EARLY LIFE.
1821-1847.
Of the boy's early life we know little. His mother was ambitious for her
sons; Otto from his early years she designed for the Diplomatic Service;
she seems to have been one of those women who was willing to sacrifice
the present happiness of her children for their future advancement. When
only six years old the boy was sent away from home to a school in
Berlin. He was not happy there; he pined for the free life of the
country, the fields and woods and animals; when he saw a plough he would
burst into tears, for it reminded him of his home. The discipline of the
school was hard, not with the healthy and natural hardships of life in
the open air, but with an artificial Spartanism, for it was the time
when the Germans, who had suddenly awoke to feelings of patriotism and a
love of war to which they had long been strangers, under the influence
of a few writers, were throwing all their energies into the cultivation
of physical endurance. It was probably at this time that there was laid
the foundation of that dislike for the city of Berlin which Bismarck
never quite overcame; and from his earliest years he was prejudiced
against the exaggerated and affected Teutonism which was the fashion
after the great war. A few years later his parents came to live
altogether in the town; then the boy passed on to the Gymnasium,
boarding in the house of one of the masters. The teaching in this school
was supplemented by private tutors, and he learned at this time the
facility in the use of the English and French languages which in after
years was to be of great service to him. The education at school was of
course chiefly in the classical languages; he acquired a sufficient
mastery of Latin. There is no evidence that in later life he continued
the study of classical literature. In his seventeenth year he passed the
Abiturienten examination, which admitted him as a student to the
university and entitled him to the privilege of serving in the army for
one instead of three years. His leaving certificate tells us that his
conduct and demeanour towards his comrades and teachers were admirable,
his abilities considerable, and his diligence fair.
The next year he passed in the ordinary course to the university,
entering at Göttingen; the choice was probably made because of the
celebrity which that university had acquired in law and history. It is
said that he desired to enter at Heidelberg, but his mother refused her
permission, because she feared that he would learn those habits of
beer-drinking in which the students of that ancient seat of learning
have gained so great a proficiency; it was, however, an art which, as
he found, was to be acquired with equal ease at Göttingen. The young
Bismarck was at this time over six feet high, slim and well built, of
great physical strength and agility, a good fencer, a bold rider, an
admirable swimmer and runner, a very agreeable companion; frank,
cheerful, and open-hearted, without fear either of his comrades or of
his teachers. He devoted his time at Göttingen less to learning than to
social life; in his second term he entered the Corps of the Hanoverians
and was quickly noted for his power of drinking and fighting; he is
reported to have fought twenty-six duels and was only wounded once, and
that wound was caused by the breaking of his opponent's foil. He was
full of wild escapades, for which he was often subjected to the ordinary
punishments of the university.
To many Germans, their years at the university have been the
turning-point of their life; but it was not so with Bismarck. To those
who have been brought up in the narrow surroundings of civic life,
student days form the single breath of freedom between the discipline of
a school and the drudgery of an office. To a man who, like Bismarck, was
accustomed to the truer freedom of the country, it was only a passing
phase; as we shall see, it was not easy to tie him down to the drudgery
of an office. He did not even form many friendships which he continued
in later years; his associates in his corps must have been chiefly young
Hanoverians; few of his comrades in Prussia were to be found at
Göttingen; his knowledge of English enabled him to make the
acquaintance of the Americans and English with whom Göttingen has always
been a favourite university; among his fellow-students almost the only
one with whom in after life he continued the intimacy of younger days
was Motley. We hear little of his work; none of the professors seem to
have left any marked influence on his mind or character; indeed they had
little opportunity for doing so, for after the first term his attendance
at lectures almost entirely ceased. Though never a student, he must have
been at all times a considerable reader; he had a retentive memory and
quick understanding; he read what interested him; absorbed, understood,
and retained it. He left the university with his mind disciplined indeed
but not drilled; he had a considerable knowledge of languages, law,
literature, and history; he had not subjected his mind to the dominion
of the dominant Hegelian philosophy, and to this we must attribute that
freshness and energy which distinguishes him from so many of his ablest
contemporaries; his brain was strong, and it worked as easily and as
naturally as his body; his knowledge was more that of a man of the world
than of a student, but in later life he was always able to understand
the methods and to acquire the knowledge of the subjects he required in
his official career. History was his favourite study; he never
attempted, like some statesmen, to write; but if his knowledge of
history was not as profound as that of a professed historian, he was
afterwards to shew as a parliamentary debater that he had a truer
perception of the importance of events than many great scholars who
have devoted their lives to historical research, and he was never at a
loss for an illustration to explain and justify the policy he had
assumed. For natural science he shewed little interest, and indeed at
that time it scarcely could be reckoned among the ordinary subjects of
education; philosophy he pursued rather as a man than as a student, and
we are not surprised to find that it was Spinoza rather than Kant or
Fichte or Hegel to whom he devoted most attention, for he cared more for
principles of belief and the conduct of life than the analysis of the
intellect.
His university career does not seem to have left any mark on his
political principles; during just those years, the agitation of which
the universities had long been the scene had been forcibly repressed; it
was the time of deep depression which followed the revolution of 1830,
and the members of the aristocratic corps to which he belonged looked
with something approaching contempt on this _Burschenschaft_, as the
union was called, which propagated among the students the national
enthusiasm.
After spending little more than a year at Göttingen, he left in
September, 1833; in May of the following year he entered as a student at
Berlin, where he completed his university course; we have no record as
to the manner in which he spent the winter and early spring, but we find
that when he applied to Göttingen for permission to enter at Berlin, it
was accorded on condition that he sat out a term of imprisonment which
he still owed to the university authorities. During part of his time in
Berlin he shared a room with Motley. In order to prepare for the final
examination he engaged the services of a crammer, and with his
assistance, in 1835, took the degree of Doctor of Law and at once passed
on to the public service.
He had, as we have seen, been destined for the Diplomatic Service from
early life; he was well connected; his cousin Count Bismarck-Bohlen
stood in high favour at Court. He was related to or acquainted with all
the families who held the chief posts both in the military and civil
service; with his great talents and social gifts he might therefore look
forward to a brilliant career. Any hopes, however, that his mother might
have had were destined to be disappointed; his early official life was
varied but short. He began in the judicial department and was appointed
to the office of Auscultator at Berlin, for in the German system the
judicature is one department of the Civil Service. After a year he was
at his own request transferred to the administrative side and to
Aix-la-Chapelle; it is said that he had been extremely pained and
shocked by the manner in which the officials transacted the duties of
their office and especially by their management of the divorce matters
which came before the court. The choice of Aix-la-Chapelle was probably
owing to the fact that the president of that province was Count Arnim of
Boytzenburg, the head of one of the most numerous and distinguished
families of the Mark, with so many members of which Bismarck was in
later years to be connected both for good and evil. Count Arnim was a
man of considerable ability and moderate liberal opinions, who a few
years later rose to be the first Minister-President in Prussia. Under
him Bismarck was sure to receive every assistance. He had to pass a
fresh examination, which he did with great success. His certificate
states that he shewed thoroughly good school studies, and was well
grounded in law; he had thought over what he had learnt and already had
acquired independent opinions. He had admirable judgment, quickness in
understanding, and a readiness in giving verbal answers to the questions
laid before him; we see all the qualities by which he was to be
distinguished in after life. He entered on his duties at Aix-la-Chapelle
at the beginning of June; at his own request Count Arnim wrote to the
heads of the department that as young Bismarck was destined for a
diplomatic career they were to afford him every opportunity of becoming
acquainted with all the different sides of the administrative work and
give him more work than they otherwise would have done; he was to be
constantly occupied. His good resolutions did not, however, continue
long; he found himself in a fashionable watering-place, his knowledge of
languages enabled him to associate with the French and English visitors,
he made excursions to Belgium and the Rhine, and hunting expeditions to
the Ardennes, and gave up to society the time he ought to have spent in
the office. The life at Aix was not strict and perhaps his amusements
were not always edifying, but he acquired that complete ease in
cosmopolitan society which he could not learn at Göttingen or Berlin,
and his experiences during this year were not without use to him when
he was afterwards placed in the somewhat similar society of Frankfort.
This period in his career did not last long; in June, 1837, we find him
applying for leave of absence on account of ill-health. He received
leave for eight days, but he seems to have exceeded this, for four
months afterwards he writes from Berne asking that his leave may be
prolonged; he had apparently gone off for a long tour in Switzerland and
the Rhine. His request was refused; he received a severe reprimand, and
Count Arnim approved his resolution to return to one of the older
Prussian provinces, "where he might shew an activity in the duties of
his office which he had in vain attempted to attain in the social
conditions of Aachen."
He was transferred to Potsdam, but he remained here only a few weeks; he
had not as yet served in the army, and he now began the year as a
private soldier which was required from him; he entered the Jaeger or
Rifles in the _Garde Corps_ which was stationed at Potsdam, but after a
few weeks was transferred to the Jaeger at Stettin. The cause seems to
have been partly the ill-health of his mother; she was dying, and he
wished to be near her; in those days the journey from Berlin to
Pomerania took more than a day; besides this there were pecuniary
reasons. His father's administration of the family estates had not been
successful; it is said that his mother had constantly pressed her
husband to introduce innovations, but had not consistently carried them
out; this was a not unnatural characteristic in the clever and ambitious
woman who wished to introduce into agricultural affairs those habits
which she had learnt from the bureaucrats in Berlin. However this may
be, matters had now reached a crisis; it became necessary to sell the
larger part of the land attached to the house at Schoenhausen, and in
the next year, after the death of Frau von Bismarck, which took place on
January 1, 1839, it was decided that Herr von Bismarck should in future
live at Schoenhausen with his only daughter, now a girl of twelve years
of age, while the two brothers should undertake the management of the
Pomeranian estates.
So it came about that at the age of twenty-four all prospect of an
official career had for the time to be abandoned, and Otto settled down
with his brother to the life of a country squire. It is curious to
notice that the greatest of his contemporaries, Cavour, went through a
similar training. There was, however, a great difference between the two
men: Cavour was in this as in all else a pioneer; when he retired to his
estate he was opening out new forms of activity and enterprise for his
countrymen; Bismarck after the few wild years away from home was to go
back to the life which all his ancestors had lived for five hundred
years, to become steeped in the traditions of his country and his caste.
Cavour always points the way to what is new, Bismarck again brings into
honour what men had hastily thought was antiquated. He had to some
extent prepared himself for the work by attending lectures at a newly
founded agricultural college in the outskirts of Greifswald. The
management of the estate seems to have been successful; the two brothers
started on their work with no capital and no experience, but after
three or four years by constant attention and hard work they had put the
affairs in a satisfactory state. In 1841, a division was made; Otto had
wished this to be done before, as he found that he spent a good deal
more money than his brother and was gaining an unfair advantage in the
common household; from this time he took over Kniephof, and there he
lived for the next four years, while his brother took up his abode four
miles off at Kulz, where he lived till his death in 1895. Otto had not
indeed given up the habits he had learnt at Göttingen; his wild freaks,
his noisy entertainments, were the talk of the countryside; the beverage
which he has made classical, a mixture of beer and champagne, was the
common drink, and he was known far and wide as the mad Bismarck. These
acts of wildness were, however, only a small part of his life; he
entered as a lieutenant of Landwehr in the cavalry and thereby became
acquainted with another form of military service. It was while he was at
the annual training that he had an opportunity of shewing his physical
strength and courage. A groom, who was watering horses in the river, was
swept away by the current; Bismarck, who was standing on a bridge
watching them, at once leaped into the river, in full uniform as he was,
and with great danger to himself saved the drowning man. For this he
received a medal for saving life. He astonished his friends by the
amount and variety of his reading; it was at this time that he studied
Spinoza. It is said that he had among his friends the reputation of
being a liberal; it is probable enough that he said and did many things
which they did not understand; and anything they did not understand
would be attributed to liberalism by the country gentlemen of Pomerania;
partly no doubt it was due to the fact that in 1843 he came back from
Paris wearing a beard. We can see, however, that he was restless and
discontented; he felt in himself the possession of powers which were not
being used; there was in his nature also a morbid restlessness, a
dissatisfaction with himself which he tried to still but only increased
by his wild excesses. As his affairs became more settled he travelled;
one year he went to London, another to Paris; of his visit to England we
have an interesting account in a letter to his father. He landed in
Hull[2], thence he went to Scarborough and York, where he was hospitably
received by the officers of the Hussars; "although I did not know any of
them, they asked me to dinner and shewed me everything"; from York he
went to Manchester, where he saw some of the factories.
"Generally speaking I cannot praise too highly the extraordinary
courtesy and kindness of English people, which far surpass what I
had expected; even the poor people are pleasant, very unassuming,
and easy to get on with when one talks to them. Those who come
much into intercourse with strangers--cab-drivers, porters,
etc.--naturally have a tendency to extortion, but soon give in
when they see that one understands the language and customs and
is determined not to be put upon. Generally I find the life much
cheaper than I expected."
In 1844, his sister, to whom he was passionately devoted, was married to
an old friend, Oscar von Arnim. Never did an elder brother write to his
young sister more delightful letters than those which she received from
him; from them we get a pleasant picture of his life at this time.
Directly after the wedding, when he was staying with his father at
Schoenhausen, he writes:
"Just now I am living here with my father, reading, smoking, and
walking; I help him to eat lamperns and sometimes play a comedy
with him which it pleases him to call fox-hunting. We start out
in heavy rain, or perhaps with 10 degrees of frost, with Ihle,
Ellin, and Karl; then in perfect silence we surround a clump of
firs with the most sportsmanlike precautions, carefully observing
the wind, although we all, and probably father as well, are
absolutely convinced that there is not a living creature in it
except one or two old women gathering firewood. Then Ihle, Karl,
and the two dogs make their way through the cover, emitting the
most strange and horrible sounds, especially Ihle; father stands
there motionless and on the alert with his gun cocked, just as
though he really expected to see something. Ihle comes out just
in front of him, shouting 'Hoo lala, hey heay, hold him, hie,
hie,' in the strangest and most astonishing manner. Then father
asks me if I have seen nothing, and I with the most natural tone
of astonishment that I can command, answer 'No, nothing at all.'
Then after abusing the weather we start off to another wood,
while Ihle with a confidence that he assumes in the most natural
manner praises its wealth in game, and there we play over the
game again _dal segno_. So it goes on for three or four hours;
father's, Ihle's, and Fingal's passion does not seem to cool for
a moment. Besides that, we look at the orange house twice a day
and the sheep once a day, observe the four thermometers in the
room once every hour, set the weather-glass, and, since the
weather has been fine, have set all the clocks by the sun and
adjusted them so closely that the clock in the dining-room is the
only one which ever gives a sound after the others have struck.
Charles V. was a stupid fellow. You will understand that with so
multifarious an occupation I have little time left to call on the
clergymen; as they have no vote for the election it was quite
impossible.
"The Elbe is full of ice, the wind E.S.E., the latest thermometer
from Berlin shews 8 degrees, the barometer is rising and at 8.28.
I tell you this as an example how in your letters you might write
to father more the small events of your life; they amuse him
immensely; tell him who has been to see you, whom you have been
calling on, what you had for dinner, how the horses are, how the
servants behave, if the doors creak and the windows are firm--in
short, facts and events. Besides this, he does not like to be
called papa, he dislikes the expression. _Avis au lecteur_."
On another occasion he says:
"Only with difficulty can I resist the temptation of filling a
whole letter with agricultural lamentations over frosts, sick
cattle, bad reap, bad roads, dead lambs, hungry sheep, want of
straw, fodder, money, potatoes, and manure; outside Johann is
persistently whistling a wretched schottische out of tune, and I
have not the cruelty to interrupt it, for he seeks to still by
music his violent love-sickness."
Then we have long letters from Nordeney, where he delighted in the sea,
but space will not allow us to quote more. It is only in these letters,
and in those which he wrote in later years to his wife, that we see the
natural kindliness and simplicity of his disposition, his love of
nature, and his great power of description. There have been few better
letter-writers in Germany or any other country.
His ability and success as an agriculturist made a deep impression on
his neighbours. As years went on he became much occupied in local
business; he was appointed as the representative of his brother, who was
Landrath for the district; in 1845 he was elected one of the members for
the Provincial Diet of Pomerania. He also had a seat in the Diet for the
Saxon province in which Schoenhausen was situated. These local Diets
were the only form of representative government which existed in the
rural districts; they had little power, but their opinion was asked on
new projects of law, and they were officially regarded as an efficient
substitute for a common Prussian Parliament. Many of his friends,
including his brother, urged him again to enter the public service, for
which they considered he was especially adapted; he might have had the
post of Royal Commissioner for Improvements in East Prussia.
He did make one attempt to resume his official career. At the beginning
of 1844 he returned to Potsdam and took up his duties as Referendar,
but not for long; he seems to have quarrelled with his superior. The
story is that he called one day to ask for leave of absence; his chief
kept him waiting an hour in the anteroom, and when he was admitted asked
him curtly, "What do you want?" Bismarck at once answered, "I came to
ask for leave of absence, but now I wish for permission to send in my
resignation." He was clearly deficient in that subservience and ready
obedience to authority which was the best passport to promotion in the
Civil Service; there was in his disposition already a certain truculence
and impatience. From this time he nourished a bitter hatred of the
Prussian bureaucracy.
This did not, however, prevent him carrying out his public duties as a
landed proprietor. In 1846 we find him taking much interest in proposals
for improving the management of the manorial courts; he wished to see
them altered so as to give something of the advantages of the English
system; he regrets the "want of corporate spirit and public feeling in
our corn-growing aristocracy"; "it is unfortunately difficult among most
of the gentlemen to awake any other idea under the words 'patrimonial
power' but the calculation whether the fee will cover the expenses." We
can easily understand that the man who wrote this would be called a
liberal by many of his neighbours; what he wanted, however, was a reform
which would give life, permanency, and independence to an institution
which like everything else was gradually falling before the inroads of
the dominant bureaucracy. The same year he was appointed to the
position of Inspector of Dykes for Jerichow. The duties of this office
were of considerable importance for Schoenhausen and the neighbouring
estate; as he writes, "it depends on the managers of this office
whether from time to time we come under water or not." He often refers
to the great damages caused by the floods; he had lost many of his
fruit-trees, and many of the finest elms in the park had been destroyed
by the overflowing of the Elbe.
As Bismarck grew in age and experience he associated more with the
neighbouring families. Pomerania was at this time the centre of a
curious religious movement; the leader was Herr von Thadden, who lived
at Triglaff, not many miles from Kniephof. He was associated with Herr
von Semft and three brothers of the family of Below. They were all
profoundly dissatisfied with the rationalistic religion preached by the
clergy at that time, and aimed at greater inwardness and depth of
religious feeling. Herr von Thadden started religious exercises in his
own house, which were attended not only by the peasants from the village
but by many of the country gentry; they desired the strictest
enforcement of Lutheran doctrine, and wished the State directly to
support the Church. This tendency of thought acquired greater importance
when, in 1840, Frederick William IV succeeded to the throne; he was also
a man of deep religious feeling, and under his reign the extreme
Lutheran party became influential at Court. Among the ablest of these
were the three brothers von Gerlach. One of them, Otto, was a
theologian; another, Ludwig, was Over-President of the Saxon province,
and with him Bismarck had much official correspondence; the third,
Leopold, who had adopted a military career, was attached to the person
of the King and was in later years to have more influence upon him than
anyone except perhaps Bunsen. The real intellectual leader of the party
was Stahl, a theologian.
From about the year 1844 Bismarck seems to have become very intimate
with this religious coterie; his friend Moritz v. Blankenburg had
married Thadden's daughter and Bismarck was constantly a visitor at
Triglaff. It was at Blankenburg's wedding that he first met Hans v.
Kleist, who was in later years to be one of his most intimate friends.
He was, we are told, the most delightful and cheerful of companions; in
his tact and refinement he shewed an agreeable contrast to the ordinary
manners of Pomerania. He often rode over to take part in Shakespeare
evenings, and amused them by accounts of his visit to England[3]. He was
present occasionally at the religious meetings at Triglaff, and though
he never quite adopted all the customs of the set the influence on him
of these older men was for the next ten years to govern all his
political action. That he was not altogether at one with them we can
understand, when we are told that at Herr von Thadden's house it would
never have occurred to anyone even to think of smoking. Bismarck was
then, as in later life, a constant smoker.
The men who met in these family parties in distant Pomerania were in a
few years to change the whole of European history. Here Bismarck for the
first time saw Albrecht von Roon, a cousin of the Blankenburgs, then a
rising young officer in the artillery; they often went out shooting
together. The Belows, Blankenburgs, and Kleists were to be the founders
and leaders of the Prussian Conservative party, which was Bismarck's
only support in his great struggle with the Parliament; and here, too,
came the men who were afterwards to be editors and writers of the _Kreuz
Zeitung_.
The religious convictions which Bismarck learnt from them were to be
lasting, and they profoundly influenced his character. He had probably
received little religious training from his mother, who belonged to the
rationalistic school of thought. It was by them that his monarchical
feeling was strengthened. It is not at first apparent what necessary
connection there is between monarchical government and Christian faith.
For Bismarck they were ever inseparably bound together; nothing but
religious belief would have reconciled him to a form of government so
repugnant to natural human reason. "If I were not a Christian, I would
be a Republican," he said many years later; in Christianity he found the
only support against revolution and socialism. He was not the man to be
beguiled by romantic sentiment; he was not a courtier to be blinded by
the pomp and ceremony of royalty; he was too stubborn and independent to
acquiesce in the arbitrary rule of a single man. He could only obey the
king if the king himself held his authority as the representative of a
higher power. Bismarck was accustomed to follow out his thought to its
conclusions. To whom did the king owe his power? There was only one
alternative: to the people or to God. If to the people, then it was a
mere question of convenience whether the monarchy were continued in
form; there was little to choose between a constitutional monarchy where
the king was appointed by the people and controlled by Parliament, and
an avowed republic. This was the principle held by nearly all his
contemporaries. He deliberately rejected it. He did not hold that the
voice of the people was the voice of God. This belief did not satisfy
his moral sense; it seemed in public life to leave all to interest and
ambition and nothing to duty. It did not satisfy his critical intellect;
the word "people" was to him a vague idea. The service of the People or
of the King by the Grace of God, this was the struggle which was soon to
be fought out.
Bismarck's connection with his neighbours was cemented by his marriage.
At the beginning of 1847, he was engaged to a Fräulein von Puttkammer,
whom he had first met at the Blankenburgs' house; she belonged to a
quiet and religious family, and it is said that her mother was at first
filled with dismay when she heard that Johanna proposed to marry the mad
Bismarck. He announced the engagement to his sister in a letter
containing the two words, "All right," written in English. Before the
wedding could take place, a new impulse in his life was to begin. As
representative of the lower nobility he had to attend the meeting of the
Estates General which had been summoned in Berlin. From this time the
story of his life is interwoven with the history of his country.
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