The fact that the Crown Prince Frederic, despondent and unnerved in
the presence of a mortal disease, had voluntarily pledged himself to
renounce his rights of succession, was naturally not published to the
world. Although it is beyond doubt that such a pledge was given, nothing
more definite than a roundabout hint has to this day been printed in
Germany upon the subject. There are no means of ascertaining the exact
number of personages in high position to whom this intelligence was
imparted at the time. As has been said, the Emperor, the Chancellor,
and the young heir were parties to Frederic’s original action. Certain
indications exist that for a time the secret was kept locked in the
breasts of these four men. Then Frederic confessed to his wife what he
had done.
The strangest feature of this whole curious business is that Frederic
should ever have taken this gravely important step, not only without his
wife’s knowledge, but against all her interests. Her influence over
him was of such commanding completeness, and his devotion to her so
dominated his whole career and character, that the thing can only be
explained by laying stress upon his admitted tendency to melancholia and
assuming that his shaken nerves collapsed under the emotional strain of
meeting his father and son with sympathetic tears in their eyes.
With the moment when the wife first learned of this abdication the
active drama begins. She did not for an instant dream of suffering the
arrangement to be carried out--at least until every conceivable form
of resistance had been exhausted. We can fancy this proud, energetic
princess casting about anxiously here, there, everywhere, for means with
which to fight the grimly-powerful combination against her husband’s
future and her own, and can well believe that in the darkest hour of the
struggle which ensued this true daughter of the Fighting Guelphs never
lost heart.
For friends it was hopeless to look anywhere in Germany. She had lived
in Berlin and Potsdam for nearly thirty years, devoting her large
talents and wide sympathies to the encouragement of literature, science,
and the arts, to the inculcation of softening and merciful thoughts
embodied in new hospitals, asylums, and charitable institutions, and
the formation of orders of nurses; most earnestly of all, to the task
of lifting the women of Germany up in the domestic and social scale,
and making of them something higher than mere mothers of families and
household drudges. Nobody thanked her for her pains, least of all
the women she had striven to befriend. Her undoubted want of tact and
reserve in commenting upon the foibles of her adopted countrymen kept
her an alien in the German mind, in spite of everything she did to
foster a kindlier attitude. The feelings of the country at large were
passively hostile to her. The influential classes hated her vehemently.
That she should link together in her mind this widespread and
assiduously-cultivated enmity to her, and this new and alarming
conspiracy to keep her husband from the throne, was most natural. She
leaped to the conclusion that it was all a plot, planned by her ancient
and implacable foe, Bismarck. That her own son was in it made the thing
more acutely painful, but only increased her determination to fight.
Instinctively she turned to her English home for help. Although nearly
two centuries have passed since George I entered upon his English
inheritance, and more than half a century has gone by since the last
signs of British dominion were removed from Hanover, the dynastic family
politics of Windsor and Balmoral remain almost exclusively German. In
all the confused and embittered squabbles which have kept the royal and
princely houses of Germany by the ears since the close of the Napoleonic
wars, the interference of the British Guelph has been steadily pitted
against the influence of the Prussian Hohenzollern. Hardly one of the
changes which, taken altogether, have whittled the reigning families of
Germany from thirty down to a shadowy score since 1820, has been made
without the active meddling of English royalty on one side or the
other--most generally on the losing side. Hence, while it was natural
that the Crown Princess should remember in her time of sore trial that
she was also Princess Royal in England, it was equally to be expected
that Germany should prepare itself to resent this fresh case of British
intermeddling.
The scheme of battle which the Crown Princess, in counsel with her
insular relatives, decided upon was at once ingenious and bold. It could
not, unfortunately, be gainsaid that her husband, Frederic, had formally
pledged himself to relinquish the crown _if_ he proved to be afflicted
with a mortal disease. Very well; the war must be waged upon that “if”.
A good many momentous letters had crossed the North Sea, heavily sealed
and borne by trusted messengers, before the system of defence was
disclosed by the first overt movement. On the 20th of May, 1887,
Dr. Morell Mackenzie, the best known of London specialists in throat
diseases, arrived in Berlin, and was immediately introduced to a
conference of German physicians, heretofore in charge of the case, as
a colleague who was to take henceforth the leading part. They told him
that to the best of their belief they had to deal with a cancer, but
were awaiting his diagnosis. On the following day, and a fortnight
later, he performed operations upon the illustrious patient’s throat to
serve as the basis for a microscopical examination. With his forceps he
drew out bits of flesh, which were sent to Prof. Virchow for scientific
scrutiny. Upon examining these Prof. Virchow reported he discovered
nothing to “excite the suspicion of wider and graver disease,” * thus
giving the most powerful support imaginable to Dr. Mackenzie’s diagnosis
of “a benign growth.”
* Mackenzie’s “Frederic the Noble,” p. 34.
The German physicians allege that Dr. Mackenzie drew out pieces of the
comparatively healthful right vocal cord. The London specialist denies
this. Nothing could be further from the purpose of this work than to
take sides upon any phase of the unhappy and undignified controversy
which ensued. It is enough here to note the charge, as indicating the
view which Prof. Gerhardt and his German colleagues took from the first
of Mackenzie’s mission in Berlin.
This double declaration against the theory of cancer having been
obtained, the next step was to secure the removal of Frederic. The
celebration of the Queen’s jubilee afforded a most valuable occasion. He
came to England on June 14th--and he never again stepped foot in Berlin
until he returned as Kaiser the following year. Nearly three months were
spent at Norwood, and in Scotland and the Isle of Wight. A brief stop
in the Austrian Tyrol followed, and then the Crown Prince settled in his
winter home at San Remo. On the day of his arrival there Mackenzie was
telegraphed for, as very dangerous symptoms had presented themselves.
He reached San Remo on November 5, 1887, and discovered so grave a
situation that Prince William was immediately summoned from Berlin.
That the young Prince had been placed in a most trying position by
the quarrel which now raged about his father’s sick-room, need not be
pointed out. The physicians who stood highest in Berlin, and who were
backed by the liking and confidence of William’s friends, were deeply
indignant at having been superseded by two Englishmen like Mackenzie and
Hovell. This national prejudice became easily confounded with partisan
antagonisms. The Germans are not celebrated for calm, or for skill in
conducting controversies with delicacy, and in this instance the worst
side of everybody concerned was exhibited.
One recalls now with astonishment the boundless rancour and recklessness
of accusation which characterized that bitter wrangle. Many good people
of one party seriously believed that the German physicians wanted to
gain access to Frederic in order to kill him. On the other hand, a
great number insisted that Mackenzie was deceiving the public, and had
subjected Frederic to the most terrible maimings and tortures in order
to conceal from Germany the fact of the cancer. The basest motives were
ascribed by either side to the other. The Court circle asked what they
were doing, then, to the Crown Prince that they hid him away in Italy;
the answering insinuation was that very good reasons existed for not
allowing him to fall into the hands of the Berlin doctors, who were so
openly devoted to his heir.
In a state of public mind where hints of assassination grow familiar to
the ear, the mere charge of a lack of filial affection sounds very tame
indeed.
That William deserved during this painful period the reproaches heaped
upon him by the whole English-speaking world is by no means clear. Such
fault as may be with fairness imputed to him, seems to have grown quite
naturally out of the circumstances. He was on the side of the German
physicians as against Mackenzie; but after all that has happened that
can scarcely be regarded as a crime. He could not but range himself with
those who resented the tone Dr. Mackenzie and his friends assumed toward
what they called “the Court circles of Berlin.”
When he reached San Remo in November, it was to note the death
mark clearly stamped on his father’s face; yet he heard the English
_entourage_ still talking about the possibility of the disease not being
cancer. The German doctors had grievous stories to tell him about how
they had been crowded out and put under the heel of the foreigner.
Whether he would or not, he was made a party to the whole wretched
wrangle which henceforth vexed the atmosphere of the Villa Zirio.
The outside world was subjecting this villa and its inhabitants to the
most tirelessly inquisitive scrutiny. Newspaper correspondents engirdled
San Remo with a cordon of espionage, through which filtered the gossip
of servants and the stray babbling of tradespeople. Dr. Mackenzie--now
become Sir Morell--confided his views of the case to journalists who
desired them. The German physicians furtively promulgated stories of
quite a different hue, through the medium of the German press. Thus it
came about that, while Germany as a whole disliked deeply the manner in
which Frederic’s case was managed, the English-speaking peoples espoused
the opposite view and condemned as cruel and unnatural the position
occupied by the Germans, with young William at their head.
As the winter of 1887-8 went forward, it became apparent that the
Kaiser’s prolonged life had run its span. The question which would
die first, old William or middle-aged Frederic, hung in a fluttering
balance. Germany watched the uncertain development of this dual tragedy
with bated breath, and all Christendom bent its attention upon Germany
and her two dying Hohenzollerns.
March came, with its black skies and drifting snow wreaths and bitter
winds blown a thousand miles across the Sclavonic sand plains, and laid
the aged Kaiser upon his deathbed. Prince William, having alternated
through the winter between Berlin and San Remo, was at the last in
attendance upon his grandfather. The dying old man spoke to him as if
he were the immediate heir. Upon him all the injunctions of state and
family policy which the departing monarch wished to utter were directly
laid. The story of those conferences will doubtless never be revealed
in its entirety. But it is known that, if any notion had up to that
time existed of keeping Frederic from the throne, it was now abandoned.
William was counselled to loving patience and submission during the
little reign which his father at best could have. Bismarck was pledged
to remain in office upon any and all terms short of peremptory dismissal
through this same brief period.
It was to William, too, that that last exhortation to be “considerate”
with Russia was muttered by the dying man--that strange domestic legacy
of the Hohenzollerns which hints at the murder of Charles XII, recalls
the partition of Poland, the despair of Jena, and the triumph of
Waterloo, and has yet in store we know not what still stranger things.
William I died on March 9, 1888. On the morning of the following day
Frederic and his wife and daughters left San Remo in a special train
and arrived at Berlin on the night of the 11th, having made the swiftest
long journey known in the records of continental railways. The new
Kaiser’s proclamation--“To my People”--bears the date of March 12th, but
it was really not issued until the next day.
During that period of delay, the Schloss at Charlottenburg, which had
been hastily fitted up for the reception of the invalid, was the
scene of protracted conferences between Frederic, his son William, and
Bismarck. Hints are not lacking that these interviews had their stormy
and unpleasant side, for Frederic had up to this time fairly maintained
his general health, and could to a limited extent make use of his voice.
But all that is visible to us of this is the fact that some sort of
understanding was arrived at, by which Bismarck could remain in office
and accept responsibility for the acts of the reign.
The story of those melancholy ninety-nine days need not detain us long.
Young William himself, though standing now in the strong light of public
scrutiny, on the steps of the throne, remained silent, and for the most
part motionless. The world gossiped busily about his heartless conduct
toward his mother, his callous behaviour in the presence of his father’s
terrible affliction, his sympathy with those who most fiercely abused
the good Sir Morell Mackenzie. As there had been tales of his unfilial
actions at San Remo, so now there were stories of his shameless haste
to snatch the reins of power from his father’s hands. So late as August,
1889, an anonymous writer alleged in “The New Review” that “the watchers
by the sick bed in Charlottenburg were always in dread when ‘Willie’
visited his father lest he might brusquely demand the establishment of a
Regency.”
Next to no proof of these assertions can be discovered in Berlin. If
there was talk of a Regency--as well there might be among those who knew
of the existence of Frederic’s offer to abdicate--it did not in any way
come before the public. I know of no one qualified to speak who says
that it ever came before even Frederic.
That a feeling of bitterness existed between William and his parents
is not to be denied. All the events of the past year had contributed to
intensify this feeling and to put them wider and wider apart. Even if
the young man had been able to divest himself of the last emotion of
self-sensitiveness, there would still have remained the dislike for
the whole England-Mackenzie-San Remo episode which rankled in every
conservative German mind. But neither the blood nor the training of
princes helps them to put thoughts of self aside--and in William’s case
a long chain of circumstances bound him to a position which, though
we may find it extremely unpleasant to the eye, seemed to him a simple
matter of duty and of justice to himself and to Prussia.
The world gladly preserves and cherishes an idealized picture of the
knightly Kaiser Frederic, facing certain death with intrepid calm, and
labouring devotedly to turn what fleeting days might be left him to
the advantage of liberalism in Germany. It is a beautiful and elevating
picture, and we are all of us the richer for its possession.
But, in truth, Frederic practically accomplished but one reform during
his reign, and that came in the very last week of his life and was
bought at a heavy price. To the end he gave a surprisingly regular
attention to the tasks of a ruler. Both at Charlottenburg and, later,
at Potsdam, he forced himself, dying though he was, to daily devote two
hours or more to audiences with ministers and officials, and an even
greater space of time in his library to signing State papers and writing
up his diary. But this labour was almost wholly upon routine matters.
Two incidents of the brief reign are remembered--the frustrated
attempt to marry one of the Prussian Princesses to a Battenberg and
the successful expulsion of Puttkamer from the Prussian Ministry of the
Interior.
The Battenberg episode attracted much the greater share of public
attention at the time, not only from the element of romance inherent in
the subject, but because it seemed to be an obvious continuation of
the Anglo-German feud which had been flashing its lightnings about
Frederic’s devoted head for a twelvemonth. Of the four Battenberg
Princes--cousins of the Grand Duke of Hesse by a morganatic marriage,
and hence, according to Prussian notions, not “born” at all--one had
married a daughter, another a granddaughter of the Queen of England.
This seemed to the German aristocracy a most remarkable thing, and
excited a good deal of class feeling, but was not important so long as
these upstart _protégés_ of English eccentricity kept out of reach of
German snubs.
A third Battenberg, Alexander, had made for himself a considerable name
as Prince of Bulgaria: in fact, had done so well that the Germans
felt like liking him in spite of his brothers. The way in which he had
completely thrashed the Servians, moreover, reflected credit upon the
training he had had in the German Army. In his sensational quarrel with
the Czar, too, German opinion leaned to his side, and altogether there
was a kindly feeling toward him. Perhaps if there had been no antecedent
quarrel about English interference, even his matrimonial adoption into
the Hohenzollern family might have been tolerated with good grace.
As it was, the announcement at the end of March that he was to be
betrothed to the Princess Victoria, the second daughter of Frederic,
provoked on the instant a furious uproar. The Junker class all over
Germany protested indignantly. The “reptile” press promptly raised the
cry that this was more of the alien work of the English Empress, who had
been prompted by her English mother to put this fresh affront upon all
true Germans. Prince Bismarck himself hastened to Berlin and sternly
insisted upon the abandonment of the obnoxious idea. There was a fierce
struggle before a result was reached, with hot feminine words and tears
of rage on one side, with square-jawed, gruff-voiced obstinacy and much
plain talk on the other. At last Bismarck overbore opposition and had
his way. Prince William manifested almost effusive gratitude to
the Chancellor for having dispelled this nightmare of a Battenberg
brother-in-law.
The solicitude about this project seems to have been largely maternal.
Sir Morell Mackenzie says of the popular excitement over the subject:
“I cannot say that it produced much effect on the Emperor.” As for the
Princess Victoria, she has now for some time been the wife of Prince
Adolph of Schaumburg-Lippe.
Although it did not attract a tithe of the attention given the
Battenberg marriage sensation, the dismissal of Puttkamer was really
an important act, the effects of which were lasting in Germany. This
official had been Minister of the Interior since 1881--a thoroughgoing
Bismarckian administrator, whose use of the great machinery of his
office to coerce voters, intimidate opposition, and generally grease
the wheels of despotic government, had become the terror and despair of
Prussian Liberalism; To have thrown him out of office it was worth while
to reign only ninety-nine days.
Ostensibly his retirement was a condition imposed by Frederic before he
would sign the Reichstag’s bill lengthening the Parliamentary term to
five years. The Radicals had hoped he would veto it, and the overthrow
of Puttkamer was offered as a solace to these wounded hopes. But in
reality Puttkamer had been doomed from the outset of the new reign. He
was conspicuous among those who spoke with contempt of Frederic, and in
his ministerial announcement of the old Kaiser’s death to the public,
insolently neglected to say a word about his successor. Questioned about
this later, he had the impertinence to say that he could not find out
what title the new Kaiser would choose to assume.
Puttkamer’s resignation was gazetted on June 11th, and that very evening
Prince Bismarck gave a great dinner, at which the fallen Minister was
the guest of honour. In one sense the insult was wasted, for out at
Potsdam the invalid at whom it was levelled could no longer eat, and was
obviously close to death. Indirectly, however, the affront made a mark
upon the world’s memory. We shall hear of Puttkamer again.
On the 1st day of June Frederic had been conveyed by boat to Potsdam,
where he wished to spend his remaining weeks in the most familiar of
his former homes, the New Palace, the name of which he changed to
Friedrichskron. He was already a dying man. Two clever observers, who
were on the little pier at Gleinicke, described to me the appearance of
the Emperor when he was carried up out of the cabin to land. Said one:
“He was crouched down, wretched, scared, and pallid, like a man going
to execution.” The other added: “Say rather like an enfeebled maniac in
charge of his keepers.”
Yet, broken and crushed as he was, he was Kaiser to the last. The
announcement of Putt-kamer’s downfall came on June 11th. Frederic died
on June 15th.
It was in the late forenoon of that rainy, gray summer day that the
black and white royal standard above the palace fell--signifying that
the eighth King of Prussia was no more. A moment later orderlies were
running hither and thither outside; the troops within the palace park
hastily threw themselves into line, and detachments were at once marched
to each of the gates to draw a cordon between Friedrichskron and all the
world besides.
In an inner room in the great palace the elder son of the dead Kaiser,
all at once become William II, German Emperor, King in Prussia, eighteen
times a Duke, twice a Grand Duke, ten times a Count, fifteen times a
Seigneur, and three times a Margrave--this young man, with fifty-four
titles thus suddenly plumped down upon him, * seated himself to write
proclamations to his Army and his Navy.
* With the possible exception of the Emperor of Austria,
William is the most betitled man in Europe. Beside being
German Emperor and King of Prussia, he is Margrave of
Brandenburg, and the two Lausitzes; Grand Duke of Lower
Rhineland and Posen; Duke of Silesia, Glatz, Saxony,
Westphalia, Engern, Pomerania, Luneburg, Holstein-Schleswig,
Magdeburg, Bremen, Geldern, Cleve, Juliers and Berg,
Crossen, Lauenburg, Mecklenburg, of the Wends and of the
Cassubes; Landgrave of Hesse and Thuringia; Prince of
Orange; Count-Prince of Henneburg; Count of the Mark, of
Ravensberg, of Hohenstein, of Lingen and Tecklenburg, of
Mansfeld, Sigmaringen, Veringen, and of Hohenzollern;
Burgrave of Nuremberg; Seigneur of Frankfurt, Rügen, East
Friesland, Paderborn, Pyrmont, Halber-stadt, Münster,
Minden, Osnabrück, Hildesheim, Verden, Kammin, Fulda, Nassau
and Moers.