Bismarck
Category: History
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Otto, Prince of Bismarck, Count of Bismarck-Schönhausen, Duke of Lauenburg, was a conservative German statesman and diplomat. From his origins in the upper class of Junker landowners, Bismarck rose rapidly in Prussian politics, and from 1862 to 1890 he was the minister president and foreign minister of Prussia. Before his rise to the executive, he was the Prussian ambassador to Russia and France and served in both houses of the Prussian Parliament.

Bismarck

by
Georges Lacour-Gayet

Translated by Herbert M. Capes


Franz von Lenbach’s portrait of Bismarck in his 75th year. He is in uniform of Major General of the Guards Cuirassiers of Prussia Franz von Lenbach’s portrait of Bismarck in his 75th year.
He is in uniform of Major General of the Guards Cuirassiers of Prussia

Chapter I.
Years of Preparation

Years of childhood and youth — Legal beginnings — Life in the country — Marriage — Diet of 1847 — The days of March at Berlin in 1848 — Parliament of Frankfort — The Olmütz Interview — At the Diet of Frankfort — Journeys to Vienna and Paris — Relations with the Prince Regent.

Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck was born on the 1st of April, 1815, at Schönhausen, a village of Brandenburg in the Kingdom of Prussia. The place and date are of interest in the history of the man who was one day to make the greatness of Prussia, the unity of Germany, and the calamity of Europe.

Schönhausen, situated about five miles from the right shores of the Elbe, and actually in the province of Saxon Prussia, had been the patrimonial residence of the Bismarcks since the sixteenth century. The father and mother of the future Chancellor had there recently undergone a painful ordeal. The 14th of October, 1806, had seen the downfall of the Prussian monarchy; in the words of Heine, Napoleon had breathed on Prussia and Prussia had ceased to exist. Some days after the catastrophe of Jena, when the distraded Prussians were fleeing before the victors, the Bismarcks had abandoned their estate. Soult’s regiments, marching on Berlin, had passed through the property, and had paid little respect to it. A great genealogical tree hung on one of the walls of the hall; it was the pride of the family, for, in a purely imaginary fashion, it traced the descent of the Bismarcks from the eighth century, from the time of Charlemagne. Soult’s soldiers, showing no respect for this piece of antiquity, had slashed it about with their bayonets, and when the Bismarcks came back to their home, the famous genealogical tree was nothing but a ruin. More than once, in his childhood, the young Otto heard this episode of the passing of the French recounted.

Up to 1815 there had been trying hours at Schönhausen, but the Battle of Leipzig had brought back victory. In 1815, the very year of the birth of Bismarck, one after the other the Treaties of Vienna and the Battle of Waterloo had consolidated the political and military triumph of Prussia. France, in her turn, under the most stern conditions, was suffering the law of the vanquished. The genealogical tree of Schönhausen was amply avenged.

Bismarck used to say, à propos of his origin, that “he had in his veins both the blood of a cuirassier and the blood of a professor”; and, expressing it in a different fashion, “I come alternatively of a generation that gets thrashed and a generation that thrashes.” He who, at the time of his disgrace, was to receive the grade of General of Cavalry with the rank of Field-Marshal, loved to recall the military character of his forbears. “There is not one of my ancestors that did not draw the sword. My father and his three brothers. My grandfather was at Rosbach; he fought against Louis XV, and my great-grandfather against Louis XIV, in the little wars on the Rhine in 1672-5. Besides, a great many of my ancestors took part in the Thirty Years’ War, some for the Empire, others in the Swedish ranks.” The family bore this disquieting device: Noch lange nicht genug (Far from being enough).

This family, with its military traditions, had been settled for several generations in the middle Marches of Brandenburg, which were the cradle of the Prussian monarchy; it belonged to the small provincial nobility, whose whole ideal was to serve in the Army and to cultivate their poor estates. They were squireens — Junkers, as the Germans say, with the narrow conservative ideas and reactionary fierceness the word implies.

The Chancellor’s father had retired early from military service to employ himself in the improvement of his property; he had married Luisa Wilhelmina Mencken, who belonged to a family of professors and lawyers. Of this marriage were born six children, of whom only three survived — an elder brother of the Chancellor, the Chancellor, and a younger sister, Malvina, who was always greatly attached to him, and who married a Count von Arnim.

Bismarck’s childhood was spent on an estate at Kneiphof in Pomerania. The open-air life in a harsh climate helped to develop his powerful frame, and gave him the love of the country he kept till the end of his life, “I have always had,” he used to say, “an immense and quite romantic love for the country, for the fields and woods, for uncultivated nature. The only equal passion I have is for animals.” His mastiff, Tyras, was his inseparable companion in his old age; he had been called the Reichshund — the dog of the Empire.

From his sixth year to his eleventh the young Otto was brought up at the Plamann Institute in Berlin, a fashionable school, though its iron discipline left unpleasant memories in his mind; according to him, it was “a sort of House of Correction.” Sent later to the Friedrich-Wilhelm Gymnasium, and then to the Grey-Cloister Gymnasium, his studies were of an adequate kind; he gained a fair knowledge of French and English. Later on he learned Russian, and on this account could rightly congratulate himself on being able to treat directly with the Ministers of the Tsar without having recourse to an intermediary, and without being understood by the other diplomats, who could use only French.

Bismarck began his “Thoughts and Memories” with this view of himself at the end of his secondary studies, when he was about seventeen:

“A normal product of our official teaching, when, at Easter 1832, I left the Gymnasium, I was a Pantheist; moreover, if not a republican, I was at least convinced that a Republic was the most rational form of government; and, in addition, I used to rack my brains to discover the motives sufficient to induce millions of men to submit during their whole life to the will of one alone.”

But these republican and levelling fancies were but a fire of straw.

“An absolute devotion to the Prussian monarchy had been inculcated on me from the cradle…. I remained faithful to the defenders of authority. To the boy imbued with the belief in authority Harmodius and Aristogiton, as well as Brutus, were common criminals and William Tell a rebel and assassin.”

In a word, the young Junker of Schönhausen belonged body and soul to Prussia, of which it has been said, with good cause, that it is less a nation than a system, having State Policy for its basis, war for its industry, and, for instruments, the barrack, the school, and officials brought up in the idea that humanity begins only with the Baron.

In the month of May 1832, when he was seventeen, Bismarck was entered as a student in the Faculty of Law at the University of Göttingen; at this time, according to him, he was slender, lean, and “as thin as a knitting-needle.”

There would be little to be told of his studies; of his school-boy pranks, his coarse jests, his duels (there were as many as twenty-eight of them), his eccentricities, much might be said. It is much more interesting to recall that he had definitely taken up his position in the ranks of the reactionary party. “I was too well trained à la Prussienne not to be disagreeably impressed by the attempt on the established political order by a revolutionary and noisy crew.”

It is well to take note of another sentiment, thenceforth imprinted on his mind.

“If I let my eyes fall on the map of Europe, it maddened me to think that France had kept Strasburg.”

His student life came to an end at the Berlin University in 1835, at the age of twenty.

Great eater, great drinker, great blusterer, easily made violent and brutal, this giant of more than six feet high gave the impression of a character but ill-balanced, concerned above all in making himself singular by his extravagances.

His dèbut in the Magistracy

All this seemed unlikely to fit Bismarck for the diplomatic career about which he was vaguely thinking. He consulted Ancillon, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, who absolutely dissuaded him — his appearance was too much against it. Then he fell back upon a judicial career, as a temporary makeshift. He made his début, when he was twenty, at the Berlin Tribunal, as a Referendary, an office much like that of a Registrar. He had to settle divorce matters, and he was not interested in trying to reconcile a drunken husband with a recalcitrant wife. He then took the course of passing the State examination necessary for entering the administrative career, and after this examination he received a nomination as Referendary at Aix-la-Chapelle, and afterwards at Potsdam. But the passive nature of these duties did not suit his combative temperament; he wrote to his father at that time: “The Prussian official is like a musician in an orchestra: he plays the first violin or the triangle without a glance at, or an influence on, the thing as a whole; he must play his part as it is given to him, whether he thinks it good or bad. I want to make music as I think proper, or not at all.”

The time for military service came; he spent it in the regiment of Infantry of the Guards.

The death of his mother and reverses of fortune abruptly brought about his discharge and a complete change of life. He went to settle at Kneiphof in Pomerania to cultivate a family estate.

Life in the country

From 1839 to 1847 there were eight years of country life, where, under the roughest conditions, Bismarck led the life of a country gentleman — a Landjunker; but he was better pleased with it all than with the business of sorting documents and papers and putting them in boxes.

“Sooner or later,” he said, “the moment will come when we shall sink under the burden of our waste-paper habit, and shall be crushed by the inferior bureaucracy.”

At Kneiphof existence was hard; with very mediocre resources the cultivation of an estate that had been well-nigh abandoned had to be undertaken, and everything went wrong. He wrote to his sister:

“It is with the greatest difficulty that I resist the desire to fill my letter with lamentations over the management of my land — the night-frosts, the sick cattle, the poor-looking colza, the dead lambs, the hungry sheep, the scarcity of straw, of potatoes, of manure, and of money.

“It will be difficult to pull through this year with this bad harvest, prices so low, and this long winter.”

But to have to grapple with a thousand difficulties suited a nature to which fighting was a need and a pleasure. At this epoch of his life he thus described his ideal:

“I quite expected to live and die in the country after gaining some success as an agriculturist; and after having, perhaps, won some laurels in war, if one broke out. If, as a country gentleman, I still had some ambition, it was quite simply to be a brave lieutenant of the Landwehr.

The country life he leads continuously develops the great strength of his constitution; he is perpetually scouring his estate on horseback; he trains himself for violent exercise. “If I say that I have fallen from my horse fifty times, I believe that would be below the mark. Last time I broke three ribs, and I thought that was an end of me. Twice before the doctor had declared that by scientific rules I ought not to have recovered.”

His violent exercises, his excesses in eating and drinking, the roughness of his discourse stamped with the most retrograde notions — all these extravagances had gained for him, among his neighbours, the nickname of “the mad squire” (der tolle Junker).

But this odd character, built in a fashion very unlike that of the rest of the world, was like a professional in the cultivation of his estate. In spite of a succession of bad seasons, he succeeded in drawing from the sterile soil of his moors and Pomeranian forests revenues they had not yet yielded.

This was quite in harmony with the temperament of the Junkers, who, by dint of labour and perseverance, have managed to improve the unproductive soil of the North of Germany.

His father died in 1845, when he himself was thirty years old, and he went to settle at Schönhausen, his birthplace. There it was still the open-air life, the same sort of occupations. He was elected Captain of the Elbe Dykes, an office which necessitated continual supervision; for the Elbe, in that flat and marshy country, divides into several branches, of which some mingle with the neighbouring Havel. To prevent these inundations, it was necessary that the dykes should be kept in perfect order. The new Captain conscientiously fulfilled his duties.

A letter written at this time may give an idea of his turn of mind. In the summer of 1844, when he was at the sea-baths at Norderney, he wrote his impressions to his dear sister Malvina.

“Lest the eye should envy the palate, they’ve put a lady beside me at table, whose aspect makes me melancholy and home-sick, for she reminds me of von Pfeiffer at Kneiphof when he was at his thinnest. Opposite sits the former Minister, Z., with one of those faces that appear to one in dreams when one is not well; he’s like a big frog without legs. For every morsel he is going to devour he opens his mouth as far as his shoulders. He looks to me like a travelling-bag you open to put something in. When I see this I’m taken with giddiness, and, for fear of falling, I seize hold of the edge of the table. Near me there’s also a Russian officer; he’s a good fellow, but when I look at his tall, slim figure, and his short legs, curved like a Turkish sabre, the thought of a boot-jack invariably comes into my head.”

About his thirtieth year Bismarck experienced a religious crisis, and the vague Pantheism he had inherited from his mother gave place to a more precise belief. Becoming an orthodox Lutheran, he took to reading the Bible, and did not fail to receive the Sacrament on solemn occasions, as in the month of August 1870, when he left Berlin for the campaign in France. In this connection we may note the profession of his religious faith which he made one evening at Versailles to the guests at his table:

“I do not understand how one can live in a well-regulated society and fulfil one’s duties to oneself and to others, without the belief in a revealed religion, a God whose will is for good, a supreme judge, and a future life. If I were not a firmly convinced Christian, if I did not possess the admirable support of religion, I should never have been the Chancellor you know.”

Marriage

During his stay at Schönhausen, country neighbours had introduced Bismarck to the Puttkammer family, who were extremely pious. He had at once noticed the daughter of the house, Jeanne, nine years his junior, and he asked her hand. The father, according to his own expression, “felt as if his head had been struck with an axe,” Axe or not, the young people were agreed, and the marriage, to the satisfaction of every one, took place in July 1847. It was a very united and happy household, and there were three children, one girl, Marie, who became Countess Rantzau, and two sons, Herbert and William.

The year of Bismarck’s marriage was also that of his début in political life. He was then thirty-two years old.

At the United Diet of 1847

Prussia, as it had been re-established after the treaties of 1815, had all the characteristics of an autocratic and feudal State. Nevertheless, Friedrich-Wilhelm III had consented in 1825 to institute provincial Assemblies in each of the eight provinces of the monarchy; but nothing could have been less liberal than these institutions. The landed interest alone was represented in them, and that under quite special conditions; each Assembly was isolated, with no communication with the others; it had the right of discussion, it could express its wishes, but its power ended there. In a word, it could in no wise compare with the parliamentary functions at that time in use in England and France.

The new King, Friedrich-Wilhelm IV, who began his reign in 1840, could not be suspected of giving in to new views; but, anyhow, he understood that it might be opportune to make some concession to liberal ideas. The concession was moderate; it consisted in uniting, under any conditions he might think proper, the eight Provincial Assemblies in a single Diet, called the United Diet. This plenary assembly possessed no more efficacious powers; its setting was a little more solemn, but it was nothing more than a setting.

The first of these Diets was held at Berlin in 1847. At the opening sitting, on the 1st of April, Friedrich-Wilhelm made a declaration to the Deputies which had nothing equivocal about it.

“The inheritor of a crown which I received intact, and that I ought to and will leave intact to my successors, never will I transform the natural relation between Prince and people into a constitutional compact; never will I admit that a written sheet (here is already the scrap of paper dear to Bethmann-Hollweg) may, like a second Providence, interpose between our God and this country, to govern us with its paragraphs and by them replace the holy and ancient fidelity.”

It was at this United Diet of 1847 that Bismarck made his début in politics in consequence of accidental circumstances. Some months earlier he had been elected in the landed interests assistant member to the Landtag in the Province of Saxony. He was not intended to sit at Berlin; but the illness of the Chief Deputy left a vacant place, and Bismarck had to fill it.

Concerning this period of his life Bismarck wrote, in his “Thoughts and Memories,” that he was not imbued with the prejudices of his caste, and had never thought that the ancient royal power of Prussia ought to be restored with its absolute authority. Still, it would have been difficult to find a more convinced champion of conservative and reactionary royalty than he.

It is always interesting to know the political début of a man who later on was one of the foremost personages of his time.

Bismarck spoke his first words at the sitting on the 17th of May, 1847. An orator on the left had just recalled the rising of Prussia in 1815; he had declared that Prussia had fought then to gain a constitution, “A noble people,” he said, “an enlightened people like the Prussians, knows no national hatred.”

The assertion was singularly audacious, and the whole history of Prussia gives it the lie. Patriotisms founded on generous sentiments, and not exclusive of sympathy with other peoples, are known; Prussian patriotism has never been nourished but by jealousies and hatreds.

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