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 Königsberg. 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 élite 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 Bräsig,
Leberecht Hühnchen, 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 Rüdesheim. 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 Mäuseturm 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."
His domestic affections were by no means limited to those united to
him by ties of blood; he cherished strong patriarchal feelings for
every member of his household, past or present. He possessed in a high
degree the German tenderness for little things. He never forgot a
service rendered to him, however small. In the midst of the most
engrossing public activity he kept himself informed about the minutest
details of the management of his estates, so that his wife could once
laughingly say that a turnip from his own fields interested him vastly
more than all the problems of international politics.
His humor, also, was entirely of the German stamp. It was boisterous,
rollicking, aggressive, unsparing--of himself as little as of
others--cynic, immoderate, but never without a touch of good-nature.
His satire was often crushing, never venomous. His wit was racy and
exuberant never equivocal. Whether he describes his _vis-à-vis_ at a
hotel table, his Excellency So-and-So, as "one of those figures which
appear to one when he has the nightmare--a fat frog without legs, who
opens his mouth as wide as his shoulders, like a carpet-bag, for each
bit, so that I am obliged to hold tight on by the table from
giddiness"; whether he characterizes his colleagues at the Frankfort
Bundestag as "mere caricatures of periwig diplomatists, who at once
put on their official visage if I merely beg of them a light to my
cigar, and who study their words and looks with Regensburg care when
they ask for the key of the lavatory"; whether he sums up his
impression of the excited, emotional manner in which Jules Favre
pleaded with him for the peace terms in the words, "He evidently took
me for a public meeting"; whether he declined to look at the statue
erected to him at Cologne, because he "didn't care to see himself
fossilized"; whether he spoke of the unprecedented popular ovations
given to him at his final departure from Berlin as a "first-class
funeral"--there are always the same childlike directness, the same
naïve impulsiveness, the same bantering earnestness, the same sublime
contempt for sham and hypocrisy.
And what man has been more truthful in intellectual and religious
matters? He, the man of iron will, of ferocious temper, was at the
same time the coolest reasoner, the most unbiased thinker. He
willingly submitted to the judgment of experts, he cheerfully
acknowledged intellectual talent in others, he took a pride in having
remained a learner all his life, but he hated arrogant amateurishness.
He was not a church-goer; he declined to be drawn into the circle of
religious schemers and reactionary fanatics; he would occasionally
speak in contemptuous terms of "the creed of court chaplains"; but,
writing to his wife of that historic meeting with Napoleon in the
lonely cottage near the battlefield of Sedan, he said: "A powerful
contrast with our last meeting in the Tuileries in '67. Our
conversation was a difficult thing, if I wanted to avoid touching on
topics which could not but affect painfully the man whom God's mighty
hand had cast down." And more than once has he given vent to
reflections like these: "For him who does not believe--as I do from
the bottom of my heart--that death is a transition from one existence
to another, and that we are justified in holding out to the worst of
criminals in his dying hour the comforting assurance, _mors janua
vitae_--I say that for him who does not share that conviction the joys
of this life must possess so high a value that I could almost envy him
the sensations they must procure him." Or these: "Twenty years hence,
or at most thirty, we shall be past the troubles of this life, whilst
our children will have reached our present standpoint, and will
discover with astonishment that their existence, but now so brightly
begun, has turned the corner and is going down hill. Were that to be
the end of it all, life would not be worth the trouble of dressing and
undressing every day."
IV
We have considered a few traits of Bismarck's mental and moral make-up
which seem to be closely allied with German national character and
traditions. But, after all, the personality of a man like Bismarck is
not exhausted by the qualities which he has in common with his people,
however sublimated these qualities may be in him. His innermost life
belongs to himself alone, or is shared, at most, by the few men of the
world's history who, like him, tower in splendid solitude above the
waste of the ages. In the Middle High German _Alexanderlied_ there is
an episode which most impressively brings out the impelling motive of
such titanic lives. On one of his expeditions Alexander penetrates
into the land of Scythian barbarians. These child-like people are so
contented with their simple, primitive existence that they beseech
Alexander to give them immortality. He answers that this is not in his
power. Surprised, they ask why, then, if he is only a mortal, he is
making such a stir in the world. Thereupon he answers: "The Supreme
Power has ordained us to carry out what is in us. The sea is given
over to the whirlwind to plough it up. As long as life lasts and I am
master of my senses, I must bring forth what is in me. What would life
be if all men in the world were like you?" These words might have been
spoken by Bismarck. Every word, every act of his public career, gives
us the impression of a man irresistibly driven on by some
overwhelming, mysterious power. He was not an ambitious schemer, like
Beaconsfield or Napoleon; he was not a moral enthusiast like Gladstone
or Cavour. If he had consulted his private tastes and inclinations, he
would never have wielded the destinies of an empire. Indeed, he often
rebelled against his task; again and again he tried to shake it off;
and the only thing which again and again brought him back to it was
the feeling, "I must; I cannot do otherwise." If ever there was a man
in whom Fate revealed its moral sovereignty, that man was Bismarck.
Whither has he gone now? Has he joined his compeers? Is he conversing
in ethereal regions with Alexander, Caesar, Frederick? Is he sweeping
over land and sea in the whirlwind and the thunder-cloud? Or may we
hope that he is still working out the task which, in spite of all the
imperiousness of his nature, was the essence of his earthly life--the
task of making the Germans a nation of true freemen?
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: From _Glimpses of Modern German Culture_. Permission
Dodd, Mead & Company, New York.]
* * * * *
THE LOVE LETTERS OF BISMARCK[2] TRANSLATED UNDER THE SUPERVISION OF
CHARLTON T. LEWIS
Hôtel de Prusse, Stettin, (Not dated: Written about the end of
December, 1846.)
TO HERR VON PUTTKAMER:
_Most Honored Sir_.--I begin this communication by indicating its
content in the first sentence--it is a request for the highest thing
you can dispose of in this world, the hand of your daughter. I do not
conceal from myself the fact that I appear presumptuous when I, whom
you have come to know only recently and through a few meetings, claim
the strongest proof of confidence which you can give to any man. I
know, however, that even irrespective of all obstacles in space and
time which can increase your difficulty in forming an opinion of me,
through my own efforts I can never be in a position to give you such
guaranties for the future that they would, from your point of view,
justify intrusting me with an object so precious, unless you
supplement by trust in God that which trust in human beings cannot
supply. All that I can do is to give you information about myself with
absolute candor, so far as I have come to understand myself. It will
be easy for you to get reports from others in regard to my public
conduct; I content myself, therefore, with an account of what underlay
that--my inner life, and especially my relations to Christianity. To
do that I must take a start far back.
In earliest childhood I was estranged from my parents' house, and at
no time became entirely at home there again; and my education from the
beginning was conducted on the assumption that everything is
subordinate to the cultivation of the intelligence and the early
acquisition of positive sciences.
After a course of religious teaching, irregularly attended and not
comprehended, I had at the time of my confirmation by Schleiermacher,
on my sixteenth birthday no belief other than a bare deism, which was
not long free from pantheistic elements. It was at about this time
that I, not through indifference, but after mature consideration,
ceased to pray every evening, as I had been in the habit of doing
since childhood; because prayer seemed inconsistent with my view of
God's nature; saying to myself: either God himself, being omnipresent,
is the cause of everything--even of every thought and volition of
mine--and so in a sense offers prayers to himself through me, or, if
my will is independent of God's will, it implies arrogance and a doubt
as to the inflexibility as well as the perfection of the divine
determination to believe that it can be influenced by human appeals.
When not quite seventeen years old I went to Göttingen University.
During the next eight years I seldom saw the home of my parents; my
father indulgently refrained from interference; my mother censured me
from far away when I neglected my studies and professional work,
probably in the conviction that she must leave the rest to guidance
from above: with this exception I was literally cut off from the
counsel and instruction of others. In this period, when studies which
ambition at times led me to prosecute zealously--or emptiness and
satiety, the inevitable companions of my way of living--brought me
nearer to the real meaning of life and eternity, it was in old-world
philosophies, uncomprehended writings of Hegel, and particularly in
Spinoza's seeming mathematical clearness, that I sought for peace of
mind in that which the human understanding cannot comprehend. But it
was loneliness that first led me to reflect on these things
persistently, when I went to Kniephof, after my mother's death, five
or six years ago. Though at first my views did not materially change
at Kniephof, yet conscience began to be more audible in the solitude,
and to represent that many a thing was wrong which I had before
regarded as permissible. Yet my struggle for insight was still
confined to the circle of the understanding, and led me, while reading
such writings as those of Strauss, Feuerbach, and Bruno Bauer, only
deeper into the blind alley of doubt.
I was firmly convinced that God has denied to man the possibility of
true knowledge; that it is presumption to claim to understand the will
and plans of the Lord of the World; that the individual must await in
submission the judgment that his Creator will pass upon him in death,
and that the will of God becomes known to us on earth solely through
conscience, which He has given us as a special organ for feeling our
way through the gloom of the world. That I found no peace in these
views I need not say. Many an hour have I spent in disconsolate
depression, thinking that my existence and that of others is
purposeless and unprofitable--perchance only a casual product of
creation, coming and going like dust from rolling wheels.
About four years ago I came into close companionship, for the first
time since my school-days, with Moritz Blankenburg, and found in him,
what I had never had till then in my life, a friend; but the warm zeal
of his love strove in vain to give me by persuasion and discussion
what I lacked--faith. But through Moritz I made acquaintance with the
Triglaf family and the social circle around it, and found in it people
who made me ashamed that, with the scanty light of my understanding, I
had undertaken to investigate things which such superior intellects
accepted as true and holy with childlike trust. I saw that the members
of this circle were, in their outward life, almost perfect models of
what I wished to be. That confidence and peace dwelt in them did not
surprise me, for I had never doubted that these were companions of
belief; but belief cannot be had for the asking, and I thought I must
wait submissively to see whether it would come to me. I soon felt at
home in that circle, and was conscious of a satisfaction that I had
not before experienced--a family life that included me, almost a home.
I was meanwhile brought into contact with certain events in which I
was not an active participant, and which, as other people's secrets, I
cannot communicate to you, but which stirred me deeply. Their
practical result was that the consciousness of the shallowness and
worthlessness of my aim in life became more vivid than ever. Through
the advice of others, and through my own impulse, I was brought to the
point of reading the Scriptures more consecutively and with resolute
restraint, sometimes, of my own judgment. That which stirred within me
came to life when the news of the fatal illness of our late friend in
Cardemin tore the first ardent prayer from my heart, without subtle
questionings as to its reasonableness. God did not grant my prayer on
that occasion; neither did He utterly reject it, for I have never
again lost the capacity to bring my requests to Him, and I feel within
me, if not peace, at least confidence and courage such as I never knew
before.
I do not know what value you will attach to this emotion, which my
heart has felt for only two months; I only hope that it may not be
lost, whatever your decision in regard to me may be--a hope of which I
could give you no better assurance than by undeviating frankness and
loyalty in that which I have now disclosed to you, and to no one else
hitherto, with the conviction that God favors the sincere.
I refrain from any assurance of my feelings and purposes with
reference to your daughter, for the step I am taking speaks of them
louder and more eloquently than words can. So, too, no promises for
the future would be of service to you, since you know the
untrustworthiness of the human heart better than I, and the only
security I offer for the welfare of your daughter lies in my prayer
for God's blessing. As a matter of history I would only observe that,
after I had seen fräulein Johanna repeatedly in Cardemin, after the
trip we made together this summer, I have only been in doubt as to
whether the attainment of my desires would be reconcilable with the
happiness and peace of your daughter, and whether my self-confidence
was not greater than my ability when I believed that she could find in
me what she would have a right to look for in her husband. Very
recently, however, together with my reliance on God's grace, the
resolution which I now carry out has also become fixed in me, and I
kept silent when I saw you in Zimmerhausen only because I had more to
say than I could express in conversation. In view of the importance of
the matter and the great sacrifice which it will involve for you and
your wife in separation from your daughter, I can scarcely hope that
you will give a favorable decision at once, and only beg that you will
not refuse me an opportunity for explanation upon any considerations
which might dispose you to reject my suit, before you utter a positive
refusal.
There is doubtless a great deal that I have not said, or not said
fully enough, in this letter, and I am, of course, ready to give you
exact and faithful information as to everything you may desire to
know; I think I have told what is most important.
I beg you to convey to your wife my respectful compliments, and to
accept kindly the assurance of my love and esteem.
BISMARCK.
Schönhausen, February 1, '47.
I had only waited for daylight to write you, my dear heart, and with
the light came your little green spirit-lamp to make my lukewarm water
seethe--though this time it found it ready to boil over. Your pity for
my restless nights at present is premature, but I shall give you
credit for it. The Elbe still lies turbid and growling in her
ice-bonds: the spring's summons to burst them is not yet loud enough
for her. I say to the weather: "If you would only be cold or warm! But
you stay continually at freezing-point, and at this rate the matter
may long drag on." For the present my activity is limited to sending
out, far and wide, from the warm seat at the writing-table, diverse
conjurations, whose magic starts quantities of fascines, boards,
wheelbarrows, etc., from inland towards the Elbe, perchance to serve
as a prosaic dam in restraint of the poetical foaming of the flood.
After I had spent the morning in this useful rather than agreeable
correspondence, my resolve was to chat away comfortably through the
evening with you, beloved one, as though we were sitting on the sofa
in the red drawing-room; and with sympathetic attention to my desire
the mail kept for my enjoyment precisely at this gossiping hour your
letter, which I should have received by good rights day before
yesterday. You know, if you were able to decipher my inexcusably
scrawled note [3] from Schlawe, how I struck a half-drunken crowd of
hussar officers there, who disturbed me in my writing. In the train
I had, with my usual bad luck, a lady _vis-à-vis,_ and beside me two
very stout, heavily fur-clad passengers, the nearer of whom was a
direct descendant of Abraham into the bargain, and put me in a bitter
humor against all his race by a disagreeable movement of his left
elbow.
I found my brother in his dressing-gown, and he employed the five
minutes of our interview very completely, according to his habit, in
emptying a woolsack full of vexatious news about Kniephof before me:
disorderly inspectors, a lot of damaged sheep, distillers drunk every
day, thoroughbred colts (the prettiest, of course) come to grief, and
rotten potatoes, fell in a rolling torrent from his obligingly opened
mouth upon my somewhat travel-worn self. On my brother's account I
must affect and utter some exclamations of terror and complaint, for
my indifferent manner on receiving news of misfortune vexes him, and
as long as I do not express surprise he has ever new and still worse
news in stock. This time he attained his object, at least in my inner
man, and when I took my seat next to the Jewish elbow in green fur I
was in a right bad humor; especially the colt distressed me--an animal
as pretty as a picture and three years old.
Not before getting out of doors did I become conscious of the
ingratitude of my heart, and the thought of the unmerited happiness
that had become mine a fortnight earlier again won the mastery in me.
In Stettin I found drinking, gambling friends. William Ramin took
occasion to say, _apropos_ of a remark about reading the Bible, "Tut!
In Reinfeld I'd speak like that, too, if I were in your place, but to
believe you can impose on your oldest acquaintances is amusing." I
found my sister very well and full of joy about you and me. She wrote
to you, I think, before she received your letter. Arnim is full of
anxiety lest I become "pious." He kept looking at me all the time
earnestly and thoughtfully, with sympathetic concern, as one looks at
a dear friend whom one would like to save and yet almost gives up for
lost. I have seldom seen him so tender. Very clever people have a
curious manner of viewing the world. In the evening (I hope you did
not write so late) I drank your health in the foaming grape-juice of
Sillery, in company with half a dozen Silesian counts, Schaffgotsch
and others, at the Hôtel de Rome, and convinced myself Friday morning
that the ice on the Elbe was still strong enough to bear my horse's
weight, and that, so far as the freshet was concerned, I might today
be still at your blue or black side[4] if other current official
engagements had not also claimed my presence. Snow has fallen very
industriously all day long, and the country is white once more,
without severe cold. When I arrived it was all free from snow on this
side of Brandenburg; the air was warm and the people were ploughing;
it was as though I had traveled out of winter into opening spring, and
yet within me the short springtime had changed to winter, for the
nearer I came to Schönhausen the more oppressive I found the thought
of entering upon the old loneliness once more, for who knows how long.
Pictures of a wasted past arose in me as though they would banish me
from you. I was on the verge of tears, as when, after a school
vacation, I caught sight of Berlin's towers from the train.