Very similar divisions can be discerned in the response of the Russian administration to labour unrest in the 1890s. Here, too, there was conflict between those, like Interior Minister Zubatov, who urged the monarchy and the state to win the allegiance of the proletariat through the defence of workers’ rights and those who were protective of the capitalist sector.30
Wilhelm also opposed Bismarck on the labour question because he recognized and feared the risks involved in the chancellor’s policy of brinkmanship. Bismarck was prepared, if he deemed it necessary, to let the strikes gain momentum until Germany stood on the verge of civil war, or to introduce an unacceptably harsh anti-socialist law to the Reichstag and then, after repeated dissolutions, preside over a break with the constitution (coup d’état) along the lines of 1862. Should this happen there was little doubt that the experienced elder statesman would emerge as the dominant partner in the relationship between chancellor and monarch. Wilhelm shrank, understandably enough, from such a drastic strategy. As early as 19 May 1889, he confided to his friend Philipp Eulenburg, Prussian envoy in Brunswick, that he had ‘frightful difficulties’ with Bismarck over the matter of a ‘change to the constitution’. During a further meeting with Eulenburg on 13 January 1890, he reported that Bismarck’s intransigence on the anti-socialist law threatened to bring political conflict on a scale which could be met only by a coup d’état:
He, the Kaiser, would then be in an appalling situation, for he thought it unfortunate to begin his reign with a kind of revolution, shooting and whatever other measures of coercion. […] ‘I have […] the wish to show the people and especially the workers my good will, and to help them, but not the intention of shooting them!’31
The quarrel between the Kaiser and the chancellor was also a conflict about techniques of government, and about the distribution of authority within the imperial executive. Bismarck was dismayed not only by Wilhelm’s policies, but also by the way in which the new Kaiser had begun to intervene in the process of government. On 6 and 7 May, when first news of the Ruhr troubles reached the emperor in Kiel, he solicited reports from local officials, which were to be sent to him directly. His orders of 11 May to the governor-general of Westphalia (see above) were despatched without Bismarck’s knowledge. These were initiatives which had no precedent in imperial practice as it had evolved under Wilhelm I, and Bismarck responded robustly to them. He sent an icy communication to Governor Hagemeister of Westphalia, warning him that the government could not accept responsibility for actions taken by administrative officials without the authority of their superior ministers. In June 1889 Bismarck moved to forestall an independent monarchical initiative through the Interior Minister Ernst Herrfurth (a Wilhelm appointee) by advising him not to send reports directly to the monarch, lest ‘His Majesty feel compelled to make decisions without his responsible advisers and without any expert advice’.32
The Kaiser’s tampering with the administrative process during the labour dispute constituted a direct challenge to Bismarck’s authority as Prussian prime minister. Within Prussia, whose administration faced the task of handling the strikes and attendant unrest, the right of the minister president to coordinate policy was defined by a Cabinet Order which had been issued by King Friedrich Wilhelm IV in 1852 and had not been rescinded since. It was intended to bring order and unity into the affairs of government and stipulated that heads of departments ‘must confer, verbally or in writing, with the minister president on all administrative measures of importance’. All reports forwarded to the monarch by administrative chiefs were first to be submitted for comments to the minister president, who also reserved the right to be present at all meetings between such officials and the monarch.33 Whether the monarch’s dealings with subordinate officials during 1889 represented, as Bismarck was later to argue, a breach of the constitution was highly doubtful; however, they certainly amounted to a departure from Prussian constitutional practice hitherto.
A further challenge to Bismarck’s grip on power came from the circle of unofficial advisers that now emerged around the person of the emperor. Among them were the former tutor Georg Hinzpeter, the industrialist Count Hugo Douglas, the court painter and former mining official August von Heyden, the Kaiser’s close friend Count Philipp von Eulenburg and the formidable Friedrich von Holstein, a departmental head within the Foreign Office, who had privileged access to the internal deliberations of the Bismarck faction. They kept the monarch informed of developments, bolstered his resolve, briefed him on new policy proposals and coordinated political support for his initiatives in the labour question. It was largely thanks to this and other back-up that Wilhelm was able to hold his own in cabinet debates with the fearsome chancellor, speaking knowledgeably about the latest events and canvassing policy options with impressive fluency and confidence.
Bismarck was scathing about these figures in his memoirs, describing von Heyden, for example, as a man who passed for a mining official among artists and an artist among mining officials. After his departure from office, he did much to nourish press rumours about the mysterious Hintermänner (backroom operators) who exercised such disproportionate influence on the supreme executive. In fact, however, the influence of ‘irresponsible’ persons close to the monarch was institutionalized within the Prussian power structure through the operation of the Civil and Military Cabinets. In any case, the proximity to the king’s ear of unconstitutional outsiders had long been a characteristic of court life in Prussia. In his memoirs, Bismarck himself compared the emperor’s new advisers with the ‘coterie of ambitious place-hunters’ who had emerged at the time of Wilhelm I’s accession to the throne in order to ‘exploit the mismarriage between [the monarch’s] noble intentions and [his] inadequate knowledge of practical life’.34 Indeed it has often been observed that court systems are in general conducive to the formation of such advisory cliques, whose ability to provide an alternative to ‘official channels’ can help to sustain the autonomy of the monarch.35 What counts in such situations is not official rank or responsibility, but proximity to the monarch. As the political theorist Carl Schmitt pointed out, the resultant contest for influence and favour is a central problem of constitutional law, for ‘whoever briefs or informs the potentate is already participating in power, irrespective of whether he is a responsible countersigning minister’.36 If the emergence of an extra-constitutional advisory circle around Wilhelm II attracted such notice from contemporaries, this was in part because of the exceptional influence Bismarck had wielded within the executive. During the previous two reigns, he had, through his own virtual monopoly of executive power in the civilian sphere, largely suppressed the ‘antechamber of power’ around the person of the monarch.
In January 1890 the escalation of his dispute with Bismarck forced Wilhelm to explore further the options open to him under the German constitution. In view of Bismarck’s commanding position within the executive structure, launching any legislation without his cooperation was going to be difficult, if not impossible. The Prussian government could not bring a law on labour protection before the Prussian parliament against the will of the minister president and of the minister of commerce (both of which offices were held by Bismarck). Nor could the Prussian delegation to the Federal Council propose such a law before that body against the will of the Prussian foreign minister who cast the delegation’s vote (again Bismarck). But one avenue did remain open under the intricate Prussian-German constitution: if one of the other federal princes could be persuaded to bring a proposal before the Federal Council along the lines set out by the emperor, Bismarck could not prevent it from being discussed by the assembled plenipotentiaries.
The circumstances of Wilhelm’s accession augured well for such princely collaboration. Five days before his throne speech to the Reichstag, Wilhelm’s uncle, Grand Duke Friedrich of Baden, had proposed in a circular to his fellow sovereigns that the princes gather personally around Wilhelm when he opened the Reichstag in order to confirm ‘that the emperor of the Reich also
speaks in their name when he promises peace and undertakes to promote the welfare of the empire’.37 Several of the princes were in any case disposed to support Wilhelm’s views on the labour question, either because interventionism accorded with their own views on social policy, or (as in the case of Saxony) because they wished to offset the competitive disadvantage of labour legislation already operating in their own territories. Grand Duke Friedrich appears, for his part, to have seen princely collaboration in the Federal Council as a means of revitalizing the constitutional role of the German sovereigns, and ensuring ‘greater participation by the states’ in the ‘great political questions’ of the day38 – an aspiration which was not, in the event, to be fulfilled. By 15 January a clique of federal princes had formed – largely at Wilhelm’s initiative if a report by the Austro-Hungarian ambassador can be believed39 – around Grand Duke Friedrich of Baden, King Albert of Saxony and Grand Duke Karl Alexander of Weimar. It was agreed that the Saxon delegation should take the lead in introducing a motion to the Federal Council. Bismarck was able, in the short term, to counter this gambit through threats of resignation delivered in person to the princely envoys in Berlin.40 But the initiative does reveal something of the variety and potential of the constitutional instruments available under the hybrid German system to an emperor determined to expand his political role.
The deadlock continued throughout January and February 1890. A Crown Council meeting called by Wilhelm for 24 January became the scene of an open clash between the emperor and his chief minister. Wilhelm made an emotive address, speaking of ruthless capitalists who had squeezed their workers like ‘lemons’ and left them on the ‘manure pile’, listing his proposed reforms, rejecting the idea of a strengthened anti-socialist law and linking his own initiatives with the social achievements of his Hohenzollern ancestors. Bismarck gave no ground and the ministers (with a few exceptions) deferred to the chancellor or sat firmly on the fence, paralysed by the oncoming crisis. Following the meeting Wilhelm is said to have remarked to the Grand Duke of Baden: ‘These ministers are not mine, of course, they are the ministers of Prince Bismarck.’41
But the chancellor’s options were running out. On 25 January the Reichstag threw out the anti-socialist law, leaving the Bismarckian Cartel in disarray. On 4 February, Wilhelm issued two public statements. One, addressed to the chancellor, ordered him to organize in Berlin a Europe-wide conference on the labour question. The other, addressed to the Prussian minister of commerce (also Bismarck), directed him to prepare new legislation on social insurance, working conditions and worker representation. Bismarck edited the proclamations to dull their public impact and failed to countersign them, but could not prevent them from stirring popular opinion in favour of the emperor. In the weeks that followed he deployed a bewildering array of devices to tie Wilhelm down: encouragements to the Swiss to persevere with a parallel labour conference in Berne that would upstage the Kaiser’s project for Berlin, attempts to drive the Saxons off from their plans to propose a law before the Federal Council, repeated statements of his intention to resign various of his offices, blocking tactics in ministerial meetings, and a renewed campaign to introduce harsh anti-socialist legislation to the Reichstag, even at the cost of repeated dissolutions. These were the grotesque last resorts of a brilliant septuagenarian Machtmensch whose lust for power, as Bismarck himself admitted, had burnt up everything else inside him.
Bismarck still possessed one crucial asset, namely his ability to manage a Reichstag in which his Cartel still, though only just, controlled a majority. Since Wilhelm’s legislative plans also included a substantial increase in Reich military expenditure, the Kaiser remained reluctant to part from the chancellor as long as he felt he would need his help in manoeuvring these controversial proposals through parliament. Bismarck’s parliamentary base gave him the leverage he needed to press the emperor into supporting an anti-socialist law which might in turn bring him belated redemption. But even this advantage was lost when the results of the Reichstag elections of 20 February 1890 became known. The Cartel Bismarck had helped to create in 1887 was now shattered, the Reichstag dominated by Socialists, left-liberals and Catholics – in other words, by parties of the opposition, or ‘enemies of the Reich’ as Bismarck had so often branded them.
The end was precipitated over two issues that touched upon the prerogatives of the imperial office and the power of the Kaiser to influence (or control) the formulation of policy. In March 1890 Bismarck made an unexpected approach to Ludwig Windthorst, parliamentary leader of the (Catholic) Centre Party; the two men discussed the conditions under which the Centre Party might in future be willing to place its Reichstag votes at the government’s disposal. Windthorst’s conditions involved the reversal of various pieces of anti-Catholic legislation, such as the expulsion of the Jesuit Order, that still survived from Bismarck’s ‘cultural struggle’ (Kulturkampf ) against the German Catholics in the 1870s.
A move towards the Catholics made sense in terms of the electoral arithmetic of the Reichstag; with 106 seats, the Centre controlled the largest single contingent of seats. Bismarck may even have intended, with an eye to the forthcoming army bill, to persuade the emperor of his continuing usefulness as a political manager in the Reichstag. But in the circumstances of March 1890, the meeting with Windthorst was disastrously ill-judged. The Kaiser was strongly opposed to making concessions to the Catholic camp – the recall of the proscribed Redemptorist Order had already been proposed to him in September 1889 and categorically rejected.42 He was encouraged to take a hard line on Catholic issues by elements in his milieu. Throughout the autumn and winter of 1889 Eulenburg, the Grand Duke of Baden, Holstein and others repeatedly warned Wilhelm to be on his guard against any moves by Bismarck to conciliate the Catholics. Philipp Eulenburg in particular frequently warned that concessions to the particularist and ultramontane forces in German Catholicism would compromise the integrity of the Reich.43 The prevalence of such anxieties is a striking reminder of how fragile the sense of nation remained in Germany nearly two decades after the foundation of the empire. The meeting with Windthorst also had a disastrous effect on what remained of the largely protestant and anticlerical governmental faction in the Reichstag. Protests poured in from the National Liberals and even from those moderate ‘free conservatives’ who had previously been dyed-in-the-wool Bismarckians; Bismarck was now more isolated than at any other time since 1866.
Seeing his opportunity, Wilhelm moved in for the final confrontation. In a gruelling audience granted on 14 March 1890 – at 8.30 a.m.! – Wilhelm upbraided an unbreakfasted Bismarck over the meeting with Windthorst and declared that he had no right to negotiate with party leaders without permission. Only two weeks before, on 2 March, Bismarck had made the converse claim, namely that ministers and other officials had no right to confer with the Kaiser without the chancellor’s permission, citing as his authority the above-mentioned Cabinet Order of 1852. But the emperor now demanded that the order be returned to him so that he could rescind it. If Wilhelm’s own account of the meeting can be trusted, Bismarck flew into such a violent rage at this point that the Kaiser reached instinctively for his sabre. Then the old man ‘grew soft and wept’ while Wilhelm looked on, unmoved by the chancellor’s crocodile tears.44 Bismarck submitted his resignation four days later.
In 1888, when Wilhelm came to the throne, the office of emperor was like a house in which most of the rooms had never been occupied. Things had changed by March 1890, and they were to do so further in the decades that followed. The throne was no longer, as under Wilhelm I, merely the seat of authority on which power depended, but a political power in its own right. In the complex and difficult negotiations over the labour question, the throne had begun to emerge as one of the focal points of the decision-making process. At each step, the emperor found willing allies to abet him in his task, not only amongst his penumbra of zealous friends and advisers, but from a broader constituency within the administration that had grown weary of Bismarck�
�s rule and applauded the daring initiatives of the new monarch. With this support Wilhelm had developed and seen through a legislative programme that enjoyed the support of much of the German public. The labour laws enacted during the years 1890–92 in the wake of his intervention did not by any means do away entirely with labour grievances, but they did bring some progress in the areas of industrial safety, working conditions, youth protection and arbitration. Moreover, the principle they embodied, namely that ‘entrepreneurial forces must respect the state-endorsed interests of all groups’ remained a dominant theme in Reich and Prussian social policy during the following decades.45 Most importantly, Wilhelm had prevailed over a political colossus, dismantling in the process many of the chief hindrances to the exercise of power from the throne. As an individual, Wilhelm had also impressed many contemporary observers with his quickness to absorb facts and arguments, his self-assurance and self-control in debate. ‘The emperor’s chairmanship [of the State Council convened to discuss the labour question] has been so excellent,’ Friedrich von Holstein remarked, ‘that everyone is asking: where did he learn how to do that?’46
So far so good. But a number of questions remained open. The struggle with Bismarck had imposed a degree of discipline and focus on the young monarch and his collaborators, concentrating their minds on the task at hand. It was already clear, however, that the forces rallying behind the emperor lacked the necessary cohesion, administrative expertise or political vision to sustain him in the longer term. The Cabinet Order of 1852 had been designed to ensure unity and discipline in government affairs by consolidating the supervisory role of the chancellor. If that role were to be permanently done away with, as Wilhelm seemed to demand in his final altercation with Bismarck, who or what would take its place? Lastly, one might add that along with all the good things, the strains of 1889–90 had also brought some of the Kaiser’s more regrettable characteristics to the fore: a tendency to get the tone slightly wrong by overshooting the mark, an impatience to do everything at once, an impulsiveness that by January 1890 had already earned him the sobriquet ‘Wilhelm the Sudden’ in the South German states. And those who were often in his company detected an element of personal fragility. ‘The emperor’s health [is] outstanding,’ Philipp zu Eulenburg confided to Holstein in summer 1889. ‘But his restlessness is immeasurable. His fluctuating appearance suggests, unfortunately, a somewhat nervous disposition.’47
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