Consolidation of Germany

This series has six easy 5 minute installments. This first installment: Bismarck’s Central Role.

Introduction
What was more difficult, founding the German Empire or consolidating it? Since the Medieval Age Germany had consisted of many entities of different levels of independence, status, and power. Bringing them all together to make a single state was quite an accomplishment. Getting them to have a common sense of nationality was a slow and difficult process that required greater skill and untiring perseverance

The condition of Germany when William II had just been crowned Emperor was much like that of the United States when independence had been won by the victories of Washington’s army. The separate States had their separate interests, their traditions, their local pride, their jealousy of centralized power; and the last of these considerations was the most difficult to master or pacify. One of the plainest lessons of history is that small states within the same natural boundaries must and will ultimately unite, and they find their safety and their highest interest in so doing; and it appears strange that this can seldom be accomplished without a struggle. That which was patriotism in the earlier day, devotion to the small country and the limited sovereignty, becomes provincialism when the principalities are combined in an empire. Such combination is certain to come with the progress of civilization, the extension of lines of traffic, the multiplication of industries, and the increase of commerce. To accomplish combination and unification on an old continent, within a single generation, required at once the wisdom of patience and the genius of energy.

This selection is from Prince Bismarck by Charles Lowe . For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Time: 1881-1890
Place: Germany

To create the empire had been a very hard ask, but to consolidate it proved a still harder one. When the first Imperial Parliament was opened at Berlin (March, 1871), Bismarck had almost completed his twentieth year of continuous service to the State, counting from his appointment to the old Diet at Frankfort; and during this period of incessant endeavor he had expended the energies of at least a score of ordinary men. But there was still in store for him an equally long period of uninterrupted service as Imperial Chancellor, or major-domo, of the empire. For it was still incumbent on him to rivet the empire which he had raised.

The main reason for this was that he insisted, so to say, upon doing everything himself. The foreign relations of the empire were certainly more than enough to engage his undivided attention, but his was the chief directing hand in the field of domestic affairs as well. In his own person he formed a ministry of all the talents. As Chancellor he was the sole responsible Minister of the empire, and champion of the Imperial Constitution, which had simply been adopted from that of the North German Con federation to suit the new order of things. And, on the whole, it was not ill-suited to the peculiar wants and political character of the German people. The National Legislature might be described as of the bi-cameral kind, with no separate sovereign veto over it; the Bundesrath, or Federal Council, forming the Upper Chamber, and the Reichstag, or Imperial Parliament, the Lower. The former was composed of delegates, or plenipotentiaries, from the Federal Sovereigns, presided over by the Chancellor; while the latter represented the German people, the deputies being returned by universal suffrage in about the proportion of one to one hundred thousand of the population, making the total number three hundred ninety-seven. The assent of both bodies was equally necessary to the passing of a law, which might originate with either; though, as a matter of fact, the birthplace of bills was invariably the Federal Council. The Popular Assembly could reject a bill as absolutely as the Sovereign Council, and, when the two had once adopted a measure, it was beyond the power of the Emperor to veto it, for the Kaiser was made only the executive head of the Federal Council, and could exercise no sovereign rights apart from it in his Imperial capacity. The German Emperor always has been popularly supposed to be a kind of military autocrat, but, as a matter of fact, there is no sovereign in all Europe so constitutionally tied down and circumscribed as he. For example, it is often feared that his impetuosity might cause him to plunge his people into war. But the Emperor cannot declare an aggressive war without the consent of his fellow- sovereigns. He is only the executor of the combined will of the Reichstag and the Bundesrath, and it has often happened that he has had to carry out decisions of the latter body which, as King of Prussia, he had unsuccessfully opposed. The locating of the Imperial Supreme Court of Justice at Leipsic, instead of at Berlin, is a case in point, when Prussia was outvoted in the Federal Council by a majority of two, much to the disgust and indignation of Bismarck, though, as Chancellor, he had to bend to the decision. No student of modern German history ever can attain to a clear and just apprehension of his subject until he realizes the fact that the German Emperor is anything but an autocrat, and that the vicarious, despotic power of his Chancellor is only such as has been conferred upon him by what is probably one of the most even-balanced and beneficent constitutions in all Europe. In saying this, I would only be understood as meaning that it was peculiarly well adapted to the stage of political development reached by the German people.

Yet there were many who thought that the person of Bismarck himself formed much too prominent a part in the executive machinery of the Imperial constitution, as witness the following letter from his war colleague in the Prussian Cabinet, Count von Roon, to a Conservative leader:

The Hermit of Varzin wishes to do everything himself, and yet issues the most stringent orders that he is not to be disturbed. It is enough to drive to despair an old man who would fain go to bed with a quiet mind. If Bismarck does not make all haste to bring together a first House, and the most necessary Ministers for the empire, history will one day pronounce a severe judgment upon him. Living from hand to mouth will not do for long, ho ever dexterous and strong the hand, and however eloquent and keen the tongue. God knows that nobody wishes him better than I, as I am, so to speak, the shield on which he was uplifted. But he has too few sincere friends, and listens too much to his enemies, of whom those who idolize him are the worst. It is because I have so high an opinion of him that I should like him to be different in many respects.”

This was written after Bismarck had been only about two years in harness as Chancellor of the empire and Prussian Premier, and his pluralist duties had been of the most Herculean character. His war with Rome had already broken out, and he had also been busy garnering the results of his war with France. To him fell the organization of Alsace-Lorraine as a Reichsland, first under a kind of dictatorship, or “kindly despotism, “and then as a quasi-autonomous province duly represented in the Reichstag.

His policy toward the reconquered provinces may be briefly described. He trusted to gradual recognition on the part of the in habitants that, on the whole, “the rule of the Germans was more benevolent and humane than that of the French, and that, under their new masters, they enjoyed a much greater degree of communal and individual freedom.” In annexing Alsace-Lorraine, his primary object, he said, was not to make the inhabitants happy and contented, but to secure Germany against future aggression, and their happiness lay in their own hands. A good deal of recalcitrancy was shown by these inhabitants in the earlier years of their new lot, but by 1879 Bismarck was able to announce that he was quite willing to confer on the provinces the “highest degree of independence compatible with the military security of the empire”; and after this, the appointment of a Stadtholder, or Viceroy, in the person of Marshal Manteuffel, relieved the Chancellor of all direct responsibility for the fate of the Reichsland.

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