A crisis then emerged in the small state of Hesse-Kassel, which would bring the tensions between Austria and Prussia over Germany to a boiling point. Hesse-Kassel’s reactionary monarch feared for his dynastic survival and called upon the Confederal Reichstag to help him confront his own military forces, which had sided with the German nationalists and the delegates of the Frankfurt Assembly. Prussia squared up on the side of the nationalists while Austria still rooted for the status quo. For a short period, it appeared as though there would be a war over the future of Germany between Austria and Prussia.(30) However, at the Punctuation of Olmützcvi in Bohemia in November 1850, Austria backed Friedrich Wilhelm into a corner by making it clear that if it came to conflict, Prussia would not face Austria alone. Russia supported Austria’s desire to tear Prussia down a strip for having upset the delicate balance of the Concert of Europe, and Prussia went away with its tail between its legs. Prussian particularists were glad to have had the old balance of power restored but humiliated at the manner in which it had been done. They were pleased to see the German steamroller put back in the yard, but upset at having been rapped over the knuckles by their arch-rival. Friedrich Wilhelm backed away from a fight and Prussia dissolved her north German union. By 1851, the German Confederation was restored. Austria had won the day and demonstrated that she was still master in German Europe.
Olmütz represented the high point in Austria’s ability to pull the strings of European diplomacy. Although Austria had blocked the idea of a united Germany during the 1848 and 1849 revolutions, the Austrian Kaiser, Franz Joseph, still could not quite let go of the notion of the Habsburgs taking a lead in German affairs. In 1850, he proclaimed, ‘I am above all Austrian but decidedly German and deeply wish for Anschluß with Germany.’(31) But without the guiding hand of Prince von Metternich, the architect of the Concert of Europe, who had lost his grip on power during the tumultuous revolutions of 1848, Austrian foreign policy began to loose its way in Germany and started to stumble from one self-inflicted disaster to the next. The mistake with the most lasting consequences was Austria’s rupture with her old ally Russia. Austria had relied upon Russia’s support to help her quench the explosion of nationalist uprisings in Hungary. Russia had then helped Austria restore her status in Germany, and the balance of power in Europe. Austria repaid her by corralling the German states behind France and Britain in their war against Russia in the Crimea, in the hope of strengthening her own narrow interests vis-à-vis Russia in the Balkans. Austria’s narrowness of vision and diplomatic ineptitude in the era after 1850 was to cost her dear. In allying herself with France, Austria lost all the remaining credibility she had with the German states who still bitterly remembered French occupation, and were well aware that an alliance between Austria and France would not only open up French claims to territories to the left of the Rhine, but also lead to greater interference by France in the South German states. Austria did not gain a lasting alliance with Britain or France either. It was foreign policy at its most inept, and not for the last time.
The Crimean War of 1854–56 proved to be a turning point in European history. The war effectively marked the beginning of the end of the Concert of Europe as an alliance of nations that had been ranged against Napoleon and which sought to keep France in check. The balance of power in Europe began to change. Britain allowed France to break out of her isolation by joining her in an attempt to close the door on further Russian expansion. Following the war, Britain steadily drifted back into ‘splendid isolation’, focusing on her imperial project and largely losing interest in the squabbles on the Continent. France had a new Napoleoncvii at the helm who was determined to break the shackles of the Congress of Vienna and restore France to her pre-eminent role on the Continent. In 1859, France allied herself with the Italian nationalists in the War of Italian Unification, directed primarily against Austria. Austria was now largely friendless, having betrayed Russia and humbled Prussia. She lost the war in Italy and in 1861 had to watch the proclamation of an independent Italian kingdom.
Italy and Prussia were to find they had much in common, their aspirations for uniting their peoples having largely been held back by Austria. They also shared a fear of a revived and expansionistic France. Napoleon III made no secret of his desire for the Rhineland and while assisting the process of Italy’s liberation from Austria, France took control of the Papal States, Rome and its hinterland, thereby preventing the full unification of Italy (Austria also still held a swathe of territory in northern Italy), to the lasting resentment of Italian nationalists. In Prussia, a new king, Wilhelm I, was an enthusiast for German unification, which he believed to be inevitable.(32) It appeared that a new constellation was emerging in European power politics with the demise of the Concert, one which would prove more favourable to the achievement of Prussian consolidation in Germany. The final ingredient that would break the logjam was the appointment of a new and energetic Prussian Chancellor — Otto von Bismarck.
BISMARCK (THE GREAT) AND A PRUSSIAN GERMANY
During the French Revolution, Victor Hugo noted that, ‘Austria was Germany’s past and Prussia her future,’ and so it came to pass, and no one made it more so than Otto von Bismarck. Bismarck was born on 1st April 1815 at Schönhausen, in the old Mark of Brandenburg, just two weeks after Napoleon arrived back in Paris for his last ‘100 days’. Born at one of the great turning points of history into a world that was polarised by the ideas of the French Revolution and the forces reacting against it, he was raised in Pomerania in the traditions of the Junker land owning class of Germany’s east. Pomeranian to the core, his favourite pastimes included riding furiously through the forests of his estates at Kniephof (Konarzewo) and Varzin (Warcino), hunting with his dogs and taking family picnics in the dunes by the beach at Stolpmünde (Ustka). When defining Germany, it would be the Pomeranian soldier or the Baltic farmer he referred to, rather than the Germans of the Rhine or the Danube.cviii The Junkers were not like their aristocratic English counterparts; they could not afford to live off the rents of their estates and they worked their lands, often with little to distinguish them from their peasant farming neighbours other than their distinguished names. In fact the landed gentry of the east more often than not had to supplement their income by seeking public employment in the military or bureaucracy. Bismarck however was no typical Junker. He took after his clever and sophisticated mother; he wasn’t a great scholar but a gifted conversationalist and orator, on a par with Winston Churchill in his use of language and caustic wit. In addition to his great physical presence (he was six-foot-four), Bismarck possessed great charm and could be exceedingly courteous when he wanted to be. But he did not suffer fools gladly and viewed few, if any, as his equal. He once admitted, ‘The capacity of admiring men is only moderately developed in me, and it is rather a defect of my eye that it is sharper for weaknesses than good qualities.’(1) He could also be vengeful and unforgiving; characteristics only held in check by the Christian Pietism informed by his wife Johanna von Puttkamer. Bismarck, despite numerous dalliances, remained a devoted family man whose personal correspondence revealed a deep affection for his brother, sister, wife and three children.
Otto von Bismarck began life as a liberal and a romantic. He was invested with the ideals of the revolution, even at times proclaiming himself a ‘republican’, and a melancholy romantic in the tradition of Goethe and Byron.(2) But marriage to a simple, patient and devout wife gave him happiness, three children and imbued him with a new Lutheran pietism — a tradition that emphasised ‘service to the state and its appointed ruler as the highest religious duty’. However, when public office came, it further deteriorated his respect for his fellow man, not least in the realm of the political class. Bismarck became more conservative, but above all pragmatic, and he was increasingly assured of his superior grasp of current events. Although many of Bismarck’s contemporaries and historians past and present have attempted to narrowly define his strengths and faults, throughout his career he remained imp
ossible to box into one or other simple political or ideological category. Bismarck remained consciously above politics and parties. He hated to be beholden to anyone, or anything, always restless and determined to remain free to chart his own course, and that which he deemed best for the state. He remained a product of an age torn between liberty and authority. Bismarck’s Weltanschauung (world view) was certainly influenced by the tumultuous age in which he lived, not least by the revolutions of 1848 and 1849, and his experiences as the Prussian delegate sent to Frankfurt, the seat of the restored German Confederation.
In 1851, at the age of thirty-three, Bismarck, having spent a brief period as a member of the Prussian Landtag was dispatched as the Prussian envoy to the Diet of the German Confederation at Frankfurt. This is where his career as a ‘diplomat’ began. Frankfurt in the 1850s was about as cosmopolitan a city as Germany possessed, hosting delegates from across much of the former Holy Roman Empire. At this time, the world was a place in which the forces of radical Marxism, reactionary conservatism and Catholic papism vied with the nationalistic and liberal forces unleashed by successive French revolutions. It was a world in turmoil, a time of great social, economic, political and cultural upheavals.cix Bismarck came to define these forces for change into categories of friend and foe, first to Prussia and later to Germany, and even though time eventually moderated many of these forces, it did not change Bismarck’s perceptions of them. The fact that Bismarck’s ‘world view’ largely stopped evolving in the 1850s had a substantial impact on the future for Germany.
Bismarck spent eleven years in Frankfurt, honing his skills, jousting with his fellow delegates — not least of all the Austrians — and developing media savvy, spinning and bribing journalists in equal measure to promote Prussia’s interests. He later recalled this period as being one of the happiest times in his life, not only because his position gave him time to go swimming in the Main river, and riding in the forests of the Taunus mountains, but also because his position as a diplomat gave him ample opportunity to eat, drink and smoke to excess! He acquired a taste for Havana cigars, invented a concoction of champagne and stout that he called ‘Black Velvet’, and hosted regular beer parties at which he liked to challenge his guests and sharpen his wits.
Where Bismarck had been prepared to countenance Austria and Prussia as partners in dividing up the German Confederation between them, he soon found the overbearing and arrogant attitude of the Austrian envoys excruciating. He discovered the Austrians had no intention of giving their Prussian counterparts parity of status in Germany and continued to treat the Prussian envoy with the same measure of contempt they did the representatives of the smaller German states such as Hesse or Württemberg. By 1856, Bismarck was saying ‘Germany is too small for both of us’, and missed no opportunity to give the Austrians the benefit of his barbed wit, or to seek conflicts in Germany and the wider Europe, in which the Austrians would come to grief. He began a process of small steps that led to estrangement between Hohenzollern Prussia and Habsburg Austria, realising full well that Prussia was not yet strong enough to resist her and chart its own course in Germany. Bismarck hoped that one day an opportunity would come Prussia’s way allowing her to expand her influence in Germany, irrespective of Austria’s wishes.(3)
By 1859, Bismarck’s temperament and disputes with the Austrians led to King Wilhelm moving him out of harm’s way to a new posting as Prussian Ambassador to Russia in St Petersburg. Despite the isolation and meagre pay of the Prussian state to its ambassadors, Bismarck not only developed a great fondness for the city but more importantly for the Russian people and the Russian language. He was already fluent in English, French and Latin. He would use Russian to pen personal notes to himself that others could not understand. It was the beginning of a lifelong and heartfelt association with Russia that would come to shape both his and Imperial Germany’s future.
Bismarck’s next posting was as Prussian Ambassador to Paris. When bored with the day-to-day routines of diplomatic life, he would set off for the fashionable resort of Biarritz in the South of France, where he fell head over heels in love with Katherine Orlov, the wife of the Russian Ambassador to Brussels, and with whom some allege he had a passionate and long-lasting affair. Bismarck was ever the larger-than-life character. From Paris, Bismarck also made regular trips to London, where he met the British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. On one such visit he told Disraeli, ‘(Given the power) I shall declare war on Austria, dissolve the German confederation, subjugate the smaller and middle states, and give Germany national unity under the control of Prussia.’(4) It was a fanciful notion at the time, but it does indicate that, although he may not have anticipated the when, or the how, of German unification, he was a firm believer in the national principal and the inevitability and necessity of sorting Europe into its constituent ‘tribes’. While he always remained a Prussian at heart, he argued that everyone who spoke German, including himself, wanted the unification of Germany.(5)
But Bismarck began to tire of the pettiness of diplomatic life and wanted to return to the centre of political action in Berlin. The opportunity arose during a looming constitutional crisis in Prussia over the military budget. The delegates to the Prussian parliament would not pass the military budget without democratic reforms. Despite the anachronistic three-tier Prussian voting system, rapid industrialisation and population growth had meant that ever more liberal and left-wing MPs were being returned to the Prussian parliament. They now began flexing their muscles, not only with regard to all areas of public finances, but also on matters of how the money should be spent. Beyond that they wanted the Landwehr — the patriotic militia created during the Napoleonic invasions, which remained the enduring symbol of ‘Democratic Nationalism’ — to take a pre-eminent role within the nation’s armed forces. This was particularly galling for Wilhelm I, who was not in the least bit inclined to let a civilian militia take control of his beloved Prussian army. Wilhelm was very much a monarch in the thrifty militarist mould of Prussian kings. It was he who had wanted to set the troops on the crowds in Berlin in 1848, whilst his brother Friedrich Wilhelm IV had insisted on restraint. Wilhelm I was not remotely interested in allowing the parliament to dictate military spending. It was an area of policy that he saw exclusively as his own prerogative and that of his personally appointed military Cabinet.
In 1862, after refusing to pass the budget without further reforms, the parliament was dissolved. The new elections, however, returned an even larger liberal majority. Prussia was faced with a serious constitutional crisis and a conflict between parliamentary liberalism and the authority of the king. Wilhelm I considered abdication in favour of his more liberal son Friedrich, if the impasse could not be resolved. Friedrich — who was married to Queen Victoria’s oldest daughter, Princess Victoria — favoured a move towards a more liberal constitutional monarchy along British lines. In a last roll of the dice, members of the conservative establishment persuaded an initially reluctant Wilhelm to see if Bismarck could use his ‘diplomatic skills’ to conjure them out of having to give way to greater parliamentary reform. Wilhelm I appointed Bismarck as Prussian Prime Minister on 22nd September 1862. Bismarck’s first speech to the chamber was one of his most memorable and was indicative of a mind that could navigate the most troubled waters. He held out an olive branch to the liberals on the thing they desired even more than greater democratic reform; namely for Prussia to take the lead in forging German unity. He said, ‘Germany does not look to Prussia’s liberalism, but to her strength… The great questions of the day will not be decided by speeches and resolutions of majorities — that was the great mistake from 1848 to 1849 — but by iron and blood.’(6) He relieved them of the ‘burden’ of having to approve the budget by abusing the Prussian constitution, which stated that money could only be spent with the agreement of the king and the two houses of parliament. Bismarck invented a ‘hole in the constitution’, arguing that as there had been no agreement, the king must keep spending money until an ag
reement was made. Eventually compromise was reached and the parliament passed the military budget. They received commitments that honoured the role of the Landwehr but fell far short of their initial demands.
Bismarck became Foreign Minister of Prussia two weeks after being appointed Prime Minister and held both posts for the next twenty-seven years. He had just conjured his first great success and averted a full-blown constitutional crisis. Depending on your viewpoint, he had either impeded the progress to greater democratic reform, or avoided civil strife. Although the latter was the prominent view at the time, the former has taken on more significance in terms of the road Germany went down some fifty-two years later. It was the power of Bismarck’s personality, his gifted use of the German language and the fact that he stood outside traditional party politics that enabled his success. Bismarck was a ‘man of detachment from principal, the man who disconnected himself from the romantic attachments of an older generation to practise a new kind of politics, flexible, pragmatic, emancipated from fixed ideological commitments.’(7) One might say that Bismarck became the first truly consummate politician of the modern era. Bismarck himself said, ‘Politics is no science, it is an art,’ and it was an art in which it transpired he was uniquely gifted.(8)
Far from being the archetypal Prussian Junker aristocrat that history had sought to paint Bismarck as, he became a true maverick, and a man who increasingly came to stand above party, class or vested interest. He was a solitary figure who charted his own course, saying of himself, ‘I have never been a doctrinaire… Liberal, reactionary, conservative — those I confess seem luxuries to me.’(9) It seemed the king had found the man perfectly crafted to fill in the cracks between the civilian and military hierarchy in Prussia. For his part, Bismarck made sure there were sufficient crises at regular enough intervals to make him indispensable to the king, and keep him permanently at his post. Bismarck’s first act on becoming Foreign Minister was to tell all of Prussia’s diplomats to start writing their reports in German rather than French. He was sending out a signal that under his leadership, Prussia was going to chart a new course.(10) He went on to do remarkable things, first in foreign and then in social policy, each of which on their own would have been enough to have made him great, and to reserve his place in German and European history.
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