friend,
Only the importance of the matter could bring me to you give you discomfort by a letter. The debate in the House of Lords has unfolded in such a way that the success of the bill must be highly improbable. So yesterday the House of Lords voted by name with a two-thirds majority against the government bill and against the decision of the House of Deputies, the Lords accepted a provision that in the raising of the local tax base in the country districts the ground-and building-tax shall never be higher than the half of that percentage which is set as the basis for income and classified taxable income for suffrage. This decision will never pass the lower house. In all probability there will be decisions approved with regard to the composition of the district assemblies, whose acceptance by the House of Deputies is also inconceivable. Count Lippe, Kleist and Senfft are the spokesmen. With them more than half the members will vote: Putbus, Oscar, Arnim and so on. What is to be done? A local district ordinance must be passed and as
soon as possible. I shall fall with this one but what then? A conservative district organization has no chance in the House of Deputies, a liberal one none in the House of Lords, but something has to happen. Without an organization of district government, all the legislative programme stalls: school organization, roads, administrative organization, provincial funding; everything just stops. I beg you, dear friend, to let me know urgently how you stand on these things. The uncertainty is driving many people into the enemy camp. Do you want me to submit my resignation at once and would you like to try it with somebody else? Or do you want openly to speak out and strongly in support of my efforts? Or should there be ready for the time when the draft law returns a second time to the House of Lords, provision for a Pairschub [creation of new lords to form a majority—JS]. There is no time to lose. From my heart your Eulenburg.
PS The Catholics will vote against the district organization because they fear that the office holders will be an appropriate organ for conducting civil marriages.88
Bismarck refused to give an answer or to leave Varzin. His reply, written on 27 October 1872, is beneath contempt. He had not
yet formed an opinion about every detail … Even if our draft in its virginal purity had gone to the House of Lords, I would have not expected it to be accepted as a whole … I think your considerateness has led to a growing degeneration of the social order and I have to live here under a Landrat, who to save his own honour has made it his object to portray me before the dwellers here as an incompetent and un-Christian minister. There lies the evidence of how far my power extends in other ministries.
Bismarck refused to make the required pronunciamiento or indeed to say anything and reminds Eulenburg about
his beloved Wolff who during your illness made any legislation impossible … I hope to come in December but if I have to write many more letters like this, I shall not come before the Reichstag and will lay my presidency of the State Ministry to rest in the files. Responsibility without corresponding influence on what has to be responded leads directly to medical institutions. In old friendship, yours89
The sheer effrontery of this farrago of evasion of responsibility and irrelevance really shocked me the first time I read it. Bismarck sinks in this to a level of cowardice, irresponsibility, petty vindictiveness, and absurdity. How could Eulenburg’s gentleness as police minister have been responsible for the opinions of the Landrat in Bismarck’s district? The Landrat simply said of him what every respectable conservative landlord in the eastern areas said ten times a day and many said it in the House of Lords. How could the most powerful statesman of the nineteenth century claim that he had ‘responsibility without corresponding influence on what has to be responded’? It puzzles me that Fritz Eulenburg did not resign on the spot but stayed on for another six years.
One has to sympathize with the Junkers in the House of Lords, who like Ernst von Sennft-Pillsach (1795–1882) had written to Bismarck:
The war with France should have deepened the German people in the fear of God, but instead it drove it to arrogance. And your Excellency has not resisted that turn from God and His Word with that steadiness in faith, that holiness the Lord had commanded you in so wonderful a way. Turn in faith to our Lord Jesus Christ, who under Pontius Pilate ‘hath well acquitted’ himself. Now in Luther’s spirit acquit yourself in a German way. Then the Lord will turn to you and bring back to you many noble and pious men who now stay far from you.
Bismarck wrote on the margin with contempt: ‘Gerlach? Windthorst! Bodelschwingh? Or Ewald?’90 He found out when on 31 October 1872 the local district organization bill was defeated by 145 votes to 18 in House of Lords. As Pflanze puts it, the ‘Stahl Caucus’ rejected the transformation of the Ständestaat involved in abolition of manorial rule.91
Bismarck’s reaction was another bout of illness, as on 16 November 1872, Bucher explained to Bleichröder:
You know how spiritual and somatic conditions are reciprocally related with the Prince. Excited or annoyed by affairs, he becomes vulnerable to colds and lapses in his diet, and, when he has physical complaints, any kind of work makes him impatient.92
Bismarck responded in his usual violent way with a Promemoria dated 2 November and written still in Varzin clearly in a rage.
In the light of the attitude of the core of the House of Lords in the School Supervisory Law, the district organization and other questions, a reform of this body seems to me more important than the passage of any sort of district order … The factious attitude of the House damages and discredits the system of two chambers and endangers the monarchical system …
The solution was to abolish the House of Lords and replace it with ‘a first chamber, a Senate [which] should be essentially an organ of government and of monarchical interests in Prussia.’93
On 3 November the State Ministry met, still without Bismarck, and Eulenburg took the occasion to go over the district reorganization draft with his colleagues, to make what changes might give it a better passage and to consider the possibilities of a Pairschub. The minister conveniently omitted any discussion of the Promemoria on the abolition of the House of Lords. The cabinet calculated that at least twenty-four new peers would have to be named to ensure a majority and to intimidate the others. Helma Brunck, to whose fine analysis I owe my insight into this bizarre affair, gives the real credit for the outcome to the King. Eulenburg had made mistakes, which he admitted, but he had no reason to blame himself on moral grounds. Brunck writes:
the King saw it that way too. He saw through the game of intrigue and the unjust treatment of Eulenburg, which through his permanent absences he [Bismarck] had driven to a crisis point, in order to leave the Minister of Interior standing alone in the rain and to impose on him alone the battle for the district reorganization.94
On 30 November 1872 the Pairschub took place. King William, offended by the attitude of ‘his Junkers’, named twenty-five new peers to the House of Lords with whose votes the disputed district ordinance passed by a majority of twenty-five on 9 December 1872.95 The law abolished the patrimonial police and Junker-controlled village administration. Baroness Spitzemberg observed in her diary that the Kaiser spared the Junker right-wing the humiliation of ‘sitting next to Jew barons and speculators … It would have annoyed me if the nouveau riche had got into the House of Lords, because I am becoming more and more high Tory and conservative. Father says autocratic and violent.’96 On 13 December King William signed and sealed the new local district law.
The crisis did not end with the passage of the local district law but generated further discontent in the cabinet. Several ministers had complained to the King about Bismarck’s continuous absences. Von Selchow, the Minister of Agriculture, felt insulted that he had not been involved in the local government business. Roon also thought of resigning, and Itzenplitz had been thinking of it for years. Bismarck could not afford to lose the Conflict Ministers because it would look as if he had opted for a new liberal course, the last thing he had in mind. In mid-November he wrote gloomily to Roon about his health
In the last days I have been in bad shape again, am back in bed since the day before yesterday and have lost much heart as a result of this relapse, since I had been markedly getting better. God be with you; things cannot get worse very soon in human affairs, above all no dissolution.97
A day later he wrote to William I to express his apologies that, as a result of his weakened health, he had not been there at the Kaiser’s side during the continuing crisis. His attempt at Eulenburg’s request to intervene from a great distance had led to misunderstandings and to a further weakening of his health. ‘I have therefore asked Roon to summon me only if Your Majesty specially commands it and have notified him that I shall not correspond individually with the colleagues any more.’98 This account falsifies reality. His refusal to intervene at Eulenburg’s request had caused the crisis as had his prolonged absences. This once again shows Bismarck in his Pontius Pilate guise, washing his hands of responsibility when things
went wrong.
In mid-December he got news that Roon too had submitted his resignation and this triggered his own desire to do likewise. In a formal reply addressed to ‘Your Excellency’ of 13 December, he wrote that he decided to ask His Majesty to allow him ‘to divide functions entrusted to my person, which presupposes that His Majesty wishes to retain my services, … so that I restrict myself to the direction of the Reich’s affairs, with inclusion of foreign policy.’99 In the private ‘dear Roon’ letter written the same day, he writes that the situation now requires him to return to Berlin ‘not while I feel healthy but because I have a duty to discuss the situation with his Majesty and you in person.’ There follows a remarkable passage in which he describes an ‘unheard of anomaly that the foreign minister of a great empire also bears the responsibility for domestic policy’. What must old Roon have thought who had watched Bismarck intentionally accumulate office and power at every level? He continues his letter to Roon with a moving account of his state of mind:
In my trade one accumulates many enemies but no new friends, instead loses the old ones if one carries it out honestly and fearlessly for ten years. I am in disgrace with all[sic!] the members of the Royal family and the King’s confidence in me has ebbed. Every intriguer has his ear. As a result foreign service becomes more difficult for me. … In domestic matters I have lost the basis that is acceptable to me because of the treacherous desertion of the Conservatives in the Catholic question. At my age, and in the conviction that I have not long to live, the loss of all the old friends and ties has something disheartening about it for this [sic!] world; it produces paralysis. The illness of my wife which in the last months has afflicted her more severely, compounds that. My springs have been crippled through overuse. The King in the saddle has no idea how he has ridden a sturdy horse into the ground. The lazy last longer.100
Bismarck: A Life Page 46