Bismarck, Prince Otto Edward Leopold von

I

Introduction

Bismarck, Prince Otto Edward Leopold von (1815-1898), Prusso-German statesman, who was the architect of German unification and the first chancellor (1871-1890) of the united nation. Through Bismarck’s efforts, Germany was transformed from a loose collection of small states into the German Empire, the strongest industrialized nation in continental Europe. A unified Germany permanently changed the European balance of power. Though Bismarck dominated German and European politics for nearly 30 years, his career was a series of paradoxes. An ultraconservative, he initiated social and welfare reform. A master politician, he despised parliaments and parties. A Prussian patriot, he created a German empire.

II

Early Life

Bismarck was born at Schönhausen, north-west of Berlin. His father was an East Elbian landowner who could trace his noble ancestry back five centuries. His mother was from the middle class, a descendant of academicians and civil servants. Marriages like theirs were increasingly common in the 19th century as the educated middle classes and the old aristocracy began fusing into a new elite.

Bismarck was educated at a gymnasium, or high school, in Berlin, but was little affected by the experience. Neither music nor literature, science nor mathematics, influenced the formation of his mind. He entered the University of Göttingen in 1832 with the goal of passing, with as little effort as possible, the law examinations required for a civil service appointment. He spent a minimal amount of time in formal study at both Göttingen and Berlin, where he transferred in 1834. Nevertheless, he passed his examinations and received an appointment as an apprentice official. He found, however, the routines of Prussia’s bureaucracy boring enough that he resigned in 1838. He declared in a letter to his sister that he wanted to conduct the orchestra, not play in it.

From that point until 1847, Bismarck lived a rather dissolute life. He drank heavily and gambled recklessly. His social behaviour was so outrageous that he was known as “wild man”. He developed a series of stress-related illnesses: shingles, ulcers, insomnia. Then, in 1847, his life changed: he married, underwent a religious conversion, and began his political career. Bismarck’s wife, Johanna von Putkammer, provided him with a stable and supportive home life. Pietist Lutheranism, with its emphasis on the direct relationship between man and God, helped him develop a self-discipline that had been absent. And in the Prussian legislature, summoned in 1847 by King Frederick William IV, he found a forum in which he could develop his ideas on the nature of the state and the role of government.

III

Early Political Career

Throughout his life Bismarck was a fervent supporter of the monarchy. He believed the Hohenzollern dynasty governed Prussia by divine right and that the state was part of a divine world plan. While he possessed a driving ambition, he did not seek power for its own sake or his own advantage. Nor did he use the power he acquired irresponsibly. Bismarck believed that a state’s foreign policy must be shaped by the reasonable interests of that state, not by some personal quest for power or glory. He wanted to improve Prussia’s position, but he did not seek to be the master of Europe. As for domestic affairs, Bismarck increasingly began to see himself as an impartial arbiter among conflicting interest groups. He believed that these groups, if left to their own devices, would destroy society because they could not compromise.

However, those beliefs developed slowly in Bismarck. At the beginning of his political career, Bismarck opposed any attempts to challenge the position of the landowning aristocracy; he did so in terms so blunt and forceful that he infuriated even people who agreed with him. He made, however, a friend at court. During the Revolutions of 1848 Prussia’s King Frederick William IV briefly attempted to create a unified northern Germany that included Prussia. Austria, fearing the loss of its dominant position in central Europe, threatened war. Frederick William backed down. His decision was widely criticized in Prussia, but Bismarck was one of the few who praised it. Making Prussia subordinate to an amorphous German union, he argued, was not worth a war. Frederick William responded by appointing Bismarck ambassador to the German Confederation, a league of the 39 German states, which had been established at the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815).

As ambassador to the German Confederation, Bismarck established a reputation as a forceful defender of Prussian interests. His attacks on Austria in particular were so extreme that Bismarck was transferred to St Petersburg as ambassador to Russia to keep him out of trouble. The new appointment was distinguished, but its power was limited. Bismarck remained in Russia until 1862, when he was reassigned to France. He was recalled to Prussia later that same year when a domestic constitutional crisis threatened not only the stability, but the existence of the Prussian government.

The Prussian constitution of 1849 had created a bicameral (two-house) parliament while maintaining the king as the independent head of government. It did not provide any institutional means for resolving disputes between the parliament and the king. The parliament was dominated by liberals and influenced by German nationalism. Prince Regent William, who succeeded his brother in 1858 as William I when the latter suffered a series of strokes, was conservative and Prussian to the core. The clash began in 1860 when William introduced legislation calling for a major reform of the Prussian army. The parliament was not opposed to this, despite its criticism of specific elements of the reform plan, such as lengthening the period of mandatory active service from two to three years. What was important to the parliament was control of the budget. It refused to grant long-term funding for the reform without concessions from the Crown in return. William and his advisers refused, and for two years the Prussian government was deadlocked.

Politician after politician sought to reconcile the conflict, but neither William nor the parliament was interested in compromise. When Bismarck was appointed premier in 1862, it was less a tribute to his ability than a reflection of the fact that no one else wanted the job. His appointment was seen by many liberals as an act of desperation. Many expected the “wild man” to make some disastrous blunder, which would force William to come to terms with the parliament.

Instead, Bismarck surprised people with his handling of the situation. He proceeded to collect the additional taxes needed for the military reform based on the 1861 budget and without the approval of the parliament. Bismarck argued that, despite the standoff between the parliament and the king, the government must continue to function. Since the constitution did not provide for the case of an impasse and no new budget existed, he would have to apply the preceding year’s budget. To justify increasing the army, he warned that, “the great questions of the day will not be settled by speeches and majority decisions…but by blood and iron”.

IV

The Wars of Unification

It was Bismarck’s goal to unite the German states into a strong, single, German empire with Prussia at its centre. Bismarck knew that war would be necessary to achieve German unification, and he began to plan accordingly. Though at first Bismarck’s policies were not well received by the parliament, public opinion began shifting to his side in 1864. In that year he used the expanded Prussian army, in alliance with Austria, to wrest the provinces of Schleswig and Holstein (see Schleswig-Holstein) from Denmark. Two years later he escalated a Prusso-Austrian quarrel over the administration of these provinces into the Seven Weeks’ War against Austria and other German states. Austria and its allies were quickly defeated, and Bismarck incorporated Schleswig-Holstein, Hanover, and some other territories into Prussia. The German Confederation was dissolved and was replaced by the North German Confederation, which consisted of the northern and central German states, under Prussian leadership. Austria was not included in the new confederation.

Other members of the government wanted to march victoriously through the Austrian capital. Bismarck instead negotiated a peace that did not humiliate Austria. His primary goal was to avoid making an enemy of the Austrians; he wanted Austria to remain neutral in any future war with France. As a result of these wars, Bismarck won the support of Prussia’s parliament; in 1866 it passed legislation retroactively sanctioning his military expenditures over the previous four years.

Bismarck tried repeatedly to entice the southern German states into a confederation with the north, but these attempts failed due to popular opposition in the south. Bismarck decided that the only way to bring the south into an alliance with the north was to start a war that threatened both north and south equally. In 1870 Bismarck provoked hostilities with the French by editing an important diplomatic exchange between Prussia and France to sound insulting and hostile towards the French. French politicians were infuriated and declared war on Prussia. In the ensuing Franco-Prussian War, Bismarck secured the support of the southern German states by warning them that France intended to conquer their territories. The combined Prussian and German armies were quickly victorious, Paris was captured, and France was occupied by German and Prussian troops. As Bismarck had assumed, the successful war with France won the support of the south German states, and in 1871 they agreed to join with the members of the North German Confederation in a newly unified German Empire. King William I of Prussia became the German emperor and, as a final humiliation of the defeated French, was crowned at Versailles, outside Paris, on January 18, 1871.