Various - "Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 1, 1891"

Charles Klein - "The Lion and The Mouse"

W.J. Marx - "For The Admiral"

Various - "Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 24, 1891"

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The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. written by Kuno Francke

K >> Kuno Francke >> The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X.



VOLUME X


PRINCE OTTO VON BISMARCK

COUNT HELMUTH VON MOLTKE

FERDINAND LASSALLE





THE GERMAN CLASSICS

Masterpieces of German Literature





TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH

Patrons' Edition



IN TWENTY VOLUMES



ILLUSTRATED

1914





CONTENTS OF VOLUME X


Prince Otto Von Bismarck

Bismarck as a National Type. By Kuno Francke.

The Love Letters of Bismarck. Translated under the supervision of
Charlton T. Lewis.

Correspondence of William I. and Bismarck. Translated by J.A. Ford.

From "Thoughts and Recollections." Translated under the supervision of
A.J. Butler.

Bismarck as an Orator. By Edmund von Mach.

Speeches of Prince Bismarck. Translated by Edmund von Mach:

Professorial Politics

Speech from the Throne

Alsace-Lorraine a Glacis Against France

We Shall Never Go to Canossa!

Bismarck as the "Honest Broker"

Salus Publica--Bismarck's Only Lode-Star

Practical Christianity

We Germans Fear God, and Nought Else in the World

Mount the Guards at the Warthe and the Vistula!

Long Live the Emperor and the Empire!


Count Helmuth Von Moltke

The Life of Moltke. By Karl Detlev Jessen.

Letters and Historical Writings of Moltke:

The Political and Military Conditions of the Ottoman Empire in 1836.
Translated by Edmund von Mach.

A Trip to Brussa. Translated by Edmund von Mach.

A Journey to Mossul. Translated by Edmund von Mach.

A Bullfight in Spain. Translated by Edmund von Mach.

Description of Moscow. Translated by Grace Bigelow.

The Peace Movement. Translated by Edmund von Mach.

Fighting on the Frontier. Translated by Clara Bell and Henry W.
Fischer.

Battle of Gravelotte--St. Privat. Translated by Clara Bell and Henry
W. Fischer.

Consolatory Thoughts on the Earthly Life and a Future Existence.
Translated by Mary Herms.


Ferdinand Lassalle

The Life and Work of Ferdinand Lassalle. By Arthur N. Holcombe.

The Workingmen's Programme. Translated by E.H. Babbitt.

Science and the Workingmen. Translated by Thorstein B. Veblen.

Open Letter to the Central Committee. Translated by E.H. Babbitt.





ILLUSTRATIONS--VOLUME X


Bismarck Meeting Napoleon after the Battle of Sedan

Prince Bismarck. By Franz von Lenbach

Prince Bismarck. By Franz von Lenbach

Princess Bismarck

Coronation of King William I at Koenigsberg. By Adolph von Menzel

Emperor William I. By Franz von Lenbach

King William's Departure for the Front at the Beginning of the
Franco-German War. By Adolph von Menzel

Prince Bismarck. By Franz von Lenbach

The Berlin Congress. By Anton von Werner

Prince Bismarck. By Franz von Lenbach

The Bismarck Monument at Hamburg. By Lederer

William I on his Deathbed. By Anton von Werner

Moltke. By Anton von Werner

Count Moltke

Moltke at Sedan. By Anton von Werner

King William at the Mausoleum of his Parents on the Day of the French
Declaration of War. By Anton von Werner

The Capitulation of Sedan. By Anton von Werner

Ferdinand Lassalle

The Iron Foundry. By Adolph von Menzel

Flax Barn in Laren. By Max Liebermann

* * * * *




BISMARCK AS A NATIONAL TYPE[1]

BY KUNO FRANCKE, PH.D., LL.D., Litt.D. Professor of the History of
German Culture, Harvard University.


No man since Luther has been a more complete embodiment of German
nationality than Otto von Bismarck. None has been closer to the German
heart. None has stood more conspicuously for racial aspirations,
passions, ideals.

It is the purpose of the present sketch to bring out a few of these
affinities between Bismarck and the German people.

I

Perhaps the most obviously Teutonic trait in Bismarck's character is
its martial quality. It would be preposterous, surely, to claim
warlike distinction as a prerogative of the German race. Russians,
Frenchmen, Englishmen, Americans, undoubtedly, make as good fighters
as Germans. But it is not an exaggeration to say that there is no
country in the world where the army is as enlightened or as popular an
institution as it is in Germany.

The German army is not composed of hirelings of professional fighters
whose business it is to pick quarrels, no matter with whom. It is, in
the strictest sense of the word, the people in arms. Among its
officers there is a large percentage of the intellectual elite of the
country; its rank and file embrace every occupation and every class of
society, from the scion of royal blood down to the son of the
seamstress. Although it is based upon the unconditional
acceptance of the monarchical creed, nothing is farther removed from
it than the spirit of servility. On the contrary, one of the very
first teachings which are inculcated upon the German recruit is that,
in wearing the "king's coat," he is performing a public duty, and that
by performing this duty he is honoring himself. Nor can it be said
that it is the aim of German military drill to reduce the soldier to a
mere machine, at will to be set in motion or be brought to a
standstill by his superior. The aim of this drill is rather to give
each soldier increased self-control, mentally no less than bodily; to
develop his self-respect; to enlarge his sense of responsibility, as
well as to teach him the absolute necessity of the subordination of
the individual to the needs of the whole. The German army, then, is by
no means a lifeless tool that might be used by an unscrupulous and
adventurous despot to gratify his own whims or to wreak his private
vengeance. The German army is, in principle at least, a national
school of manly virtues, of discipline, of comradeship, of
self-sacrifice, of promptness of action, of tenacity of purpose.
Although, probably, the most powerful armament which the world has
ever seen, it makes for peace rather than for war. Although called
upon to defend the standard of the most imperious dynasty of western
Europe, it contains more of the spirit of true democracy than many a
city government on this side of the Atlantic.

All this has to be borne in mind if we wish to judge correctly of
Bismarck's military propensities. He has never concealed the fact that
he felt himself, above all, a soldier. One of his earliest public
utterances was a defense of the Prussian army against the sympathizers
with the revolution of 1848. His first great political achievement was
the carrying through, in the early sixties, of King William's army
reform in the face of the most stubborn and virulent opposition of a
parliamentary majority. Never, in the years following the formation of
the Empire, did his speech in the German Parliament rise to a higher
pathos than when he was asserting the military supremacy of the
Emperor, or calling upon the parties to forget their dissensions in
maintaining the defensive strength of the nation, or showering
contempt upon liberal deputies who seemed to think that questions of
national existence could be solved by effusions of academic oratory.
Over and over, during the last decade of his official career, did he
declare that the only thing which kept him from throwing aside the
worry and vexation of governmental duties and retiring to the much
coveted leisure of home and hearth, was the oath of vassal loyalty
constraining him to stand at his post until his imperial master
released him of his own accord. And at the very height of his
political triumphs he wrote to his sovereign: "I have always regretted
that my talents did not allow me to testify my attachment to the royal
house and my enthusiasm for the greatness and glory of the Fatherland
in the front rank of a regiment rather than behind a writing-desk. And
even now, after having been raised by your Majesty to the highest
honors of a statesman, I cannot altogether repress a feeling of regret
at not having been similarly able to carve out a career for myself as
a soldier. Perhaps I should have made a poor general, but if I had
been free to follow the bent of my own inclination I would rather have
won battles for your Majesty than diplomatic campaigns."

It seems clear that both the defects and the greatness of Bismarck's
character are intimately associated with these military leanings of
his. He certainly was overbearing; he could tolerate no opposition; he
was revengeful and unforgiving; he took pleasure in the appeal to
violence; he easily resorted to measures of repression; he requited
insults with counter-insults; he had something of that blind _furor
Teutonicus_ which was the terror of the Italian republics in the
Middle Ages. These are defects of temper which will probably prevent
his name from ever shining with that serene lustre of international
veneration that has surrounded the memory of a Joseph II. or a
Washington with a kind of impersonal immaculateness. But his
countrymen, at least, have every reason to condone these defects; for
they are concomitant results of the military bent of German character,
and they are offset by such transcendent military virtues that we
would almost welcome them as bringing this colossal figure within the
reach of our own frailties and shortcomings.

Three of the military qualities that made Bismarck great seem to me to
stand out with particular distinctness: his readiness to take the most
tremendous responsibilities, if he could justify his action by the
worth of the cause for which he made himself responsible; his
moderation after success was assured; his unflinching submission to
the dictates of monarchical discipline.

Moritz Busch has recorded an occurrence, belonging to the autumn of
1877, which most impressively brings before us the tragic grandeur and
the portentous issues of Bismarck's career. It was twilight at Varzin,
and the Chancellor, as was his wont after dinner, was sitting by the
stove in the large back drawing-room. After having sat silent for a
while, gazing straight before him, and feeding the fire now and anon
with fir-cones, he suddenly began to complain that his political
activity had brought him but little satisfaction and few friends.
Nobody loved him for what he had done. He had never made anybody happy
thereby, he said, not himself, nor his family, nor any one else. Some
of those present would not admit this, and suggested "that he had made
a great nation happy." "But," he retorted, "how many have I made
unhappy! But for me three great wars would not have been fought;
eighty thousand men would not have perished; parents, brothers,
sisters, and wives would not have been bereaved and plunged into
mourning.... That matter, however, I have settled with God." "Settled
with God!"--an amazing statement, a statement which would seem the
height of blasphemy if it were not an expression of noblest manliness,
if it did not reveal the soul of a warrior dauntlessly fighting for a
great cause, risking for it the existence of a whole country as well
as his own happiness, peace, and salvation, and being ready to submit
the consequences, whatever they might be, to the tribunal of eternity.
To say that a man who is willing to take such responsibilities as
these makes himself thereby an offender against morality appears to me
tantamount to condemning the Alps as obstructions to traffic. A
people, at any rate, that glories in the achievements of a Luther has
no right to cast a slur upon the motives of a Bismarck.

Whatever one may think of the worth of the cause for which Bismarck
battled all his life--the unity and greatness of Germany--it is
impossible not to admire the policy of moderation and self-restraint
pursued by him after every one of his most decisive victories. And
here again we note in him the peculiarly German military temper.
German war-songs do not glorify foreign conquest and brilliant
adventure; they glorify dogged resistance and bitter fight for house
and home, for kith and kin. The German army, composed as it is of
millions of peaceful citizens, is essentially a weapon of defense. And
it can truly be said that Bismarck, with all his natural
aggressiveness and ferocity, was in the main a defender, not a
conqueror. He defended Prussia against the intolerable arrogance and
un-German policy of Austria; he defended Germany against French
interference in the work of national consolidation; he defended the
principle of State sovereignty against the encroachments of the
Papacy; he defended the monarchy against the republicanism of the
Liberals and Socialists; and the supreme aim of his foreign policy
after the establishment of the German Empire was to guard the peace of
Europe.

The third predominant trait of Bismarck's character that stamps him as
a soldier--his unquestioning obedience to monarchical discipline--is
so closely bound up with the peculiarly German conceptions of the
functions and the Purpose of the State, that it will be better to
approach this Part of his nature from the political instead of the
military side.

II

In no other of the leading countries of the world has the _laissez
faire_ doctrine had as little influence in political matters as in
Germany. Luther, the fearless champion of religious individualism,
was, in questions of government, the most pronounced advocate of
paternalism. Kant, the cool dissector of the human intellect, was at
the same time the most rigid upholder of corporate morality. It was
Fichte, the ecstatic proclaimer of the glory of the individual will,
who wrote this dithyramb on the necessity of the constant surrender of
private interests to the common welfare: "Nothing can live by itself
or for itself; everything lives in the whole; and the whole
continually sacrifices itself to itself in order to live anew. This is
the law of life. Whatever has come to the consciousness of existence
must fall a victim to the progress of all existence. Only there is a
difference whether you are dragged to the shambles like a beast with
bandaged eyes, or whether, in full and joyous presentiment of the life
which will spring forth from your sacrifice, you offer yourself freely
on the altar of eternity."

Not even Plato and Aristotle went so far in the deification of the
State as Hegel. And if Hegel declared that the real office of the
State is not to further individual interests, to protect private
property, but to be an embodiment of the organic unity of public life;
if he saw the highest task and the real freedom of the individual in
making himself a part of this organic unity of public life, he voiced
a sentiment which was fully shared by the leading classes of the
Prussia of his time, and which has since become a part of the
political creed of the Socialist masses all over Germany.

Here we have the moral background of Bismarck's internal policy. His
monarchism rested not only on his personal allegiance to the
hereditary dynasty, although no medieval knight could have been more
steadfast in his loyalty to his liege lord than Bismarck was in his
unswerving devotion to the Hohenzollern house. His monarchism
rested above all on the conviction that, under the present
conditions of German political life, no other form of government would
insure equally well the fulfilment of the moral obligations of the
State.

[Illustration: PRINCE BISMARCK _From the Painting by Franz von
Lenbach_ COURTESY OF MR. HUGO RESINGER NEW YORK]

He was by no means blind to the value of parliamentary institutions.
More than once has he described the English Constitution as the
necessary outcome and the fit expression of the vital forces of
English society. More than once has he eulogized the sterling
political qualities of English landlordism, its respect for the law,
its common sense, its noble devotion to national interests. More than
once has he deplored the absence in Germany of "the class which in
England is the main support of the State--the class of wealthy and
therefore conservative gentlemen, independent of material interests,
whose whole education is directed with a view to their becoming
statesmen, and whose only aim in life is to take part in public
affairs"; and the absence of "a Parliament, like the English,
containing two sharply defined parties whereof one forms a sure and
unswerving majority which subjects itself with iron discipline to its
ministerial leaders." We may regret that Bismarck himself did not do
more to develop parliamentary discipline; that, indeed, he did
everything in his power to arrest the healthy growth of German party
life. But it is at least perfectly clear that his reasons for refusing
to allow the German parties a controlling influence in shaping the
policy of the government were not the result of mere despotic caprice,
but were founded upon thoroughly German traditions, and upon a
thoroughly sober, though one-sided, view of the present state of
German public affairs.

To him party government appeared as much of an impossibility as it had
appeared to Hegel. The attempt to establish it would, in his opinion,
have led to nothing less than chaos. The German parties, as he viewed
them, represented, not the State, not the nation, but an infinite
variety of private and class interests--the interests of landholders,
traders, manufacturers, laborers, politicians, priests, and so on;
each particular set of interests desiring the particular consideration
of the public treasury, and refusing the same amount of consideration
to every other. It seemed highly desirable to him, as it did to Hegel,
that all these interests should be heard; that they should be
represented in a Parliament based upon as wide and liberal a suffrage
as possible. But to intrust any one of these interests with the
functions of government would, in his opinion, have been treason to
the State; it would have been class tyranny of the worst kind.

The logical outcome of all this was his conviction of the absolute
necessity, for Germany, of a strong non-partisan government: a
government which should hold all the conflicting class interests in
check and force them into continual compromises with one another; a
government which should be unrestricted by any class prejudices,
pledges, or theories, and have no other guiding star than the welfare
of the whole nation. And the only basis for such a government he found
in the Prussian monarchy, with its glorious tradition of military
discipline, of benevolent paternalism, and of self-sacrificing
devotion to national greatness; with its patriotic gentry, its
incorruptible courts, its religious freedom, its enlightened
educational system, its efficient and highly trained civil service. To
bow before such a monarchy, to serve such a State, was indeed
something different from submitting to the chance vote of a
parliamentary majority; in this bondage even a Bismarck could find his
highest freedom.

For nearly forty years he bore this bondage; for twenty-eight he stood
in the place nearest to the monarch himself; and not even his enemies
dared to assert that his political conduct was guided by other motives
than the consideration of public welfare. Indeed, if there is any
phrase for which he, the apparent cynic, the sworn despiser of
phrases, seems to have had a certain weakness, it is the word _salus
publica_. To it he sacrificed his days and his nights; for it he more
than once risked his life; for it he incurred more hatred and slander
than perhaps any man of his time; for it he alienated his best
friends; for it he turned not once or twice, but one might almost say
habitually, against his own cherished prejudices and convictions. The
career of few men shows so many apparent inconsistencies and
contrasts. One of his earliest speeches in the Prussian Landtag was a
fervent protest against the introduction of civil marriage; yet the
civil marriage clause in the German constitution is his work. He was
by birth and tradition a believer in the divine right of kings; yet
the King of Hanover could tell something of the manner in which
Bismarck dealt with the divine right of kings if it stood in the way
of German unity. He took pride in belonging to the most feudal
aristocracy of western Europe, the Prussian Junkerdom; yet he did more
to uproot feudal privileges than any other German statesman since
1848. He gloried in defying public opinion, and was wont to say that
he felt doubtful about himself whenever he met with popular applause;
yet he is the founder of the German Parliament, and he founded it on
direct and universal suffrage. He was the sworn enemy of the Socialist
party--he attempted to destroy it, root and branch; yet through the
nationalization of railways and the obligatory insurance of workmen he
infused more Socialism into German legislation than any other
statesman before him.

Truly, a man who could thus sacrifice his own wishes and instincts to
the common good; who could so completely sink his own personality in
the cause of the nation; who with such matchless courage defended this
cause against attacks from whatever quarter--against court intrigue no
less than against demagogues--such a man had a right to stand above
parties; and he spoke the truth when, some years before leaving
office, in a moment of gloom and disappointment he wrote under his
portrait, _Patrice inserviendo consumor_.

III

There is a strange, but after all perfectly natural, antithesis in
German national character. The same people that instinctively believes
in political paternalism, that willingly submits to restrictions of
personal liberty in matters of State such as no Englishman would ever
tolerate, is more jealous of its independence than perhaps any other
nation in matters pertaining to the intellectual, social, and
religious life of the individual. It seems as if the very pressure
from without had helped to strengthen and enrich the life within.

Not only all the great men of German thought, from Luther down to the
Grimms and the Humboldts, have been conspicuous for their freedom from
artificial conventions and for the originality and homeliness of their
human intercourse; but even the average German official--wedded as he
may be to his rank or his title, anxious as he may be to preserve an
outward decorum in exact keeping with the precise shade of his public
status--is often the most delightfully unconventional, good-natured,
unsophisticated, and even erratic being in the world, as soon as he
has left the cares of his office behind him. Germany is the classic
land of queer people. It is the land of Quintus Fixlein, Onkel Braesig,
Leberecht Huehnchen, and the host of _Fliegende Blatter_ worthies; it
is the land of the beer-garden and the Kaffeekranzchen, of the
Christmas-tree and the Whitsuntide merry-making; it is the land of
country inns and of student pranks. What more need be said to bring
before one's mind the wealth of hearty joyfulness, jolly
good-fellowship, boisterous frolic, sturdy humor, simple directness,
and genuinely democratic feeling that characterizes social life in
Germany.

And still less reason is there for dwelling on the intellectual and
religious independence of German character. Absence of constraint in
scientific inquiry and religious conduct is indeed the very palladium
of German freedom. Nowhere is higher education so entirely removed
from class distinction as in the country where the imperial princes
are sent to the same school with the sons of tradesmen and artisans.
Nowhere is there so little religious formalism, coupled with such deep
religious feeling, as in the country where sermons are preached to
empty benches, while _Tannhauser_ and _Lohengrin, Wallenstein_ and
_Faust_, are listened to with the hush of awe and bated breath by
thousands upon thousands.

In all these respects--socially, intellectually, religiously--Bismarck
was the very incarnation of German character. Although an aristocrat
by birth and bearing, and although, especially during the years of
early manhood, passionately given over to the aristocratic habits of
dueling, hunting, swaggering and carousing, he was essentially a man
of the people. Nothing was so utterly foreign to him as any form of
libertinism; even his eccentricities were of the hardy, homespun sort.
He was absolutely free from social vanity; he detested court
festivities; he set no store by orders or decorations; the only two
among the innumerable ones conferred upon him which he is said to have
highly valued were the Prussian order of the Iron Cross, bestowed for
personal bravery on the battlefield, and the medal for "rescuing from
danger" which he earned in 1842 for having saved his groom from
drowning by plunging into the water after him.

All his instincts were bound up with the soil from which he had
sprung. He passionately loved the North German plain, with its gloomy
moorlands, its purple heather, its endless wheatfields, its kingly
forests, its gentle lakes, and its superb sweep of sky and clouds.
Writing to his friends when abroad--he traveled very little abroad--he
was in the habit of describing foreign scenery by comparing it to
familiar views and places on his own estates. During sleepless nights
in the Chancellery at Berlin there would often rise before him a
sudden vision of Varzin, his Pomeranian country-seat, "perfectly
distinct in the minutest particulars, like a great picture with all
its colors fresh--the green trees, the sunshine on the stems, the blue
sky above. I saw every individual tree." Never was he more happy than
when alone with nature. "Saturday," he writes to his wife from
Frankfort, "I drove to Ruedesheim. There I took a boat, rowed out on
the Rhine, and swam in the moonlight, with nothing but nose and eyes
out of water, as far as the Maeuseturm near Bingen, where the bad
bishop came to his end. It gives one a peculiar dreamy sensation to
float thus on a quiet warm night in the water, gently carried down by
the current, looking above on the heavens studded with moon and stars,
and on each side the banks and wooded hilltops and the battlements of
the old castles bathed in the moonlight, whilst nothing falls on one's
ear but the gentle splashing of one's movements. I should like to swim
like this every evening." And what poet has more deeply felt than he
that vague musical longing which seizes one when far away from human
sounds, by the brook-side or the hill-slope? "I feel as if I were
looking out on the mellowing foliage of a fine September day," he
writes again to his wife, "health and spirits good, but with a soft
touch of melancholy, a little homesickness, a longing for deep woods
and lakes, for a desert, for yourself and the children, and all this
mixed up with a sunset and Beethoven."