Battle-born, Bismarck’s genius springs from the very fire and sword of human nature—resembling definitely his iron-headed barbarian ancestry, whose freedom remained unconquered through the centuries.
Battle-born, Bismarck’s genius springs from the very fire and sword of human nature—resembling definitely his iron-headed barbarian ancestry, whose freedom remained unconquered through the centuries.
¶ We cannot hope to trace Bismarck to any complete legal basis—any more than we can defend the complete legitimacy of France, Belgium, or the United States, countries avowedly harking back to revolutionary origin. Bismarck’s life, likewise, presents unquestioned elements of anarchistic root. Inherited from battle-born Bismarcks are forces peculiar to himself, free, and individualistic, profoundly expressive wherein Mother Nature summoning her ultimate powers endows a colossal courage in a colossal mind and body.
¶ As far as the Thirteenth Century, the name Bismarck, then styled Bishofsmarck or Biscopesmarck, is associated with the little river Biese; but whence the original stock is for antiquarians to debate.
Believe the Bismarcks to be of Bohemian, of Frankish or of Jewish origin, or of Slavic if you will, you find bespectacled, scholastic authorities who will open the musty pages and display to you the truth.
¶ Herbort of Biese became in due course Herbort von Bismarck. The “von” was unquestionably a mark of geographical origin, rather than a sign of nobility. The name is borne by other families from Biese; but the important part is not the name but the men behind that name, what that name stood for.
¶ Herbort von Bismarck’s name is enrolled in the guild papers as master of the merchant tailors of Stendal, in the old Mark of Brandenburg; a “Mark” being somewhat equivalent to an English “shire.”
¶ But this fact about the tailor-ancestor must not be pressedtoo far. Some antiquarian of the year 2700 A. D., let us say, might argue that President Taft was a steam-shoveler, because the name is found recorded among the laborers who helped dig the Panama Canal; whereas, the fact is that the President was enrolled as an honorary member of one of the labor unions.
Also, after Waterloo, when the British nation was running wild trying to imagine some distinction that as yet had not been bestowed on Wellington, the London tailors in a moment of inspiration added the Iron Duke’s name to the great roll of scissor-snippers!
¶ Beginning with Herbort’s son, four Bismarcks, in three generations, were social lepers.
¶ Klaus von Bismarck died about the year 1385, outside the holy favor of the church—as his father had died before him, and as did two sons, in their turn. But Klaus, ever shrewd in a worldly way, recommended himself as a king’s fighting man; led the robber gang off with the loot in the name of his merry monarch, the Margrave of Bavaria.
¶ For this most excellent service as a professional man-killer, Klaus was rewarded with a knight’s fee of forest land, at Burgstal, an estate that remained in the family for two hundred years. There were deer, wild boar, wolves and bear in the Bismarck forest, and one day Conrad of Hohenzollern came that way on a royal hunting expedition.
¶ Conrad could have stolen the Bismarck petty title outright, but while he confiscated Burgstal forest, he offered Schoenhausen, on the Elbe, in exchange. However, Schoenhausen did not compare with the estate that the envious monarch took by force. The Burgstal forest is to this day one of the great game preserves of the German Emperor.
¶ The Bismarcks also received in the exchange farming land known as Crevisse, lately confiscated by the Hohenzollerns from the nuns; and one of the conditions of the transfer to the Bismarcks was that these nuns should be supported.
Strong animal basis of Bismarck’s rise to Power—The story is always the same, “Fight, or die like a dog!”
Strong animal basis of Bismarck’s rise to Power—The story is always the same, “Fight, or die like a dog!”
¶ Thus, from time immemorial, the fighting Bismarcks wrote their title to a share of this earth with the sword, which in spite of all Hague Conferences remains the best sort of title man has been able to devise.
As time sped and what is called Civilization grew somewhat, men took on chicken-hearted ways; and in every pinch appealed to courts for decisions formerly decided by individual brawn; till finally, as in these latter degenerate days, if a fight becomes necessary, society hires policemen to stop the row.
¶ Klaus von Bismarck preferred to do his own murdering, and consequently, Klaus stood first in the eyes of honest men of his own generation; but in this Twentieth Century, instead of putting incompetents to the test of the sword, society, committed to the soft doctrine that all life is sacred, burdens itself with lengthening the days of the daft. A far cry that from the ideals of the early Bismarcks! It is well to keep these facts in mind, in contemplating the extraordinary career of the great Otto von Bismarck, king-maker and unifier of Germany.
¶ Modern timid-hearted folk, reading of the desperate makeshifts of the old Bismarcks to get on in the world, would say off-hand, “There must be a strain of madness in the Bismarck brain?”
¶ Unquestionably! This fighting family in each generation had its born revolutionists, its enormous egotists, its men who lived what orthodox opinion calls “godless lives”—although in their own philosophy the Bismarcks are always preaching that God is on their side. When the Elector decided to steal Burgstal forest, the Bismarcks set up this pious plea: “We wish to remain in the pleasant place assigned to us by the Almighty.” Four hundred years later we find Otto von Bismarck using again and again this peculiar reasoning,to justify, at least to explain, his own career: “If I were not a Christian, I would not continue to serve the King another moment. Did I not obey my God and count on Him, I should certainly take no account of earthly masters.”
¶ In three great wars of ambition in which 80,000 perished, he repeated this solemn formula about God; he repeated it on the blood-drenched field of Koeniggraetz; he repeated it in the Holstein war, and he repeated it again at Sedan and at Gravelotte.
¶ Bismarck persisted in this peculiar conception of life, down to the last. While in retirement, after his downfall, one day the bloody past rose before him like a dream, and he exclaimed to Dr. Busch: “Politics has brought me vexation, anxiety and trouble; made no one happy, me, my family nor anyone else, but many unhappy. Had it not been for me, there would have been three great wars less; the lives of 80,000 would not have been sacrificed; and many parents, brothers, sisters and wives would not now be mourners. That, however, I have settled with my Maker!” Now, once and for all, what we understand this to mean is merely this: a super-abundance of faith. Many great leaders have had it—David, Cromwell, Bismarck.
¶ In seeking biographic clues, through hereditary influences, we are impressed with the astounding animal-basis of strength behind the Bismarcks, from earliest recorded history. They were a deep-drinking, prolific gormandizing race, and every mother’s son had to do battle by brawn backed by the sword, or die like a dog! This bred high tempers, turbulent manners and contempt for the weak.
¶ Soldiers, diplomatists, brow-beaters, characterized the Bismarck clan down through centuries. Stormy and adventurous Bismarcks fought for the sheer delight of doing battle;—it mattered not, whether against the Turks or against some near-by king whose lands the German robber-knights lusted for and wished to annex by appeal to the sword.
¶ There is a story of a garrison brawl in which a Bismarck slew his companion in drink, then fled to Russia, then on toSiberia; soldier of fortune, he fights under any flag that promises a gay life and plenty of loot. Three hundred years later—how the wheel turns round!—Otto von Bismarck, as Russian Ambassador to the King of Prussia, engaged in intrigues for the same old lust of land, the same old nefarious business, but this time sprayed over by the high-sounding name, diplomacy.
¶ Dr. Busch, the Saxon press-agent for Prince Bismarck, repeats the old tale of the winning of Alsace by the French king, through the aid of Otto von Bismarck’s great-great-grandfather, a mercenary soldier; adding that while one Bismarck helped take Alsace away, another of that redoubtable family brought it back many years later, with the added joy of the prodigious money-fine of five billions of francs!
Boisterous Col. Bismarck, of the Dragoons; “The Wooden Donkey dies today!” French Cavalier Bismarck and his mushy prose-poems.
Boisterous Col. Bismarck, of the Dragoons; “The Wooden Donkey dies today!” French Cavalier Bismarck and his mushy prose-poems.
¶ Burly strength and horse-play, rather than diplomacy, were always distinctive traits of that part of the Bismarck family immediately surrounding Otto von Bismarck; and in Otto’s case, although the years gradually taught him that there are more ways of stopping a man’s mouth than by cutting off his head, on the whole we seek in vain, among ancestral Bismarcks, for any striking characteristics in which the point does not turn either on gluttony or on deep-drinking.
¶ They were enormous eaters. Bread and meat were not enough. They must have game, fish, cake, wines, and plenty of each. Hunger put them in a rage. They were iron men, with stomachs of pigs.
¶ They were unbrooked master spirits, followed the hounds, fought duels, had noisy tongues, and gloried in personal independence.
When they loved they loved madly; when they hated it was the same. They drank all night and were out again at dawn.
¶ Yet in their way, they were high-minded gentlemen, devotedthemselves industriously to their duties; and it may be that the turbulence of their lives borrowed something from the rude clash of opinion that often divided the best friends, during the stormy periods of history in which they fought as soldiers of fortune.
¶ Otto von Bismarck’s great-grandfather, Augustus, calling his cronies of the barracks around him, was wont to add zest to the carousal by introducing the trumpet call after each toast; to heighten the infernal racket, the boisterous colonel of dragoons ordered a volley fired in the drink-hall.
¶ This terrible dragoon, master of the hounds, guzzler, companion and leader in all revels, was generally voted one of the amiable men in army circles. He was a noted shot. In one year of record his score was 154 red deer and 100 stag.
¶ At the Ihna bridge was a ducking stool, for army punishments; it took the amusing style of a wooden donkey, and was so called by the dragoons as a rude joke.
After one of his hard drinking bouts, it was often the colonel’s amusing habit to order his men to march to the bridge; on arriving the band struck up and the wooden donkey was thrown into the stream. “All offenders of my regiment are forgiven,” Bismarck would bawl, “the donkey dies today!”
Then with all manner of opera bouffe the offending donkey would be put overboard—only to be brought out next morning, ready for official business.
¶ But our fun-loving colonel’s good times were now over. As commander of the gallant Anspach-Bayreuth dragoons, Augustus fought for Frederick the Great and was severely wounded at Czaslau. Austrian hussars surprised the transport wagons carrying the wounded to the rear, and with brutality common to the soldier-business of that rude day killed the defenseless Prussians, among whom was our Colonel von Bismarck.
¶ Bismarck’s grandfather, Karl Alexander, leaned toward the namby-pamby intellectual rather than to the social and convivial.He is remembered for his affected poetical style. Karl, brave soldier, attracted the eye of no less a judge of valor than the Great Frederick, who appointed this Karl Alexander von Bismarck an attache of the Prussian embassy at Vienna.
¶ Karl, like other Germans of the sentimental period, aped the French poets; but when a German is sentimental, the mush-pots boil over. Karl’s writings show that peculiar over-inflated quality, “sentimentality,” so much admired in the rococo period.
¶ Karl William Ferd., Otto’s father, and Louise Wilhelmina, Otto’s mother, born Mencken, lived at Schoenhausen in troublous French times. Oct. 14th, 1806, the terrible defeat at Jena put Prussia in the hands of the enemy.
Fortresses surrendered without firing a shot, and the panic-stricken king fled to the far eastern side of his domains, near Russia.
All this took place within three months after the marriage of Karl and Louise, who had now set up housekeeping at Schoenhausen.
¶ The Bismarcks tried to escape in a coach, but the French unexpectedly appeared and ordered Karl back to the house. The French ransacked every room; Louise fled to the library and locked the massive oak door; to this day it bears the marks of French bayonets; the Bismarcks then hid in the forest where they remained all night with panic-stricken neighbors; at dawn Karl and Louise ventured out, to find Schoenhausen a scene of destruction.
¶ The one galling fact that Karl could not overlook, in Marshal Soult’s raid, was the desecration of the genealogical tree. This huge painting with its shields of the Bismarck descent was slashed from end to end, with bayonets!
¶ Oh, Otto von Bismarck remembered this many, many years later, in making terms with the French after Sedan—do not for a moment forget that! Such is the amazing power of hereditary loves and hates;—and certainly the Bismarcks had no reason to admire the French.
Idyl of the child Otto, in his huge Gothic cradle at Schoenhausen; wonders that gather ’round his destiny, a forecast and a reality.
Idyl of the child Otto, in his huge Gothic cradle at Schoenhausen; wonders that gather ’round his destiny, a forecast and a reality.
¶ Otto Edward Leopold von Bismarck, the great central figure in our story, was the fourth of six children, three dying in infancy. He was born April 1, 1815, but a few months before the crowning defeat at Waterloo—that year big with the hammer-blows of Destiny!
¶ In lonesome Schoenhausen on the Elbe, the village lately devastated by Marshal Soult and his plundering soldiers, the infant Otto sleeps peacefully in his oak-carved Gothic cradle. A century later, we still see that huge cradle as one of the souvenirs in the famous Bismarck museum at Schoenhausen.
¶ Schoenhausen house is one of those thick-walled monuments of mediæval masonry.
There is, to be sure, something out of drawing about the antiquated three-story house; and we survey with respect for the past the queer courtyard, leaded panes, park with the artificial island, wooded byways, and old forest, and not far away is the village church with the square stone tower; hard by, also, the kattenwinkel, or Katte’s corner, at the confluence of the Havel and the Elbe; and on the house is the Katte’s coat-of-arms, a cat watching a mouse, the mark of the sturdy 17th century builder, Katte, who to honor his wife, Dorothea Sophia Katte, added her name to his builder’s sign over the lintel.
¶ In this historical 1815, seed-time and harvest strangely blend, yet are years apart.
For, while the child sleeps in his Gothic cradle, the Congress of Vienna meets to redistribute among the hungry kings the old domains stolen as prizes in the long Napoleonic wars; and in turn, after incredible political adventures, running over years, the child before us, grown to be a man, will smashthe rulings of Vienna and will build an empire stronger far than that of imperial France, now dying at Waterloo.
¶ All these wonders gather ’round the destiny of the child in the big Gothic cradle, before which we now tiptoe at Schoenhausen, lest we awaken the baby and he cry.
¶ When the French overrun Prussian territory the old land-owning military aristocracy was reduced to bankruptcy. Mortgages falling due could not be paid; the king extended credit for four years; and in the interim Prussians were forced to use depreciated rag-money; all the gold and silver had been confiscated by the French invaders.
¶ Great dissatisfaction followed. The farms had been tilled by feudal-laborers, practically slaves; these oppressed peasants now flew to arms.
Schoenhausen was a dreary place indeed; while the Bismarcks were better off than their neighbors, still the times were out of joint and ruin fell over the broad acres.
¶ Then came an unexpected change. Along about 1816, Karl inherited Kneiphof, Kuelz and Jarchelin estates from his cousin, moved to Kneiphof, just east of the hamlet of Naugard.
The house was exceeding modest; a brook, the Zampel, ran near by; and there was a carp pond. Karl was fond of hunting in the old beech forest. Such were the unsettled conditions in the Bismarck family, up to Otto’s sixth year.
Soft-hearted Karl and Spartan Mother Louise; her rigid character, its good and its bad side; her extreme punctilio and her pistol-shooting, to steady her sight.
Soft-hearted Karl and Spartan Mother Louise; her rigid character, its good and its bad side; her extreme punctilio and her pistol-shooting, to steady her sight.
¶ Otto von Bismarck inherited his tall form from his father, Karl William. This unusual type of cavalry captain subscribed for French journals and ate off silver plate. Karl’s regiment was known as the “White and Blue,” and one of his duties was to get up at 4 in the morning and measurecorn for horses. At one time the captain lived in Berlin, but he soon tired of the capital and gladly returned to the country where he passed his days as squire. To the end of his life, he was fond of horseback riding and hunting; and he brought his sons up to ride like centaurs.
¶ Bismarck’s mother, Louise Wilhelmina Mencken, married at the age of sixteen; her husband Karl was nineteen years her senior.
¶ In the family circle, the father was known as the heart, the mother as the brains; but in Louise’s case it might well read “ambition.” She wished to see Otto von Bismarck, her youngest son, become a diplomatist—a judgment that in the light of after years seems almost uncanny.
Later, at the full tide of the Chancellor’s great glory, frequently his earliest friends used to say, “Bismarck, had your mother only survived to see this day!”
¶ The wife’s leading trait was her inflexible resolution, the will to rulership;—and rule she certainly did, always.
For one thing, she steadied her nerves and schooled her sharp eyes by practising pistol shooting.
There was Spartan courage about her decisions! Frau Bismarck’s irritability had been growing of late; Karl was too soft with Otto. She was angered to think that her husband might spoil Otto, by too much coddling. The domestic climax came.
¶ That day at table, Otto with childish impatience, began swinging his legs like a pendulum. The good-natured Karl hadn’t it in his heart to correct the child, but instead began making excuses for Otto’s conduct. This aroused Louise’s ire. To smooth matters Karl said, “See, Minchen, how the boy is sitting there dangling his little legs!”
¶ Louise then and there read her ultimatum. She would not have her son spoiled by the foolishness of his soft father—not at all! She would send her beloved son away, first. At the time, Otto was only six years old.
And she thereupon proceeded to keep her decision—acting with all the aggressiveness for which in later life Otto von Bismarck was himself celebrated.
Wherein is shown the amazing power of hereditary traits; history repeats itself.
Wherein is shown the amazing power of hereditary traits; history repeats itself.
¶ It was from his mother that Prince Bismarck, the future ruler of Germany, received his endowment of dauntless audacity, his gift of trenchant argument, his bursts of ironical laughter, his power of instant decisions, his scolding, and his bitter wrath. All these qualities shone in the parliamentary fight before the Austrian war, when for three years he defied the country, and raised the Prussian war-funds by extortion!
¶ In one sense, he was always stacking the cards! And what chance has the fellow-player against the dealer with the marked deck? Bismarck’s life abounds with episodes showing this astonishing readiness. In love, in laughter and in intrigue, it was ever the same. Bismarck’s use of human nature, constructively, at the precise psychological moment, redounding to his self-interest, is supreme.
¶ At the wedding of his friend Blankenburg to Fraulein Thadden-Triglaff, the bridesmaid was Fraulein Johanna von Puttkammer. Bismarck saw, admired and decided. Soon after in a Hartz journey, with the Blankenburgs, Otto had a brief opportunity to favor energetic measures. He wasted no time, Johanna must become his wife! He wrote direct to the young lady’s parents, with whom he was not acquainted. A flying visit followed to the home of his intended father-in-law. The Puttkammers were surprised at the suitor’s impetuous love-making, also were shocked by the reputation Bismarck had for fast living.
The moment he saw parents and daughter he forced the situation. Throwing his arms around his sweetheart, Bismarck embraced her, vigorously. And thus he won hisbride even before an unwilling father and mother; for Bismarck carried them off their feet by the very audacity of his wooing.
¶ During the Franco-Prussian war, coming to the Rothschild château, Bismarck found 17,000 bottles of wines in the cellar, under lock and key; and the keeper was determined that Bismarck should not use the master’s champagnes.
It took Bismarck only a few minutes to change all that. Soon he was comfortably settled in the Baron’s private chambers, reached by a grand winding staircase; here the Chancellor proceeded to make himself at home in dressing gown and slippers.
¶ He rang for the butler, ordered wine for himself and suite. The keeper of the cellar still refused—and Bismarck’s black ire rose. In a voice of thunder he cried, “If you do not open that cellar door by the time I count five, you will be trussed on a spit, like a fowl!”
¶ After that, the Prussians had what they wanted, made merry on the rare wines of Baron Rothschild, who was known as a hater of Prussia and an admirer of Austria.
¶ Bismarck now decided to try various gastronomic oddities; ordered his staff to shoot pheasants from the Baron’s preserves, and commanded the cook to stew the birds in champagne!
¶ When Napoleon wrote his famous note, at Sedan, “Not having been able to die in the midst of my troops, there is nothing left for me but to place my troops in your Majesty’s hands,” Bismarck saw the human nature side at a glance! He urged peace, then and there, with the Prince Imperial on the throne, and “under German influence,” which would thus give to Prussia the whip hand. General Sheridan tells the story.
It was an instantaneous look into the far future, and although it did not prevail, for certain important reasons, the Chancellor caught the human side of the combination, with the clarity of a dramatist constructing a plot.
¶ On his mother’s side, Otto von Bismarck comes of hunting, fighting and farming stock.
Shrewd, wise, ambitious, and haughty—with these traits she richly endowed her son. His father was handsome, bright, solid, emphatic-looking, but with a yielding disposition; the iron will and sharp tongue of the wife overawed the husband. The shrewish frau had things largely her own way, was able to read a lecture like the wrath of God. However, on the whole, the couple got along passably well—for Karl never took Louise too seriously! When Frau Louise’s efforts to make a lackey of him got on his nerves, Karl called his cronies and away they went fox-hunting.
At the tender age of six, already is Otto forced out of the family circle; the wolf’s breed shows its teeth.
At the tender age of six, already is Otto forced out of the family circle; the wolf’s breed shows its teeth.
¶ Well, the incensed Louise, weary of the softness of Karl, and fearing lest Karl would spoil Otto by too much petting, packed the child off to Plamann Institute, Berlin, a school of the Squeers type.
Otto remained in this Spartan school-prison for nearly six years, and to the end of his life carried unpleasant memories. Plamann Institute idea was to harden lads, but instead of hardening the practices there embittered.
¶ The half-starved boys were up at 6; breakfast of bread and milk; religious exercises at 7; at 10, luncheon of bread and salt; then, a run in the garden; at noon, dinner from the hands of Frau Plamann; and if a lad wanted a second plate, and couldn’t eat it all, he was punished by being sent to the garden, there to remain till he had gulped down the last morsel, even though he fairly choked; at teatime, bread and salt, or warm beer and slices of bread; all day, studies of interminable length and dullness;—but, best of all, fencing exercises wound up the day.
¶ In the school yard was a lone lime-tree, and here the boys came running as a goal for their sports. Using this lime-tree as a pulpit, Otto used to read to his companions chapters from Becker’s stories about giants.
¶ There was a pond near Schoenberg where the pupils used to go bathing. Otto’s chum was Ernest Kriger.
¶ After six years of this life on salt and potatoes, Otto was transferred to Dr. Bonnell’s Frdk-Wm. Gymnasium, Berlin, and in another year to Grey Friars’ Gymnasium. Soon after Dr. Schleiermacher confirmed Otto, at Trinity Protestant church.
In the light of subsequent history, it is significant, almost uncanny, to recall the life-text offered to Otto at this solemn moment by his pastor: “And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men.” Many years later—just before his death—Bismarck ordered the motto to be carved on his tomb; all his life he had followed the text.
¶ The lad was two years at Grey Friars’ school. While there Otto’s deep-seated hatred of the French is again visible for a decisive moment.
In 1806 Marshal Soult had slashed the genealogical tree of the Bismarck family; and young Otto, who often heard the story, grew up with the idea that the French were ogres.
The school schedule, among other studies, called for French, or English as an optional selection; although all Otto’s chums decided for French, the lad flatly refused to follow and instead stood almost alone in the English class.
¶ He is no longer a child when he says good-bye to Grey Friars; he is a young man of 17—and life is opening before him.
Life! The joyous care-free life of youth and inexperience; with the world and its cares still seemingly far away!
At Goettingen, he joined the Hannovera Corps and his record is twenty-eight duels; his face bore many scars, among them a long cut from left jaw to corner of his mouth.
At Goettingen, he joined the Hannovera Corps and his record is twenty-eight duels; his face bore many scars, among them a long cut from left jaw to corner of his mouth.
¶ Otto’s mother, who had strong social aspirations and held to the rigid exclusiveness of the upper classes, wished to send her son to an aristocratic university. So she selected Goettingen.Her ideas were to make her son a man of dignity and solid social qualities.
Alas, he became but an indifferent student, excelling principally in dueling, beer-bouts in college taverns, dog-fighting, flirting, and general deviltries unnumbered, for which he spent considerable time in the college dungeon. Listen to this:
¶ Many years ago, in his roaring student days, long before Otto von Bismarck was famous, he received an invitation to a ball, and went to the shoemaker to be measured for high-topped military boots, affected by the beaux of that day. Calling some days later, he was told that it would be impossible to get them finished in time; and he would therefore have to wear his old boots to the ball.
¶ Bismarck scowled and going back to his rooms, whistled for his two ferocious dogs with which he was wont to trail around town; returning to the cobbler’s the daring rascal said in a loud voice: “Mister bootmaker, at a signal from me the dogs will tear you to pieces! I am here to tell you, in the most friendly way in the world, that it is absolutely necessary to have my boots on time.”
¶ Bismarck then went away, but he hired a man to parade up and down in the vicinity of the shop with the two mastiffs; and now and then this man dropped in, and in a voice of sorrow, said to the cobbler: “My master has a terrible temper and I am sorry for you.” At that, the shoemaker told his wife: “Frau, I am going to work all night, to get Herr Bismarck’s boots finished in time for that ball!”
¶ It is needless to add that young Bismarck had his boots on time.
¶ In discussing Bismarck’s life and personality many writers will tell you that the man is inconsistency itself; advocating now what in a year he will recant; that for this and other reasons it is baffling to try to make a picture many-sided enough to portray adequately his complex life.
¶ On the contrary, Bismarck, once you get the biographic clue, is as open, free and direct as the light of the noondaysun. And the story of the poor cobbler and the boots is all there is to it!
Repeat this story in a hundred and one forms, and the same man is always behind.
¶ Among his cronies, he early gained the name “The Mad Bismarck.” At Goettingen university, Otto fought 28 duels and his face bore his fighting scars.
¶ To scare the girls and to make them shriek and lift their skirts, a sight that the rascal Otto enjoyed, one night at a dance he let loose a small fox in the ball room! And he had ridden like the devil, some 30-odd miles to be at this dance.
¶ As for drinking, no man could put him under the table. Later in life, he invented his own special draught, a combination of champagne and porter; ordinary men dropped under the deadly compound as from a dose of cyanide of potassium, but Otto could drain his quart without taking the tankard from his lips. He soon had all the company under the chairs, like dead soldiers.
¶ Often, at country houses, he fired pistols to awaken guests in the morning.
¶ His groom fell into the canal, the young giant Bismarck leaped in and dragged the drowning man to safety; for this heroic deed, Bismarck won his first medal.
¶ Bismarck’s student life was tempestuous. He was indeed full of the very devil.
His every-day get-up comprised top boots, long hair flowing over the collar of his velveteen jacket; a big brass ring on the first finger of his left hand; two fierce mastiffs trotted sullenly at his side. He trailed around, smoking a long pipe.
¶ The young man’s high animal spirits broke all restraints; he smoked, he drank, he sang, he flirted, and he fought; but as for books, he did as little studying as he could.
He was sent many times to the university “carcer” or prison; an interesting souvenir is still to be seen at Goettingen, the student-prison door, on which Bismarck carved his name in 1832, when he was “doing” ten days for acting as second in a pistol duel.
¶ With a Mecklenburg student, Otto’s great chum, a trip was made through the Hartz mountains, and on returning a wine dinner was offered to other students.
All the fellows drank too much brandy. Bismarck made an inflammatory speech, at table, ending by showing his derision of scholasticism by hurling ink bottles out of the window. For this breach of the rules, he was hauled before the university court. Here, he appeared in outlandish get-up, jack boots, tall hat, long pipe, dressing gown—and coolly asked the proctor what ’twas all about. Bismarck’s huge dogs, with which he was always accompanied, frightened the proctor half to death! Bismarck was promptly fined five thalers for his absurdities; he paid the fine and began studying up more deviltry.
¶ Joining the Hannovera Corps of fighting men, Otto was soon known as “Achilles,” leading the fellows in all sword-play. He fought duel after duel, and finally under the influence of Morley, an American student, decided to switch over from the Hannovera to the Brunswick corps—whereon every Jack in the Hannovera sent Otto a challenge.
¶ On a trip to Jena, the fellows decided on a riot, and were deep in their cups when the Goettingen proctor arrived to bring the runaway Bismarck back, and put him in the “carcer” till he cooled off. The Jena fellows carried on at a great rate to think that the beloved “Achilles” had to leave so unceremoniously, but at the last moment hitched up six horses and paraded Bismarck around town, as a demonstrative fare thee well!
¶ The scene of many of his drinking bouts was “Crown” tavern, an ancient Goettingen resort, where the fellows sat on wooden benches in front of a long bar and drank till they felt like fighting cocks. By the way, it is a bit strange that Otto had such amazing capacity; for he was as thin as a knitting needle.
Among the men Bismarck met at this bar was Albrecht von Roon, who many years later was to become the great Prussian military drill-master.
¶ Bismarck finally left Goettingen in August, ’33; his last duel was with an Englishman who had made fun of the German peasant, describing that worthy as “a dunce in a night cap, whose night-dress is made of 39 rags.” The 39 rags was an allusion to the 39 petty German states. Bismarck was already becoming imbued with the “national German faith,” as it was called, and could not let the insult go by.
¶ As a rule, Bismarck was lucky in his sword play. The biggest slash he received was made by Biedenweg, whose sword broke and cut Otto from jaw to lip, on the left cheek—a scar that Bismarck carried to his grave.
¶ Giesseler, the proctor, gave Bismarck a very doubtful letter of recommendation; the duelist and beer-drinker had asked for a transfer to Berlin university. Otto wanted to hear law lectures by Savigny.
¶ He began his Berlin course in a mocking way. There was an unserved jail sentence hanging over Bismarck’s head at Goettingen; and with sham seriousness, as though he were going to turn over a new leaf, Otto humbly set up that, to be strictly honest with the professors, to jail Otto must go and to jail they sent him! But no sooner was he out than he forgot all his good resolutions, and began his mad existence again.
¶ Finally, in May, 1835, he passed his examination in law, or “advocate assistant,” but not without hiring a professional “crammer” to drill him hours and hours—to make up for wasted weeks in beer cellars and with the pretty girls.
Deficient in discipline, young Otto makes a fizzle of his first office-holding; his shocking conduct against his superior officer; back to the old estates, he looks after the cattle, dogs and horses.
Deficient in discipline, young Otto makes a fizzle of his first office-holding; his shocking conduct against his superior officer; back to the old estates, he looks after the cattle, dogs and horses.
¶ Harum-scarum days are over—and now for the serious business of life. Years later, in the days of his great renown, Bismarck, thinking of his early preparation, alwaysregretted, he said, that he did not join the army. As a matter of fact, he had no serious plans for years to come—and it would appear that, on the whole, his career was decided by accident. Of this more, at the right time, later.
¶ When Bismarck was 20, he served several months at Aix-la-Chapelle, in court work, then was transferred to Potsdam, to the administrative side.
He soon showed himself deficient in discipline. An over-officer kept him waiting, and Bismarck took personal offense. At last Bismarck was admitted. The over-officer was sitting there, calmly killing time smoking a cigar. Bismarck leaned over and in his gruff way asked, “Give me a match!” This in itself was highly insolent, a violation of Prussian ideas of discipline. But the astonished over-officer complied. The young clerk thereupon sprawled in a chair and lighted his cigar.
It was, you see, merely to show his independence. Also, it meant that he had to get out of the service.
¶ Bismarck was glad to go; he hated intensely the clock-like regularity of the Prussian bureaucracy.
¶ His mother died in 1839, at which time Otto was 24; and on the young chap now fell the management of the Pomeranian estates.
¶ In 1844, Otto went to live with his father at Schoenhausen; here, Otto and his brother looked after the farms. Otto was later appointed Dyke-captain of the Elbe.
¶ Along about this time, a religious revival swept through Prussia and Otto was carried away on the flood; also, he began showing himself a strong monarchical man.
Always religious and always a King’s man, at heart, Otto now seriously studied religion and state affairs. When the call came, he was not found wanting!
¶ We hasten along. In 1847, Otto’s naturally deep religious convictions were strengthened by his wife’s uncompromising orthodoxy.
¶ It was in this year, also, that he made his entry into Prussianpolitics—to the study of which he was to devote his long life and his surprising genius. However, to present a clear idea of the work Bismarck was to do, it is necessary to return, briefly, to an earlier day, and to trace a complex historical movement through the past. We shall summarize, on broad lines, the problem presented by the question of German national unity. The German problem comprised a political, sociological and racial situation toward whose solution hundreds, if not thousands, of notable men and women, for several generations past, had sought in vain.
¶ “Nothing,” says Wilhelm Gorlach, “can more clearly prove Bismarck’s historical importance than the fact that we are obliged to go back several centuries to understand the connection of his actions.”
The German crazy-quilt, of many hues and colors, and how this blanket was patched and mended through the years.
The German crazy-quilt, of many hues and colors, and how this blanket was patched and mended through the years.
¶ From the 18th Century, and indeed before that time, to say nothing of years to come as late as 1871, there was in fact no Germany. The term was a mere geographical “designation.” We shall hear more of this, as Bismarck assumes the stupendous task of German unity, in a real sense of the word; but we will never understand what Bismarck and other statesmen who hoped for German unity had to deal with, unless we take a broad survey of conditions in Germany from the year 1750; not only from the political but also from the social and domestic side, as represented in 300-odd German principalities that like a crazy-quilt were thrown helter-skelter from Hamburg on the North to Vienna on the South.
¶ Many of the holdings were gained through musty papers from rulers of the ancient Holy Roman Empire, a nation Voltaire declared “neither holy, nor empire, nor Roman.”
¶ There were free cities, great landlords, and there were great robber-barons—thieves of high or low degree.
¶ At Cologne, Treves and Mayence archbishops held the lower valley of the Moselle, also some of finest parts of the Rhein valley.
¶ Next, came dukes, landgraves, margraves, cities of the Empire, and then still smaller, duchies in duodecimo, down through some 800 minor landlords who as the owners of some borough or village walked this earth genuine game cocks on their own dunghills. Political conditions were distressing; old feuds, old hates prevailed.
There were restrictions on commerce, statute labor, barbarous penal laws, religious persecution and Jew-baiting.
¶ In short, to make 300-odd jealous princelings join hands in national brotherhood is the complex problem that goes down through the years; generation after generation; till at last the one strong man appears, Otto von Bismarck, who in his supreme rise to power sees clearly that the only hope for Germany is in a complete social and political revolution, in which the changes in the German mind concerning political unity in governmental affairs must be as unusual as the transformations in the German mode of life.
¶ During the early part of the 18th Century, of which we are now writing, a certain bold political doctrine still stood unchallenged. It had come out of the dim and hoary past, and in effect it proclaimed the power of the fist. For centuries unnumbered the idea prevailed that a state defends itself against foreign foes, and otherwise conserves its existence through the direct will of a strong ruler, preferably a king brought up in arms.
Thus the “genius of the people” meant in effect the wisdom or the ignorance of the line of kings.
Under this theory, Prussia by slow degrees and through many sacrifices of blood and treasure, had become a great power.
¶ Fred: Wm. I., (1713-40), who was indeed a miser and a scoffer, freed little Prussia from debt and rebuilt cities ruined by the wars. He likewise established a system of compulsory education, made schoolmasters state officers, and contributed mightily to a higher standard.
And he went further still: he welcomed religious exiles from other parts of Germany; he settled thousands of immigrants on the raw lands; he saved his money, economized to the last pfennig, was prudent in a worldly sense, and to the end of his life remained intolerable foe of idleness.
¶ It was from this severe master that the Great Frederick (1740-86) learned the trick of laying his cane over the backs of peasants and crying out in rage: “Get to work!”
¶ Old Fritz continued his line of battle from 1740 to 1763, in various unequal contests with the Allies. He fought Austria, France, Russia, Sweden, Saxony, and Poland, and for a while he fought their allied strength. The upshot was that Prussian enemies at home and abroad were defeated and Prussia won first rank as a military and political power. This idea of military discipline, united with large worldly sagacity in the management of state affairs, marks and explains Prussia’s rise to power.
¶ But the decline was equally manifest under Fr: Wm. II, the Great Frederick’s nephew. Although he inherited a domain of six millions of people, banded under an excellent administrative system, sustained by the disciplined army of “Old Dessauer” (Prince Leopold), and although Fr: Wm. II found the huge sum of 40,000,000 thalers in his fighting uncle’s treasure chest, yet within a few years all these splendid advantages were frittered away in idle dalliance and the weak king found himself twenty millions in debt.
By the time he died, 1797, Prussia was riding to a fall; and disregarding plain measures for her own safety, she had reached the sad place where the sturdy old Prussian spirit of prudence and independence had become so compromised that Prussia almost deemed it unessential to preserve her own political life!
¶ Thus, within three generations, Prussia repeated the old story of human life, wherein the weak descendant eats up the strong sire’s goods. Frederick the Great died Aug. 17th, 1786. Within three years, France struck at the German lands; and within 20 years the old Constitution of the Empire was scoffed at by encircling enemies along the frontiers, led by France, while at home political disputants destroyed National spirit by exciting revolution after revolution. “Everywhere,” says Zimmermann, (Germany, p. 1618), “one felt the morning breeze of the new dispensation.” The cry of the people had to be answered, and the common man wanted to know not only “Why!” but “When!”
¶ For the ensuing 85 years clamor, disruption and disunion continue often accompanied by bloodshed; till through Bismarck’sgreat work over which he toiled for 40-odd years, came the final answer of the Imperial democracy, 1871.
¶ It is to be the labor of years with confusion worse confounded, as we go along. The Feudal system, with which Germany has been for centuries petrified, must be thrown off; the peasant laborers freed in some sort, whether social or political, the absurd restrictions of countless customs houses walling-in each petty principality, must be destroyed. Before a new Germany may emerge, if Germany is to emerge at all, a National faith must be stimulated, fighting blood stirred, wars waged. Then, and then only, may this idea of German Unity, long the puzzling mental preoccupation of the fathers, become a geographical actuality and a political fact.
¶ The German peasants’ sense of respect for vested authority, even when held by hated kings, made the common people of the various German states almost ox-like in their patience under harsh political conditions.
Between the power of petty tyrants and of foreign despots, there was no freedom worthy of the name.
The German lived for himself, aloof, suspicious, not caring particularly to change his condition.
Compromise after compromise, failure after failure, sorrow after sorrow must be recorded in the great story; but do not despair. In amazing manner, through blood and iron, Otto von Bismarck, our blond Pomeranian giant, will face, fight and finally conquer the bewildering cross-forces of his time—till “German national faith” is supreme.
¶ Paying no attention to its neighbor, each German state stood off by itself; each princeling had his army, in some instances only 25 men; each ruler had his castle, in imitation of Versailles; each state its custom house, its distinct court and rural costumes.
To go ten miles north or south was to find yourself in a new world; you could scarcely understand the mush-talk of the peasants, whereas the various Liliputian courts chattered in mongrel French, aped from Versailles.
¶ The minor courts of Germany imitated the excesses of Versailles;had dancing teachers from Paris, French barbers, French governesses, and French prostitutes.
Every young man of wealth was sent to Paris to acquire what was called “bon ton,” that is to say, familiarity with the vices of the day; the etiquette of the fan and the study of new ways to spend money wrung from over-taxed peasants of German provinces was also regarded as very important.
Even to speak German was held a mark of vulgarity; and what more despicable than to be ashamed of one’s ancestry?
¶ Unmoved by the sufferings of the peasants, Augustus III of Saxony applied himself to grand operas, written by queens of French society. While the peasants were living like beasts, Frederick Augustus, the successor, spent his time hunting red deer. The dukes of Coburg and Hildburghausen were miserable bankrupts. As a result of social excesses, Charles VII of Bavaria left a debt of forty millions. Charles Theodore, in some respects an enlightened monarch, is particularly remembered for three strange facts: That he once gave an opera in German and not in French; that he tried to sell off Bavaria, his inheritance, and move to a more congenial locality; and third, that he hired Rumford, the great chemist, to invent a soup, at low cost, to feed the poor, whose miseries had been growing on account of the bad government.
¶ Nor should we overlook the monarch at Zweibrucken, the Pfalzgraf Charles. His mania took the form of collecting pipes and toys, of which he had innumerable specimens from the ends of the earth. He kept also one thousand five hundred horses and a thousand dogs and cats. Every traveler had to take off his hat and bow at sight of the spire, on pain of being beaten by the Count’s constable.
¶ Charles Eugene, of Wuertemberg, slave to luxury, played pranks when he was not indulging in vices. He liked to alarm peasants at night with wild cries; and when a woman stuck her head out of the window, the monarch would throw a hoop and try to drag her outside. In a deep forest he built his castle “Solitude.”
¶ On his 50th birthday, he wrote to his subjects, promising to mend his life; the letter was read in all the churches.The people decided that he was in earnest, promised him more money, of which he was in sore need. His first step was to contract a left-handed marriage with Francisca von Bernedin, whom he raised to the rank of countess.
¶ His next step was to build a queer bird-cage for his new mate. Menzel says of this episode: “Records of every clime and of every age were here collected. A Turkish mosque contrasted its splendid dome with the pillared Roman temple and the steepled Gothic church. The castled turret rose by the massive Roman tower; the low picturesque hut of the modern peasant stood beneath the shelter of the gigantesque remains of antiquity; and imitations of the pyramids of Cestius, of the baths of Diocletian, a Roman senate-house and Roman dungeons, met the astonished eye.”
¶ Another amiable peculiarity of French-mongering German princelings in their petty monarchies, was man-stealing. Hard-pressed for funds, the practice was to kidnap peasants and sell them into foreign military service. The vile trade was dignified by court authority; followers of the game were known as “man merchants.”
¶ The Wuertemberg monarch in order to raise funds to complete the absurd castle for his mistress, took it into his head to sell 1,000 peasants to the Dutch, for the war in the Indies; and so deep lay the curse of tyranny that no public protest was raised. It is true that Schiller, the noble poet, who at this time was a student at Charles College, fled in disgust, but Schaubert, another poet, was not so fortunate; he was seized and imprisoned for ten years.
¶ The vile practice of man-stealing from the wretched peasantry long continued as a monarchical privilege. The Landgrave Frederick of Hesse-Cassel, on one occasion sent 12,800 Hessians to the British, to fight in America. English commissioners came over and inspected the captive men as though picking out stock at a cattle show. Should a parent protest, a son, a wife or a widow, the answer was the lash. Hanau furnished 1200 of these slave-soldiers, Waldeck several hundred. Seume, who was himself a victim to the system,deported to America, tells us in his Memoirs: “No one was safe; every means was resorted to, fraud, cunning, trickery, violence. Foreigners were thrown into prison, and sold.”
“There is a Hessian prince of high distinction,” says Huergelmer. “He has magnificent palaces, pheasant-preserves, at Wilhelmsbad, operas, mistresses, etc. These things cost money. He has, moreover, a hoard of debts, the result of the luxury of his sainted forefathers. What does the prince do in this dilemma? He seizes an unlucky fellow in the street, expends fifty dollars on his equipment, sends him out of the country, and gets a hundred dollars for him in exchange.”
¶ Frederick of Bayreuth expended all his revenues in building a grand opera house, for giving balls, parties, receptions and official functions to aristocrats. His successor Alexander fell under the sway of Lady Craven, a British adventuress, who led the peasants a merry chase for the cash; man-stealing was the old game; and one order alone from the British government called for 1,500 peasants.
¶ But why continue the recital of man’s inhumanities?
Charles of Brunswick, a spendthrift, who sold subjects into captivity, paid his ballet-master 30,000 a year. Frederick of Brunswick on one occasion sold 4,000 peasants to Britain, for the army.
¶ The terrible famine of 1770-72 added to the discontent of the common man, throughout Germany; he began to feel that it was the duty of kings to feed the hungry; bark, grass, leaves, carrion were eaten; disease spread; emigrations depopulated the Rheinlands; 20,000 left Bavaria alone; while upwards of 180,000 Bavarians died of hunger; in Saxony, the number that starved to death is placed at 100,000. Other kingdoms suffered heavily.
¶ In many of the provinces were laws to prevent immigration; those who tried to get Bavarians to leave the country were guilty of a crime, punishable by hanging. A similar punishment was exacted for marrying out of one’s native province.
¶ Also, the wretched condition of the roads added to the isolation of the various German provinces. Exacting customs’ duties, military espionages, a weak postal system, contributed to keep Germans unacquainted, except with near neighbors. He, indeed, was a bold man who had gone over the mountains or beyond his native valley. Even a journey of two days caused grave anxieties; the carriage was almost certain to be overturned in some deep rut and the travelers injured or killed; robbers lay in wait in the mountains; protection was almost unheard of; life and property were insecure; every traveler had to be his own policeman, and never issued forth on a journey without dagger, pistol and sword.
¶ Thus, 300 princelings, great or small, were determined to rule in their individual capacities; there was no Germany in fact, and that much of the German Empire that had outlived the gradual ruin of the old Holy Roman Empire, the great-ancestor of Germany, was now approaching complete dissolution.
The power lay no more in states, but in 300-odd local political bureaus, scattered everywhere, dominated often enough by an ambitious French prostitute, or by some lucky ballet-master.
¶ Then, there was August of Saxony, who is said to have been the father of 300 children. This foolish fellow’s fetes cost thalers by the wagon-load; one set of Chinese porcelains ran into the millions, and it cost 6,000 thalers to gild the gondolas for a night in June, to say nothing of the fancy ball.
¶ The Baden monarch, Charles William, built Carlsruhe in the deep forest, the better that his orgies be kept from prying eyes.
¶ Eberhardt of Wuertemberg gave the whole conduct of his government over to women and Jews—and by the way the Jews were the only saving force. As for the Graevenitz woman, she was king in petticoats. She mortgaged crown lands and raised hell generally. One day in church she made a fuss about not being mentioned among royal rulers, and the pastor immediately replied: “Madam, we mention youdaily in our prayers when we say: ‘O Lord, deliver us from all evil!’” Once, in time of famine, Charles William scattered loaves of bread; the rabble maddened by hunger fought to the death for the dole!
¶ Also, there were Ernest of Hanover and Tony of Brunswick, two precious rascals, with all their retinue of mistresses, mistresses’ maids, mothers, hangers-on, and pimps. Carl Magnus had his Grehweiler palace costing 180,000 guelden. He grew so desperate that the Emperor sent him to a fortress for ten years’ imprisonment, for forging documents to raise the wind. Count Limburg-Styrum was a princeling whose army consisted of one colonel, six officers and two privates! Count William of Bueckeburg had a fort with 300 guns, defending a cabbage patch. Count Frederick of Salm-Kyrburg swindled the churches; and in tiny Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, only 15 miles square, was a royal palace of 350 rooms with clocks of all sizes, great and small, in each apartment. This count went mad over clocks, but was popular with the working class; often he would take a man off a job in order to laugh and joke.
Also, Frederick had original taste in military affairs; his army comprised 150 soldiers, with 28 guards on horseback. The prince prided himself on being a wrestler, and one day when a yokel threw the prince, the prince set up a great cry, “I slipped on a cherry stone!”—and this regardless of the fact that it was not the time of the year for cherries.
¶ There was another local ruler, Ludwig Guenther, who was fond of painting horses, and on his death 246-odd horse pictures adorned the walls of his palace.
¶ “Show a German a door and tell him to go through, and he will try to break a hole in the wall.”
¶ “Here, every one lives apart in his own narrow corner, with his own opinions; his wife and children round him; ever suspicious of the Government, as of his neighbor; judging everything from his personal point of view, and never from general grounds.”
¶ “The sentiment of individualism and the necessity for contradiction are developed to an inconceivable degree in the German.”
¶ The problem of directing this intense individualism is the problem of German unity.
¶ With rough manners, blunders, extravagances, absurdities, the hereditary princes continued to sponge on the peasants, generation after generation, till wretchedness spread far over the German lands. They had their châteaux, their dancing girls, their dogs, horses, cats, mistresses and their royal armies.
¶ The misery of centuries of oppression existed; petty monarchs exercised powers of life and death.
¶ The South German mocked the North German’s pronunciation. One set vowed that the “g” in “goose” is hard, the other proclaimed that the “g” is soft. One side went about mumbling with hard “g’s,” “A well-baked goose is a gracious gift of God,” whereupon the other side replied that all the “g’s” are “j’s,” that the “gute ganz” is really “jute janz,” and “Gottes” “Jottes.” And duels were fought over it.
¶ Nor was this all. An intense local pride expressed itself in grotesque dialects, unsoftened by intercourse with the outer world; also, there were outlandish fashions in dress and other domestic affairs.
¶ In Brunswick the women wore green aprons, curious black caps, the men buff coats, red vests with four rows of buttons, caps with crazy pompons, buckled slippers and gay ribbon garters.
¶ In lower Saxony the women wore flat straw hats, like a dinner plate, hair plastered down, head-dresses of gigantic black ribbons, aprons of gay stripes, and ten petticoats coming only a little below the knee. The men wore farce-comedy costumes, not unlike coachmen.
¶ In Pomerania-Rugen the women admired scarlet petticoats, knee-length, capes like turko-rugs, black veils, green garters and blue stockings. The men wore aprons like butchers, caps and long-tailed coats.
¶ The Hessian women preferred turbans of red, vestees of gay stuffs, blue, green or yellow knee-length skirts.
¶ The Baden men folk liked reds, greens and yellows, vests adorned with many ribbons, top boots, high white collars and funny-looking black coats. The women had their green aprons, puffed sleeves, and ten short petticoats.
¶ In East Prussia men wore double and triple vests. As for the women, they looked like animals in the zoo.
¶ In Wuertemberg, a typical landlord wore a blue peajacket with two rows of large silver buttons, two vests of high contrasting colors, a black sash, salmon-colored trousers, polished boots;—and carried a meerschaum pipe.
¶ In Bavaria one saw green vests, yodlers’ hats with tiny feathers, green leggings, or military boots; and among the women gay vestees, bright shawls and white kerchiefs.
¶ Thus, the dead-weight of centuries still lay like a mountain on the various German states.
¶ This dead-weight of olden times kept the German states bickering among themselves.
For long years past, the people were divided by political brawls, altercations, affrays, squabbles, feuds, often with the loss of life. The general disposition was choleric, pugnacious, litigious.
There was bad blood over principles and procedure, policies and plans.
To transform aloofness to neighborliness, tumult to conciliation, quarreling to friendliness, hostility to good will, dissent must give way to assent, distrust to faith, denial to admission, misgiving to conviction, political atheism to political revelation.
Such are some of the peculiarities of the human animal; and in political life human animals are prone to fight for self-interest, like dogs over a bone.
¶ We are not going to try to tell you of the many efforts by rash reformers, in the half-century of the dead-weight, leading to the rise of Prussia.
Again and again, far-sighted Germans, sick unto death at the way things were going, urged equality for all men beforethe law, equal taxation, restriction of the power of the nobles.
Strange as it may seem, the peasants themselves stood in the way. They did not care to change their condition, miserable as it was. They dreaded the future, preferred present miseries than to risk new ills. For example, on one occasion, a certain political idealist excited the peasants in revolt, assassinated 120 nobles, destroyed 264 castles. This was in the time of Joseph II, of Austria, the ruler filled with amazing ideas of equality. The peasants themselves were the first to protest, much as they detested the nobles; and the unsupported leaders died on the wheel, while 150 miserable followers were buried alive.
And yet, at that very moment, the idealistic Joseph, who with an excess of zeal, tried for political equality, made enemies of his nobles, enemies of his peasants, likewise. The great reformer was held a fanatic, intent on destroying government. Too far ahead of his time, his plans for political semi-equality failed.
¶ This monarch, thinking to make a lesson, had swindling nobles placed in the stocks, like common thieves.
Joseph was one of the first great democrats, in the modern sense. To him, the cause of the common man was sacred. He believed in genuine equality, but alas, he did not know how to bring about the political Millennium.
¶ He threw open the parks to the people; he proclaimed free speech and free thought; he abolished serfdom; he labored to construct a state-machine with one system of justice and one National plan.
Joseph, though overbrimming with emotions for the common man’s political salvation, failed to allow for the ignorance of his people, their stubborn avowal of local self-interests.
¶ And it fell out that his people thought that Joseph was trying to enslave them the more; ingratitude and misapprehensions followed, destroying the liberal reformer’s most cherished plans for his beloved Austria-Germany.
The word was passed alone that Joseph was a tyrant. You see, as frequently happens, the people preferred old abusesto new ways. The general population hugged their chains and refused to be delivered.
This singular belief in the past, rather than in the future, is indeed a human weakness and has checked and restrained the rise of intellectual freedom since the world began.
¶ It might all have been a good lesson to republicans, but the nobility assumed a threatening attitude and the peasants did not understand a monarch like Joseph.
Their idea of a king was a man going upstairs on horseback and eating spiders. A king must have powers of life and death and bags of gold. A citizen king was absurd.
The peasantry, on whom Joseph had endeavored to bestow many large democratic privileges, rose against him. He died Feb. 20, 1790, “a century too early,” says Jellenz, and as Remer adds, “misunderstood by a people unworthy of such a sovereign.”
¶ Germany, in the sad period between 1750 and 1806 had long been a European political jest; these are hard words, but it is the language of truth.
She had sunk so low that she saw no degradation in going off to fight French or British wars, while at home remaining a mere political nonentity.
She had sunk so low, under French influences, and through her own lack of self-control, that she forgot her great ancestors and her noble traditions.
She had sunk so low that her very children were brought up to despise the language of the Fatherland; the children scoffing at the parents, aped foreign ways rather than support German originality, strength and national genius; young men coming of age preferred to leave the land of their birth, mocked the simple German virtues, and occupied themselves in idle dalliance in Paris, or failing in this, set up imitations of French courts in the petty German monarchies.
Thus, finally Germany became insensible, indifferent and debased by stupid and selfish ideals from beyond the Vosges; till at last Germany became, literally, a land without a people, a people without a land.
¶ Worse still, the time came when, under these false teachings, a sense of shame no longer lived, to arouse great national interests and to recall degenerate sons to their solemn duties to their Fatherland.
Hundreds of noble Germans, at one time or another, during these dark years, tried in vain by voice or pen to restore national consciousness, but failed. The problem of German liberty seemed incapable of solution; and as for the still larger problem of German unity—that became a mere dream.
¶ We glorify here and now, the genius and the manhood of Bismarck as the one man who had the strength of purpose to recall to Germans the heroic tale of a free and united Fatherland.
It took him thirty years or more, through well-nigh superhuman striving; he preached, he cursed, he vilified, he used the iron rod.
He would have absolutely nothing to do with the political ideas from over the Vosges; he knew too well the curse of olden times, and his one great central emotion was to end that condition—as he hoped forever.
You are to read of the battles of a giant, filled with immense compassion for the follies and weaknesses of his misled countrymen, filled, too, with fanatical zeal to punish, that good might come of it at last.
Bismarck used the strong military arm, the hell fires and the lightnings.
His nature scorned any further mere palliation of the weaknesses of human nature. Like all supermen, Bismarck struck straight from the shoulder; in turn to be misunderstood, cursed and reviled by the very people he would serve; but in the end aroused German manhood to a just comprehension of the power and dignity of a free and united Fatherland.
¶ For upwards of 100 years before Bismarck’s great hour, the French had been accustomed to exploit Germany. To fill the pocketbook, to provide soldiers for wars, or to afford opportunities for buccaneering expeditions, were all the same.