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complete contempt for the members of these bodies, dramatic gestures, violent ideas couched in sparkling prose but delivered in easy conversational tones. He consistently chose conflict over consensus and saw in such clashes what Clark calls a ‘clarifying element’.
another permanent and not very agreeable feature of Bismarck’s character: he never took full responsibility for his acts.
That Bismarck should have concealed the actual content of the speech from his wife reflects his constant need to be seen to be right, not unusual in politicians, but in Bismarck’s case the scale of the correction of his own history has the proportions of his own gigantic ego.
He had one of the biggest Junker estates in Pomerania, and when in 1848 a ‘Junker Parliament’ met he was the obvious choice to be its Speaker.24 Bülow-Cummerow could not understand why Bismarck stirred up unnecessary trouble. He, as a sensible, large landowner, would never have done that.
First things first with Bismarck.
To obtain superiority over the extreme conservatives in the United Diet of 1847, Bismarck turned himself into the most extreme of extremists, the wildest of reactionaries, and the most savage of debaters.
Bismarck had found a passion for politics, the attendant intrigues, and, I suspect, the growing awareness of his enormous intellectual and personal superiority over the other deputies and their backers.
He plunged into politics the way he had hunted in the ‘mad Junker’ phase, taking risks, drinking too hard, and riding too fast. Above all, he loved the power to manipulate others.
casuistical
His faith provided the reinforcement, not the foundation of his sense of responsibility … Religion gave him a sense of security, a feeling of belonging to a coherent, meaningful and controlled world—the
28 July
The two essential elements in Bismarck’s career had fallen into place: the certainty that he could master political bodies and the favour of the King.
As Bismarck made his way home that night, the streets of Palermo in Sicily were buzzing with rumours. The next day a revolt against the King of Naples broke out and the revolutionary year of 1848 had begun.
In France on 23 February 1848, full-scale revolution broke out. Within hours, Louis Philippe fled and the Second French Republic had been declared with its fiery Jacobin language and memories of the Terror.
On 17 March the King, shaken by news of the flight of Metternich, finally gave in and agreed to lift press censorship and introduce a constitution for Prussia.
The reader can choose which version to accept but needs to bear in mind that Bismarck always covered up his mistakes, and this headstrong act of folly led to deep hostility between the future Queen and her future Minister-President. In addition, one must reflect that Bismarck wrote the passage after his fall from power and after forty years of his neurotic hatred of her.
There was no single revolution but many and often different ones.
Within a state like Germany thirty-nine revolutions broke out in big kingdoms like Prussia or Bavaria and in tiny German state-lets like the Principalities of Reuss older line and Reuss younger line, one of which was ruled by Heinrich the XX and the other by Heinrich the LXII (this is not a misprint).67
Each kingdom, dukedom, principality, or city had its feudal constitution and special relationship to its King, Prince, Duke, Count, Margrave, Landgrave, or Lord.
The German national state had to include the ‘eternally united’ Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, which, though only Holstein was a member of the Confederation, both had the King of Denmark as their sovereign.
Charles Albert, King of Piedmont, under the banner l’Italia farà da se (Italy will make itself)
To the west and to the east two great powers escaped the turmoil, Great Britain because it already had liberalism, capitalism, a constitution, and a middle class (though it was a close call and radicals in 1848 like the Reverend Frederick Maurice expected the revolution any day) and Russia which had none of those things.
If you see the King or President every day, especially if you see him alone, you have power irrespective of the title of your office or its place in the hierarchy.
the ‘Society for King and Fatherland’ was founded, a semi-clandestine association of Junker landlords, not more than ten or twenty in each province, who would, by joining other organizations without acknowledging the existence of the Society itself, influence local people and report to the central committee in Berlin on the atmosphere in the country at large.
agreed to sign an armistice with Denmark without consulting the German National Assembly, whose agent in theory Prussia had been. This betrayal of the national cause made clear the evident fact that Frankfurt as capital of the new Germany had no executive force of its own.
The parade showed that the revolutionaries had lost support and that the army had regained its prestige especially when commanded by a witty, dialect-speaking, people’s general.
the 1848 Constitution was by no means entirely reactionary. It stipulated that all Prussians were equal before the law (Article 4); had personal freedom guaranteed (Article 5); inviolability of their dwellings (Article 6); property was inviolable (Article 8); and religious freedom was guaranteed (Article 11); research and teaching were free (Article 17). Every male Prussian over the age of 24 who had lived in his community for six months and had not been declared ineligible by a court had the right to vote (Article 67).
The Frankfurt crown may glitter brightly but the gold which lends authenticity to its sparkle must be won by melting down the Prussian crown and I have no confidence that the smelting will succeed with the form of this constitution.107
Baden—to unify Germany in a ‘Union’ of Princes on a federal basis but without Austria.
Under Prussian pressure twenty-eight German states recognized the constitution and joined the union by the end of August 1849 but Bavaria held out and the loyalty of Saxony and Hanover to the idea was never very strong.
At long last the summer holidays freed Bismarck from his seat on the podium in Erfurt and he had time to write to Hermann Wagener in June of 1850: I lead a bottomlessly lazy life here, smoking, reading, taking walks and playing family father.
Why do great states fight wars today? The only sound basis for a large state is egoism and not romanticism; this is what necessarily distinguishes a large state from a small one. It is not worthy for a large state to fight a war that is not in its own interests. Just show me an objective worth a war, gentlemen, and I will agree with you … The honour of Prussia does not in my view consist of playing Don Quixote to every offended parliamentary bigwig in Germany who feels his local constitution is in jeopardy.122
Prussian House of Lords
Article 1 of the Treaty declared that the deutscher Bund [the German Confederation] is an international association of German sovereign princes and free cities to preserve the independence and inviolability of the member states and to preserve the inner and outer security of Germany.1
The structure and arrangement of the Final Act of 1820 have the charm and clarity of the Lisbon Treaty of the European Union of 2007. Nobody but experts ever really cared to understand it, just as today very few outside Brussels can explain how the EU works.
One thing really pains me, that is that you still see everything the way you did five years ago and that I can hardly understand … Everything that belongs to those days lives on in me, but I now have other things to do, more serious things, but do not lack the inner glow.
The coup d’état changed the entire diplomatic situation in Europe. Without it Bismarck could never have unified Germany.
Without Russia’s defeat in the Crimea, Bismarck could never have fought his three wars of unification. The rule of central European power had been constant since 1700 (and in a way still is): when Russia is up Germany is down; when Germany is up, Russia is down.
The metaphors that Bismarck began to use in the 1850s came from his experiences in games of chance, cards, dice, and the like.62 Politics had, he asserted more and more openly, nothing to do with good and evil, virtue and vice; they had to do with power and self-interest.
These letters announce the emergence of a new diplomatic style, the birth of what came to be known as Realpolitik, for which—interestingly—there is no apt English translation. Langenscheidt’s two-volume German–English dictionary suggests ‘practical politics, politics of realism’ but neither catches the complete idea. The following exchange of letters between Bismarck and Leopold von Gerlach constitutes a kind of practical definition of the term; do what works and serves your interests.
In spite of his resistance to his assignment Bismarck actually enjoyed St Petersburg very much and the letters have a mellow sense of well-being, which can hardly be found either before or after. His descriptions of the promenades and boulevards of the ‘Venice of the North’ have great charm.
On 23 April Austria sent an ultimatum to Piedmont-Sardinia to demand that the Piedmontese disarm, which the government of Piedmont rejected on 26 April.23 The following day at the Austrian Crown Council Franz Joseph decided irrevocably for war, calling it ‘a commandment of honor and duty’.
Under the rule of such an incompetent, absolute monarch, Austria declared war on Piedmont on 29 April, an act of aggression which triggered the Franco-Piedmontese treaty of alliance.
On 20 May French infantry and Sardinian cavalry defeated the Austrian army, which retreated, near Montebello and a week later Garibaldi’s Hunters of the Alps defeated the Austrians at San Fermo and liberated Como.
from 21 to 24 June the Battle of Solferino at which the Franco-Piedmontese Army under Napoleon III defeated an Austrian force under the Emperor Franz Joseph himself. The battle left so many dead and wounded that it moved the Swiss observer Henri Dunant to found the Red Cross.
Bismarck had from the beginning argued that Prussia must stay neutral in the Austro-French war. ‘We are not rich enough to use up our strength in wars that do not earn us anything,’ he argued.
‘Iron and fire’ was the precursor of the more famous ‘blood and iron’ phrase from his first speech as Minister-President in September 1862. It certainly had the same meaning. Prussia would have to carve out its own fate by ‘iron and fire’, that is, by war.
On 26 July 1866, Prussia and Austria signed a preliminary peace agreement at Nikolsburg which established the following agreement: 1. Austria is to withdraw entirely from the association of German states; 2. Austria recognizes the formation of a federation of the North German states under Prussian leadership; 3. The relationship between the south German states among themselves and with the North German Federation remains to be decided by freely agreed arrangements. 4. Austria recognizes the alterations of possessions to be carried out in North Germany. 5. Austria to pay a reparation of 40
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Bismarck in the meantime had collapsed physically. The strain of the recent months had taken their toll.
The victory over France and the foundation of the new Reich marked the high point of Bismarck’s career. He had achieved the impossible and his genius and the cult of that genius had no limits.
