MECKLENBURG, THE PARADISE OF PRUSSIAN JUNKERTHUM
I.
The tourist who takes the express train between Berlin and Copenhagen,
one hour after he has left the Prussian capital reaches a vast plain
more than half the size of Belgium, where barren moorlands alternate
with smiling fields, where dormant lakes are succeeded by dark
pine-forests. Few travellers ever think of breaking their journey on
this melancholy plain, the territory of the Grand Dukes of
Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Mecklenburg-Strelitz. They have not the
remotest suspicion that these Grand Duchies of Mecklenburg, which they
cross in such listless haste, are, from a political point of view, one
of the most fascinating countries of Europe. Mecklenburg has for the
students of comparative politics the same sort of interest which an
Indian reserve territory, or the Mormon State of Utah, has for the
traveller in the United States, or which a cannibal tract in the
equatorial Congo forest has for the explorer of Central Africa. For
this pleasant land of Mecklenburg-Schwerin is the last survival of a
patriarchal and feudal civilization. It is the most perfect type of
the paternal Prussian type of government, entirely unspoiled by the
Parliamentary institutions of a feeble democratic age.
II.
Here alone of all the North German States the conditions of a past
generation continue in their pristine vigour. Although the Grand Duke
is the only descendant of Slavonic Princes in the German Empire, and
still calls himself "Prince of the Wendes," he is the most Teutonic of
dynasts. Although Mecklenburg-Schwerin is independent of Prussia, it
is the most Prussian and the most Junkerized of all Federal States.
In degenerate Prussia the Kaiser has actually to submit to the
financial control of an unruly Reichstag, and is not even allowed to
spend the Imperial revenues as any Emperor by right Divine ought to be
logically allowed to do. The Duke of Mecklenburg is far more fortunate
than William II. He has no accounts to settle, _he has not even a
budget to publish_. He collects in paternal fashion the revenues of
his Grand Ducal demesnes, and no power has any right to ask any
questions. Even the "Almanack of Gotha," which is generally omniscient
in these matters, is silent on the revenues of His Highness. There is
a public debt of about one hundred and fifty million marks! The public
revenues are the private income of the Grand Duke. The public debt is
a private charge on the people.
In degenerate Prussia even the Imperator-Rex has to divide some of his
authority with a meddlesome assembly, and has to delegate it to an
obedient but ridiculous bureaucracy. In the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg
the ruler governs his subjects in the good old patriarchal way. It is
true, in the troubled days of 1848 an unwise predecessor granted
something like a paper constitution, but that scrap of parchment
happily became a dead-letter twelve months after it had been granted.
It is also true that there still subsists some faint image of
representative government in the two estates of the Grand Duchy,
dating as far back as 1755, but those venerable estates of the Grand
Duchy are only composed of and only represent the _Ritterschaft_--_i.e._,
six hundred and ninety noblemen; and the _Landschaft_--_i.e._, fifty
municipalities. Neither the peasants in the country nor the artisans
in the towns are ever troubled to give their advice on matters
concerning the common weal. And as, in order that a Bill may become
the law of the Grand Duchy, the consent of the two estates is
required, nothing unpleasant is ever likely to happen, and the old
order, represented by the six hundred and ninety overlords, continues
undisturbed.
In degenerate Prussia even the Junkers have to submit to the presence
of petty landowners of lowly birth, or even to peasants of servile
origin. Do not historians remind us that even Frederick the Great had
to surrender to the claims of the Miller of Sans Souci. In
Mecklenburg-Schwerin there is no Miller of Sans Souci to worry the
Grand Duke. _For no peasant owns one single acre of land._ One-half of
the territory of the Grand Duchy is owned by a few hundred lords of
the manor, and the other half realizes the Socialist ideal of the
suppression of private property and of the transfer of all private
ownership to the State. Six thousand square miles are the absolute
property of the State--that is to say, of the Grand Duke. For never
was absolute ruler more truly entitled than the Grand Duke to
appropriate the words of Louis XIV.: "L'état c'est moi."
In this paradise of Prussian Junkerthum one might reasonably have
expected the monarch and the lords of the manor to enjoy as complete
happiness as is ever allotted to mortal man. And the peasants and
artisans could equally be expected to share in the universal
contentment. Are not the Grand Duke and his knights as closely
interested in the welfare of their tenants as a shepherd in the
welfare of his flock? But even in a patriarchal Grand Dukedom the
spirit of modern unrest seems to have penetrated. If German
statisticians may be trusted, the inhabitants of the Grand Duchy do
even seem to have preferred the risks and uncertainties of living in a
distant and unpaternal American Government to the peace and quiet and
security of the Mecklenburg plains. The ungrateful subjects of the
Grand Duke have done what the Kaiser once advised his own disloyal
subjects to do; they have shaken the dust of the Fatherland off their
feet; they have emigrated in such large numbers to the United States
of America that this paradise of Prussian Junkerthum, with its 700,000
inhabitants, is to-day the most thinly populated part of the German
Empire, and contains fewer industries than any other part.
After all, to a military empire soldiers are more necessary than
peasants and artisans. Already in 1815 Mecklenburg could claim the
glory of having produced the greatest Junker soldier of the age, bluff
and rough Prince Blücher, the victor of Waterloo. The achievements of
the Grand Ducal regiments have fully proved that Mecklenburg-Schwerin
and Mecklenburg-Strelitz have in the present war remained true to the
glories of their military past and have remained worthy of their
feudal present, and the august head of the Grand Ducal dynasty is just
now doing most efficient work in the Balkan States as the
super-Ambassador of his Imperial cousin.