I.

Introduction

Otto von Bismarck (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.

V.

Chancellor of the Empire

Bismarck was made chancellor of the new German Empire. At home, he concentrated on building a powerful German state and encouraged nationalism and the ideal of a German national identity. In foreign affairs, his goal was to make Prussia the dominant power in the German Empire and to establish that empire as the primary power in Europe.

A.

Domestic Policy

Between 1871 and 1879 Bismarck developed the Empire’s federal infrastructure. Uniform legal codes, nationalized railways, and a common bureaucracy helped Germany develop as a major economic power. Additionally, compulsory military service indoctrinated generations of young men into the new German system, a system that offered great rewards for loyalty while at the same time allowing some room for diversity. However, this diversity had its limits.

For Bismarck, those limits were marked by Catholicism on one side and socialism on the other. Neither Germany’s Catholics nor its working classes were ever fully integrated into the new national community. Bismarck considered both, along with the liberals, to be threats to his power.

Bismarck believed that German Catholics were subservient to the pope and that the political power of the Centre Party (composed of Catholic groups) threatened his authority over the empire. To combat this, in the early 1870s Bismarck initiated the so-called Kulturkampf (“culture struggle”). This movement, fuelled by nationalist propaganda, attempted to portray Catholic allegiances as intellectually backward and dangerous to German security.

However, what was originally a conflict with the Centre Party quickly became a conflict with the Roman Catholic Church itself. In 1872 and 1873 Bismarck passed several laws limiting the powers of the Roman Catholic Church in Germany. One of these laws expelled from the empire all members of the Society of Jesus (see Jesuits), a religious order known for its service to the pope.

Bismarck could not win this struggle in an empire where Catholics made up 40 per cent of the population. Bismarck’s persecution only consolidated support for the Centre Party, which doubled its popular vote in 1874. By 1879 Bismarck had repealed several of the laws and was negotiating an end to the conflict.

At the same time, Bismarck also turned against the liberals, whom he suspected of seeking to share power. Nationalist propaganda previously directed against Catholics was now used against the liberals and their policy of free trade—a move that appealed to a broad spectrum of German conservative business, financial, and agricultural interests. This time Bismarck’s campaign was successful, and in the elections of 1877 liberal presence in government was drastically reduced, and the liberals ceased to be a political threat.

The election also marked the beginning of the chancellor’s campaign against socialism. Germany’s rapid industrialization in the 1870s had multiplied its urban working classes. Bismarck feared these workers might support socialist parties whose presence in parliament might threaten his direct control of that institution. A series of laws and regulations outlawing socialist political activity began to be established in 1878. At the same time, Bismarck introduced a large-scale programme of health, accident, and old-age insurance. This programme was designed to bind the workers to the state and to draw them away from socialist movements. Despite these social and welfare reforms, Bismarck’s attempts to suppress the socialists only increased their popularity.

By 1890 Bismarck’s domestic policy had fragmented his political opposition into mutually exclusive interest groups. Because of their disorganized nature, Bismarck was able to manipulate these groups by playing one off against the others. While this political system proved very convenient for Bismarck, it was so complicated that it would be impossible to maintain for anyone who lacked his personal abilities and stature as the architect of the German Empire. The political structure of the empire had come to be dependent on Bismarck (and only Bismarck) to lead it.

B.

Foreign Policy

Bismarck’s foreign policy began to change in the early 1870s, when it became clear that the other European powers would not tolerate further German expansion. As a result, Bismarck began to establish Germany as a European peacemaker and preserver of the status quo. In 1873 Bismarck negotiated the Dreikaiserbund (Three Emperors’ League) with Austria-Hungary and Russia. The league was intended primarily to isolate France and forestall a European conflict that would be costly to the German Empire. At the Congress of Berlin in 1878, Bismarck forced Russia to abandon some of its recent diplomatic gains in the Balkan Peninsula. In order to maintain peace, these Russian losses were balanced by later concessions in other areas.

Bismarck was, however, unable to resolve growing tensions between Russia and a comparatively weak Austria-Hungary in the Balkans. To maintain the balance of power, Germany was forced to throw more and more weight behind Austria-Hungary. In 1879 Bismarck negotiated the Dual Alliance with Austria-Hungary, which required the two countries to stand together in case of an attack by Russia. At the same time, Bismarck tried to placate the French, who were still hostile to Germany because of the Franco-Prussian War, by encouraging French overseas expansion.

Bismarck’s remaining worry was the British, who refused to commit themselves to alliances with nations on the European continent. This refusal seemed to Bismarck to represent a potential threat to the stability of Europe. The chancellor’s solution was the two Mediterranean Agreements of 1887, designed to preserve the status quo from any threats from Russia. Britain joined with Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Germany in these agreements in order to protect its interests in the Middle East from Russian expansion. Bismarck then negotiated a separate treaty of non-aggression with Russia.

These alliances brought all the powers of Europe into a network in which any aggressor would, in theory, confront a powerful defensive coalition of the other major powers. Ideally this would deter any one power from acting alone, and maintain the peace in Europe. The weaknesses of this system, however, were its complexity and the fact that it was based on a common commitment to the status quo. Over the next 25 years this commitment to the status quo weakened, as the interests of the different nations diverged over such issues as arms build-ups, territorial disputes, and trade practices. The complex web of alliances gradually began to collapse, eventually leading to World War I.

VI.

Final Years and Legacy

In 1890 the young emperor William II dismissed Bismarck. His dismissal was as much a product of the chancellor’s age and inflexibility as of any specific political issues. Retiring to his estate, Bismarck lived the rest of his life at odds with the emperor and the government that had succeeded him. Bismarck, who had been made a prince at the end of the Franco-Prussian War, was made the Duke of Lauenburg after his retirement. He died on July 30, 1898.

The crucial question in evaluating Bismarck’s achievements centres around his contribution to Germany’s 20th-century behaviour. Did the German catastrophe—two world wars and the Nazi movement—have its roots in Bismarck’s 19th-century policies? The issue remains controversial. What is known is that, by the time of Bismarck’s resignation, Germany’s domestic politics were so deadlocked that Bismarck himself was considering either a coup d’état or a return to the “crisis management” techniques of the 1860s. In foreign affairs Bismarck had created a web so complex that it frightened even his associates in the foreign office, who considered it a house of cards unsustainable in any serious crisis. Bismarck’s legacy, in short, was at best an extremely intricate system that depended on the abilities and personality of not merely one man, but one particular man whose talents proved impossible to replicate. In the absence of such talents, the elaborate structure Bismarck had created in both Germany and Europe quickly collapsed.