YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK

Books bt
PRINCE OTTO Von BISMARCK
AUTOBIOGRAPHY. Portraita. Vols. I and II
KAISER VS. BISMARCK
THE LOVE LETTERS OF BISMARCK

HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK
Established 1817

PRINCE BISMARCK. AFTER A PORTRAIT BY LENBACH

KAISER vs. BISMARCK
Suppressed Letters by the Kaiser
and New Chapters from the
Autobiography of the IRON
CHANCELLOR; With a Historic
cal Introduction by Charles
Downer Hazen, Professor of His
tory, Columbia University; Author of
"Europe since 1815" \
TRANSLATED BY BERNARD MIALL

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
1921

Kaiser vs. Bismarck

Copyright, 1920, by Harper & Brothers
Printed in the United States of America

DEDICATED
TO MY SONS AND GRANDSONS
FOR THE BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF THE PAST
AND AS A LESSON FOR THE FUTURE

CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
Introduction, by Prof. Charles Downer Hazen xi
I. Prince Wilhelm  i
II. The Grand Duke of Baden  29
III. Boetticher  41
IV. Herrfurth  51
V. The Crown Council of January 24TH .... 55
VI. The Imperial Decree of February 4, 1890 . . 73
VII. Changes  85
VIII. My Dismissal  97
IX. Count Caprivi  130
X. Kaiser Wilhelm II ...  141
XI. The Treaty Relating to Heligoland and Zanzibar 171
XII. Commercial Treaty with Austria  178
Appendices  185
Index  197

ILLUSTRATIONS
PRINCE BISMARCK. AFTER A PORTRAIT BY LENBACH . Frontispiece
"THE KAISER SNATCHED THE PAPER FROM MY HAND,
READ IT, AND APPEARED TO BE JUSTLY WOUNDED
BY THE WORDING OF THE TSAR'S SUPPOSED
REMARKS"  Facingp. IOO
"dropping the pilot" — one of the most famous
cartoons ever drawn — which appeared in
"punch" march 29, 189o, a week after bis-
marck's dismissal. when the german ship of
state crashed on the rocks under the un
skilled helmsmanship of the kaiser, the car
toonist's prophetic conception of the signifi
cance of the episode illustrated received
striking confirmation  " 122
the german emperor and empress. from a photo
graph taken in 1899  " 150
a "punch" cartoon published a month or two
after bismarck's dismissal, the kaiser is
shown "rocking the boat," which he subse
quently succeeded in capsizing  " 154
a suppressed photograph of the kaiser taken when
he was experimenting with a beard ... " 166

INTRODUCTION
By CHARLES DOWNER HAZEN
Professor of History in Columbia University
The year 1888 possesses a special and memorable
significance in the history of Germany. It was the
year of the Three Emperors, witnessing the passing
from the scene of two figures who had long been active
and familiar, who had been connected with great events
and high transactions in the realm of politics and war,
witnessing also the arrival upon the stage of a new
figure, quite unknown, of quite incalculable import,
whose probable destinies the world was in no position
even vaguely and loosely to forecast, so little had his
personality been revealed. William I died on March 9,
1888, at the age of ninety-one; his son and successor,
Frederick III, after a reign of a hundred days of
physical agony and spiritual fortitude, died on June
15th, at the age of fifty-six; and William II, twenty-
nine years old, on that day ascended the most powerful
throne in Europe, from which thirty years later he was
to be hurled in the midst of a whirlwind of destruction
which with incredible lightness of heart he had let
loose upon the world. Behind the three figures and
looming far above them was the man who had made
them great by vastly elevating their station in the
world and by endowing them with a power commensur
ate with their magnified opportunities. If ever there
was a maker of emperors Bismarck was that man, Bis-
xi

INTRODUCTION
marck who had begun life as a narrow, provincial
Junker of the strictest and straitest sect and who had
contrived to become a great national and international
figure, dominating his age as did no other single, per-
j sonal force; dominating it partly by superior astute
ness and partly by a franker brutality of method than
| the world had latterly experienced.
1 The fundamental aim of Bismarck's statecraft was
the exaltation of the Prussian monarchy a&d of the
" monarchical principle. Living in a century increasingly
clamorous for democratic and responsible government,
he challenged and defied liberalism in every way and
with every accent of contempt and with every term of
opprobrium. The idea that the Prussian monarch
should become inferior in actual power to his Ministers
and that his Ministers shotdd_b"Ecorne responsible to the
popularly elected parliament — in other words, that the
people, not the monarch, should be in the saddle — was
an idea utterly repugnant to Bismarck's thought. It
had been, he said, the Prussian kings and not the Prus
sian people who had made Prussia great, and this, the
great historic fact, must be preserved and even ac
centuated still more. "The Prussian Crown must not
allow itself," he announced, "to be thrust into the
powerless position of the English Crown, which seems
more like a smartly decorative cupola on the state
edifice than its central pillar of support, as I consider
ours." Called to power by William I in 1862 as a last
hope in the critical and desperate struggle which the
King was then carrying on with parliament, Bismarck
fought and won a decisive victory, defeating liberalism
at every point, abasing parliament, ~arid immensely
reinforcing the monarchical authority and~jyestige.
And when later he was able to create the German Em
pire as an additional trophy and distinction for the
xii

INTRODUCTION
Prussian monarch, and create it by blood and iron and
not by speeches and majority votes, which he despised,
he was able so to shape the new imperial institutions
as to avoid aU semblance of parliamentary government,
of ministerial responsibility, and so to fashion the office
for which he was himself destined, the Chancellorship^
as to make hjmself. dependent only upon the Emperor,
and to make the other federal officials responsible only
to himself.
As the Chancellor was appointed by the Emperor,
was responsible to the~Emp'eTc^f"an"(_rto~him alone, and
might be dismissed-aL duy inomeTir, the personal and
official relatloris~oT1Bisrriarck with William I, Frederick
III, and William II became necessarily matters of great
and far-reaching public concern. As long as Bismarck
held office the public life of Germany and of Europe
would inevitably receive the impress of his thought and
purpose, and whether he should remain in power was de
termined by three men in succession, and by no more.
Politics is reduced to great simplieity-when expressed in
terms of royal favor or disfavor. History, therefore,
occupies itself^lTdtTwTth trifles, but with matters of
primary importance, when it inquires how things stand
between the monarch and the Minister; for from this
relationship flow streams of tendency of incalculable
consequence. Between William I and Bismarck conflicts often
arose, vital, tense, and most painful to both. William
disapproved the form and frequently the very sub
stance of many of Bismarck's measures, but he always
yielded, in the end, before a mind and a will which he
recognized as stronger than his own and more far-
sighted, and he had no occasion to regret his action,
since the prosperity of his country and the fortunes of
his house steadily increased. William came in time to
xiii

INTRODUCTION
repose unlimited confidence in his gifted Minister whose
obvious superiority had sometimes frightened and
embarrassed him. William was grateful for services
rendered, and in the case of Bismarck he recognized
the unique and supreme nature of those services. Bis-
, marck had access to his sovereign at all times and in all
places, and he generally kept him informed as to all or
nearly all the details of current politics. The intimacy
of these two men was close and in the latter years
almost unruffled, and when the Iron Chancellor had
occasion finally to announce to the Reichstag the death
of his sovereign and master he broke down, after a few
words, and wept. William I, a man of ordinary intel
ligence, had this rare merit, that lie judged himself
accurately. He knew that he wasjncapable of govern
ing without strong and trusted advisers. He himself
chose Roon and Moltke and Bismarck, and, having
chosen them, he stood by them through thick and thin,
subordinating his views or preferences, when neces
sary, to theirs. He was not jealous of the power they
wielded or of their popularity — power and popularity
based, as he well knew, upon achievements for the
Fatherland and for the House ofTforTerizollern.
Between Bismarck and Frederick III jzhere was no
such harmony, and, had Frederide-lived, the incom
patibility of temper which had long existed might have
led to a serious strain. The new Emperor was a liberal
and independent mind, a^Tnair^vtuT oelieved in free
institutions, and who hoped for the introduction of a
parliamentary system of government into Germany
Frederick admired the English constitution as much
as Bismarck detested it. But Frederick, when he
came to the throne, was a dying man, ill of cancer of
the throat. Unable to speak, he could only indicate
his wishes by writing or by signs, and when opposition
xiv

INTRODUCTION
developed he was too weak to sustain a contest, and so
usually yielded. And opposition did develop from the
start, active, systematic, and discreditable. Frederick
had long desired to show the world that a Hohenzollern,
who believed in Prussia and in the Prussian army,
could also be a constitutional and a liberal monarch.
Had his aspiration, cherished since his early days, been
realized, it is needless to say the history of contemporary
Europe would have taken a very different turn. But
not only was he stricken with a mortal disease, but he
was made to know during his brief possession of
nominal power the full bitterness that may reside in
death, the arrogance, the insolence, the ingratitude, the
unscrupulous intriguing of those of whom at least
decency might have been expected, in a situation in
which the baser passions are often stilled. This is an
odious chapter in Prussian history and in the biog
raphies of Bismarck and William II.
The accession of the Etnperor WilJiam II, on June
15, 1888, brought relief to Bismarck and seemed to
assure thfi_ indefinite continuance of his power. The
new monarch, twenty-nine years of age, was of an
active mind, of a fertile imagination, self-confident,
ambitious. He showed in his earliest acts that under
him there would be no dallying with liberalism. In
proclamations to the army and to the people he mani
fested his enthusiasm for the old and established Prus
sian institutions and Prussian life, and his desire and
intention to continue his grandfather's policy. It was
inferred that he would have nothing to do with the
spirit and policies of the "Hundred Days." It was
known, too, that the new Emperor had revered his
grandfather and that he had had serious conflicts with
his father and his mother. Bismarck breathed freely
and settled back with the__coinfortahIe_conviction that
xv

INTRODUCTION
he was regarded, in the highest of all quarters, as indis
pensable. Had not the Crown Prince as recently as
April ist proposed a resounding toast to him on the
occasion of his birthday: "Standard-bearer of the
imperial banner, may you long continue to hold it
aloft!" And now Bismarck composed the Kaiser's
first speech from the throne, and the Kaiser, having
read it, extended his hand from the throne itself to
Bismarck, and the resulting vigorous clasp seemed a
sign to all the world that the monarch and the Minister
were in complete accord. The young sovereign was
full of good will, Bismarck confided to his friends.
Nothing could be more idyllic.
Twenty^ohe monthlTlater, to the amazement of the
world and to the satisfaction of numerous enemies,
Bismarck W»srdismT5seii from the position lie had held
for twenty-eight years, wKcri^lThaUT'eridered memo
rable, as well as most profitable to the House of Hohen
zollern. His dismissal was a famous incident in the
history of the nineteenth century, and for the two per
sons most intimately concerned it meant much — the
end of one career and the beginning of another.
Bismarck withdrew to his estate, Friedrichsruh,
where he lived for eight years longer, surrounded by
his family and friends. He found country life less
attractive than he had thought it from previous ex
perience, and retirement from the world's great stage
soon became an intolerable bore. To be compelled,
like any other human being, to read in the morning
paper the news which he had been in the habit of
creating, was humiliating indeed, and also unsatisfac
tory, as newspapers do not always tell the truth and
very frequently fail to reveal what one would like to
know. But the old warrior, now discarded, was him
self compelled to resort to the press as the sole means
xvi

INTRODUCTION
of indulging his still vigorous combative instincts, and
a Hamburg journal became the organ of his discontent,
through whose columns he leveled many poisoned
missiles at his enemies and successors. But even these
polemics of the quill could not bring content. They
constituted by a kind of guerrilla warfare and Bismarck
had long been accustomed to the joys of Armageddon.
Friedrichsruh, it is true, became during these years a
place of pilgrimage for patriotic Germans. Delega
tions, associations, distinguished individuals, visited in
almost endless succession the great exile, and formidable
and heady was the volume of incense that arose. But
all this, though gratifying, was tame for one who had
tasted abundantly of the real pleasures and pomp of
power. Adulation in adversity contrasts unpleasantly
with adulation in prosperity, and Bismarck was too
clear-headed to make any mistake about that.
However, he accomplished, during these years of
enforced rustication, one very useful and durable piece
of work. He wrote or dictated his memoirs, beginning
soon after his dismissal from office and working inter
mittently upon them for years, revising and altering
and perfecting the narrative. Shortly after his death
in 1898, two volumes of them were published. -Bis
marck had said that he himself distrusted memoirs as
works of rehabihtatiQS3npgEiBEar_apology. His com
ment was just and, moreover, was applicable to himself,
yet the student of history would not do without them,
he, the student, being prepared to make the necessary
allowances and deductions, to apply the necessary
critical tests. Bismarck did not attempt, nor was he
qualified, to write an impartial history of his times.
He wished to justify himself, or rather to justify his
policies, at every point3:wi____rever~they had been attacked
or discussed. His method was not to try to cover his
xvii

INTRODUCTION
career in a systematic and balanced way; whole phases
of his activity, and some of the most important, were
entirely ignored, as, for instance, the diplomacy which
led up to the three great wars which he contrived to
bring about. But, while desultory and fragmentary,
nevertheless the volumes which appeared twenty years
ago were prodigiously interesting. In the first place
they were genuinely autobiographical in that they
reflected very clearly the extraordinary personality of
the author. They also revealed the personalities of
those with whom he had been associated, for Bismarck
displayed in them his remarkable ptfwer of delineating
character, and, amid much acute criticism of Prussian
\ policy and much close discussion of famous political
struggles, he inserted a famous gallery of portraits of
some of the world's celebrities, of royalties and their
consorts and their Ministers and attaches. Done
with particular care and mastery was the portrait of
William I. And Bismarck wrote throughout in a tone
and manner worthy of himself, his position, his career.
One portrait was missing in those volumes, that of
the man who had dared terminate the public career of
the Iron Chancellor, thus rendering possible the writing
of memoirs. The second volume closed with a study
of Frederick III, and William II did not appear in the
narrative. He now appears, however, and is the chief
figure in volume three. For Bismarck had drawn
William the Second's portrait, too, and had drawn it
with great care arid attention to detail. He was de
termined that his dismissal from office should be thor
oughly understood by posterity, and as it had been
William who had dismissed him, William's charactei
and actions and policies must be studied and analyzed
and set forth so that men might forever see clearly
how and why one mighty chapter in history had
xviii

INTRODUCTION
been brought to a close, and how another chapter had
begun. It is this story that forms the content of the volume
now finally given to the public, after the world has wit
nessed a personal catastrophe in comparison with which
the fall of Bismarck was almost a caress of fortune.
It is likely that this third volume of Bismarck's reminis
cences will prove of greater historical importance than
the two earlier ones, as it will surely be more widely
read. Of all Bismarck's writings, it is probably the
most carefully constructed and elaborated. Moreover,
it adds more fresh material than did the earlier volumes
for the use of the historian. Contemporary documents
of great importance are here presented, and the studied
characterization, the weighty judgments, the pene
trating expose of conduct make this a book of com
manding significance. Devoted almost entirely to
the events that led up to the famous dismissal, to the
divergencies of opinion of the Minister and his master,
to the wirepulling and intriguing of the lesser figures,
it is an ex parte account, of course, and its actual value
will only be known after historians have subjected it
to their criticisms and after other archives, public
and private, have yielded up their relevant treasures.
Meanwhile it will remain the most extensive, the
most detailed, and the most authoritative account we
have of an important and dramatic turning point in
modern history. If its publication should prompt the
Kaiser or his friends to add a similar installment to our
information, it would be gratefully received.
But, pending new installments from other sources,
Bismarck's volume will serve for enlightenment and
varied entertainment. At the outset we have a striking
and frank appraisal of the future Emperor by his
father, Frederick III. Writing to Bismarck in October,
xix

INTRODUCTION
1886, Frederick says, "But considering the unripeness
and inexperience of my eldest son, together with his
leaning toward vanity and presumption and his over
weening estimation of himself, I must frankly express
my opinion that it is dangerous to bring him into touch
with foreign affairs." Interesting, too, and ironic, in
view of what was before long to happen, is the letter
of William to Bismarck, dated December 21, 1887, in
which the Prince said, "The great and affectionate
respect and heartfelt attachment which I cherish for
Your Highness — and for you I would let my limbs be
hewn off piecemeal, one after the other, rather than
undertake anything that would be disagreeable to you
or cause you difficulties — should, I think, be sufficient
guaranty that I have engaged in this work in no party
spirit." And the last paragraph in the same letter
also arrests attention: "While concluding my letter
herewith, I wish Your Highness a Happy New Year,
and may it be granted to you to lead the nation onward
in your accustomed wise care, whether in peace or in
war. Should the latter come to pass, I hope you will
not forget that here are ready the hand and the sword
of a man who is fully conscious that Frederick the
Great was his ancestor, and fought alone against three
times as many as we have against us now."
And is not the future Emperor sufficiently adum
brated in that other letter written about the same time,
November 29, 1887, in which he unfolded to the Iron
Chancellor his plan of action toward his fellow sover
eigns of Germany when he should be called to power
by two deaths which he saw were imminent and which
he was awaiting with apparent fortitude? "Elderly
uncles must not put a spoke in the wheels of their dear
young nephew." "It will be easy for me, as the
nephew of these gentlemen, to win them over by little
xx

INTRODUCTION
acts of complaisance, and to make them tractable by
means of eventual visits of ceremony. If I have first
of all convinced them as to my type and character and
have got them well in hand, they will then obey me
all the more readily. For I must be obeyed! But
obedience is better obtained by persuasion and con
fidence than by compulsion."
Bismarck's respectful and discreetly cooling reply to
his animated correspondent may have been the insig
nificant beginning of that event of great pith and mo
ment, the forced resignation of March 20, 1890. But if
so, it was not apparent to either of the two persons
directly involved. When, in October, 1889, in the
midst of an important interview with Alexander III
of Russia, the Tsar interrupted Bismarck by saying,
"Yes, I believe you, I have confidence in you, but are
you sure of remaining in office?" Bismarck replied,
"Certainly, Your Majesty, I am absolutely sure to
remain a Minister all my life." An error of calculation
of eight years, pardonable, no doubt, since whims of
masters are not always stable or always easy to forecast.
Between them, these two autocrats, William and
Bismarck, cut a large figure in the history of the world,
precipitating, among other things, four memorable
wars, and building and destroying much by their ad
herence to the congenial policy of blood and iron.
Anything that throws light upon their relations to each
other is, therefore, destined to be appreciated by all who
seek to understand the present age. Without wishing
to moralize unduly, one may distill, from a contempla
tion of these two careers, the reflection, by no means
new, but always timely, that the possession of power is
apt to poison its possessor.
The following remark of Bismarck, which is to be
found in his chapter on Caprivi, has a pertinence which
xxi

INTRODUCTION
he scarcely could have foreseen: "I have heard that
the Kaiser had allayed the misgivings which Caprivi
had expressed as to becoming my successor with the
words, 'There's no need for you to be anxious; one
man's much like another, and I'll accept the respon
sibility for all transactions.'" "Let us hope," Bis
marck adds, "that the next generation will gather the
fruits of this kingly self-confidence."

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
NEW CHAPTERS OF BISMARCK'S
AUTOBIOGRAPHY

CHAPTER I
PRINCE WILHELM
During the reign of the old Kaiser x I had for
a long time endeavored to contrive that his grand
son2 should receive an adequate preparation for his
lofty position. Before all things I held it neces
sary to withdraw the heir to the throne from the
limited circle of the military society of Potsdam,
and to bring him into contact with other than the
military tendencies of the period. I had no ex
pectation of getting him appointed to a civilian
position, first of all perhaps in the Landrath, then
in some government department, under the super
vision of an experienced official. I confined myself
to trying to get the Prince transferred to the Ber
lin garrison, where I could bring him into touch
with wider social circles and with the different

1 Wilhelm I, King of Prussia and German Emperor, born March 22,
1797; died March 9, 1888.
•Wilhelm II, born January 27, 1859; Crown Prince March 9, 1888;
King and Emperor June 15, 1888; abdicated November, 1918.
I

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
central authorities. The obstacles in the way of
this course appeared to consist principally of the
objection of the Household Administration to the
expenses of residence in Berlin — that is, to the
cost of preparing the Schloss Bellevue. Potsdam
remained the Prince's place of residence. There
he was to receive lectures from Governor von
Achenbach.1 At his own desire, in 1886 I also
obtained His Majesty's authority for giving him
access to the minutes and transactions of the
Foreign Office; not, I confess, without the em
phatic disapproval of the Crown Prince,2 who
wrote to me on the 28th of September from Porto-
fino on the Genoese Riviera :
My son, Prince Wilhelm, before I had knowledge of it,
expressed the wish to His Majesty that he might become
more closely acquainted, during the coming winter, with the
activities of our governmental departments, and in conse
quence, I understand, he is already contemplating temporary
employment in the Foreign Office.
As I have hitherto received no official communication
from anyquarter concerning this matter, I find myself obliged,
in the first place, to apply to you in confidence, only to learn
what is perhaps already decided, and also to declare that,
although I am fundamentally in agreement with the policy
of initiating my eldest son in the problems of the higher
administration, I am decidedly against his beginning with
the Foreign Office.
For considering the importance of the task to which the
Prince will be set, I regard it as a matter of course that he
should before all things be acquainted with the internal
1 A Prussian jurist (1829-99), governor (jOber-prasident) of the province
of Brandenburg, June, 1879.
2 Friedrich III (Friedrich Wilhelm), born October 18, 183 1; Crown
Prince; King and Emperor March 9, 1888; died June 15, 1888.
2

PRINCE WILHELM
conditions of his own country and feel that he knows them
intimately before he, with his already quick and overhasty
judgment, occupies himself, to a certain extent only, with
politics. His actual knowledge is still defective; he has had
no time to lay a proper foundation; for which reason it is
absolutely necessary that his attainments should be improved
and completed. This object would be accomplished by the
appointment of a civilian tutor and, at the same time or later,
employment in one of the ministerial departments.
But considering the unripeness and inexperience of my
eldest son, together with his leaning toward vanity and pre
sumption, and his overweening estimation of himself, I must
frankly express my opinion that it is dangerous as yet to
bring him into touch with foreign affairs.
While I beg you to treat this communication of mine as
addressed to you alone, I count upon your support in this
matter, which deeply concerns me.
I deplored the evident want of harmony be
tween father and son which was manifested by
this letter and the lack of that natural communi
cativeness on which I had counted, although the
same lack of confidence had existed for years
between His Majesty and the Crown Prince. I
was unable, however, at that time to concur in
the opinion of the latter, because the Prince was
already twenty-seven years of age, and Frederick
the Great ascended the throne when he was
twenty-eight years old, while Friedrich Wilhelm I
and III were even younger. In my reply I con
fined myself to saying that the Kaiser had ordered
and "commanded" the Prince to enter the Foreign
Office, and to calling attention to the fact that in
the royal family the authority of the father was
sunk in that of the monarch. 3

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
Against the Prince's removal to Berlin the Kaiser
did not in the first place urge the question of ex
pense, but the circumstance that the Prince was
still too young for his promotion to the next mili
tary rank, which would have represented the
external motive for the removal; and it did not
help me at all to remind the Kaiser of his own
much more rapid rise in the military hierarchy.
The relations of the young Prince to our central
authorities were confined to the Foreign Office
(subordinate to myself), with whose interesting
records he made himself acquainted with alacrity,
but without any inclination toward persevering
work. In order to instruct him more exhaustively
as to the Home Department, and to introduce into
his daily intercourse a civilian element, in addition
to the society of his comrades, I begged the Kaiser
to allow a higher official of scientific attainments
to be appointed to attend upon His Royal High
ness; I proposed the Under-Secretary of State
in the Ministry of the Interior, Herrfurth,1 who
seemed to me, owing to his intimate knowledge of
the legislation and statistics of the whole country,
to be peculiarly fitted to become a mentor to the
heir to the throne. At my suggestion, my son
invited the Prince and Herrfurth to dinner in
1888, in order to make them personally acquainted.
This, however, led to no closer relation. The

1 Ludwig Herrfurth (1830-1900), a Prussian jurist; in 1873 reporting
Councilor in the Ministry of the Interior; 1 881, Ministerial Director; 1882,
Under-Secretary of State and Chairman of the Imperial Commission which
dealt with the question of the Socialist laws; from July 2, 1888, to August 9,
1892, Minister of the Interior. 4

PRINCE WILHELM
Prince said that he himself, in his youth, had acted
the part of a mountain goblin in just such an un
combed beard, and, in answer to my questions,
mentioned Von Brandestein of Magdeburg, a
Regierungsrath1 and an officer in the Reserve, as
having a personality which was agreeable to him.
He seemed, indeed, according to all information,
a fit person for the post in question, and at my re
quest he accepted it, but as early as the middle of
March he expressed a wish to be relieved of it and
to return to his provincial activities. He was
very graciously treated by the Prince, and invited
to all meals as a welcome guest, but he could not
feel conscious that he was fulfilling any useful
function, not could he get used to an idle court
life. He was persuaded to remain a little while
longer, and in June, after the Prince had ascended
the throne, was appointed at the royal command
to a higher post in Potsdam, in the face of the op
position of the interested authorities, which was
based upon the theory of seniority.
My efforts to get the Prince removed to one of
the provincial garrisons, merely in order to with
draw him from the influence of the Potsdam regi
ment, were unsuccessful. The cost of the princely
household in the provinces seemed to the House
hold Administration even greater than in Berlin.
Moreover, the Crown Princess was averse to the
plan. The Prince was, indeed, appointed briga
dier in Berlin in January, 1888, but the rapidity
with which his father's malady developed finally
1 Councilor in the administration of a departmental government. ( Trans.)
S

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
disposed of the possibility of giving the Prince,
before his accession to the throne, any other im
pressions of the internal life of the state than those
afforded by regimental life.
An heir to the throne, as a comrade among youth
ful officers, the most gifted of whom, perhaps, have
an eye to their future in the service, can very sel
dom expect to be assisted in his preparation for
his future calling by the influence of his surround
ings. I deeply deplored the restricted nature of
the life to which the present Kaiser was condemned
by the niggardliness of the Household Adminis
tration and which I had been unable to alter. He
came to the throne with views which to our Prus
sian ideas were unfamiliar, and had not been
schooled in our constitutional life.
Since the year 1884 the Prince had maintained
a sometimes lively exchange of letters with me.
In these a note of ill humor on his part was first
perceptible after I had warned him with urgent
arguments, but in a perfectly respectful manner,
against two proposals, one of which was con
nected with the name of Stocker.1
On November 28, 1887, a meeting was held at
the house of the Quartermaster General, Count
Waldersee,2 at which were present the Prince and

1 Stocker, Adolf (1835-1909), Protestant theologian and politician.
Founder of the Christian Social Party (1878); member of the Prussian
Chamber of Deputies from 1879 and of the German Reichstag from 1881;
Court and Cathedral Chaplain in Berlin 1874-90.
2 Alfred Count von Waldersee (1832-1904); 1882, General Quartermaster
and Adjutant General to the Kaiser; under Friedrich III General of Cav
alry; under Wilhelm II Chief of General Staff, Member of the House of
Peers, and of the Staatsrath; 1891, general commanding 9th Army Corps.
6

PRINCE WILHELM
Princess Wilhelm,1 Court Chaplain Stocker, depu
ties, and other well-known persons, in order to
discuss the matter of obtaining funds for the
Berlin City Mission. Count Waldersee opened
the proceedings with a speech in which he empha
sized the fact that the City Mission flew no political
colors, but that its only intention was to be loyal
to the King and to foster the spirit of patriotism;
that the only effective means which it could use
against the anarchical tendencies of the time was
the spiritual nourishment which went hand in hand
with material assistance. Prince Wilhelm expressed
his approval of Count Waldersee's plans, and ac
cording to the report of the Kreuzzeitung made
use of the expression, "Christian Socialist ideas."
Coming away from this meeting, the Prince
called upon my son2 and spoke of the incident of
the meeting, saying, "Stocker, I'm inclined to
think, has something of Luther in him." My
son, who first heard of this meeting from the
Prince, replied that Stocker might have his merits
and be a good preacher, but he was a vehement
person, and his memory was not always to be relied
upon. The Prince rejoined that Stocker had, j
nevertheless, won many thousands of votes for the f
Kaiser, which he had wrested from Social De- '
mocracy. My son replied that since the elections
of 1878 the Social Democratic vote had steadily
1 Auguste Victoria, nee Princess of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-
Augustenburg, born October 22, 1858; married February 27, 1881; Crown
Princess March 9, 1888; Queen and Empress June 15, 1888.
2 Count Herbert Bismarck, born 1849; eldest son of the Chancellor;
Prince von Bismarck 1898. From 1873 in the Foreign Office; Secretary of
State for the same in 1886; Prussian State Minister 1888; died 1904.
7

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
increased; if Stocker had really won any votes
there should be a demonstrable diminution. In
Berlin the interest in the elections was very slight.
yet the native of Berlin loves meetings, noise, and
horseplay, and many indifferent persons who other
wise would never have troubled to vote had made
their appearance, owing to Stocker's agitation,
and had voted for the candidate proposed by him.
But it was a delusion that Stocker and his efforts
as agitator had converted any large number of
Social Democrats.
After a hunt dinner, which took place soon after
this in Letzlingen, the Prince handed round a
newspaper containing an article dealing with the
tendencies of the meeting. During the conversa
tion which sprang up among his companions in
respect of this article my son expressed the opinion
that Stocker was to be regarded not as a preach
er, but as a politician, and that as such he was
so acrid that one could not recommend Prince
Wilhelm to allow himself to be identified with him.
My son traveled direct from Letzlingen through
Berlin to Friedrichsruh, where I, in the mean
time, had seen several articles on the so-called
Waldersee meeting, and now asked him to tell
me the meaning of them. He told me what had
taken place at Letzlingen. I approved of his atti
tude, and remarked that for once the matter did
not concern me. In the meantime the clamor in
the press increased; well-disposed people called
on my son and complained bitterly in the inter
ests of the Prince that he had meddled with an
8

PRINCE WILHELM
affair from which he would now be unable to extri
cate himself. Those who were about the Prince
and had discussed the matter with him were con
founded by his vehemence, and related that my
son had been calumniated by him; Chamberlain
von Mirbach1 had assured the Prince and Princess
that my son had written the violent article which
appeared in the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung
in December, which had first been taken as a
challenge and as the signal for the Liberal press to
turn against the Prince and his "Stockerei." As
a matter of fact this article originated with Rotten-
burg,2 head of the Imperial Chancellery; my son
had never read it, nor had I.
My son noted the effect of this baiting of the
Prince at the next and all subsequent court ban
quets, where the Princess Wilhelm, who had hither
to been well disposed toward him, ignored him so
persistently that her next recognition of him did
not take place until he was on the eve of departing
for St. Petersburg, when the Cabinet was received
in a body.
I had not found occasion to intervene in the mat
ter until the Prince wrote me the following letter :
Potsdam,
December 21, 1887.
I have found to my regret that Your Highness is not in
sympathy with a task which I have undertaken in the in
terest of the poorer classes of our people. I have found that
1 Ernst Freiherr von Mirbach, born 1844; Chamberlain; from June, 1888,
Lord High Steward (Oberhofmeister) to the Empress.
2F. J. von Rottenburg(i'845-i907); Prussian jurist; 1876, in the Foreign
Office; 1881, called to the Imperial Chancellery; chief of the same until
February, 1891; then Under-Secretary of State, etc.
2 9

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
the news of this step which has been published by the Social
Democratic newspapers, and unhappily reproduced by many
other journals, may have afforded an occasion for misrepre
senting my intentions. By reason of the intimate relations
which have so long existed between Your Highness and my
self, I have daily hoped that Your Highness would make
inquiry of me direct. For this reason I have hitherto been
silent — but now I regard it as my duty, in order to avoid
further misunderstanding or misconception, to inform Your
Highness plainly of the actual state of affairs. In former
years many persons of high position, both in and out of Ber
lin, have repeatedly expressed a wish that greater festivities
should from time to time be arranged in the interest of the
Berlin poor, as the proceeds would be of lasting assistance
to the Berlin City Mission. With the approval of His Maj
esty the Kaiser, preparations were made for a cavalry fete
under my patronage. The fete was not given on that
occasion. The idea was taken up anew this autumn, but
on account of the serious illness of my father it again fell
through, and in its place my wife offered to undertake the
patronage of a large bazaar, as she had already done two
years previously. As in the meantime the Princess, my
wife, was too greatly disturbed by the increasingly dis
quieting news of the Crown Prince, she wished that the
bazaar, too, might be postponed, as well as the other pro
jected festivities, and that a direct appeal for a great collec
tion might be addressed to all friends of the City Mission
and of those suffering from want.
With this object a larger committee was to be appointed.
To co-operate in its appointment I had friends invited
from all the provinces, and it is true that they were inten
tionally drawn from the most diverse political parties and
religious sects. On this committee the following persons, at
my proposal, took the lead: Count Stolberg,1 Minister von
1 Otto Count Stolberg-Wernigerode, born 1837; in 1890 Prince; Prussian
statesman; 1878-81, vice-president of the Cabinet and Chancellor-substi
tute; 1885-88, representative Minister of the Royal House; 1884-92,
Lord High Chamberlain. IO

PRINCE WILHELM
Puttkamer,1 Minister von Gossler,2 Count Waldersee, and
Count Hochberg,3 with their wives.
On November 28th my wife and I invited about thirty
persons to a preliminary review of the affair by Count
Waldersee. I there urged my views upon these gentlemen
and laid stress upon the fact that it was to me a matter of
the greatest interest to unite, in this work of Christian love,
people of the most diverse political parties, in order thereby
to keep the work free of all political ideas, and in this way to
incite the greatest possible number of good elements to take
part in this common work of Christianity. That it was
incumbent upon me, of all people, in my difficult, respon
sible, and thorny position, to avoid giving such a cause any
political coloring is, as I think you will agree, self-evident.
But, on the other hand, I am fully persuaded that a combina
tion of these elements, for the purpose explained, is an end
to be desired, which offers the most effective means for a
lasting campaign against Social Democracy and anarchy.
The city missions already existing in various great cities of
the Empire seemed to me to be the instruments best adapted
for this work.
I was, therefore, delighted that at this meeting of the
most diverse parties — particularly of the Liberal persuasion,
Von Benda,4 etc. — the proposal was made to extend the pro
posed work to all the great cities of the monarchy simul
taneously. Thus the Berlin City Mission would have been
only an equally privileged link in a chain of many other
co-existing city missions, and would not hold a more privi
leged position than Magdeburg or Stettin.
This I hope will make an end of the suspicion which was

1 Robert von Puttkamer (1828-1900); Prussian statesman; 1879, Minis
ter of Public Worship; 1881, Minister of the Interior; until June 8, 1888,
vice-president of the Cabinet.
2 Gustav von Gossler (1838-1902); Prussian jurist; 1881-91, Minister
of Public Worship.
s Bolko Count von Hochberg, born 1843; jurist and musician; 1886-1902,
General Intendant of the Royal Theaters in Berlin.
4 Robert von Benda (1816-99), a Liberal politician; from 1878 to 1893
vice-president of the Prussian Chamber of Deputies.
II

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
skillfully aroused by the international misrepresentations of
the press, as though a special invention of Stocker's had been
in question. It comes to this, that the intention is to place
the united city missions under the supervision and leadership
of a prominent ecclesiastic — who would at the same time be
a member of the Working Committee, on which the before-
mentioned Ministers will sit — but who would in any case not
be Stocker. Thus the Berlin City Mission would be in the
same position as all the rest in respect of the dreaded Stocker,
and he would take no further part in the business transacted
by the committee than the head of the City Mission of Leip
zig or Hamburg or Stettin. The Berlin City Mission is an
institution operating by means of the granting, by the last
General Synod, of a regular collection in the Established
Church, and also by virtue of a unanimous vote in which
even the Liberals took part. The most prominent and dis
tinguished persons of all the provinces have for years been
supporters of the City Mission Aid Societies, through whose
support and interest I hope for the greatest assistance in the
moral elevation of the masses, thanks to the co-operation of
so many precious faculties.
I have been shocked to discover that some have sought,
by means of a fictitious but extremely crafty and cleverly
calculated insistence upon the person of Stocker, to frustrate
and cast suspicion on the cause. In spite of all the remark
able work which this man has done for the monarchy and
Christendom, we have thrust him aside, as regards the asso
ciation which I have proposed, simply on account of public
opinion, and this step, which I had already permitted myself
to carry into effect, is necessitated in a still greater degree by
the extension of the work over the whole monarchy, and great
stress has already been laid upon it at the meeting itself by
Count Waldersee. For since the common task is colorless and
nonpolitical it is open to all parties to co-operate in it, and
it is even intended to appoint as the head of the Mission's
work in the country an absolutely nonpolitical personality,
to whom the separate city missions will be subordinate.
12

PRINCE WILHELM
To this end the Minister of Public Worship and Instruc
tion will be asked to advise us whether he can propose a
suitable person.
Men like Counts Stolberg and Waldersee, General Count
Kanitz, Count Hochberg, Count Ziethen-Schwerin, Von
Benda, Miquel,1 and Your Highness's truly devoted col
leagues Von Puttkamer and Von Gossler are already guaran
ties, I should think, that the business will be conducted
righteously and in accordance with instructions, and in such
a way as to promote the welfare of the country, and will
result in the constant and enduring furtherance of Your
Highness's difficult and magnificent work in the Home De
partment. Be sure that I personally am inspired only by
the desire which His Majesty has so often expressed, that
the wandering masses of the people may be won back for the
Fatherland by the joint labor of all the good elements of
every class and party in the sphere of Christian activity, a
plan which has also been most circumstantially advocated
by Your Highness. The announcement of the plan was at
first received with great applause, until the Social Democratic
and freethinking newspapers assailed it, and scattered broad
cast the most incredible and often the most shameless accu
sations. They have, at all events, done what they wanted,
arid have disconcerted and startled a number of people. I
most certainly hope, however, that as in many places my
truly nonpolitical intentions have already been conspicu
ously acknowledged, the good cause will be furthered and will
bring blessings with it, and that the vile attacks upon it
will lead to explanations and a clearing of the air.
The great and affectionate respect and the heartfelt attach
ment which I cherish for Your Highness — and for you I would
let my limbs be hewn off piecemeal, one after the other,
rather than undertake anything which would be disagreeable
to you or cause you difficulties — should, I think, be sufficient

' Johannes Miquel (1828-1901), National Liberal politician; Chief Burgo
master of Osnabriick; in 1880, of Frankfurt; from June, 1890, to May, 1901,
Prussian Minister of Finance. 13

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
guaranty that I have engaged in this work in no party
spirit. Similarly, the great confidence and warm friendship
which Your Highness has always shown me, and which I
have always repaid most gladly and thankfully, with a proud
heart, allows me to hope that Your Highness will, after this
explanation, vouchsafe me your good will in this matter,
inasmuch as I have begun this work with the purest inten
tions and the most gratifying confidence, in co-operation with
many true and noble men, and that you will not deny me
your support, which will disperse all insinuations in the most
effectual manner.
Briefly to recapitulate: A working committee will shortly
be constituted with the co-operation of the Ministers, which
will lay down the general outlines of the work, and in par
ticular will arrange for its extension throughout the whole
country. The provinces and provincial capitals will send
plenipotentiaries who will represent the provinces and
direct the work therein. The work of the Mission will be
intrusted to a qualified person, a member of the committee
(perhaps a general superintendent?), who will have the
joint missions under his control. The committee will
inform me from time to time what is determined upon. I
am not even closely connected with the work as patron, but
only remotely as a well-wisher and promoter.
While concluding my letter herewith, I wish Your High
ness a happy New Year, and may it be granted to you to
lead the nation onward in your accustomed wise care, whether
in peace or in war. Should the latter come to pass, I hope
you will not forget that here are ready the hand and the
sword of a man who is fully conscious that Frederick the
Great 1 was his ancestor, and fought alone against three
times as many as we have against us now; and who has not
in vain worked hard at his ten years of military training!
For the rest, alleweg guet Zollre!
In sincerest friendship
Wilhelm Prince of Prussia.

1 Born January 24,1712; King of PrussiaMay3l,l74o; died August 17,1780.

PRINCE WILHELM
A few weeks earlier he had informed me of
another purpose in the following letter:
Potsdam, November 2Q, 1887.
The Marble Palace.
I take the liberty of sending Your Highness herewith a
document which I have written with a view to the not im
possible eventuality of the early or unexpected decease of
the Kaiser and my father. It is a brief proclamation to
my future colleagues, the princes of the German Empire.
The standpoint from which I have written it is briefly the
following: The imperial dignity is still new, and the change in it is
the first to occur. By this change the power passes from a
powerful Prince, who played a prominent part in the history
of the creation and foundation of the Empire, to a young
and comparatively unknown ruler. The princes are almost
all of my father's generation, and humanly speaking they can
not be blamed if they find it unpleasant to come under so
youthful a new sovereign. For this reason the succession
to the throne by inheritance (by God's grace) must be pre
sented to the princes emphatically as a self-evident fait
accompli; indeed, it must be done so that they have no time
to brood much over the matter. For this reason it is my
purpose and my desire that after perusal by Your Highness,
and subsequent revision, this proclamation shall be de
posited, sealed, in every Legation, and in the event of my
accession to the throne it will immediately be handed to the
princes concerned by the diplomatic representatives. My
relations with all my cousins in the Empire are excellent;
I have, at one time or another, discussed the future with
almost all of them; and through my relationship with the
greater number of these sovereigns I have sought to create
a very agreeable basis of friendly intercourse. Your High
ness will note this in the passage where I speak of support
by word and deed, which means that elderly uncles must
not put a spoke in the wheels of their dear young nephew!
I have often exchanged ideas with my father concerning
IS

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
the position of a future Kaiser, and I very soon perceived
that we hold very different views. He was always of opinion
that it was for him alone to command, and for the princes to
obey, while I advocated the view that one must not regard
the princes as a troop of vassals, but rather as a sort of
colleagues, to whose remarks and wishes one would quietly
give ear; whether one would fulfill them is rather a different
matter. It will be easy for me, as the nephew of these
gentlemen, to win them over by little acts of complaisance,
and to make them tractable by means of eventual visits of
ceremony. If I have first of all convinced them as to my
type and character and have got them well in hand they will
then obey me all the more readily. For I must be obeyed!
But obedience is better obtained by persuasion and confi
dence than by compulsion!
In conclusion, I express the hope that Your Highness may
once more have recovered the desired sleep, and remain ever
Your truly devoted
Wilhelm, Prince of Prussia.
I answered both letters together in the following
communication : Friedrichsruh, January 6, 1888.
Your Royal Highness will graciously pardon me in that I
have not already answered your gracious letters of Novem
ber 29th and December 21st. I am so worn out with pain
and sleeplessness that I can only with difficulty cope with
the daily budget, and every attempt to work increases this
weakness. I cannot answer these letters of yours other
wise than in my own hand, and my hand does not write as
readily as of old. Moreover, in order to reply to these
letters in a satisfactory fashion, I should have to write a
historico-political work. But in accordance with the excel
lent proverb, that the best is the enemy of the good, I will
answer them now as far as my energies will allow, rather than
wait for greater energies in disrespectful silence. I hope
16

PRINCE WILHELM
shortly to be in Berlin, and then to communicate by word of
mouth what it exceeds my capacities to write.
I have the honor submissively to remind Your Royal
Highness of the projected document of November 29th of
last year, and I should like respectfully to advise you to
burn it without further delay. If a draft of this kind were
to become known prematurely, more than His Majesty the
Kaiser and His Royal Highness the Crown Prince would be
painfully affected by it; and secrecy is always uncertain
nowadays. As it is, the only existing example, which I have
kept here carefully under lock and key, may fall into dis
honest hands; but if some twenty copies were prepared
and deposited at seven different Legations, the possibilities
of unfortunate accidents and imprudent men would be mul
tiplied accordingly. And if finally the use intended were
made of these documents, the fact, which would then become
known, that they were drafted before the decease of the
reigning sovereign, and had been kept in readiness, would
create anything but a good impression. I have been greatly
rejoiced that Your Royal Highness, in opposition to the
strict ideas of your illustrious father, recognizes the political
importance of the voluntary co-operation of the federated
princes in the aims of the Empire. We should already have
fallen during the past seventeen years of parliamentary
government, had not the princes stood firmly and voluntarily
by the Empire, because they themselves are contented so
long as they retain what the Empire guarantees to them;
and in the future, when the halo of 1870 has faded, the
security of the Empire and its monarchical institutions will
depend even more than now upon the unity of the princes.
The latter are not subjects, but confederates of the Kaiser,
and if the Federal Treaty is not observed they will not feel
pledged to it, and will seek support, as they did formerly,
from Russia, Austria, and France, as soon as the occasion
appears favorable, just as they will always prefer to assume
a nationalist policy so long as the Kaiser is the stronger.
Thus it was a thousand years ago, and so will it be if the old
17

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
dynastic jealousy is again aroused. Acheronta movebunt;
even the Parliamentary Opposition would acquire a very
different power if the unity which has hitherto obtained in
the Federal Council were to come to an end and Bavaria
and Saxony were to make common cause with Richter and
Windthorst. It is also a highly correct policy which makes
Your Royal Highness wish to rank first among your royal
cousins. But I would respectfully advise you to do this
with the assurance that the new Kaiser will respect and pro
tect the "stipulated rights of the confederate princes" just
as conscientiously as his predecessors. It will not be ad
visable to lay particular stress upon the "erection" and
"union" of the Empire as an imminent achievement, since
by this the princes will understand a further centralization
and a diminution of the rights remaining to them under the
treaty. And if Saxony, Bavaria, and Wiirtemburg were to
hold back, the spell of the national union, with its tremen
dous influence even in the new provinces of Prussia, and par
ticularly abroad, would be broken. The nationalist ideal is
more violently opposed to the Social and other Democrats
than the Christian ideal; perhaps not in the country, but in
the cities. I deplore it, but I see things as they are. How
ever, I look for the firmest support of the monarchy not to
these two ideals, but to a monarchical principle whose up
holder is resolved not only to co-operate diligently in times
of peace in the governmental business of the country, but
also, in critical times, to fall, sword in hand, fighting for his
right, on the steps of his throne, rather than yield. Such a
ruler no German soldier will ever leave in the lurch, and the
old saying of 1848 is still true: "Only soldiers avail against
democrats." Priests might do much harm and be of little
help; the most pious nations are the most revolutionary,
and in 1848, in devout Pomerania, all the clergy were on
the side of the government, yet the whole of Lower Pome
rania elected socialistic representatives: mere day-laborers,
publicans, and provision merchants.1
¦Literally egg merchants. {Trans.) 18

PRINCE WILHELM
Now I come to the contents of your gracious letter of the
21st of last month, and I should prefer to begin with the con
clusion of that letter, and the expression of the consciousness
that Frederick the Great was your ancestor, and I beg Your
Royal Highness to follow him not merely as a general, but
also as a statesman. It is not in the nature of the great king
to set one's trust upon such factors as that of the Home
Mission; the times are certainly different to-day, but the
results to be obtained by speeches and societies will not
afford, even to-day, any lasting foundation for monarchical
institutions; of them the saying "soon come, soon gone" is
true. The eloquence of opponents, malicious criticism,
tactless co-operation, the German love of quarreling and lack
of discipline, will readily prepare a disastrous issue for the
best and most honorable cause. With such enterprises as
the "Home Mission," particularly in its expansion as in
tended, Your Royal Highness's name, in my humble opinion,
should not be so closely connected that it might be involved
in any possible failure. Yet the consequences are beyond
all computation if the society extends to all the great cities,
and further adopts all the principles and tendencies which
are already extant in the local associations, or may be forced
upon them. In such associations what finally matters is
not their material aim, but the fact that the leading per
sonalities impress upon them their sign-manual and their
control. They will be orators and clergymen, and very
often ladies, even, factors which can only be utilized with
circumspection if they are to be politically effective in the
state; and I should not like to know that the people's
opinion of their future sovereign was dependent upon their
good behavior and their tact. Every mistake, every blunder,
every example of excess of zeal in the activities of the society
will give the republican newspapers occasion to identify the
royal patron of the society with its errors.
Your Royal Highness cites a very large number of re
spectable names as those of persons in agreement with Your
Royal Highness's sympathies. Among them I find none at
19

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
all of persons to whom I should care to intrust, singly, the
responsibility for the future of the country; but then the
question arises, how many of these gentlemen would have
interested themselves in the Home Mission if they had not
been aware that Your Royal Highness and the Princess were
interested in the cause? I am not one to exert myself to
arouse suspicion where confidence exists; but a monarch, as
a matter of experience, cannot avoid all suspicion, and Your
Royal Highness is too near that high office not to test every
person he meets, as to whether the cause now under con
sideration is the thing that matters, or the future monarch
and his favor. Those who wish to be honored by Your
Royal Highness's confidence in the future will already, to
day, endeavor to establish a bond, a relationship, between
themselves and the future Kaiser: and how many are with
out some secret wish or ambition? And who is there for
whom, in our monarchical society, the endeavor to achieve
some sort of closer relationship with the monarch will remain
ineffectual? The Red Cross and other societies would not
find so many supporters without Her Majesty the Kaiserin;
the desire to be somehow connected with the Court comes
to the aid of Christian charity. This is very gratifying and
does not hurt the Kaiserin. But it is otherwise with the
heir to the throne. Among the names which Your Royal
Highness cites there are none at all without some political
flavor, and behind the alacrity to further the wishes of the
royal patron is the hope of obtaining the support of the
future Kaiser, either for the individual or for the faction to
which he belongs. Your Royal Highness will have to make
use of men and parties, after you have ascended the throne,
with circumspection, and with varying tactics, according to
your own judgment; without the possibility of surrendering,
outwardly, to one of our factions. There are seasons of
liberalism and seasons of reaction, and even of the rule of
force. In order to preserve the free hand which is necessary
at such times Your Royal Highness, as successor to the
throne, must beware lest public opinion should regard you
20

PRINCE WILHELM
as adhering to a party movement. This would not fail to
occur if Your Royal Highness were to stand in an organic
relation to the Home Mission as its patron. The names of
Benda and Miquel are for me only ornamental trimmings;
both are future ministerial candidates; but in the sphere of
the Mission they would soon give up the race in favor of
Stocker and other clergymen. In the very name of "Mis
sion" there is a prognostic that the clergy will subscribe to
the enterprise, even if the working member of the committee
were not a general superintendent. I have nothing against
Stocker; he has for me only one defect as a politician —
namely, that he is a priest; and as a priest his only fault is
that he dabbles in politics. I can take pleasure in his cour
age and energy, and his eloquence, but he has an unlucky
hand; the results which he obtains are only momentary;
he is not able to establish them permanently; every equally
good speaker, and there are such, snatches them from him;
it will be impossible to separate him from the Home Mission,
and his ready wit assures him of an authoritative influence
therein over his colleagues and the lay members. Certainly,
he has hitherto acquired a reputation which he will find more
and more difficult to increase and maintain; every power in
the state is stronger without him than with him, but in the
arena of party conflict he is a Samson. He is at the head of
those elements which are in flat opposition to the traditions
of Frederick the Great, and on which a government of the
German Empire could place no dependence. With his press
and his little tale of supporters he has made life burdensome
to me and has made the great Conservative party insecure
and disunited. But the "Home Mission" is a soil from
which he, like the giant Antaeus, will continually draw fresh
strength, and on which he will be invincible. The task of
Your Royal Highness and of your future Ministers would
be made essentially more difficult if it were to include the
advocacy of the "Home Mission" and its organs. The
Evangelical clergyman, as soon as he feels that he is strong
enough, is as much addicted to theocracy as a Catholic, and
21

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
it is all the more difficult to deal with him in that he has no
Pope over him. I am a devout Christian, but I fear that I
might go astray in my belief if I, like the Catholic, were
confined to the mediation of a priest between me and my God.
Your Royal Highness, in your letter of the 2 ist ult.,
expresses the opinion that I had occasion to make inquiry
as to the question before us before I heard from Your Royal
Highness; but I was first informed of the matter by Your
Royal Highness's last letter, and my reply has no other
basis than the contents of the said letter. What I knew of
it before that was indeed enough to cause me some anxiety
as to the press attacks upon Your Royal Highness, but I
had too little belief in the importance of the affair to apply
directly to Your Royal Highness. It was your letter of the
21st that first persuaded me of the contrary.
Your Royal Highness will accept with indulgence the
candid frankness with which I express my opinion of the
matter under consideration. The confidence with which
Your Royal Highness has always honored me, and your
assurance of my respectful attachment, induce me to count
upon this indulgence. I am old and worn out and have no
longer any other ambition than that of retaining the favor
of the Kaiser and his successors, should I outlive my master.
My sense of duty commands me honorably to serve the
Imperial House and the country as long as I can, and it is
part of this service that in answer to your letter I should
urgently dissuade Your Royal Highness from assuming,
before your accession to the throne, the shackles of any sort
of connection with political or ecclesiastical societies. All
associations whose initiation and whose activities are de
pendent upon individual members of the same, and upon
their good will and personal opinions, may be employed
very effectively as implements for attacking and destroying
the existing state of things, but not for construction and
preservation. Every glance of comparison at the results
of the activities of conservative and revolutionary societies
convinces me of this regrettable truth. With us only the
22

PRINCE WILHELM
king, at the head of the Executive, is qualified, by way of
legislation, to undertake the positive creation and main
tenance of reforms of an enduring nature. The Imperial
Message relating to social reforms would have remained a
dead letter if its realization had been anticipated by the
activities of free associations; they might very well exercise
the function of critics, and utter complaints of wrongs, but
they could not remedy the latter. The members of these
societies are able to bear the certain failure of their enter
prises all the more easily in that every one of them after
ward impeaches the others; but an heir to the throne, as
patron, will suffer more severely in the opinion of the public.
To be a fellow member of the society with Your Royal
Highness is, for every other member of the society, honorable
and useful, without any risk; only for Your Royal Highness
the reverse of this situation is true; every member feels
himself uplifted and assumes an air of importance as being
associated, through the society, with the heir to the throne,
and it is only the latter who has, for all his reward for the
importance which he bestows upon the society, nothing but
the danger of failure through the fault of others. From a
cutting from the Freisinnige Zeitung which reached me to
day and is now lying before me Your Royal Highness will
graciously perceive how the democracy is already endeavoring
to identify you with the so-called Christian Social faction.
It prints, with wide spacing, the phrases by which Your
Royal Highness's relations with this faction, and my own,
are to be brought before the public. The Freisinnige Zeitung
assuredly does not do this out of good will, or in order to do
the Kaiser's government a service. The "Religious and
Moral Education of Youth" is in itself an honorable aim,
but I fear that beneath this profession other aims, of a po
litical and ecclesiastical tendency, will be pursued. The
false insinuation of Pastor Seydel, that my political opinions
are the same as his own, and that I regard him and his col
leagues in the first place as Christians, will compel me to
contradict him, and then it will become evident that the
23

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
situation existing between these gentlemen and myself
is much the same as that existing between myself and
every other faction in opposition to His Majesty's present
government. I am in truth still in some danger of writing a book; I
have suffered too much, during the past twenty years, from
the poisonous views of the gentry of the Kreuzzeitung and
the evangelical Windthorst1 to be able to speak of them
briefly. I close this overlong letter with my dutiful and
heartfelt thanks for the favor and the gracious confidence
of which Your Royal Highness's letter gives proof.
To this I received the following reply: Potsdam,
January 14, 1888.
I am in receipt of Your Highness's letter, and express my
best thanks for the thorough and circumstantial develop
ment of the standpoint from which you believe that you
ought to dissuade me from supporting the Home Mission.
I can assure Your Highness that I have taken all possible
pains to make your point of view my own. Before all, I
fully and completely recognize the necessity of withholding
myself from close contact, to say nothing of identification,
with definite political party movements. But this has
always been a principle of mine, by which I have strictly
shaped my life and conduct. At the same time I cannot,
with the best will in the world, convince myself that any
sort of political "taking sides" can be recognized in my
furtherance of the efforts of the Home Mission. This was,
is, and, so far as in us lies, will always in future remain
simply and solely a work of charity which looks to the
spiritual health and sickness of the poorer classes; and I
cannot, in spite of your letter, abandon my confident
opinion that Your Highness yourself, upon closer con
sideration, will not refuse to admit the justice of this
1 Ludwig Windthorst (1812-91), Hanoverian solicitor; Minister, then
leader of the Center Party in the Prussian Chamber of Deputies and the
Reichstag. 24

PRINCE WILHELM
assumption. It is accordingly impossible, after the full
est consideration of the objections advanced by Your High
ness, to withdraw myself from a work of whose importance
for the general weal I am firmly convinced — a conviction
which I am assured is now widespread and well founded by
the countless letters and addresses from all parts of the king
dom, particularly from the Catholics and the lower laboring
classes of the population — yet I am far from unwilling to
recognize, with Your Highness, that it is desirable and
necessary to remove by a spontaneous action the grounds of
the erroneous supposition that this is a matter of favoring
individual political efforts. To this end I shall allow Court
Chaplain Stocker to decide to withdraw from the official
leadership of the City Mission, and this will be made public
in a fitting manner, not compromising to himself. Before
such a manifestation, I think, every aspersion upon my
intentions and my position must necessarily be silenced
— if not, then woe to them if I have to give orders! — and
Your Highness will at the same time be disposed to recognize
what a high value I set upon dispersing, as far as I am able,
even the slightest shadows of a difference of opinion betwen us.
Wilhelm, Prince of Prussia.
The foregoing correspondence evoked the first
passing fit of irritability on the part of the Prince
toward myself. He had believed that I should
respond to his letter with an acknowledgment in
the style of his aspiring followers, while I had held
it to be my duty to warn him, in my autograph
letter, which may perhaps be considered a trifle
didactic and whose length considerably exceeded
my capacity for work, of the exertions by which
persons and cliques were seeking to assure them
selves of the patronage of the heir to the throne.
The Prince's answer, both in its form and in its
3 25

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
contents, left me in no doubt whatsoever that the
lack of recognition accorded to his efforts, and my
warning criticism, had put him out of humor. In
the concluding part of his letter he expresses, in a
princely fashion, that which he was afterward to
express in the imperial fashion, "Whosoever
opposes me, him will I shatter."
When I now look back I assume that the Kaiser,
during the twenty-one months wheu I was his
Chancellor, was only with difficulty able to sup
press his inclination to get rid of an inherited
mentor; until this inclination suddenly exploded,
and a separation which, if I had known the
Kaiser's wish, I would have brought about with
an avoidance of all external sensation, was forced
upon me suddenly, in an injurious and, I might
say, an insulting fashion.
Nevertheless, events were so far in correspond
ence with my advice that participation in the
proposed Christian work was, to begin with, con
fined to less and less exclusive circles. The fact
that the preliminary scene, of which I had disap
proved, had taken place in Count Waldersee's
house contributed to put this prominent person
ality even more out of humor with the Prince's
circle than would otherwise have been the case.
At an earlier period I had for a long time been
friendly with him, and had learned to estimate his
value, in the Franco-Prussian War, as a soldier and
a political colleague; so that later it offended my
ideas of what was fitting to recommend him to the
Kaiser for a military position of a political nature.
26

PRINCE WILHELM
After further official contact with the count I be
came doubtful of his political suitability, and as
Count Moltke,1 in his position as Chief of the
General Staff, required an ad latus, I had occasion
to inquire into the opinions prevailing in military
circles before I submitted my views to the Kaiser,
as by him commanded. The result was that I
called His Majesty's attention to General von
Caprivi,2 although I knew that the latter had not
as good an opinion of me as I had of him. My
idea that Caprivi ought to be Moltke's successor
was frustrated, I believe, in the last resort, by the
difficulty of establishing, between two such inde
pendent characters, the modus vivendi which was
necessary in a dual control of the General Staff.
This task seemed easy of solution to the highest
circles, inasmuch as the position of an ad latus to
Count Moltke would be conferred upon General
von Waldersee; and in his new position the latter
would be brought into closer contact with the
monarch and his successors upon the throne. In
the sphere of nonmilitary politics his name first
became known in wider circles — and, to tell the
truth, in connection with that of Court Chaplain
Stocker — through the discussion relating to the
Home Mission which was held in his house.
On New- Year's Eve, 1887, at the Lehrter railway
station, from which he was traveling to Friedrichs-
1 Hellmut Count von Moltke, General Field Marshal, born October 26,
1800; died April 24, 1891.
2 Leo Count von Caprivi, born February 24, 1831; died February 6, 1899;
1882, Divisional Commander in Metz; 1883-88, Chief of the Admiralty;
1888, Army Corps Commander in Hanover; 1890-94, Imperial Chancellor.
27

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
ruh, my son met the Prince, who was on the look
out for him, and begged him to tell me that the
Stocker affair was now quite harmless; he added
that my son must be thoroughly sick of the affair.
but he, the Prince, had interceded for him.

CHAPTER II
THE GRAND DUKE OF BADEN
According to my observations, which were
founded on His Majesty's statements, the Grand
Duke of Baden,1 who had supported me in a
willing and effectual manner at an earlier period,
had, as far as I was concerned, a disturbing influ
ence upon the Kaiser's resolutions during the
latter period of my administration. Amenable
earlier than most of the other confederate princes
to the persuasion that the German question could
be solved only by the furtherance of Prussia's
efforts toward hegemony, he came to oppose the
Nationalist policy with all his might — not with the
assiduity of the Duke of Coburg,2 but with greater
consideration for the Prussian dynasty, to which
he was nearly related, and without the fitful inter
course with the Emperor Napoleon, the Court of
Vienna, and the ruling circles in England and Bel
gium which the duke maintained. His political
relations were confined within the limits which
the German interests and his family connection
indicated to him. He had no need, real or appar
ent, to concern himself in the more important
1 Friedrich I, Grand Duke of Baden, brother-in-law to Wilhelm I, born
September 9, 1826; died September 28, 1907.
8 Ernst II, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, bora 1818, died 1893.
29

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
transactions of European politics, and was not,
like the Coburg brothers, exposed to the tempta
tions which resided in their belief in their own su
perior capacity for the handling of political ques
tions. For this reason, too, his environment had
more influence upon his views than upon the Co-
burgish overestimation of self displayed by Duke
Ernst and Prince Albert,1 which had its roots in
the halo of wisdom that surrounded the first King
of the Belgians,2 because he had adroitly looked
after his own interests.
There had been times when the grand duke,
under the stress of external conditions, was not in
a position to give practical proof of his conviction
of the manner in which the German question ought
to be solved; times which were connected with
the name of the Minister von Meysenbug3 and
the year 1866. In both cases he found himself
confronted by a force majeure. In the chief in
stance he was always inclined to obey the best —
the Nationalistic — impulses of his craving for popu
larity, and his effort in this direction could only
suffer by a parallel effort to obtain recognition in
the civil sphere, in the direction indicated by the
example of Louis Philippe, even where the two
could with difficulty be reconciled. That the
grand duke was, in the difficult time of the so
journ at Versailles, when I was in conflict with
1 Albert, Duke of Saxe-Coburg, Prince Consort of Queen Victoria, born
1819, died 1861.
2 Leopold I, Prince of Saxe-Coburg, born 1790; first King of Belgium 183 1 ;
died 1865.
3 Wilhelm Freiherr von Meysenbug (1813-66); 1851, Minister of Baden
in Berlin; 1856-60, Prime Minister of Baden.
30

THE GRAND DUKE OF BADEN
foreign, feminine, and military influences, the only
one among the German princes who gave me his
support, before the King, in the matter of the im
perial dignity, and that he helped me actively
and effectively to overcome his Prussian particu
laristic reluctance is a well-known fact. The
Crown Prince, where his father was concerned,
displayed his wonted discretion, which prevented
his effective assertion of his Nationalist convic
tions. The good will of the grand duke was mine for
decades after the peace, if I ignore the temporary
differences which arose when the interests of Baden,
as he or his officials conceived them, clashed with
the imperial policy.
Herr von Roggenbach, who for a time passed for
the spiritus rector of Baden politics, had, in my
presence, at the time of the peace negotiations of
1866, expressed himself as in favor of a diminution
of Bavaria and an enlargement of Baden. To him
was traced back the rumor put about in 1881 that
Baden was to be made a kingdom.
That the grand duke wished to enlarge the
area, if not of his territory, at least of his activities,
was made manifest later by the movement in
favor of the restoration of military and political
relations between Baden and Alsace-Lorraine. I
refused to co-operate in the execution of such a
plan, because I could not avoid the impression
that Baden's position, as regards the improvement
of the situation in Alsace, and the transformation
of French into German sympathies, was perhaps
31

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
even less well qualified, and in any case not more
advantageous, than that of the present imperial
administration would be.
In the administration of Baden the kind of
bureaucracy adapted to South German habits —
one might call it a government by clerks — was
even more rigorously developed than in the other
South German states, including Nassau. Bureau
cratic overdevelopment is not unknown in con
nection with North Germany also, especially in
the higher circles, and will, in consequence of the
present administration of local self-government
{lucus a non lucendo), penetrate even into rural
circles; but hitherto its adepts have with us been
prominent officials, whose sense of justice is made
more acute by their degree of education; yet in
South Germany the importance of the official
class, which with us belongs to the subordinate
classes, or is on the fringe of them, is greater, and
the government policy, which even before 1848
was calculated more with an eye to popularity
than was usual elsewhere in Germany, proved, in
time of disorder, to be precisely that which had
established itself least firmly, and whose root con
nection with the dynasty was the weakest. Baden
was in those years the only state in which the
experience of Duke Karl of Brunswick1 was re
peated, inasmuch as the sovereign had to leave
his country.

1 Karl Duke of Brunswick, born 1804; succeeded 1823; on September 7,
1830, was driven out of the country by a national uprising; died in Geneva
1873. 32

THE GRAND DUKE OF BADEN
The ruling sovereign had grown up in the tradi
tion that striving for popularity and accommo
dating oneself to every movement of public opinion
is the foundation of the modern art of govern
ment. Louis Philippe was a sort of pattern for
the external attitude of the constitutional mon
arch, and since he had played his part as such on
the European stage of Paris, he acquired, for the
German princes, a significance not unlike that
possessed by the Paris fashions for German ladies.
That even the military side of the political life of
the state had not remained untouched by the
system of the Citizen King was shown by the
revolt of the Baden troops, which so far had not
occurred in so ignominious a fashion in any other
German state. In these retrospective medita
tions I have always had my misgivings as to co
operating to the end that the development of
affairs in the imperial territory1 shall give way to
the governmental policy of Baden.
However Nationalistic in his ideas the grand
duke might be when left to himself, he was, never
theless, not always able to resist the particularist
policy of his officials, based upon material in
terests, and in the event of a conflict it would
naturally be difficult for him to sacrifice the local
interests of Baden to those of the Empire.
A latent conflict lay in the rivalry of the im
perial railways with the railways of Baden, and
this conflict became apparent in connection with
Baden's relations with Switzerland. To the Baden
1 Alsace-Lorraine. (Trans.) 33

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
officials the cultivation and reinforcement of Social
Democracy in the Swiss cantons was less incon
venient than prejudice to, or complaints from, the
numerous subjects of Baden who were members of
the party and were making a livelihood in Switzer
land. That the imperial government, in its be
havior to its neighbor state, pursued no other aim
than that of supporting the Conservative ele
ments in Switzerland against the influence and the
propagandist pressure of foreign and domestic
Social Democracy was a fact of which the Baden
government could entertain no doubt. It was
said that we were negotiating, with the most
respectable Swiss citizens, an agreement which
was unexpressed, but was at the same time com
plied with, and which, thanks to the support
which we guaranteed our friends, led practically
to the result that the central political administra
tion of Switzerland obtained a firmer position and
a stricter control than of old in respect of the Ger
man Socialists and the Democratic politics of the
cantons. Whether Herr von Marschall1 had made this
state of affairs clear in his report to Karlsruhe I
do not know; I do not remember that he ever
sought or had a conversation with me in the seven
years during which he was the diplomatic repre
sentative of Baden. But through his intimacy
1 Adolf Hermann Freiherr von Marschall von Bieberstein (1842-1912);
a Baden jurist; 1871, Attorney General; 1878-81, Member of the Reichs
tag; 1883-90, Baden's Minister in Berlin, and Plenipotentiary to the
Federal Council; 1890, Secretary of State of the Foreign Office; 1894,
Prussian Minister of State; 1897, German Ambassador in Constantinople.
34

THE GRAND DUKE OF BADEN
with my colleague Boetticher1 and his relations
with his colleagues at the Foreign Office he per
sonally was, at any rate, fully informed. I was
told that he had sought for an even longer period
to win the sympathies of the grand duke and to
create an antipathy against those persons who had
obstructed his view upward. I remember, in
connection with him, a remark of Count Harry
Arnim's, made at a time when the latter used
often to converse with me.
The traffic across the French frontier, again,
from the standpoint of Baden, is to be regarded
and treated otherwise than according to the im
perial policy. The number of the citizens of Baden
who find employment in Switzerland and Alsace
as laborers, shop assistants, and waiters, and who,
apart from Alsace, are interested in an undis
turbed connection with Lyons and Paris, is very
considerable, and it was scarcely to be expected
of the grand ducal officials that they would sub
ordinate their administrative affairs to an im
perial policy whose political aims were beneficial
to the Empire, but whose local disadvantages
were burdensome to Baden.
From such causes of friction arose a press
campaign between the semiofficial and even
official organs of Baden and the Norddeutsche
Allgemeine Zeitung.

1 Karl Heinrich von Boetticher (1833-1907); Prussian jurist; 1869-72
in the Ministry of the Interior; then in the Provincial Administration, and
a Conservative member of the Reichstag; 1880, Secretary of State of the
Interior and Prussian Minister of State; from 1881 Chancellor-substitute;
1888-97, vice-president of the Prussian Cabinet.
35

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
In respect of its general tone neither side was
free from blame. The controversial style of the
Baden newspapers was like that of a public prose
cutor, and departed as far from the rules of or
dinary courtesy as did that of the Berlin periodical,
which I could not keep free of the acrid language
which was a peculiarity of my then friend Herr von
Rottenburg, the head of the Imperial Chancellery,
as a gentleman learned in the law, for I had not
always time to concern myself with the editorial
offices of publicist journals, even in the way of
controlling them merely.
I remember that late one evening in 1885 I sud
denly received a command from the Crown Prince
to go to the Dutch Palace, where I found His
Royal Highness and the grand duke, the latter
in an ungracious mood, as a result of an article in
the Norddeutsche- Allgemeine Zeitung, which was
engaged in a controversy with the semiofficial
journal of Baden. I have no fuller recollection of
the circumstances of this controversy, nor do I
know whether the article referred to in the Berlin
newspaper was officially inspired. It might have
been, without coming to my knowledge before
going to press; the occasions on which I found
time and inclination to influence the output of the
press were much rarer than the press, and there
fore the public, assumed. I did so only in con
nection with such questions or personal attacks as
had a particular interest for me, and weeks and
months went by, even when I was in Berlin,
without my having found either time or inclina-
36

THE GRAND DUKE OF BADEN
tion to read the articles for which I was held
responsible, to say nothing of writing them or
having them written. But the grand duke, like
everybody else, regarded me as responsible for the
expressions of the journal referred to in connec
tion with this (to him) vexatious affair.
The manner in which he reacted to this per
formance on the part of the press was peculiar.
The Kaiser was at that time seriously ill, and the
grand duchess had come to look after him. In
these circumstances the grand duke had made the
article in question an occasion for giving his
brother-in-law, the Crown Prince, to understand
that in consequence of this infamous outrage he
would immediately leave Berlin with his wife and
would not conceal the reason for his departure.
Now as a matter of fact the attentions which the
Kaiser received from his daughter were not neces
sary to him as a patient, but were a demonstra
tion of filial affection which he endured with
knightly courtesy. But it was just this peculiar
characteristic of his which was predominant in his
relations with his wife and daughter, and every
discord within the narrow family circle had a
depressing and disheartening effect upon him.
I therefore did my utmost to spare the sick
sovereign any experiences of this kind, and — well,
what it was that I did I no longer remember, but
at all events I did all that was possible, in a con
ference of more than two hours, with the vigorous
and effectual assistance of the Crown Prince, to
pacify his royal brother-in-law. Probably the rec-
37

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
onciliation was effected by my protest against
any hypothesis of official ill will in the publication
of a new and tendencious article in the Nord-
deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung. I remember that it
dealt with the criticism of some measure of the
Baden Cabinet, and that the irritability of the
grand duke allowed me to conjecture that he
had, in this particular case, personally interfered
in the business of the state, as he held such inter
ference to be compatible with the observation of
constitutional principles.
I learned from the court circles in Berlin and
Karlsruhe that the cause of the change which
seemed to occur in the grand duke's mood during
the latter part of my official activity was the fact
that while he was present in Berlin, harassed by
the affair concerning himself and his wife, I had
not given sufficient attention to the intercourse
usual in court life. I do not know whether this
is correct, and I am not qualified to judge how far
the intrigues of the Baden court had been at
work, whose mouthpiece, I was told, in addition to
Roggenbach, was Court Marshal von Gemmingen,
whose daughter the Freiherr von Marschall had
married. It is possible that the latter, the
Attorney General of Baden, and shortly afterward
the representative of Baden on the Federal Coun
cil, did not regard his career as ending with his
promotion to the presidency of the Foreign
Office of the German Empire; and the fact is
that between him and Herr von Boetticher, during
the last part of my administration, an intimacy
38

THE GRAND DUKE OF BADEN
had developed which was based upon a common
and feminine interest in questions of rank and
precedence. Although, under the repeated attacks of ill
humor to which the grand duke was subject, his
good will for me gradually cooled, yet I do not
believe that he consciously aimed at my removal
from office. His influence over the Kaiser, which
I have mentioned as interfering with my policy,
made itself felt in questions of the Kaiser's attitude
toward the working classes, and may be traced
in connection with the Socialist laws. I have been
credibly informed that the Kaiser, in the winter
of 1890, before he suddenly decided to abandon
his intention of offering resistance, as I had
counseled, consulted the grand duke, and that
the latter, in the spirit of the traditions of Baden,
recommended the winning over rather than the
overcoming of the adversary; but he had been
surprised and displeased when the change in His
Majesty's intentions led to my dismissal.
His advice would not have taken effect if His
Majesty had not been inclined to take steps to
insure that a proper appreciation of suitable action
on the part of the monarch should not be further
prejudiced by any doubt as to whether the Kaiser's
resolutions originated with the Kaiser or with the
Chancellor. The "new ruler" felt the need not
only of getting rid of his mentor, but of per
mitting of no eclipse in the present or the future,
such as might ensue from the unrolling of a cloud
from the Chancellery, perhaps like, the cloud
39

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
evoked by Richelieu or Mazarin. An incidental
remark made by Count Waldersee at breakfast,
in the presence of the aide-de-camp, Adolf von
Biilow, had made a lasting impression on him. It
was to the effect " that Frederick the Great would
never have been the Great if on his accession to
power he had found and retained a Minister of
Bismarck's importance and authority."
After my dismissal the grand duke sided against
me. When in February, 1891, the municipal au
thorities of Baden-Baden were moved to offer me
the freedom of the city, he sent for the chief
burgomaster and called him to account for such
want of consideration to the Kaiser. A little later
he had a conversation with Maxime du Camp, the
author, who was living in Baden-Baden. The
author brought me into the conversation, but the
grand duke cut him short with the remark,
"II nest qu'un vieux radoteur" ("He is only an
old driveler").

CHAPTER III
BOETTICHER
Kaiser Wilhelm II felt no need of collaborators
with opinions of their own, who could approach
him, in their own department, with the authority
of expert knowledge and experience. The word
"experience" on my lips would irritate him, and
occasionally evoke the remark: "Experience?
Yes, of course, I haven't any." In order to make
expert suggestions to his Ministers he would ap
ply to their subordinates and obtain information
from them, or from private people, on the basis of
which he might take the initiative in his relations
with the departmental Ministers. Besides Hinz-
peter1 and others I found Herr Boetticher especially
useful to me in this connection.
I had known his father,2 and in 185 1 had sat
with him upon the Bund, and was attracted by
the exceptionally pleasing appearance of the son,
who was more talented than the father, while his
inferior in honesty and firmness of character.
Through my influence with Kaiser Wilhelm I, I

'Georg Ernst Hinzpeter (1827-1907), Doctor of Philosophy and gymna
sium teacher; from 1866 Prince Wilhelm's tutor; an adviser and helper of
the Kaiser, and in 1904 a member of the Prussian House of Peers.
1 Doctor Boetticher, from 1850 Prussian Commissary of the Interior in
the Central Administration of the Bundestag at Frankfurt.
4 41

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
furthered the son's career fairly quickly; he be
came, on my recommendation, governor — Ober-
prdsident — in Schleswig, Secretary of State, and
Minister of State, entirely through my efforts,
but he was Minister always only in the capacity of
my amanuensis ; an aide-de-camp, or adjutant, as
they say in St. Petersburg, who, by the Kaiser's
wish, had merely to represent my policy in the
Cabinet and the Federal Council, especially when
I was unable to be present. He had no other ad
ministrative duties than the task of supporting
me. This was a position which, at my suggestion,
was first held by the Minister Delbriick, and which
was finally created, in order to represent and
relieve me, by His Majesty. Delbriick was presi
dent of the Federal, later the Imperial, Chancel
lery, where he was in constitutional law the highest
responsible ministerial officer of the Imperial
Chancellor, and was then appointed Minister, so
that he might support the Imperial Chancellor in
the Cabinet and represent him in his absence.
Delbriick had represented my views in a conscien
tious manner, even when his own ideas upon cer
tain questions differed from mine, and retired
because this representation was in such definite
contradiction to his own convictions that he did
not believe it possible to overlook it. On his own
recommendation he was followed by the Hessian
ex-Minister, Von Hofmann, who was regarded as
manageable, and had no political past to trouble
about. Moreover, he undertook the direction of
a branch department of which the scope had been
42

BOETTICHER
very materially reduced, and which went by the
name of the "Board of Trade." He assumed that
in addition to fostering German trade he had par
ticular duties and privileges in respect of Prussian
trade, in the sphere of legislation; and he misused
the independence conferred upon him by this po
sition, which he himself had desired, in order to
prepare, without my knowledge, drafts of bills
affecting imperial affairs, which did not meet with
my assent, especially such as in my opinion over
stepped the limits of labor protection and verged
upon the sphere of compulsion, in the form of a
limitation of the personal independence and au
thority of the worker and father of a family ; from
which, in the long run, I anticipated no beneficial
effects. Hence, as the repeated remonstrances
(which I made in respect of these proposals which
for me meant opposition and more assiduous work)
to the Minister of this department of the superior
Councilors of the Board of Trade remained with
out effect, I induced Field Marshal von Man-
teuffel to accept Herr von Hofmann as Minister
in the Imperial Provinces.
I then begged the Kaiser to appoint Herr von
Boetticher as Hofmann's successor, and I was able
to promise myself, from this official, who was
skilled in matters of parliamentary procedure, the
support which this post of Minister without a de
partment, in the shape of an ad latus to the Chan
cellor and Prime Minister, was exclusively created
to provide. Herr von Boetticher was appointed
as my subordinate in the imperial service, as
43

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
Secretary of State of the Interior, and in the
Prussian service as my official assistant, to sup
port me by representing my views, but to do
nothing independently of me. He performed this
duty willingly and skillfully for years, and advanced
his own opinions in my presence only with great
reserve, and, I presume, only at the instigation of
parliamentary or other circles. A definitive ex
pression of my opinion was always enough to
insure his final assent and co-operation. He pos
sessed notable endowments for an under-secre-
tary, was an excellent parliamentary debater, a
skillful negotiator, and had a talent for bringing
intellectual values of the higher currency home
to the people in the form of small change, and by
the, sort of good-humored honesty peculiar to him
he was able to exert influence on their behalf.
That he was never sufficiently settled in his opin
ions to represent them steadfastly in the Reichs
tag, let alone to the Kaiser, was not essentially a
defect in the sphere of operations assigned to him;
and while he was morbidly irritable in the matter
of orders and rank, so that when his expectations
were disappointed he would burst into tears, I
was successful in my efforts to spare and to gratify
his sensibilities. My confidence in him was so
great that after the departure of Herr von Putt
kamer I recommended him as his successor in the
post of vice-president of the Cabinet. In this
position, too, he remained the representative of
the President, myself. There is no room for du
alism in the post of Prime Minister. I had ac-
44

BOETTICHER
customed myself to treat him as a personal friend,
who on his side was perfectly contented with our
relations. I was all the less prepared for a disap
pointment because I was in a position to do him a
substantial service in respect of his family interests,
which were seriously endangered by the debts and
misdemeanors of his father-in-law, a bank director
in Stralsund.
I cannot exactly determine the precise moment
when he first surrendered to the Kaiser's tempta
tions and began to keep in closer touch with him
than with me. The possibility that he could act
dishonestly toward me was so far from my thought
that I first had proof of it when in 1890, in the
Crown Council, the Ministry, and the civil ser
vice he publicly opposed me, supporting the Kai
ser's suggestions, my fundamentally adverse opin
ion of which was known to him. Communications
which reached me later, and a retrospective con
sideration of incidents to which I vouchsafed little
attention at the moment, have since convinced me
that Herr von Boetticher had already for a long
time profited by the personal intercourse with the
Kaiser which he enjoyed as my representative, as
well as his relations with the diplomatic represent
ative of Baden, Herr von Marschall, and through
his father-in-law, Gemmingen, with the Grand
Duke of Baden, in order to establish closer rela
tions with His Majesty at my expense, and to fit
myself into the gap which existed between the
conceptions of the youthful Kaiser and the cir
cumspection of the gray-haired Chancellor.
45

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
The temptation to which Herr von Boetticher
found himself exposed, the fascination of novelty
which his monarchical duties had for the Kaiser,
and my confiding negligence in business, which
was exploited to the detriment of my position,
were, I am told, aggravated by a feminine striving
for rank, and, in Baden, by an impatient thirst for
influence. Semiofficial articles, which I attributed
to the well-informed pen of my former colleague,
laid stress upon a claim of Boetticher's to my grati
tude, in that he had taken great pains, in January
and February, 1890, to mediate between the Kaiser
and myself and to win me over to the Kaiser's
opinions. In this (as I believe) inspired perform
ance lies the full confession of the falseness of the
situation. The official duty of Herr von Boet
ticher was not to work for the subjection of an
experienced Chancellor to the will of a youthful
Kaiser, but to support the Chancellor in his re
sponsible task in the presence of the Kaiser. Had
he confined himself to this, his official duty, he
would have remained within the boundaries of his
natural qualifications, on the strength of which he
was appointed to his position. His relations with
the Kaiser had in my absence become more inti
mate than my own, so that he felt himself strong
enough to leave his chief's official and written di
rections unexecuted, conscious that he could rely
upon a more exalted source of support.
That he had aimed not merely at the Kaiser's
favor, but also at my dismissal and his succession
as Prime Minister, I concluded from a series of
46

BOETTICHER
circumstances of which some first came to my
knowledge at a later period. In January, 1890, he
told the Kaiser, in the house of the Freiherr von
Bodenhausen, that I was fully determined to re
sign, and about the same time he told me that
the Kaiser was already negotiating with my
successor. In the first days of the month aforesaid he
visited me for the last time at Friedrichsruh for
the purpose of discussing matters of business.
As I learned later, he had already insinuated to the
Kaiser that I had become incapable of transacting
business, through the immoderate use of morphia.
Whether this suggestion was made to the Kaiser
directly by Boetticher or through the medium of
the Grand Duke of Baden I have not been able
to determine; at all events, His Majesty questioned
my son Herbert about the matter, and was re
buked by him and by Professor Schweninger, from
whom the Kaiser learned that the suggestion was
a pure invention. Unfortunately the professor's
vivacity prevented the conversation from leading
up to a complete explanation of the origin of the
calumny. The motive of the Kaiser's inquiry
could only have arisen out of Boetticher's visit to
Friedrichsruh, since at that time I had no other
personal relations with him.
Even at the time of his visit in January he had
spoken to me in favor of the concessions which
afterward formed the subject of the modifications
in the imperial manifesto of February the 9th.
I had opposed this manifesto, firstly because
47

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
I did not consider it advantageous that the worker
should be forbidden by law to dispose of the
working capacities of himself and the members
of his family at certain hours and on certain occa
sions; and secondly, because I shrank from the
idea of fresh burdens upon industry which would
affect the future of both worker and employer,
so long as their practical consequences were not
more clearly established than hitherto. More
over, it seemed to me, after the incidents of the
miners' strike in 1899, that in the first place we
should pursue not the method of concessions, but
that of defense against the too luxuriant growth
of Social Democracy. Before and after Christmas
I had intended to take part in the deliberations
concerning the Socialist bill, and to advance the
proposition that Social Democracy in a higher
degree, as it existed abroad, involved the mon
archy and the state in a danger of war, and must
be regarded, on the part of the state, not as a
legal question, but as a matter of civil war and
internal power. This opinion of mine was known
to Herr Boetticher, and through him without a
doubt to the Kaiser as well, and in this knowledge
of the situation I think I see the reason why His
Majesty did not desire my presence in Berlin, and
caused the expression of this desire to be repeated
to me, directly and indirectly, in a manner which
for me had the character of an imperial command.
If I had taken up a mere rigorous position, pub
licly, as Chancellor, I should have rendered more
difficult the Kaiser's conciliatory attitude toward
48

BOETTICHER
Social Democracy, to which he was then already
won over by the Grand Duke of Baden, Boetticher,
Hinzpeter, Berlepsch,1 Heyden,2 and Douglas,3 and
which, announced by Herr von Boetticher in the
Crown Council of the 24th of January, came as a
startling surprise to me and other Ministers. If
the plan had been realized which the Kaiser
favored in February, but which His Majesty, I
believe, under the influence of the Grand Duke
of Baden, abandoned a few days later, which was
that I should remain Imperial Chancellor while
resigning all my Prussian appointments, Herr von
Boetticher might have hoped to become Prussian
Prime Minister, for as vice-president of the Coun
cil he had the affair in his own hands. Thereby
he and his wife would have been promoted to
the highest rank, to the so-called field marshals'
class. I would not willingly have recommended
him for this position. I feared that unrest would
result from the events of 1889 and the encouraging
mood of the Kaiser, and with regard to the
Liberal sympathies of the Minister of the Interior
and the Minister of War (Police and Army) and
the apathy of the Minister of Justice (Attorney-

1 Hans Hermann Freiherr von Berlepsch, born 1843; Prussian jurist;
1884, president of the Government Board in Diisseldorf; 1889, governor
in the Rhine Province (Coblenz); 1890, Minister of Commerce and presi
dent of the International Conference for the Protection of Labor.
2 August Heyden (1827-97). A mining expert and painter of mining
subjects; since 1882 Professor of Historical Costume in the Berlin Academy;
1890, member of the Staatsrath.
8 Hugo Sholto Count von Douglas (1837-1912), German politician, jurist,
officer, and industrial magnate; from 1882 member of the Prussian Chamber
of Deputies (Free Conservative); 1890, member of the Staatsrath.
49

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
General) I recommended that the presidency of
the Council should at least lie in military hands.
The fact that Boetticher, when I once more
took part in the ministerial discussion of all ques
tions in which the deviation of my opinions from
the Kaiser's was known to him, as the latter were
communicated to him earlier than to me, now op
posed me, in His Majesty's presence and in the
Cabinet, as the advocate of the imperial will, was,
to my political and, I might say, historical com
prehension, a gratifying symptom of the strength
which the monarchical power had recovered since
1862. The Minister who, at my request had been
appointed as my assistant, now took over the
leadership of the opposition against me, as soon
as he believed that he could establish himself in
the imperial favor by so doing, and countered my
pertinent scruples exclusively by the plea that we
had to fulfill the imperial wishes and must ac
complish something to satisfy His Majesty.

CHAPTER IV
HERRFURTH
On his accession to the throne the Kaiser was
determined to restore to office the Minister for the
Interior, Von Puttkamer, dismissed by his father
on his deathbed; only for the sake of decorum
the restoration could not follow too quickly upon
his dismissal and the death of the Emperor Fried
rich. At his command I offered Herr Herrfurth
the Ministry of the Interior, on the condition
that he should exchange it for a governorship, if
possible that of Coblenz, directly the Kaiser con
sidered that the time had come to recall Herr von
Puttkamer. Herrfurth declared himself ready to
accept it, with the remark that in the meantime
he would strictly follow Puttkamer's policy. After
he had become Minister of the Interior in this
manner, on July 2, 1888, he proceeded to exert
himself to make the temporary Ministry a per
manent one, playing on His Majesty's appetite
for reform. I was surprised, when I reported to
the Kaiser that the moment for restoring Putt
kamer appeared to have come, to receive the reply
that he had now got used to the "mountain
goblin"1 and wished to retain him.
1 Rubezahl. — "Number Nip," a mountain sprite. (Trans.)
51

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
How had the goblin so overcome the Kaiser's
former antipathy for him that he was now pre
ferred before Herr von Puttkamer, whose restitutio
in integrum the Kaiser had stipulated ? I venture
to assume that the prospect of satisfying an urgent
need in the province of rural self-government with
the acquiescence of all those interested, and of
abolishing the general sense of oppression due to
the remnants of the feudal system, formed the
substratum of the imperial favor.
Herrfurth had spoken to me, even before his
appointment to the Ministry, of an intended re
form of the laws affecting the village communities
in the old provinces, and I had urgently begged
him to leave the matter alone; the rural popula
tion of the old provinces was living in a state of
profound peace; no one felt any need of change,
with the exception, possibly, of the villages which
had acquired an urban character, for the most part
in the neighborhood of large cities; the great mass
of the rural population was living in peace and
quiet under the present system of rural and local
self-government, while there is nothing in common
between a manorial community and a village com
munity, except that on both sides there is a dis
inclination for change. I begged him urgently
not to disturb the concord existing in the rural
districts by the introduction of theoretical apples
of discord, or to evoke a conflict by the suggestion
of insoluble questions of principle, for w,hich there
had so far been no real occasion.
Herrfurth rejoined that at all events there was
52

HERRFURTH
occasion in the existence of the "pygmy parishes"
which were in no position to fulfill their duties as
communities. I denied that this proved the need
of a destructive revolution, which reminded one
of the year 1848, with its constitution-making
and readjustment of all the conditions of life.
After this understanding with my colleague,
and after confidential discussions of the problems
existing in the winter of 1888-89, I was surprised
to receive a visit from a deputation of peasants
from Schonhausen, who laid before me a litho
graphed sheet of questions received from the
Landrath, from which one might perceive the
intention of the government to remodel the con
ditions of our rural communities upon a new prin
ciple. To their lively satisfaction I was able to
tell them that so long as I was a Minister I should
not give my consent to such schemes, and also
that I did not believe that the plan would meet with
His Majesty's approval. By making inquiries in
other provinces I learned that there, too, the au
thorities had made the same prearranged inquiries
of the agricultural communities.
When I told Herrfurth that I could not have be
lieved that after our discussion he would calmly
have proceeded with his plans of reform, without
the knowledge of the Cabinet, I obtained only
feeble and evasive replies of such a nature that my
suspicions were already aroused that my col
league had assured himself, behind my back, of
the Kaiser's sympathy with his efforts, and that
the prospect of the great effect to be produced by
S3

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
these reforms had been the means of winning the
Kaiser's favor and attaining a definitive position
as Minister. If at that time he had not been
actually aware of the Kaiser's habit of covering
his retreat, he could hardly have proceeded so far
in the face of my known conviction, and that of
the Cabinet, as inquiry informed me he had done.1

1 The Landgemeindeordnung (Local Government bill) was passed by the
Chamber of Deputies by 327 votes against 23, and Herrfurth was congratu
lated upon this result by a telegram from the Kaiser, sent from Eisenach.
The House of Peers gave a different wording to one paragraph, which on
June ist was accepted by the Chamber of Deputies by 206 votes against
99 Conservative votes.

CHAPTER V
THE CROWN COUNCIL OF JANUARY 24TH
When the Kaiser first began to entertain the
idea of setting me aside, or when the resolve to do
so was matured, I do not know. The idea that he
would not share the glory of his future government
with me was already familiar to him as a Prince,
and was now ripe for realization. It was natural
that place hunters — who in those days were de
scribed, by a current "Berlinism," as "civil and
military cobblers" — should attach themselves to
the future heir to the throne as long as he was in
the accessible position of a young officer. The
more probable it seemed that the Prince would
succeed to the throne soon after his grandfather's
death the more animated were the efforts to win
the future Kaiser's support in respect of personal
or party aims. The cleverly calculated phrase
applied by Count Waldersee had already been
used against me — namely, that if Frederick the
Great had had such a Chancellor he would not
have been Frederick the Great.
The difference of opinion which had arisen out
of the Stocker affair, as discussed in the corre
spondence between Prince Wilhelm and myself
(in his letter of January 14, 1888), ended in at
55

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
least an outward reconciliation. At the dinner
which I gave on May i, 1888, the Prince, who in
the meantime had become the successor to the
throne, proposed me a toast in which, according
to the text published by the Norddeutsche Allge
meine Zeitung, he said :
To make use of a military illustration, I regard our present
situation as that of a regiment advancing to the assault.
The commander of the regiment has. fallen; the next in
command, although sorely wounded, nevertheless rides boldly
onward. There all eyes follow the colors, which the bearer
waves high overhead. So Your Highness holds aloft the
imperial standard. The innermost wish of our hearts is
that you may yet long be spared, in common with our
beloved and revered father, to hold on high the banner of the
Empire. God bless and protect him and Your Highness!
On January 1, 1889, I received the following
letter: Dear Prince: The year which brought us such heavy
afflictions and irreparable losses is coming to an end. The
thought that you stand faithfully beside me and are entering
upon the New Year with fresh strength fills me with gladness
and consolation. With my whole heart I pray that you may
be granted happiness, prosperity, and, before all, lasting
health, and I hope to God that I may be long permitted to
work with you for the welfare and the greatness of our
Fatherland. Wilhelm, I.R.
Until the autumn no symptoms of any change
of mood were observable; but in October, in con
nection with the Kaiser's presence in Russia, His
Majesty was surprised that I advised against the
56

THE CROWN COUNCIL
intended second visit to Russia, and by his be
havior to me gave me to understand that he was
not well disposed toward me. This incident will
find its proper place in a later chapter.1 A few
days later the Kaiser set out on his journey to
Constantinople, during which he sent me friendly
telegrams relating to his impressions from Messina,
Athens, and the Dardanelles. None the less, it
came to my knowledge later that he had heard
"too much talk of the Chancellor" while abroad.
An eventual breach over this matter was increased
by the witty and calculated remarks of my op
ponents, which referred among other things to the
"firm of Bismarck and Son."
In the meantime I had gone to Friedrichsruh on
the 1 6th of October. In my old age I was not for
my own sake anxious to retain my position, and if
I could have foreseen my early departure I would
have arranged it in a manner more convenient to
the Kaiser and more dignified for myself. That I
did not foresee it proves that in spite of forty
years' practice I had not become a courtier, and
that politics absorbed me rather than the question
of my position, to which no love of power or ambi
tion chained me, but only my sense of duty.
In the course of January, 1890, it came to my
knowledge how keenly interested the Kaiser had
become in the so-called "protection of labor"
legislation, and that he had conferred upon the
subject with the King of Saxony2 and the Grand
1 Chap. x.
2 Albert (1828-1902).
5 57

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
Duke of Baden, who had come to Berlin for the
funeral of the Empress Augusta. In Saxony the
modifications which had occupied the Reichstag
and the Bundesrath under the heading referred to
— that is, the legal restriction of female labor, child
labor, and Sunday labor — had already been intro
duced for some considerable time, and in various
industries had been found inconvenient. The
Saxon government did not itself wish to reform its
own regulations affecting its large industrial popu
lation; the interested manufacturers urged upon it
their desire that a revision of the arrangements
obtaining in Saxony should be effected by imperial
legislation, or that the inconvenience of the ar
rangements should become general for the whole
Empire, and therefore for all German competitors;
and the King had so far given way to them that
the Saxon representatives in the Federal Council
became active in connection with the Labor Pro
tection bill; and by degrees all the parties in the
Reichstag, in order to win the votes of the electors,
or, perhaps, in order not to lose them, expressed
themselves by means of resolutions in favor of this
legislation. For the bureaucracy of the Federal
Council there was a compulsion in the repeated
resolutions of the Reichstag, which they, owing to
their lack of sympathy with practical life, could
not withstand. The members of the committees
concerned thought to jeopardize their reputation
as the friends of humanity if they did not agree
with the humanitarian phrases originating in
England. The important Bavarian vote was not
58

THE CROWN COUNCIL
instructed by leaders who were disposed to accept
the responsibility for the appearance of anti-
humanitarian efforts. I contrived so that the
resolutions of the Reichstag were disregarded in the
Bundesrath. In these circumstances it was an
easy and grateful task for Herr von Boetticher to
criticize my opinion in his intercourse with his
colleagues in the Bundesrath instead of repre
senting it. My long absence from Berlin placed
him in a position to do the same in his dealings with
the Kaiser, and, if he had to present reports as my
representative, he could point to my self-will as
the obstacle in the Kaiser's path to popularity.
It was repugnant to my convictions and my ex
perience so far to encroach upon the independence
of the worker, in his professional life and his rights
as the head of a family, as to forbid him by law to
exploit his own working capacities, and those of his
family, according to his own judgment. I do not
believe that the workingman is in himself grateful
because he is forbidden to earn money on certain
days, and during certain hours, as he may choose,
even though the question was undoubtedly utilized
by the Socialist leaders for the purposes of a suc
cessful agitation, with the misrepresentation that
the employers were in a position to pay an unre
duced wage for the diminished hours of labor.
As for the veto upon Sunday labor, I have found
by personal inquiry that the workers agreed to it
only when they had been assured that the weekly
wage would be as large for six days as it had for
merly been for seven. The prohibition or limita-
59

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
tion of the work of children and adolescents did
not commend itself to the parents of those for
bidden to work, and among the adolescents it was
welcomed only by individuals who followed haz
ardous ways of making a livelihood. In the
present state of railway communications and with
a free choice of domicile the opinion that the worker
will constantly be compelled by the employer to
work at appointed times, even against his will, can
be correct only in exceptional instances where the
conditions of labor and the state of communica
tions are quite peculiar; but hardly to the extent
that an encroachment upon the personal freedom
of all the workers would seem to be justified there
by. These questions played no part in connection
with the strike.
Be this as it may, it is a fact that the King of
Saxony, in spite of all his good will for me, in
fluenced the King's ideas in a direction which was
opposed to that which I had advocated for years,
particularly in my speech of May 9, 1885, con
cerning the question of Sunday rest. He had not
anticipated that my dismissal from the service
would be connected with this point of issue, and
he deplored this result. It could hardly have had
any connection with it had not the Kaiser's frame
of mind been so far influenced, apart from this, by
the Grand Duke of Baden and the Ministers
Boetticher, Verdy,1 Herrfurth and others, that
His Majesty was convinced that my senile obsti-
1 Julius von Verdy du Vernois (1832-1910), Prussian officer and military
writer; April, 1889, to October, 1890, Minister of War.
60

THE CROWN COUNCIL
nacy was a hindrance to his efforts to win over
public opinion and to convert the opponents of the
monarchy into adherents.
On the 9th of January the Reichstag reas
sembled. Even before Christmas, and again soon
after, the - Kaiser had recommended me, in a
fashion that was equivalent to a command, not
to come to Berlin for the session. On the morning
of the 23 d, two days before the session ended,
Boetticher telegraphed to me that the Kaiser had
informed him through an aide-de-camp that the
Crown Council would be held at six o'clock on the
following day, and upon my inquiring of him as
to the object of the Council, he replied that he did
not know. My son, whom I had informed of my
correspondence with Boetticher, betook himself to
the Kaiser during the afternoon, and in reply to
his query as to the purpose of the Council he re
ceived the answer that His Majesty wished to lay
his opinion concerning the labor question before
the Ministry and desired that I should attend the
Council. On my son's remarking that he expected
me that evening the Kaiser said that I had better
not arrive until noon on the following day, so that
I should not be settled en demeure, nor appear in
the Reichstag, where the expression of my opinion,
which differed from that of the majority, might
endanger the party truce (but this was not said
in so many words), and would be incompatible
with the intentions of the All-Highest.
I arrived at two o'clock on the afternoon of the
24th. I called a session of the Ministers for three
61

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
o'clock. Herr von Boetticher gave no hint that he
knew anything certain of the Kaiser's intentions,
and the other Ministers merely indulged in con
jectures. I moved, and the motion was accepted,
that we intended to maintain a provisionally re
ceptive attitude in respect of the imperial revela
tions, if these should be important, in order that
we might thereafter discuss them confidentially
among ourselves. The Kaiser had asked me to
arrive half an hour earlier than the other Minis
ters, at half past five, from which I concluded that
he wished to discuss the intended communication
with me beforehand. Therein I was mistaken ; he
vouchsafed me no hints as to what was to be dis
cussed, and gave me the impression, when the
Council had assembled, that he had a pleasant
surprise in store for us. He laid before us two
projects, worked out in detail; one in his own
hand, the other written to his dictation by an aide-
de-camp, both promising to fulfill the Socialist
demands. One called for the drafting and com
pletion of a decree of the Kaiser's, expressed in
enthusiastic language, and intended for publica
tion, in the spirit of the detailed scheme. The
Kaiser had this read by Von Boetticher, who ap
peared to be familiar with the text. This, to me,
was surprising, not so much on account of its busi
nesslike grasp — in this connection I had the im
pression that there would be no trouble in finding
draftsmen who would satisfy the Kaiser — as on
account of the practical aimlessness of the scheme,
and its pretentious and exalted tone; this could
62

THE CROWN COUNCIL
only weaken the effect of the steps announced,
and threatened to allow the whole affair to come
to nothing, as a sort of speech of popular felicita
tion. Yet more surprising was the monarch's frank
written declaration, before his expert constitu
tional advisers, that this proclamation was based
on the information and advice of four men, whom
he described as authorities, and mentioned by
name. One was Privy Councilor Hinzpeter, an
educationalist, who presumptuously and unskill-
fully exploited the remains of his reputation as a
teacher in his relations with his former pupils,
carefully avoiding all responsibility; secondly
there was Count Douglas, a rich and lucky specu
lator in mines, who had endeavored to enhance the
consideration lent by a great fortune by the luster
of an influential position near the sovereign; for
this purpose, with ready and appreciative con
versational powers, he established political, or per
haps rather politico-economical, relations with the
Kaiser, and sought through friendly intercourse
with the imperial children to contrive that the
Kaiser should make him a count. In the third
place there was the painter Von Heyden, a society
man, easily persuaded, who, thirty years before,
had been a mining official in the office of a Schles
wig magnate ; to-day he was regarded as an artist
in professional mining circles, while in artistic
circles he was looked upon as a mining expert.
He had, as we were told, based his influence over
the Kaiser less upon his own judgment than upon
63

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
his relations with an old workingman from Wed
ding, who served him as a model for beggars and
prophets, and from whose conversation he derived
material for legislative suggestions which he made
in the most exalted quarter.
The fourth authority whom the Kaiser upheld
in the presence of his Councilors was Governor
von Berlepsch from Coblenz, who had drawn the
Kaiser's attention to himself by his friendly atti
tude to labor during the strike of 1889, and had
entered into direct alliance with him, which, as
far as I, the superior departmental Minister, was
concerned, remained as much a secret as the
alliance of Herr von Boetticher in connection with
the same question, and that of Herr Herrfurth in
connection with local self-government.
After the ensuing reading of the draft His
Majesty declared that he had chosen the birthday
of the great King for this Crown Council, because
the latter would provide a new and highly signif
icant historical point of departure, and he wished
the drafting of the decree alluded to in one of the
detailed statements to be so expedited that it
might be published on his own birthday (the 27th).
jAll the Ministers who spoke declared that the
i immediate consideration and drafting of such
I refractory material was impracticable. I warned
[them what the result would be; the increased
expectations and the insatiable covetousness of the
Socialist classes would drive the kingdom and the
governmental authority on to precipitous courses;
His Majesty and the Reichstag were speaking of
64

THE CROWN COUNCIL
the protection of labor, but as a matter of fact it
was a question of the compulsion of labor, the
compulsion to work less ; and whether the deficiency
in the income of the head of the family would be
forcibly laid to the charge of the employers was
questionable, because industries which had lost
14 per cent, of their labor power through the
Sunday rest would perhaps be incapable of carrying
on, so that finally the workers would lose their
livelihood. An imperial decree in the intended
spirit would prejudice the coming elections, be
cause it would alarm_the propertied classes and
would encourage the Socialists. A further burden
ing of fhe~costs of production would therefore be
possible, and could be charged upon the consumers
only if the other great industrial states were to
proceed in a similar fashion.
His Majesty disputed this opinion, but finally
declared that he would agree to the preliminary
discussion of his proposals by the Ministry.
The imminent close of the Reichstag session
raised the question of a renewal of the Socialist
Act, which would otherwise expire in the autumn.
In the Commission, in which the National Liberals
struck the first blow, the authority to banish was
expunged from the proposal of the Bundesrath;
consequently the question was raised whether the
confederate governments would comply in this
particular or whether they would wish to retain
the power of banishment because of the danger
that the bill might not be passed. To my surprise,
and in contravention of my strict instructions to
65 "

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
him, Herr von Boetticher proposed to introduce
on the following day, when the last sitting of the
Reichstag would take place, an imperial proclama
tion by which the projected bill would be revised
in the sense desired by the National Liberals — that
is, the power of banishment would be voluntarily
' renounced — which could not be accomplished in
a constitutional manner without the previous con
sent of the Bundesrath. The Kaiser immediately
agreed to the proposal.
There was as yet no question of a definitive
resolution of the Reichstag, but only of a second
reading of the proposal and the report of the
deliberations of the Commission, according to
which the unmodified acceptance of the law could
not be expected. As I had fought for decades
against the tendency of the commissaries and
Ministers to alter and weaken the government
bills in the course of committee deliberations and
under the influence of the lobbies, I declared that
in this case the confederate governments would
aggravate matters in the future were they already
to lower the flag and mutilate their own measures.
If they did that, then in the new Reichstag severer
measures would become necessary, which would
oppose the governmental manifesto that Boet
ticher had advocated only a few weeks earlier,
according to which they, too, would be able to
dispense with the banishment clause. I therefore
demanded that we should wait for the resolution
of the full Assembly; if it submitted an inade
quate law this would have to be accepted, but if
66

THE CROWN COUNCIL
now, on account of a refusal, a vacuum were to
occur which could not be filled, it would be neces
sary to wait for the occasion of a more serious
infringement, which was finally to be anticipated.
We should in any case have to lay a severer measure
before the next Reichstag. The Kaiser protested
against the experiment with the vacuum ; he could
not in any case allow matters to come to such a
pass, at the beginning of his reign, that there would
be a danger of bloodshed; that would never be
forgiven him. I replied that whether it came to
insurrection and bloodshed depended not on His
Majesty and our legislative schemes, but on the
revolutionaries, and that bloodshed could hardly
be avoided unless we, while confronted by no
admitted danger, determined to give way no
longer, but to make a stand somewhere. The
later the government began to resist the more
violent must that resistance be.
The rest of the Ministers, excepting Boetticher
and Herrfurth, expressed themselves in agreement
with me, some of them giving detailed reasons for;
their agreement. Here the Kaiser, visibly annoyed
by the negative vote of the Ministers, alluded
again to capitulating before the Reichstag; where
upon I observed that it was my duty, on the
grounds of my special knowledge and experience,
to dissuade him from such a course. When I
entered official life in 1862 the monarchical power
was insecurely situated; the abdication of the
King, on the pretext of the impracticable nature
of his convictions, had been under discussion.
67

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
Since then, for twenty-eight years, the sovereign
authority had constantly increased in power and
consideration; the voluntary withdrawal in the
fight against Social Democracy— which was in
spired by Von Boetticher — would be the first step
downhill upon the hitherto rising path, in the direc
tion of a temporarily convenient but dangerous
parliamentary authority. "If Your Majesty at
taches no value to my advice, I do not know
whether I can retain my position." To this
declaration the Kaiser replied, turning toward
Boetticher and away from me, "That puts me in
a position of constraint." I myself did not catch
these words, but they were repeated to me after
ward by those of my colleagues who were sitting
to the left of the Kaiser.
Already, on account of the attitude which the
Kaiser had adopted in May, 1889, in respect of the
miners' strike, I had feared that I should not be
able to remain in agreement with him in this sphere
of activity. Two days before he received the depu
tation from the striking miners, on May 14, 1889,
he appeared unannounced at the meeting of the
Cabinet, and declared that he did not share my
views as to the management of the strike. "The
employers and shareholders must give way; the
workers were his subjects, for whom it was his
place to care; if the industrial millionaires would
not do as he wished he would withdraw his troops ;
if the villas of the wealthy mine-owners and di
rectors were then set on fire, and their gardens
trampled underfoot, they would soon sing small."
68

THE CROWN COUNCIL
His Majesty failed to grasp my objection that the
mine-owners were also subjects who had a claim to
the protection of their sovereign, and exclaimed
excitedly that if no coal was dispatched our navy
would be defenseless; we could not mobilize the
army if the movement of troops upon the railways
was hindered by lack of coal; that we were now in
so precarious a position that if he were Russia he
would declare war immediately.
His Majesty's ideal seemed at that time to be
popular absolutism. His ancestors had emanci
pated the peasants and townsfolk. Would a
similar emancipation of the workers, at the cost
of the employers, follow a course of development
to-day analogous to that of the legislative labors
of fifty years before, from which proceeded the
agricultural and municipal statutes? '
The French kings acquired absolutism by play
ing one rank against another; and from Louis XIV
to Louis XVI absolutism was the fundamental
law of the state, but it was not a durable basis.
Under Friedrich Wilhelm I the King's will was
unrestricted; this absolutism, however, was based
not on the fickle and changeable foundation of
popularity with the mass of the nation, but on the
hitherto unshaken monarchical spirit of all ranks,
the invincible power of the army and police, and
the absence of parliament, press, or rights of
association. Friedrich Wilhelm I put any one
who opposed him "in the cart" (condemned him
to hard labor), or had him hanged (as Schlubuth);
and Friedrich II sent the Supreme Court to Span-
69

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
dau. To-day the monarchy lacked an ultima ratio,
and an absolute sovereign authority could not now
be based on the acclamation of the masses, even
if their material claims were as modest as in the
time of Friedrich Wilhelm I. In Denmark, in
1665, the King's decree was law, and remained
for a long time valid; but at that time it had to
break down only the opposition of a small minority,
that of the nobility, not the economic life of the
industrial and professional classes.
The strikers were naturally encouraged to in
crease their demands by the belief that the attitude
of the highest authority in the state was favorable
to them. This is why the factions of our Reichs
tag were unanimous in fawning upon the en
franchised workers in connection with the pre
tended labor-protection laws. I regarded the
latter as irremediably prejudicial and a source of
future discontent, but I did not think them so
important that the Kaiser would in 1887 make a
Cabinet question of them.
The reasons why my political conscience was
not in favor of my resignation lay in another
direction — namely, in that of foreign affairs — from
the standpoint of the Empire as well as that of
the German policy of Prussia. I could not transfer
to another the confidence and authority which I
had acquired, during a long period of service, both
' abroad and at the German court. On my retire
ment this possession would be lost to the nation
and the dynasty. During sleepless nights I had
time enough to weigh this question in my con-
70

THE CROWN COUNCIL
science, and came to the conclusion that it was a
point of honor for me to endure to the end, and
that I could not take the responsibility and in
itiative for my resignation upon myself, but must
leave it to the Kaiser. But I did not wish to make
matters more difficult for him, and determined,
after the Privy Council of the 24th of January,
to retire voluntarily from the Ministry, from a
department of which those convictions which had
proved irreconcilable with the Kaiser's had for
years been officially announced — that is, from the
Board of Trade, to whose official competence the
labor question belonged.
I regarded it as possible to allow developments
in this department to pass over me with a tolerari
posse, giving a sort of passive assistance, while
continuing to control the really political — that is,
the foreign — business of the department. It was
obvious beforehand that the handling of the labor
problem would be a difficult task for a prudent and
honorable servant of the nation and the monarchy,
in the face of the Kaiser's belief that his good will
would suffice to appease the covetousness of the
workers, and to win their gratitude and alle
giance. I considered it right and just that Herr
von Berlepsch, who, as president of a government
board, without the knowledge of the responsible
Minister of Commerce, had in 1889, for the sake
of higher inducements, begun actively to oppose
my ideas, should assume ministerial responsibility
for the course in which he had confirmed the Kaiser
by his co-operation. Thereby at the same time
71

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
the Kaiser would be placed in a position to put the
practicability of his benevolent intentions to the
proof, of his own initiative and without being
misled by me.
I called a session of the Ministry and expressed
my opinion, which obtained the unanimous assent
of the Ministers; and as the result of a petition
which was immediately presented Herr von Ber
lepsch was appointed Minister of Commerce on
January 31, 1890. I may add in connection
with this experiment that by reason of the inde
pendence which Governor von Berlepsch had
displayed as an unofficial adviser of His Majesty's,
I had estimated his energy, his interest in the
matter, and his qualifications for it at a higher rate
than his ministerial record justified. The Kaiser
prefers men of the second class as Ministers, and
the resulting situation is incorrect, inasmuch as the
Ministers do not provide His Majesty with advice
and encouragement, but expect, and receive, both
from him.

CHAPTER VI
THE IMPERIAL DECREE OF FEBRUARY 4, 1890
During the ministerial session of the 26th of
January I expounded again the danger of the
intended imperial decree, but was met with the
objection from Boetticher and Verdy that an ad
verse vote would displease the Kaiser. My col
leagues had performed a sacrificium intellectus to
the Kaiser; my representative and ad latus had
behaved dishonestly toward me. In vain did I
go to the length of describing it as a commission of
high treason when responsible Ministers found
their sovereign pursuing a path which they re
garded as dangerous to the state, and did not
candidly tell him as much, but reversed the con
stitutional position by a Cabinet advised by the
Kaiser. My suggestion was opposed by Boet
ticher, with the approval of the Minister of War,
by the simple repetition of the phrase, that we
really must contrive something in accordance with
His Majesty's wishes. As the other Ministers re
frained from joining in the discussion between
Boetticher and myself, I was obliged to abandon
the hope of opposing His Majesty's encouragement
of the workers, which, according to my conviction,
was dangerous to the state, by a unanimous vote.
6 73

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
I had anticipated that the Cabinet would assume
the same attitude as when the Kaiser's grand
father, through feminine, Masonic, or other in
fluences, had been persuaded to injurious courses.
In such cases it was necessary to aim at estab
lishing the unanimous agreement of the Ministers,
even though violent differences of opinion had
existed among them previously; and the aged
sovereign used to give way if he could win no
votes for himself. I remember only one exception.
After the Frankfort Treaty of Peace of May 10,
1 87 1, had been accepted by the French National
Assembly it was possible to withdraw our troops,
which until then had been employed in garrisoning
a sufficient area of the occupied departments as
guaranty. The Ministers were unanimous that
this should be done forthwith. All troops that
were not obliged to remain with the colors were to
be discharged, and the return to Berlin of the regi
ments forming part of the garrison was to be fixed
for the earliest possible date, and in any case was
not to be later than May. But here we encoun
tered an obstinate opposition on the part of His
Majesty. The Kaiserin Augusta, as I had learned,
desired to be present at the entry of the troops,
but wished to finish her cure in Baden-Baden first;
the Kaiser wished his wife's desire to be fulfilled,
but he also wished to see the regiments march
past in full war strength. In vain did we deliberate
for days on end, meeting on the ground floor of the
palace. In vain did we urge the expense, and
consideration for those men who had so long been
74

THE IMPERIAL DECREE
separated from their families and businesses, and
the urgent need of returning so many workers to
the fields. The Kaiser, who did not wish to enter
into the ieal reasons for his opposition to the advice
of his Ministers, found it difficult to meet our ar
guments, but remained firm on this point, that the
entry of the troops must take place in the middle
of June, and that they must be in full war strength.
During our deliberations it happened that some
one was walking to and fro in the room over the
Council Chamber with such a heavy tread that the
chandeliers broke into a jingling movement. After
the last fruitless deliberation Lauer, physician in
ordinary to the Kaiser, sought me out in order to
inform me that he feared the most dangerous
results for His Majesty's health, possibly an
apoplexy, if domestic peace were not restored. On
receiving this information the Cabinet yielded ; the
troops did not enter the city until the 16th of June,
when they marched past beneath His Majesty's
eyes. In the case which now engaged the attention
of the Cabinet I had considered by what other
factors the Kaiser might perhaps be influenced.
Such appeared to be the Council of State, the
Politico-Economical Council, from which I might
expect a spirit of reaction against the immediately
imminent elections to the Reichstag, and the
foreign governments, which might look for the
same sort of mischief, as a result of the partizan
interference of the Kaiser, as I feared would occur
at home. My proposal to convene the Council of
75

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
State and an international Conference, which I
made at the same sitting (on the 26th), in order
to provide, by the deliberations of competent
authorities, a counterpoise to the work of irre
sponsible and ignorant amateurs, met with ap
proval. The drafting of the corresponding decree I
myself took in hand. The so-called camarilla had
been of opinion that a proclamation such as the
Kaiser desired would have a favorable influence on
the Reichstag elections. I was convinced of the
contrary, of course without foreseeing how far the
falling off of the votes on the 20th of February
was to justify my opinion. As the result of experi
ence I held that as a matter of tactics it was
dangerous, in a situation such as the strike of the
previous year had prepared, to make allusion to
measures of indefinite and incalculable scope in a
promissory form. I was convinced that the un
truthfulness and misrepresentation of election
speeches would never give prime consideration to
any real purpose of the government, but always to
the pretense and misrepresentation intended to
arouse criticism of the existing state of things.
Proclamations of a decisive character issued before
the elections might have a favorable effect upon
the latter if they referred to unequivocal matters
of fact, which afford no grounds for misrepresenta
tion — for example, of foreign aggression or menace,
or of attempts at assassination like that of Nobii-
ing.1 For a proclamation such as that intended I
•On June 2, 1878. 76

THE IMPERIAL DECREE
feared not exactly direct and immediate criticism,
if it were really and correctly understood, so much
as its skillful exploitation by agitators hostile
to the government. On this account I was not
without anxiety as to the effect of the decree which
the Kaiser wished to issue, but thought it all the
more important to advise him. In accordance with
the conviction which had guided me for forty years
in Prussian and German politics I regarded it as
my duty to warn the Kaiser against impressions
or actions which would lead rather to a retrograde
movement of that reinforcement of the sovereign
power and strengthening of the Empire at which I
had been working, with success, since 1862, than
to the winning of momentary election results.
In the course of forty years I had seen many
popular representatives come and go, and I re
garded them as less injurious to our general develop
ment than monarchical blunders might be, if they
were not presented for discussion, since in 1858 the
Prince Regent had entered upon the path of the
"new era." 1 Even in those days it was the honest
desire of the sovereign to benefit his subjects, who,
in his opinion, had been taken away from him
merely out of mistaken zeal and unrighteous lust for
power. Even in those days it happened that a
coterie of ambitious place hunters, who had
achieved nothing during the Manteuffel era, the
Bethmann-Hollweg 2 party, had formed itself about
'TheHohenzolIern-Auerswald Ministry, November, 1858, toMarch, 1862.
•Moritz August Bethmann-Hollweg (1795*1877), Prussian jurist, uni
versity professor and politician; Minister of Public Worship in the
"new era." 77

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
the heir to the throne, ana nad exploited the dis
parity between his lofty intentions and his defi
cient knowledge of practical life, in order to set
him against his brother's government, and to
make him seem its opponent, as the representative
of the rights of man.
In order to appease the Kaiser's impatience to
some extent, I gave the two drafts in question (for
the Imperial Chancellor and the Ministry of Com
merce) a style corresponding to his character and
his desire for emphatic expression. On presenting
them I declared that I had prepared them only in
obedience to his command, and urgently begged
him to refrain from publications of the kind, to
wait for the moment when properly formulated
and detailed proposals could be laid before the
Reichstag, or at all events to allow the elections
to go by before the labor problem was touched
upon. The indefinite and universal character of
the imperial proposals would arouse expectations
which it would be impossible to satisfy, and their
nonfulfillment would increase the difficulty of the
situation. I wanted to be able to remember,
when after months or weeks His Majesty should
himself come to recognize the danger and prejudice
which I feared, that I had advised him against the
whole proceeding in the most positive manner, and
that I had supplied the completed text only out of
the dutiful obedience of an official who is still
serving. I concluded with the request that the
drafts which had been read aloud might be thrown
into the fire then burning in the grate. The Kaiser
78

THE IMPERIAL DECREE
replied, "No, no, give them to me!" and with
some haste signed both proclamations, which were
published, without counter-signatures, in the
Reichs- und Staats-Anzeiger of the 9th of February:
I am resolved, for the betterment of the situation of the
German workers, so far as the limits which of necessity re
strict my provisions will allow, to assist in maintaining Ger
man industry in a condition capable of competing in the
world market, thereby assuring its and the workers' exist
ence. The retrogression of our home trades through the
loss of their foreign markets would leave not only the em
ployers, but also their workers, without a livelihood. The
difficulties in the way of improving the situation of our
workers, which are based on international competition, can
be, if not overcome, then diminished, only by an interna
tional agreement with the countries which share the mastery
of the world market. Convinced that other governments also
are inspired by the desire to submit to a joint examination
the endeavors of the workers of these countries to carry on
international negotiations among themselves, I desire that in
France, England, Belgium, and Switzerland official inquiries
shall first be made by my representatives there as to whether
the governments are disposed to enter into negotiations
with us in respect of an international agreement relating to
the possibility of meeting those needs and wishes of the
workers which were revealed during the strikes of the last
year and at other times. Directly assent is obtained for the .
essential points of my proposal, I commission you to invite
the Cabinets of all the governments which take a similar
interest in the labor question to a conference for the pur
pose of deliberating over the problems referred to.
To the Imperial Chancellor. Wilhelm, I.R.
On my accession to power I announced my resolve to pro
mote the further development of our legislation in the same
79

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
direction as that adoptea by my grandfather, now resting in
God, in his care for the economically weaker portion of the
nation, in the spirit of Christian morality. Valuable and
pregnant in results as the legislative and administrative
measures hitherto taken for the improvement of the condi
tion of the working class have been, yet they do not fulfill
the whole of the task which is before me. In connection
with the further completion of the labor protection legis
lation, the existing prescriptions of the trade regulations
concerning the conditions of the factory workers will be sub
jected to an examination, as to whether the wishes and com
plaints which have been loudly heard in this connection are
proved to be justified. This examination will be under
taken on the principle that it is one of the duties of the execu
tive power so to regulate the time, the duration, and the
character of labor that the preservation of health, the in
junctions of morality, and the economic needs of the workers,
and their claim to equality of legal rights, shall be pro
tected. For the furtherance of peace between employers
and employed, the legal determination will be considered of
the manner in which the workers, through representatives
who possess their confidence, may share in the settlement of
joint affairs, and be authorized to protect their interests by
negotiation with the employers and the organs of my gov
ernment. Through such an arrangement the free and
peaceful expression of the workers' desires and grievances
will be made possible, and the governmental authorities
will be given an opportunity of informing themselves unin
terruptedly of the conditions of the workers, and to keep
in touch with them. The government mines I wish to be
developed, as regards the precautions taken in respect of
the workers, into model training schools, and in the case of
private mines I am endeavoring to realize the establishment
of an organic relation with my mining officials, for the pur
pose of establishing a supervision corresponding to the
factory inspection, as it existed up to the year 1865. For
the preliminary consideration of these questions I intend to
80

THE IMPERIAL DECREE
summon the State Council under my presidency, to be
assisted by experts whom I shall call together for the pur
pose. The selection of these latter I reserve to myself.
Among the difficulties which confront the regulation of the
conditions of labor in the direction which I have in view
those which arise from the necessity of protecting our home
industries in their competition with foreign countries occupy
a predominant position. I have therefore instructed the
Imperial Chancellor to suggest to the governments of those
states whose industries, together with ours, govern the world
market, the convening of a conference, in order to advocate
the introduction of the uniform international control of
frontiers, in the place of demands which might be based on
the activities of the workers. The Imperial Chancellor will
communicate to you the transcript of the manifesto which I
have addressed to him.
Wilhelm R.
To the Minister of Public Works and for Trade and
Industry.
Although I could not, as I saw, cut at the root
of His Majesty's personal intentions, yet I was
gratified to receive his consent — subrepticie, it is
true — to the rapprochement of the State Council
and the neighboring governments. But I had
deceived myself in counting on these factors.
While I had believed in the compelling power of
material interests in the State Council and the
international conference, I had overestimated the
independence and the moral earnestness of the
people. In the State Council the servile element
was strengthened by the convening of a number of
hitherto unknown persons, who had been gathered
partly from the working class and partly from the
Berlin manufacturers, and who delivered speeches
81

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
which they had certainly often delivered before.
A propagandist chaplain was also present. All the
officials were silent and expectant. Baare, a
foundry-owner, and Jencke, a confidential man of
Krupp's from Essen, the only persons who ven
tured discreetly to criticize the Kaiser's intentions,
were overawed by the remembrance of partly
spoken, partly fabricated sayings of the Kaiser, in
the shape of threats against the employers, and
by the fear of estranging the Kaiser still further,
and thereby evoking yet further threats against
the proprietors and employers. The courteous
timidity of the representatives of prudence, com
pared with the boldness of the practiced popular
speakers whom the Kaiser had called in, made it
evident that we could not anticipate that the
sittings of the State Council would affect His
Majesty impartially. The Kaiser had decided
that the sittings should take place in the offices of
Herr von Boetticher, on whom the selection and
invitation of the persons representing the working
class also devolved. As vice-president of the
State Council I attended the first four hours'
sitting of my own accord without taking part in
the discussion. When the Kaiser wished to put
the question presumably formulated by Von Boet
ticher to the vote, I found myself alone, with
Baare and Jencke, among forty or fifty persons.
As in my ministerial position I did not wish to set
myself in manifest opposition to the Kaiser, I
declared, as the reason for my abstention, that the
active Ministers of State in particular were not in
82

THE IMPERIAL DECREE
a position to vote in the State Council and thereby
prejudice their vote in the Cabinet. The Kaiser
commanded that my observation should be offi
cially recorded. I kept away from the following
sittings of the State Council, after I had ascer
tained, in private conversation with the Kaiser,
that I was thereby fulfilling his desire.
The International Conference also, which was
opened on the 15 th of March, and by the mention
of which I am only slightly anticipating events,
failed to respond to my expectations. I had pro
posed that it should be convened because I as
sumed that His Majesty's belief in the utility,
justice, and popularity of his efforts had been so
fortified by the four intellectual originators of the
same that his willingness to listen to yet other
experts was only to be counted upon if the delibera
tions took place in the splendor of a European con
ference summoned by him and a public discussion
in the State Council.
In this connection I had counted upon a more
honest examination of the German proposals, at
least on the part of the French and English, be
cause in the case of our western competitors I had
not properly weighed against one another the
tendencies which would presumably be operative.
I credited them with more sense of honor and hu
manity than existed: I assumed that they would
either take a practical point of view, and decline
the Utopian part of the Kaiser's suggestions, or
would consent to the demand for regulations of a
similar nature in the countries concerned, so that
83

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
the workers would be uniformly better treated and
the costs of production increased uniformly. The
first alternative was, to my thinking, on account
of the difficulties of execution and control involved
by the second, the probable one. But I had not
calculated that our representatives would have
fallen so completely under the charm of Jules
Simon's phrases that not once was an argument of
service to the Kaiser triumphant; we only ac
quired the certainty that the neighbor states did
not envy us our illusions. They took good care to
guard against hindering the German legislation, if
it was about to cause inconvenience to the home
industries and the workers of Germany. They
regulated their behavior by the same rule of con
duct which all the elements that I have fought for
decades as enemies of the Empire are acting up to
to-day; it was not their business to check the im
perial government on the path of self-injury.

CHAPTER VII
CHANGES
From his behavior to me, and from communica
tions made to me later, I can only draw more or
less accurate conclusions as to the changes of mood
and opinion that occurred in the Kaiser during
the last weeks before my dismissal. Of the psy
chological changes in myself alone I can give some
account, thanks to contemporary notes made from
day to day. Each of us, of course, exerted a recip
rocal influence, but it is not practicable to repre
sent synoptically the parallel events which oc
curred on both sides. In my old age I did not
cling to my position — only to my duty. The ever-
increasing signs that the Kaiser — who was allowed
to believe (by Boetticher, Berlepsch, etc.) that I
was an obstacle to his popularity with the workers
— had more confidence in Boetticher, Verdy, my
councilors, Berlepsch, and other unofficial ad
visers than in me, made me consider whether and
how far my complete or partial withdrawal with
out prejudice to the interests of the state might be
advisable. Without any ill feeling, on many a
sleepless night I considered the question whether
I could and should extricate myself from the diffi
culties which I foresaw as imminent. I always
85

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
came to the conclusion that I should be conscious
of a feeling of disloyalty if I refused the conflict
which I foresaw. I found the Kaiser's disinclina
tion to share the glory of his coming years of rule
understandable from a psychological point of
view, and, any sensitiveness apart, he was clearly
within his rights. The idea of being free of all
responsibility, in view of my opinion of the Kaiser
and his aims, was to me extremely seductive; but
my sense of honor showed me this aversion from
conflict and work in the service of the Fatherland
as incompatible with a courageous sense of duty.
I feared at that time that the crises which, as I
believed, were before us would be upon us quickly.
I did not foresee that their advent would be post
poned by the abandonment of all anti-Socialist
legislation through concessions to the different
classes hostile to the Empire. I was and am of
opinion that the later they occur the more danger
ous they will be. I regarded the Kaiser as longing
for conflict, as he was, or remained while under
alien influence, and I held it my duty to remain
beside him, as a moderating influence, or eventu
ally opposing him.
In the second week of February, when my im
pression was confirmed that the Kaiser wished to
develop at least the Socialist affair, in the belief
that he could conduct it in a propitiatory manner,
without me, and more indulgently than I thought
advisable, I resolved to have the matter plainly
understood, and said, in a speech, on the 8th of
February, "I fear that I am in Your Majesty's
86

CHANGES
way." The Kaiser was silent, signifying his as
sent. I thereupon amiably unfolded the pos
sibility that in case I were first of all to resign my
Prussian offices, retaining only that for which I
had been recommended by my opponents more
than ten years previously, that of the "old fellow
at the Foreign Office," I might still continue, to
make the capital of experience and confidence
which I had won for myself in Germany and
abroad useful to the Kaiser and the Empire. His
Majesty nodded in agreement with this part of my
statement, and finally asked, in a vivacious tone,
"But I suppose you will still move the military
requisitions in the Reichstag?" I replied, without
knowing their extent, that I would willingly sup
port them. To me the Socialist question was at ,
first more important than the military question,
and I considered that we were strong enough in
artillery and superior officers. Verdy had been
appointed without me; since 1870 our relations
had been bad, and I regarded him as a spy in the
Kaiser's Cabinet Council. His appointment was
a move of the Kaiser's against me, and I did not
regard it as my duty to take the lead in opposing
the far-reaching plans which in the Kaiser's name
and Verdy's were brought forward as "infallible."
The sum of 117 millions was a challenge first to
the Minister of Finance and then to the con
federate states and the Reichstag. To me the
Socialist problem was, as a running fight, more
urgent than Verdy's proposition; and it was so.
I offered without more ado to postpone my
87

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
resignation from the Prussian administration, if
His Majesty so desired, until the day of the elec
tions (20th of February), so that it should neither
seem a result of the elections nor yet affect them ;
for I considered that they were already imperiled
by the Kaiser's manifestoes. I recommended, in
my program, that in any case a general officer
should be selected as my successor in the Prussian
service, because I feared that in possible conflicts
with the Socialist movement, and in the event of
repeated dissolutions of the Reichstag, the Liberal
Ministers would be reluctant to represent the
Kaiser, somewhat as Bodelschwingh1 and others,
who at least were not wanting in personal courage,
had in 1848 so dealt with the King that reactionary
methods were impossible. The most important
departments in such a case, as I told His Majesty,
were those of the Police, War, and Justice. The
police were in the hands of the Minister of the
Interior, Herrfurth, a Liberal bureaucrat. The
Ministry of War, on which was founded the King's
power of resistance and final victory in 1848, was
likewise in Liberal hands; the political ideals of
Herr von Verdy would hardly coincide with those
of the majority of his predecessors. The attitude
of the Attorney General depended on that of
the Minister of Justice,2 and Herr von Schelling
was a distinguished jurist, conservatively inclined,
but decrepit, and not the man for self-sacrificing
1 Ernst von Bodelschwingh (1794-1854); from 1842 to 1848 Prussian
Minister; finally Minister of the Interior.
s Hermann von Schelling (1824-1908), a son of the philosopher; 1889-94
Prussian Minister of Justice. 88

CHANGES
action in a difficult situation. Boetticher, too,
was no hero, but was regarded as a flabby character.
Only a military chief could in case of need conceal
the civilian weakness of the government. I men
tioned Caprivi as a suitable general ; true, he was
strange to politics, but was a soldier on whom the
King might rely. In political life he could, in quiet
times, be substantially held in check as a President
of Council without a department. There was no
talk at that time of the possibility of making
Caprivi my successor in the Foreign Office. The
Kaiser consented to the idea that I should retire
from the Prussian service, and at the mention of
Caprivi's name I thought I read in his face an
expression of gratified surprise. He seemed al
ready to have been His Majesty's candidate. I
could thereafter conjecture that the summoning
of the general from Hanover to Berlin shortly
after the Crown Council of the 24th of January
had another motive than that of military discus
sions. It seemed to me worth noting that Ca
privi was also Windthorst's candidate. Relations
had existed between Caprivi and the Center via
Gebbin since the time of the Kulturkampf.
In the ministerial session of the 9th of Feo-
ruary I intimated my intention of resigning from
the Prussian administration. My colleagues were
silent, the expressions on their faces were various,
only Boetticher spoke a few unimportant words,
but he asked me, after the sitting, whether as
president of Council he would take precedence at
court before old General von Pape. I said to my
7 89

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
son, "At the idea of being rid of me they all said,
'Oufl' relieved and gratified!"
The Kaiser's desire that I should bring forward
the heavy military requisition which he was then
contemplating caused me to undertake a repeated
examination of the conditions as they would be
if I were to withdraw from my Prussian offices as
early as the 20th of February. I had to consider
that the introduction of Verdy's proposal, and
others of a less far-reaching nature, would be of
little importance, and have little prospect of suc
cess if at the time I no longer appeared to enjoy
the Kaiser's confidence in the same measure as
heretofore, and could no longer come forward as
the leader of Prussian politics in the Federal
Council, but had to carry out the instructions
of my Prussian colleagues and successors. Fol
lowing up these arguments, I accordingly recom
mended, in a report to the Kaiser, on the 12th
of February, that the decision relating to my
retirement should not take effect on the 20th of
February, but should be postponed until after the
first divisions had been lost, or won, in the new
Reichstag, in respect of the military requisition
and the renewal of the Socialist law, preferably
until May or June. His Majesty, who was, it
seemed to me, unpleasantly affected by my state
ment, said, "Then everything will stay with the
old man for a time." I replied: "As your Majesty
commands. I am afraid of bad elections, and it
will need all the authority that has existed hither
to in order to influence the Reichstag; my earlier
90

CHANGES
importance in the Reichstag is apart from that
diminished by the already known diminution of
Your Majesty's confidence in me."
Although I was fully convinced that the Kaiser
wished to be rid of me, yet my attachment to the
throne and my doubts as to the future made it
seem cowardly to desist before I had exhausted
all means that might guard the monarchy from
danger or defend it. After it was possible to
survey the result of the elections, I developed a
program, in a proposal made on the 23d of Febru
ary, in the conviction that His Majesty wished to
pursue the policy, which for years previously had
been known as contrary to my own, in view of the
new electoral situation. On account of the com
position of the Reichstag, and in order to advocate
the Socialist policy hitherto followed, as well as
the military requisitions, I now held that it was all
the more necessary for me to remain until after
the first parliamentary conflicts, so that I might
help to insure our future against the Socialist
peril. His Majesty, in consequence of the policy
observed in connection with the strike and the man
ifesto of the 4th of February, would be obliged to
fight against Social Democracy earlier than would
otherwise have been the case. If he wished to do
this I would willingly lead the battle, but should
indulgence be the order of the day I foresaw greater
perils; and these would only be increased by the
postponement of the crisis. The Kaiser under
stood the situation, cast aside his policy of in
dulgence, and accepted, or so it seemed to me
91

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
when he gave me his hand at parting, my watch
word of "No surrender!"
On the following day he expressed himself, be
fore his circle of acquaintances, who were grati
fied by the remark, in these words, " He only wants
me still to go on giving the impression that he is
governing alone, and that all measures proceed
from him, and so on."
In the belief that I had the Kaiser's consent
to my program, and that I should retain my
offices perhaps until June, I declared, at the
Cabinet meeting of the 2d of March, that His
Majesty was determined to accept the situation
and to fight. The Ministry would eventually
have to be reconstructed to that end; I would
at the proper time place my portfolio at His
Majesty's disposal, and in accordance with his
last statements I should be charged with the
formation of a homogeneous Ministry prepared
to fight against the social revolution. The im
pression made by these opening remarks was not
pleasing to all my colleagues; the expression
"homogeneous" was understood in the sense that
an aggressive attack upon Socialism would demand
attributes of character which not all of them
possessed. On the 8th of March I had reason to consider
whether the Kaiser's attitude at the close of the
conversation of the 25 th of February was to be
explained by a momentary excitement which had
since then subsided, or whether perhaps it was
not intended seriously. On the occasion of a con-
92

CHANGES
versation relating to other subjects, His Majesty
recommended me to be friendly with Boetticher.
I replied with an illustration of his insubordina
tion and deceitfulness toward me, calling particular
attention to the facts that legally he was my
subordinate in the Empire, and had his seat in
the Cabinet only as my ad latus, yet in the Reichs
tag, particularly in social matters and questions
of Sunday labor, he enlisted and influenced mem
bers against me ; and that on the afternoon of the
20th of January he had summoned the Federal
Council and, entering into the proposals originating
in the Reichstag, had put a motion for the im
provement of the salaries of administrative of
ficials, and then, in the name of the federated
governments, had made a corresponding state
ment in the Reichstag, in direct contradiction to
my written instructions, which I had given him
on the morning of the same day. I had scarcely
left the palace when the Kaiser sent Herr von
Boetticher, with a very gracious letter, the Order
of the Black Eagle. I, as superior of the persons
thus decorated, was not informed of this, and I
received no subsequent communication on the
subject. In spite of the demonstration which was thus
directed against me I did not receive the impres
sion, in a conversation which took place on the
ioth, that the Kaiser had abandoned my pro
gram. His Majesty declared that he wished to
insist upon the larger military requisition, which
the Minister of War, Von Verdy, at the Cabinet
93

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
meeting of the previous day, had emphatically
stated must not be refused; the Scharnhorst-Boyen
idea of training every man capable of bearing
arms had been abandoned by us, but adopted
by the French as the ideal of the "nation in arms."
In spite of a population eleven millions less than
ours they would before long be superior to us, with
seven hundred and fifty thousand fully trained
troops. In the Cabinet meeting of the 12th of
March the same matter was discussed, and it
appeared that the permanent increase of expendi
ture for the realization of Verdy's plans would
amount to something over one hundred million
marks yearly.1 To the question whether with
this extraordinary Reichstag it would not be pos
sible to be content with those things that were
most urgent, rather than expose the necessary
artillery projects, which would certainly have been
accepted, to the postponement of a dissolution
which might follow the demand for the whole
requisition, Verdy replied that the whole must be
accepted without delay. I demanded that the
heads of the Finance Department should put the
matter to the vote; Scholz and Maltzahn would
then be prepared to negotiate the matter finan
cially. A future sum of one hundred millions would
have been added to the army budget and would
have to be gradually realized during the next ten
years. While I was thus working for the realization
of the imperial program the Kaiser himself, I am
1 $25,000,000. {Trans.) 94

CHANGES
forced to believe, had given it up, without giving
me any hint of it. I shall not attempt to decide
whether he had been particularly in earnest over
it. I was informed later that the Grand Duke of
Baden, advised by Herr von Marschall, had in
those days warned the Kaiser against a policy
wnich might lead to bloodshed; if it came to a
conflict "the old Chancellor would be in the
foreground again."
In the then aspect of the military question I saw
no reason for a breach with the Reichstag; I sup
ported it partly from conviction (as regards artil
lery, officers, and noncommissioned officers) and
partly because I held it to be the duty of others
(the Finance Department and the Reichstag) to
oppose the Kaiser and his Verdy in this matter.
Whether such influences were required at all I
do not know. The grand duke came to Berlin a
few days before the 9th of March, the anniversary
of Wilhelm I's death, and according to my obser
vations the Kaiser's resolution to allow the plan of
campaign to drop dated from the period between
the 8th and the 14th of March. I suppose it was
repugnant to him to extricate himself openly in my
presence, and instead of this, to my regret, the
method was chosen of allowing me to remain in
office until the June term. The usual methods of
business intercourse, with which I had until then
been favored, underwent a decisive alteration dur
ing these days, so that I am obliged to conclude
that the Kaiser not only regarded my services as
unnecessary, but also as unwelcome; and that
95

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
His Majesty, instead of telling me this in a friendly
manner, with his former candor, urged my retire
ment by ungracious methods. Hitherto I per
sonally had felt no ill humor. I was honestly
ready to help the Kaiser to shape affairs as he
desired. This mental condition of mine was first
disturbed by the steps taken on the 15 th, 16th,
and 17th, which exempted me from any personal
responsibility for my resignation from service
and necessitated my breaking up a household which
had existed for a lifetime at a day's notice; yet
to this day I have not with absolute certainty
learned the actual reason of the rupture.

CHAPTER VIII
MY DISMISSAL
On the morning of the 14th of March I inquired
whether I should attend for the presentation of my
report on that or the following day, but I received
no answer. My intention was to inform the Kaiser
of a conversation which I had had with Wind
thorst on the 1 2th, and of certain communications
which had reached me from Russia. On the morn
ing of the 15th, at nine o'clock, I was awakened
with the news that His Majesty had just had it
announced that I should make a speech in the
"Foreign Office" at nine-thirty, by which was
meant, in accordance with the usual custom, my
son's official residence. There we received the
Kaiser. To my remark that I had almost been
too late, since I had been awakened only twenty-
five minutes earlier by His Majesty's command,
the Kaiser replied : " So ? I gave the order yester
day afternoon." Later it came out that he had
first settled the time for the report after ten o'clock
at night, and that there was as a rule no egress
from the palace in the evening. I began my
report: "I am able to inform Your Majesty that
Windthorst has come out of his burrow and has
sought me out." The Kaiser thereupon cried
97

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
out, "Well, of course you had him thrown out-of-
doors." I replied, while my son left the room,
that I had naturally received Windthorst, since I
had always been accustomed, as Minister, to re
ceive any member of parliament whose manners
did not make him impossible, and since I was in
duty bound to do so when any such member pre
sented himself. The Kaiser declared that I should
first have inquired of him. I differed from him,
indicating my liberty to receive visits in my own
house, particularly such as it was my official duty
to receive, or such as I had a reason for receiving.
The Kaiser insisted on his pretensions, adding
that he knew that Windthorst's visit had been
arranged through the banker, Von Bleichroder;
"Jews and Jesuits" always held together. I re
plied that I was greatly honored that His Majesty
should be so exactly informed concerning the
private occurrences in my house; it was correct
that Windthorst had sought for Bleichroder's
mediation, probably owing to some sort of scheme
of his, for he knew that every deputy had access
to me at any time. But the choice of an inter
mediary was Windthorst's, not mine, and did not
concern me. In connection with the constellation
in the new Reichstag, it was a matter of great
importance that I should know the plan of cam
paign of the leader of the strongest faction, and I
was pleased to hear that he unexpectedly wished
me to receive him. I had discovered, in the
course of this conversation, that Windthorst
intended to make impossible demands (status quo
98

MY DISMISSAL
ante 1870). To ascertain his intentions had for
me been a professional necessity. If His Majesty
wished to reproach me in respect of this motive, it
was just as if His Majesty were to forbid his
General Staff, in time of war, to reconnoiter the
enemy. I could not submit to such control over
private matters and my personal movements in my
own house. But the Kaiser peremptorily de
manded, "Not even when your sovereign com
mands it?" I persisted in my refusal.
The Kaiser asked me nothing as to Windthorst's
plans, but began: "I receive scarcely any reports
now from my Ministers ; I have been told that you
have forbidden them to give me reports except
with your consent or in your presence, and that
you are relying on an old yellow order that was
completely forgotten."
I explained that this was not the case at all.
This order of September, 1852, which had been in
force as long as our Constitution had existed, was
indispensable to every Prime Minister; it required
only that he should be informed in the case of
important proposals, which were new in principle,
before the Kaiser's decision was obtained, for
otherwise he could not shoulder the collective
responsibility; if there was to be a Prime Minister,
the substance of this order must be authoritative.
The Kaiser asserted that the order in question
limited his royal prerogative, and demanded its
revocation. I called attention to the fact that
His Majesty's three predecessors had governed
the country under this order; since 1862 there
99

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
had been no question raised in respect of it, for it
had always been observed as a matter of course.
I had lately been obliged to remind certain persons
of its existence, in order to maintain my authority
over certain Ministers who had failed to observe
it. The Ministers' proposals were not restricted
by the order; it merely stipulated that notice
should be given to the Prime Minister when new
proposals of a general nature were put before His
Majesty, so that the former, in such cases as seemed
to him of importance, should be in a position to
express his possible disapproval in the joint re
ports. The King could then always decide ac
cording to his own opinion; under Friedrich
Wilhelm IV x it had morgjhan once happened that
the King had decided against the Premier.
I then turned the conversation upon the dis
patches which had come to hand concerning the
visit to Russia, which His Majesty had announced
for the summer. I again sought to dissuade him,
and in support of my arguments I mentioned
certain secret reports from St. Petersburg, which
Count Hatzfeldt had forwarded from London;
they contained unfavorable expressions which the
Tsar was said to have employed concerning His
Majesty and the last visit which His Majesty had
paid him. The Kaiser demanded that I should
read him a report of the kind which I was holding
in my hand. I explained that I could not bring
myself to do that, because the verbal contents

'Friedrich Wilhelm IV, born 1795; King of Prussia June 7, 1840; died
1861. IOO

THE KAISER SNATCHED THE PAPER FROM MY HAND, READ IT, AND
APPEARED TO BE JUSTLY WOUNDED BY THE WORDING OF THE TSAR's
SUPPOSED REMARKS."

MY DISMISSAL
would wound his feelings. The Kaiser took the
paper from my hand, read it, and appeared to be
justly wounded by the wording of the Tsar's
supposed remarks.
The remarks which, according to hearsay evi
dence, were attributed to the Emperor Alexander,
concerning the impression which his cousin had
made upon him at the time of his last visit to St.
Petersburg, were indeed so unpleasing that I had
had some misgivings as to calling His Majesty's
attention to these reports at all. Apart from this
I had no assurance that Count Hatzfeldt's state
ments, or his sources of information, were authen
tic. The falsifications which were conveyed to
the Emperor Alexander from Paris in 1887, and
which I had successfully checkmated, now made
me think it possible that certain persons were
trying, by similar methods, but from the other
side, to influence our sovereign, in order to turn
hima^in^TTTiii Russian relatives, and to make
him inimical to Russia in the matter of the Anglo-
Russian controversy, and directly or indirectly the
confederate of England. We are, it is true, no
longer living in the days when the insulting sallies
of Frederick the Great made the Empress Eliza
beth and Madame de Pompadour, and therefore
France, the enemies of Prussia. Still, I could
not bring myself to read or to communicate the
expressions which were ascribed to the Tsar to
my own sovereign. But, on the other hand, I
had to consider that the Kaiser, as the result of
experience, was actuated by suspicion, as though
101

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
I had held back important dispatches, and that
his inquiries as to whether I was doing so would
not be confined to direct inquiries addressed to
myself. The Kaiser had not always as much
confidence in his Ministers as in their subordinates,
and Count Hatzfeldt, as a useful and efficient
diplomatist, enjoyed, in the circumstances, more
confidence than his predecessor. It was also easy
for him, when meeting the Kaiser in Berlin or
London, to question His Majesty as to what sort
of impression these extraordinary and significant
announcements had produced upon him; and if
it then proved that I had placed them, without
using them, among the state papers — as I should
have preferred to do — then the Kaiser would have
reproached me, in word or thought, for concealing
dispatches from him in the interest of Russia,
as was the case a day later in connection with the
military reports of a certain consul. Apart from
this my desire to dissuade the Kaiser from the
second visit to St. Petersburg carried some weight
against the complete silence of Hatzfeldt's com
munication. I had hoped that the Kaiser would
have listened to my decided refusal to inform
him of the tenor of Hatzfeldt's report, as his father
and grandfather would undoubtedly have done,
and I had on this account confined myself to
paraphrasing these passages, with the intimation
that it followed therefrom that the Kaiser's visit
was not welcome to the Tsar; that he would
rather that it should not take place. The wording
of the document whose perusal the Kaiser insisted
102

MY DISMISSAL
upon, literally with his own hands, was un
doubtedly extremely displeasing to him, and was
intended to be so.
He rose, and offered me his hand — in which he
was holding his helmet — more coldly than usual.
I accompanied him to the outer steps before the
door of the house. He was just about to step
into the carriage before the eyes of the servants
when he sprang up the steps again and shook
my hand vigorously.
While already the Kaiser's whole attitude
toward me could only produce the impression
that he wanted to disgust me with the service
and increase my ill humor to the point of seeking
to resign, yet I believe that his fully justified irri
tation concerning the affronts which Count Hatz
feldt, no matter from what motives, had trans
mitted, had for the moment encouraged the
Kaiser in his tactics against me. Even if the
change in the Kaiser's methods, and in his con
sideration for me, had not been intended, as I
had incidentally supposed, to determine how long
my nerves would hold out, it was nevertheless
quite in the monarchical tradition that the bearer
should be the first to suffer for the insult which
might be contained in a message for the King.
History ancient and modern contains examples of
messengers who were sacrificed to the royal anger
on account of the contents of messages of which
they were not the authors.
In the course of our conversation the Kaiser
declared quite positively that he wished in any
103

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
case to avoid a dissolution of the Reichstag, and,
on this account, to reduce the military requisition
to a sum which would be sure to obtain a majority.
My audience and my conversation left me with
the subsequent impression that the Kaiser wanted
to be rid of me, that he had altered his intention of
going through the first negotiations with the new
Reichstag with me, and did not wish to come to a
decision regarding our separation until the begin
ning of the summer, after it had become clear
whether it would or would not be necessary to
dissolve the new Reichstag. I suppose the Kaiser
did not wish to go back upon his quasi-agreement
of the 25th of February, but was merely seeking
to bring me to the point of demanding my dis
charge by ungracious behavior. In the mean
while I did not allow myself to depart from my
resolution to subordinate my personal feelings to
the interests of the service.
At the close of the discussion I asked His Majesty
whether he insisted upon expressly ordering me to
withdraw the order of 1852, on which the position
of the Prime Minister depended. The answer
was a curt "Yes." I did not as yet decide upon
an immediate withdrawal, but proposed to take
the command, as one says, " Sunday fashion," and
to wait until I should receive warning to withdraw
it, when I would ask for a written order and bring
it forward for discussion by the Cabinet. I think
I was even then convinced that I should not have
to assume the initiative, and therewith the re
sponsibility, for my retirement. 104

MY DISMISSAL
On the following day, while the English dele
gates to the Conference were at table with me,
the chief of the Military Cabinet, General von
Hahnke, appeared, and discussed the Kaiser's
request that the order in question should be can
celed. I explained the practical reasons, which
have been given above, why the thing was, as a
matter of procedure, impossible. A Prime Minis
ter could not proceed without the authority con
ferred upon him by the order; if His Majesty
wishec! to revoke the order he must do the same
with the title of Prime Minister,1 against which I
had nothing to say. General von Hahnke left
me with the remark that he took it upon himself
to say that the matter could certainly be nego
tiated. (The order was not canceled after my
dismissal.)2 On the following morning, the 17th of March,
Hahnke returned, in order regretfully to inform
me that His Majesty insisted on the revocation

1 Prdsident des Staatsministerium.
2 In the session of the Prussian Landtag of April 28, 1892, Count Eulen-
burg made the following declaration regarding the report then under dis
cussion, relating to the position of the Prime Minister: "That the duty of
the Prussian Prime Minister does not consist merely in presiding over de
liberations and numbering votes, requires, I believe, no demonstration; it
is the duty of the Prussian Minister-President to provide for the smooth
and uniform progress of the business of state, and when necessary to repre
sent the whole Cabinet. I believe, too, that the opinion expressed from the
other side of the House, that his participation in affairs is very insignificant,
is baseless." (Applause.) From this statement we may conclude that
even to-day the revocation of the Cabinet order of 1852 concerning the
authority of the Prime Minister, which played a predominant part in my
dismissal, has not been accomplished; for if it had really been revoked the
Prime Minister, Count Eulenburg, would hardly have been in a position to
carry out the program expressed in the above words, which received the
full approval of the Chamber of Deputies.
8 105

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
of the order, and was expecting, from the report
which he, Hahnke, had given him of his conversa
tion with me on the previous day, that I should
forthwith hand in my resignation. I was to go
to the palace in the afternoon, in order to take it
myself. I replied that I was not well enough to
do so and would write.
The same morning a number of reports came
back from His Majesty, among them some from
a consul in Russia. Appended to these was a
note in His Majesty's hand, which was open and
had passed through the departmental offices. It
ran as follows:
The reports make it as clear as possible that the Russians
are strategically fully prepared to go to war — and I must
greatly deplore the fact that I have received so few of the
reports. You ought to have drawn my attention long ago
to the terrible danger threatening! It is more than high
time to warn the Austrians and to take counter-measures.
In such circumstances I can of course no longer think of a
journey to Krasno.
The reports are excellent. W.
The facts of the case are as follows : The consul
in question, who seldom found safe opportunities,
had sent in, at one time, fourteen more or less
voluminous and skillful reports, running to over
a hundred pages, the oldest of which were several
months old, and whose contents presumably were
not new to the General Staff. In dealing with
the military contents of the reports the practice
was that those which did not seem to be urgent
106

MY DISMISSAL
and important enough to be laid directly before
the Kaiser by the Foreign Office were sent to the
twofold address of the Minister of War and the
chief of the General Staff, for their information,
with the request that they should be returned.
It was the business of the General Staff to sift
what was military news from what was already
known, and what was important from what was
unimportant, and to bring the former items to
His Majesty's knowledge through the Military
Cabinet. In the case in question I had four of
these reports, whose contents were partly politi
cal and partly military, laid directly before the
Kaiser, and six, which were exclusively military
in character, were sent to the two addresses above
mentioned, while a written account of the four
others was sent to the competent Council, in order
to determine whether they contained anything
that called for a higher decision. The Kaiser
must have assumed that I had wished to with
hold from him those reports which I sent to the
General Staff, in contravention of the usual and
only possible method of procedure. If I had
wished to keep things secret from His Majesty
I could easily have required the dishonest sup
pression of documents, not directly of the General
Staff, whose chiefs were not all friendly to me, but,
in the circumstances, of the Minister of War,
Von Verdy.
Also, because a consul had reported certain
military events which were in part three months
old and were beyond his sphere of observation —
107

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
among others the posting of a few sotnias of
Cossacks on the Austrian frontier (known to the
General Staff)— Austria was to be alarmed, Russia
threatened, war prepared for, and the visit which
His Majesty had announced of his own accord
abandoned; and because the consul's reports had
arrived late I was implicitly reproached as a
traitor to my country, as having withheld facts
in order to conceal a danger threatening from
without. I demonstrated in a memorial at once
presented to His Majesty that all consular reports
which were not laid directly before the Kaiser by
the Foreign Office were immediately sent to the
Minister of War and the General Staff. After
my memorial (which was returned some days
later without any marginal notes whatever, and
also without any withdrawal of the serious accusa
tion against the Foreign Office) had been sent
off, I called a session of the Ministry for that after
noon. I must regard it as a caprice of fortune,
and history will perhaps have reason to call it
ominous, that on the morning of the same day
Count Paul Schuvalov,1 the ambassador from St.
Petersburg, who had arrived overnight, reported
himself to me with the statement that he was
empowered to enter into certain negotiations for
a treaty,2 and that these negotiations fell through
shortly afterward, when I was no longer Imperial
Chancellor.
1 Paul Count Schuvalov (1830-1908), Russian ofiicer and diplomatist;
188^-94, Russian Ambassador in Berlin.
8 Relating to the prolongation of a treaty lapsing in June, 1890, which
assured us of Russia's neutrality if we were attacked by France.
108

MY DISMISSAL
I had prepared the following draft of the declara
tion to be made at the meeting of the Ministry:
I am doubtful whether I can any longer bear the respon
sibility which rests upon me for the Kaiser's policy, for the
co-operation indispensable to such a course is not conceded
to me. It surprised me that His Majesty had arrived at
final decisions relating to the so-called labor-protection
legislation with Boetticher, but without conferring with me
and the Ministry. I expressed my fear at the time that this
procedure would result in disorder during the Reichstag
elections, arousing expectations which could not be fulfilled
and which, because they could not be fulfilled, would finally
diminish the authority of the Crown. I hoped that the
remonstrances of the Ministry would induce His Majesty
to abandon the designs which he had announced; however, I
met with no concurrence on the part of my colleagues, but I
found that my closest representative, Von Boetticher, had al
ready, without me, effected an understanding in respect of the
Kaiser's suggestions, and I convinced myself that several of
my colleagues had judged this understanding to be advisable.
After this I really could not be certain whether I, as Prime
Minister, still possessed the authority which I required for
the responsible guidance of the general policy. I have discov
ered that the Kaiser had been dealing not only with individual
Ministers, but with individual councilors and other officials,
subordinate to me; in particular the Minister of Commerce
had presented reports to the Kaiser without any previous
understanding with me. I have in this connection drawn the
attention of Herr von Berlepsch to the order of Sep
tember 8, 1852, which was unknown to him; and after I
had convinced myself that in general this order had not been
present to the minds of all the Ministers (and this was par
ticularly true of my representative, Herr von Boetticher)
I had a copy of it forwarded to each of them, and the covering
letter laid stress upon the fact that I regarded it as relating
only to reports presented to the sovereign which aimed at
altering our laws and the existing legal situation. With
109

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
tactful handling the order comprised no more than was
indispensable to every Prime Minister. His Majesty, from
whatever quarter he was informed of this procedure, had
commanded that I should see that the order was annulled.
I was obliged to refuse to co-operate with him in this matter.
His Majesty had given me a further sign of his lack of
confidence in his complaint that I should not have received
the deputy Windthorst without his permission. To-day I
am persuaded that I can no longer represent even His Maj
esty's foreign policy. Notwithstanding my confidence in
the Triple Alliance, I have never lost sight of the pos
sibility that it might at some time be dissolved; for in Italy
the monarchy is not very firmly established; the engagement
between Italy and Austria might be endangered by the Irre
denta; in Austria only the trustworthiness of the present
Emperor excludes a change during his lifetime; and it is
never safe to count upon the attitude of Hungary. On this
account I have constantly endeavored never quite to break
down the bridge between us and Russia. [Here follows
information concerning the Kaiser's letter respecting the
military reports of a consul. See p. 106.]
I am, generally speaking, not in duty bound to lay all
teports before His Majesty, but have done so in the case
under discussion, some being forwarded directly and some
through the General Staff, and owing to my confidence in
the peaceful intentions of the Russian Emperor, I am not
in a position to advocate the measures which His Majesty
commands me to take.
His Majesty approved of my suggestions regarding the
attitude to be observed toward the Reichstag, and an
eventual dissolution of the same, but is now of opinion that
the military proposals should be introduced only so far as
one can count upon their acceptance by the present Reichstag.
The Minister of War has recently spoken in favor of intro
ducing them as a whole, and if one had at the time seen
danger approaching from Russia this would have been the
proper course.
no

MY DISMISSAL
I assume that I am no longer in full agreement with my
colleagues, just as I no longer enjoy a sufficient measure of
His Majesty's confidence. I am glad that a King of Prussia
wishes himself to govern; I recognize the disadvantage of
my retirement to the public interest; I have no longing,
since my health is now good, for a life without work; but I
feel that I am in the Kaiser's way, and am officially informed
through the Cabinet that he wishes me to retire. I have
therefore at His Majesty's command begged for my release
from service.
After I had offered an explanation correspond
ing to this draft, the vice-president of the Cabinet,
Herr von Boetticher, spoke in favor of the idea
which I had suggested earlier, that I should con
fine myself to the direction of foreign affairs.
The Minister of Finance declared that the order
of September 8, 1852, did not in any way exceed
what was necessary, and he joined in Herr von
Boetticher's request that an agreement might be
sought. If no such agreement could be found
the Ministry must consider whether they would
not be obliged to follow in my steps. The Min
ister of Public Worship and Instruction and the
Minister of Justice were of opinion that these were
questions of a misunderstanding only, which must
be explained to His Majesty, and the Minister
of War added that he had not for a long time
received any communication from His Majesty
with reference to warlike developments in Russia.
The Minister of Public Works alluded to my re
tirement as disastrous to the security of the
nation and the peace of Europe; if it was not
possible to prevent it the Ministers must, in his
in

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
opinion, place their portfolios at His Majesty's
disposal, and he himself had the intention of so
doing. The Minister of Agriculture declared that
if I was persuaded that His Majesty desired my
retirement it was impossible to dissuade me from
such a step. The Ministry would in any case
have to consider what steps it must take if I
received my dismissal. After a few personal ob
servations on the part of the Minister of Com
merce and the Minister of War, I closed the
meeting. The official minutes of this meeting, which were,
as usual, circulated among all the Ministers for
correction, have, according to subsequent in
formation on the part of the Minister von Miquel,
disappeared from the records and have been
destroyed, probably at the instigation of vice-
president Von Boetticher.
After the meeting the Duke of Coburg paid me
an hour's visit, during which nothing worth noting
was said on his side.
Soon after dinner Lucanus appeared, the head
of the Civil Cabinet, and hesitatingly executed
the commission with which His Majesty had in
trusted him, which was to ask "why the resigna
tion demanded that morning had not yet been
delivered." I replied that the Kaiser could dis
miss me at any moment without my initiative,
and that I could not contemplate remaining in his
service against his will; but I wished to arrange
for my resignation so that I could afterward pub
lish the facts. I had no intention of accepting the
112

MY DISMISSAL
responsibility for my own retirement, but should
leave it to His Majesty; the opportunity for a
public explanation of its genesis, my right to which
was contested by Lucanus, would very soon occur.
While Lucanus was discharging his inconsequent
errand, my hitherto equable temper perforce gave
way to a feeling of mortification, which increased
when Caprivi, even before I had received the
answer to my resignation, took possession of a
portion of my official residence. Here was an
eviction without respite, which I, considering my
age and the length of my service, very justly re
garded as a piece of brutality. Even to-day I
have not recovered from the consequences of my
hasty eviction. Under Wilhelm I it would have
been impossible, even in the case of incompetent
officials. On the afternoon of the 18th of March I sent
in my resignation.
My draft of this resignation ran as follows:
In connection with my respectful proposal of the 15 th of
this month Your Majesty has commanded me to present a
draft order by which the Royal Order of the 8th of Sep
tember, 1852, which has since then regulated the position
of the Prime Minister in respect of his colleagues, should
be annulled.
I will permit myself to make the following most respectful
statement concerning the origin and significance of this
order. In the time of absolute sovereignty, there was no need of
the post of Prime Minister.1 The need was first demon
strated, in the United Landtag of 1847, by the then Liberal
1 Prasident des Staatsministerwm. "3

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
deputy Mevissen, of clearing the way for a constitutional
state of affairs by the appointment of a Prime Minister,
whose duty it would be to watch over the unification of the
policy of the responsible Ministers, and to carry out the same,
and to accept the responsibility for the joint results of the
Cabinet's policy. With the year 1848 the constitutional
habit became part of our life, and Prime Ministers were
appointed, such as Count Arnim, Count Camphausen, Count
Brandenburg, Freiherr von Manteuffel, and Prince von
Hohenzollern, whose names are in a pre-eminent degree con
nected with the responsibility, not for a ministerial depart
ment, but for the joint policy of the Cabinet, and the uni
fication of the departments. Most of these gentlemen had
no department of their own, but only the Premiership;
such were Prince von Hohenzollern, the Minister von Auers-
wald, and Prince Hohenlohe. But it was incumbent upon
them to maintain, in the Cabinet and in its relations with
the monarch, that unity and stability without which minis
terial responsibility, as constituting the essence of constitu
tional life, cannot be realized. The relations of the Ministry
and its individual members to this new institution of the
Premiership very soon necessitated a stricter regulation, cor
responding with the Constitution, such as was effected, in
agreement with the Ministry of the day, by the order of
September 8, 1852. This order has since then remained of
decisive importance to the position of the Prime Minister,
and has alone given the Prime Minister the authority which
makes it possible to accept that measure of responsibility
for the joint policy of the Cabinet which is expected of him
in the Landtag and by public opinion. If every individual
Minister can extract orders from the sovereign, without a
previous understanding with his colleagues, a united Cabinet
policy, for which each Minister shall be responsible, is not
possible. None of the Ministers, and particularly not the
Prime Minister, could possibly any longer assume the con
stitutional responsibility for the joint policy of the Cabinet.
In the days of the absolute monarchy such a definition of
114

MY DISMISSAL
procedure as that comprised in the order of 1852 was un
necessary, and it would be so to-day if we were to go back to
absolutism without ministerial responsibility. But in ac
cordance with the constitutional arrangements now current
a presidential direction of the Ministry on the basis of the
principle of the order in question is indispensable. In this
connection, as was established in yesterday's Cabinet meet
ing, my colleagues are as a whole in agreement with me, and
also in this respect, that any successor of mine in the Pre
miership would be unable to assume the responsibility for his
administration if the authority bestowed by the order of
1852 were lacking to him. To each of my successors this
necessity will appear even more forcibly than to me, because
he will not immediately be assisted by the authority which
many years of the Premiership and the confidence of both
the late Kaisers has lent me. I have not hitherto found it
necessary expressly to refer my colleagues to the order of
1852. Its existence, and the certainty that I possessed the
confidence of the late Kaisers Wilhelm and Friedrich, were
sufficient securely to establish my authority in the Ministry.
This certainty no longer exists to-day, either for myself or
my colleagues. On this account I have been obliged to fall
back upon the order of 1852, that I might securely establish
the necessary centralization of Your Majesty's service.
For the foregoing reasons I am not in a position to carry
out Your Majesty's command, according to which I was to
accomplish and countersign the abrogation of the order of
1852, of which I had been only lately reminded, but was
nevertheless to continue in the Premiership.
According to the information which Lieutenant General
von Hahnke and Privy Cabinet Councilor von Lucanus gave
me yesterday, I can no longer doubt that Your Majesty
knows and believes that it is not possible for me to abrogate
the order and still to remain Prime Minister. Nevertheless,
Your Majesty has upheld the command given me on the 15th
of this month, and has given me to understand that, having
made my resignation necessary thereby, he will accept it.
"5

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
After earlier conversations which I had with Your Majesty
concerning the question whether Your Majesty no longer
desired me to remain in your service, I ventured to assume
that it would be acceptable to Your Majesty if I resigned my
posts in the Prussian service, but remained in the imperial
service. I have, after close examination of this question,
permitted myself respectfully to draw attention to a few
critical results of this division of my offices, particularly in
respect of the future appearances of the Imperial Chancellor
in the Reichstag, while refraining from recapitulating in this
place all the results which such a separation between Prussia
and the Imperial Chancellor would produce. Your Majesty
was pleased to approve that for a time "everything should
remain with the old man." But as I had the honor of ex
plaining, it is not possible for me to retain the position of Prime
Minister after Your Majesty has repeatedly commanded,
in respect of this position, the capitis diminutio which re
sides in the abrogation of the fundamental order of 1852.
Your Majesty was also pleased, in connection with my
respectful report of the 15th inst., to set limits to the exten
sion of my official privileges, which do not leave me the
measure of participation in the affairs of the state, of super
vision over the latter, and of freedom in my ministerial
decisions and my intercourse with the Reichstag and its
members, which I require if I am to accept the constitu
tional responsibility for my official activities.
But even if it were practicable to carry out our foreign
policy so independently of our domestic policy, and our
imperial policy so independently of our Prussian policy as
would be the case if the Imperial Chancellor had as little to
do with Prussian as with Bavarian or Saxon politics, and had
no interest in the re-establishment of the Prussian vote in
the Federal Council and the Reichstag, yet I should find it
impossible, in accordance with the latest decision of Your
Majesty, concerning the direction of our foreign policy, as
contained in the note with which Your Majesty accom
panied the return of the reports from the Kieff consul, to
116

MY DISMISSAL
undertake the execution of Your Majesty's written com
mands in respect of our foreign policy. I should thereby call
in question all the results of importance to the German Em
pire which our foreign policy has for decades, under unfavor
able circumstances, achieved, in the opinion of both Youi
Majesty's predecessors, as regards our relations with Russia^
and whose unexpectedly great significance for the present
and the future was demonstrated to me by Count Schuvalov
upon his return from St. Petersburg.
It is very painful to me, in my attachment to the service of
the Royal House and to Your Majesty, and after long years
of familiarity with conditions which I had regarded as per
manent, to sever myself from the accustomed relations with
Your Majesty and the general policy of the Empire and of
Prussia; but after conscientious consideration of Your
Majesty's intentions, which I should have to be prepared to
carry out were I to remain in the service, I cannot do other
wise than most humbly beseech Your Majesty graciously to
please release me, with the statutory pension, from the offices
of Imperial Chancellor, Prime Minister, and Prussian Min
ister of Foreign Affairs.
After my impressions of the last few weeks and the dis
closures which I gathered yesterday from the communica
tions of Your Majesty's Civil and Military Cabinets, I
may in all respects assume that I am meeting Your Maj
esty's wishes by this my request for leave to resign, and also
that I may with safety assume that Your Majesty will
graciously grant my request.
I would have submitted the request for my discharge from
my offices to Your Majesty a long time ago, if I had not had
the impression that it was Your Majesty's wish to make use
of the experience and the capacities of a faithful servant of
your predecessors. Now that I am sure that Your Majesty
does not require these, I am able to retire from public life
without the fear that my decision will be condemned as
untimely by public opinion. VQN BlsMARCK.
To His Majesty the Emperor and King.
117

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
I took an opportunity to inform the heads of
the Civil and Military Cabinets, Lucanus and
Hahnke, that the abandonment of the campaign
against Social Democracy and the arousing of
hopes that could not be fulfilled had filled me
with heavy forebodings.
On the evening of the 18th the generals com
manding in Berlin were sent for to go to the
palace. The ostensible reason given for this
procedure was that His Majesty wished to hear
what they had to say of the military proposals.
But as a matter of fact the Kaiser addressed
the gathering — which lasted barely twenty min
utes — and at its conclusion he told the generals,
or so I was credibly informed, that he found him
self compelled to dismiss me; and to the chief of
the General Staff, Von Waldersee, he expressed his
annoyance at my arbitrary methods and my
secrecy in my intercourse with Russia. Count
Waldersee had, with His Majesty, as a matter of
departmental procedure, received the report on the
above-mentioned consular reports. None of the
generals, not even Count Moltke, had anything
to say to the Kaiser's revelations. It was not
until he was on the stairs that Count Moltke
said, "This is a very regrettable proceeding; the
young gentleman will give us plenty to think
about yet."
On the 19th of March, at the levee, my son was
near Schuvalov. The latter told him, in the
endeavor to induce him to stay, that if he and
I did not remain the overtures which he was
118

MY DISMISSAL
charged to make would come to nothing. Since
these remarks might possibly influence the political
decision of the Kaiser, my son, in the afternoon
of the following day, communicated them to His
Majesty in an autograph report.
I do not know whether it was before or right
after the receipt of this report; at all events, on the
20th, Adjutant Count Widel, who had been on
service, went to my son, in order to repeat the
Kaiser's wish, which had already been announced
by deputy, that my son should remain in his office,
to offer him a long period of leave, and to assure
him of His Majesty's absolute confidence. My
son did not believe that he possessed this last,
because the Kaiser had repeatedly sent for council
ors from the Foreign Office without his knowledge,
for the purpose of giving them orders or to find
out how the land lay. Widel granted this, and
assured him that His Majesty would without
doubt be prepared to redress this grievance. To
this my son replied that his health was so debili
tated that without me he could not assume the
difficult and responsible position. Later, after I
had received my discharge, Count Widel sought
me out also and asked me to influence my son in
the direction of remaining. I turned his request
aside with the words, "My son is of age."
On the afternoon of the 20th of March Hahnke
and Lucanus brought me my papers of discharge
in two blue envelopes. Lucanus had been to my
son the previous day, on a commission from His
Majesty, in order to induce him to sound me con-
n9

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
cerning the granting of the title of duke and the
proposal of a corresponding grant of money by the
Landtag. My son, without reflection, declared
that both would be undesired and distressing to
me, and in the afternoon, after conferring with
me, he wrote to Lucanus that "the grant of a title
would, after the way in which I was treated in
His Majesty's earliest youth, be distressing to
me, and a grant of money, in view of the financial
situation and for personal reasons, would be un
acceptable." In spite of this the title of duke
was conferred upon me.
The two orders addressed to me on the 20th
ran as follows:
My dear Prince!
1 With deep emotion I have perceived, from your request of
the 1 8th inst., that you are determined to retire from the
offices which you have filled for many years with incompar
able results. I had hoped that I should not be obliged to
consider more closely the idea of parting with you in our
lifetime. If I am none the less compelled, in the full con
sciousness of the grievous importance of your retirement, to
familiarize myself with this idea, I do it indeed with an
afflicted heart, but in the confident expectation that the
granting of your request will contribute toward sparing and
preserving your life — irreplaceable to the Fatherland — and
your energies, as long as possible. The motives of your
resolve which you have put forward convince me that further
attempts to persuade you to take back your offer would have
no prospect of success. I therefore respond to your wish, in
that I herewith grant you the requested discharge from
our offices as Imperial Chancellor, Prime Minister, and
Minister for Foreign Affairs, with my good will and in the
assurance that your counsel and your energy, your loyalty
120

MY DISMISSAL
and devotion, will not fail me, and the Fatherland, in the
future also. I have regarded it as one of the most merciful
dispensations of my life that I had you beside me, as my
first adviser, at the time when I succeeded to the govern
ment. What you have effected and attained for Prussia
and Germany, what you have been to my House, my prede
cessors, and myself, will remain a grateful and imperishable
memory for me and the German people. But even abroad
your wise and energetic peace policy, which I, too, am re
solved, in future and out of complete conviction, to make the
pattern of my own dealings, will always be recollected with
glorious approbation.
iTo reward your service adequately is not within my
power. I must in this connection be satisfied with assuring
you of my and the Fatherland's imperishable gratitude. As
a token of this gratitude I confer upon you the dignity of a
Duke of Lauenburg. I will also have my life-size portrait
sent to you.
God bless you, my dear Prince, and grant you yet many
years of an untroubled old age, illumined by the conscious
ness of duty loyally accomplished.
With these sentiments I remain, in the future also, in
loyalty bound, your grateful Kaiser and King, Wilhelm, I.R.

I cannot see you leave the position in which you have
worked so many years for my House, as for the greatness
and welfare of the Fatherland, without also calling to mind,
as War Lord, in secret gratitude, the irreplaceable services
which you have performed in connection with my army.
With far-seeing circumspection and iron steadfastness you
stood by the side of my grandfather, now resting in God, in
the difficult times when the point at issue was the accom
plishment of that reorganization of our military forces which
was recognized as necessary. You have helped to build the
9 121

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
track on which the army, with God's help, may be led from
victory to victory. Heroically you did your duty as a sol
dier in the great war, and since then, down to this day, you
have, with unresting heedfulness and self-sacrifice, been
prepared to step forward as the keeper of that valor which
our people inherited from their fathers, and therewith to
guarantee the continuance of the benefits of peace.
I know myself one with my army when I cherish the
desire to see the man who has accomplished such great
things henceforth in the highest rank. I therefore appoint
you Colonel General l of Cavalry with the rank of a General
Field Marshal, and hope to God that you may for many
years yet be left to fill this honorable position.
Wilhelm.
Since then my counsel has not at any time been
demanded either directly or through an inter
mediary; on the contrary, my successsors appear
to be forbidden to discuss politics with me. I
have the impression that in the case of all officials
and officers who hold on to their places there is a
boycott against me; not only professional, but
social also. This boycott found a curious official
expression in the diplomatic pardon extended to
my successor on account of the discredit thrown
upon the person of his predecessor abroad.
I expressed my thanks for the military promotion
in the following letter:
I respectfully thank Your Majesty for the gracious words
with which you have accompanied my dismissal, and I feel
myself greatly favored by the gift of the portrait, which for
me and mine will be an honorable memorial of the time during
which Your Majesty permitted me to devote my energies to
the imperial service. Your Majesty has had the kindness
1 General-Oberst. (Trans.) 122

DROPPING THE PILOT"-ONE OF THE MOST FAMOUS CARTOONS
EVER DRAWN-WHICH APPEARED IN "PUNCH" MARCH 29, l890, A
WEEK AFTER BISMARCK's DISMISSAL. WHEN THE GERMAN SHIP OF
<u™ E^RASHED 0N THE ROCKS UNDER THE UNSKILLED HELMSMAN-
n7 °I HE KA'SE^ THE CARTOONIST'S PROPHETIC CONCEPTION
OF THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE EPISODE ILLUSTRATED RECEIVED
STRIKING CONFIRMATION

MY DISMISSAL
at the same time to bestow upon me the dignity of a Duke
of Lauenburg. I have respectfully permitted myself to lay
before Privy Cabinet Councilor von Lucanus, verbally, the
reasons which make it difficult for me to bear a title of this
nature, and thereto I added the request that this further act
of grace should not be made public. The fulfillment of this
request of mine was not possible, because the official pub
lication had already taken place in the Staats- Anzeiger at the
time when I was able to express my scruples. But I venture
most submissively to beseech Your Majesty graciously to
permit me to continue to bear the name and title which I
have hitherto borne. As for the military, promotion which
so greatly honors me, I submissively beg Your Majesty to
allow me to lay my respectful thanks at Your Majesty's feet
as soon as I am in a position to make the official announce
ment, for the moment delayed by indisposition.
On the morning of the 21st, at ten o'clock, while
my son was at the Lehrter railway station to
receive the Prince of Wales, His Majesty said to
him: "You have misunderstood Schuvalov, to
judge by your letter of yesterday; he has just
been speaking to me. He wants to visit you this
afternoon and put matters straight." My son
replied that he could no longer deal with Schuvalov,
for he was on the point of sending in his resigna
tion. His Majesty would not hear of such a
proposal: "he would grant my son all facilities,
and that afternoon or later would discuss matters
with him in detail; he must remain." Schuvalov,
too, called on my son that afternoon, but declined
to make overtures, since his instructions were to
deal with my son and myself, not with our suc
cessors. Concerning the audience that morning,
he told us that he had been awakened at 1 a.m.
123

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
by a military policeman, who had brought him a
two-line note from the aide-de-camp, an appoint
ment for 8.45 a.m. He had been greatly agitated,
supposing that something had happened to the
Tsar. At the audience His Majesty had spoken
of politics, expressing himself as ready to make
advances, and declared that he wished to con
tinue the policy which had so far been followed ;
and he, Schuvalov, had informed St. Petersburg of
this. To a question of Caprivi's as to a suitable suc
cessor my son mentioned (on the 23 d) the am
bassador in Brussels, Von Alvensleben.1 Caprivi
stated that he was on good terms with him, and
expressed himself as against a non-Prussian at the
head of the Foreign Office. His Majesty had named
Marschall to him. In the meantime the Kaiser
informed my son, whom he met at breakfast at the
Dragoons' mess, that Alvensleben was also quite
acceptable to him.
On the morning of the 26th my son showed
Caprivi the ropes of the Secretariat. The latter
found the conditions too complicated — he would
be obliged to simplify them — and he mentioned
that Alvensleben had been with him that morning;
but the more he lectured him the more obstinate
he became in his refusal. My son agreed that he
would make another attempt with Alvensleben
that afternoon and inform Caprivi of the result.
In the course of the same day he received his
1 Friedrich Johann Count von Alvensleben, born 1836; Prussian diplo
matist, 1888-1901; Minister to Brussels, then ambassador to St. Petersburg.
124

MY DISMISSAL
discharge, without having had the conversation
which the Kaiser had given him reason to expect.
My son endeavored in the afternoon, as prom
ised, in company with the ambassador, Von
Schweinitz, who was present on leave, to induce
Herr von Alvensleben to accept the position as his
successor, but without success. Alvensleben de
clared that he would rather abandon his career
than become Secretary of State, but he, neverthe
less, promised not to make up his mind finally
until he had spoken to the Kaiser.
On the morning of the 27th the Kaiser called
on my son, and in the midst of repeated embraces
expressed the hope that he would soon see him
rested and back in the service, and asked how
matters stood in respect of Alvensleben. After
ward my son reported, and His Majesty expressed
his astonishment that Alvensleben had not yet
presented himself; he immediately made an ap
pointment for the latter to be at the palace at
half past twelve.
My son betook himself to Caprivi and informed
him of Alvensleben's attitude. He told him that
His Majesty had sent for him, and he recapitu
lated the reasons by which he himself had en
deavored to influence him. Thereupon Caprivi
expressed himself somewhat as follows :
"That's all too late now. Yesterday he had
submitted to His Majesty that Alvensleben was un
willing, and thereupon he was authorized to apply
to Marschall. Marschall had at once declared
himself to be ready, with the additional remark
12s

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
that he had already had the consent of his grand
duke for his transfer to the imperial service, and
his official request to Karlsruhe was only a matter
of form. If Alvensleben were to accept now there
would be nothing else for him (Caprivi) to do but
resign. He would report at the palace at 12.45,
and remind His Majesty of yesterday's commis
sion to Marschall."
Alvensleben, who was received at the palace
immediately before Caprivi, had not been per
suaded even by the Kaiser. As the latter in
formed Caprivi of this fact, with an expression of
his regret, Caprivi replied that it was very for
tunate, and had saved him from a great dilemma,
for he had already settled matters with Marschall.
The Kaiser exclaimed, briefly, "Good, then; it's
Marschall." Caprivi had not awaited the result
of my son's conversation with Alvensleben, but
had secured the ambassador from Baden before
this took place.
The Grand Duke of Baden, who had learned
from remarks made by my son, in the presence
of Herr von Marschall, that his decisive influence
over the Kaiser had come to my knowledge, paid
me a call on the 24th and left me in an ungracious
frame of mind. I told him that he had interfered
with the Imperial Chancellor in his own com
petence, and had made my position with regard
to His Majesty impossible.
On the 26th of March I took leave of the Kaiser.
His Majesty said that "anxiety for my health
alone" had induced him to consent to my resigna-
126

MY DISMISSAL
tion. I replied that my health had seldom been
so good of late years as during the past winter.
The publication of my resignation was postponed.
Simultaneously with his installation Caprivi had
already taken possession of part of the Chancellor's
official residence; I saw that ambassadors, Min
isters, and diplomatists were obliged to wait on
the ground floor, a coercive measure compelling
me to expedite my packing and my departure.
On the 29th of March I left Berlin under the
compulsion of this overhasty evacuation of my
residence, receiving in the railway station the
military salute ordered by the Kaiser, which I
might justifiably have called my first-class funeral
obsequies. Before this I received the following letter from
His Majesty the Kaiser Franz Joseph:
Vienna, March 22, i8go.
Dear Prince :
The news, which evokes my fullest sympathy, that you
consider that the time has come to withdraw yourself from
the grinding fatigue and anxieties of your office, has now
received your official confirmation. Much as I desire and
hope that your shaken health will improve, if you will not
grudge yourself rest after so many years of uninterrupted,
successful, and glorious statesman-like efficacy, as little can
I leave unuttered the feelings of sincere regret with which I
regard your departure from the direction of the foreign
affairs of the German Empire, which is so close a neighbor.
I shall always most gratefully acknowledge that you have j
conceived the relations between Germany and Austria- j
Hungary in a spirit of loyal friendship, and have founded, by !
your consistent and loyal co-operation with persons in my
confidence, the conditions of the now unshakable alliance,
127

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
which corresponds with the interests of both empires, as it
does with my desires and those of your sovereign and Kaiser.
I congratulate myself that I have contributed by my sup
port and my unreserved confidence to the fate of efforts of
such importance to the Continent; and I know how grate
fully I realize that I can count upon you, on all occasions, for
the same loyal honesty and indefatigable co-operation.
May you still be granted the satisfaction of seeing, through
a long period of years, how the bond of friendship between
Germany and Austria, joined fast by you in the difficult days
in which we are living, proves to be a safe bulwark not only
for the allies, but also for the peace of Europe. Receive, my
dear Prince, the assurance that my heartfelt wishes always
accompany you, that I think of you with feelings of sincere
esteem and friendship, and that it will give me the keenest
pleasure, whenever the opportunity offers itself to you, to give
yet a further demonstration of your devoted patriotism and
your long-proved and sagacious experience.
Franz Joseph.
At Christmas, 1890, Kaiser Wilhelm had a col
lection of photographs of the rooms of Wilhelm Fs
palace sent to me; I thanked him for it in the
following letter: Friedrichsruh,
December 25, 1800.
Most Illustrious Kaiser,
Most Gracious King and Master:
I take the liberty of laying at your feet my respectful
thanks for the Christmas present sent me at Your Majesty's
command. To me it represents in perfect facsimile the
places with which my recollections of my late master are pre
dominantly connected, and in which he showed me, for more
than half a century, his gracious good will, which he retained
128

MY DISMISSAL
to the end of his days. To my most dutiful thanks for this
souvenir of the past I join my respectful good wishes for the
coming New Year.
In deepest respect I remain
Your Majesty's Most dutiful servant, v. Bismarck.

CHAPTER IX
COUNT CAPRIVI
How long and how profoundly the depart
mental jealousy which had its rise in the war of
1866 was responsible afterward for causing ill
humor in the army, and how far it found support
in the increasing ill will of my equals in rank and
my former party comrades, I perceived from a
communication made to me by Field Marshal von
Manteuffel (among others) to the effect that
General von Caprivi had expressed himself to him
of his own accord and in urgent terms concerning
the danger which had been created by my, the
leading Minister's, "enmity toward the army,"
and in this connection had requested the marshal
to help him by using his influence with the King.
This outbreak of latent enmity, unexpected even
to the field marshal, and Caprivi's simultaneous
dealings with the gatherings which centered round
Count Roon and in the house of the Privy Coun
cilor von Lebbin (Minister of the Interior), who
was an ally of Caprivi's, and which were ener
getically working against me, did not destroy the
high opinion which I entertained of his military
talents, as a result of the testimony of competent
witnesses. Before and after his appointment to
130

COUNT CAPRIVT
the head of the navy, which took place in 1883,
against my advice, I importuned Kaiser Wilhelm
not to withdraw from the land forces, in view of
the then doubtful prospects of peace, a general
who enjoyed to such an extent the confidence of
the army; not to interrupt in such a manner the
sympathy which he had for the army, and which,
on the outbreak of war, he would first of all be
obliged to renew. I importuned him particu
larly to assign Caprivi a share in the direction of
the General Staff as soon as Count Moltke should
need assistance. The latter, however, was not in
clined to accept Caprivi's assistance, declaring
that he would rather resign, a thing which the
Kaiser wished in any case to prevent. Apart
from this His Majesty felt the need — which was
doubtless justified — of correcting certain faults
which were said to have gained ground under
General von Stosch, by means of a soldierly, dis
ciplined character such as Caprivi. My own wish
was to see the control of the navy placed in the
hands of a sailor. Here was a similar situation to
that which occurred under the Kaiser Friedrich,
when he, annoyed by Waldersee's and the Countess
Waldersee's relations with Stocker, declared to
me that he wished to appoint Waldersee to the
General Staff, and I, in this case, named Caprivi
as a suitable successor to Count Haseler. Ca
privi was more intimate with the Kaiser, but on
sounding the field marshal His Majesty encoun
tered the same decided refusal as his father had
done. Caprivi was too independent in his judg-
131

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
ment, in the military sphere, for Wilhelm II, but
in the political sphere he was not His Majesty's
match in the matter of training.
I had voluntarily retired from the post of
Minister of Commerce, only because I was not
willing to furnish the responsible counter-signa
tures for what was so much "Love's Labor Lost,"
as far as Social Democracy was concerned, and for
legislation relating to the compulsion of labor and
Sunday labor, of the kind to which the Kaiser had
been won over by certain reigning sovereigns and
Von Boetticher and other backstairs intriguers.
At that time I still had the intention of remaining
Chancellor and Prime Minister, because I held
this to be a point of honor in view of the difficulties
which I anticipated in the immediate future. In
particular I felt that I could not myself accept the
responsibility for my retirement from the imperial
Foreign Office, but that I must wait until His
Majesty should assume the initiative in this re
spect. To this point of honor I held fast, even
when the Kaiser's attitude toward me prompted
me to put the direct question "whether I was in
His Majesty's way." In the reply, that I must
still support the new military proposals — Von
Verdy's — I read an affirmative answer to my
inquiry, and intimated the possibility of his re
placing me as Prime Minister and leaving me at
my post as Chancellor. At that time I thought I
was still in agreement with His Majesty as regards
my remaining as Chancellor, while the intentions
of the King, in which I did not feel that I could
132

COUNT CAPRIVI
co-operate in a responsible manner, concerned, in
the first place, the functions of Prussian Prime
Minister and Minister of Commerce. The latter
post I resigned immediately after His Majesty
had resolved to retain Governor von Berlepsch,
recommending Von Berlepsch as my successor. In
this situation I assumed that we must have, at the
head of affairs, not such a man as Boetticher, but
a general officer with the sense of honor peculiar
to the Prussian officers' corps. I was not without
anxiety lest the Kaiser's choice, in accordance with
the influence which, to judge by his own declara
tion in Council on the 24th of January, such
unofficial persons as Hinzpeter, Douglas, Heyden,
and Berlepsch, and such officials as Boetticher had
obtained over him, might be determined by the
belief that the revolutionary peril could be fought
by acquiring popularity. I was much disturbed
by the Kaiser's inclination to win over his enemies
by amiability, instead of inspiring his friends with
courage and confidence. Moreover, the destruc
tive criticism of my policy, which in my absence
was brought to bear from the direction of Baden,
increased my fear of civilian concession hunters
and advisers, and of successors without a political
sense of honor, who would injure tne monarchy
in order to retain their positions. This anxiety
was based upon my observations of my colleagues
in the Ministry.
I had heard that the Kaiser had allayed the mis
givings which Caprivi had expressed as to becoming
my successor with the words: "There's no need
133

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
for you to be anxious; one man's much like
another, and I'll accept the responsibility for
all transactions." Let us hope that the next
generation will gather the fruits of this kingly
self-confidence. When Caprivi had overcome the misgivings
which he entertained as to taking over the post of
Chancellor, he expressed himself concerning them,
in the one short conversation which we had after
his appointment, through the open door of the
room which he had appropriated in the wing of
my house, in the following words: "If in battle,
at the head of my Tenth Army Corps, I received
an order such that I feared its execution would
lead to the loss of the corps, the battle, and my
own life, and if the representation of my genuine
misgivings had no result, nothing would be left
for me but to carry out the order and perish.
What else? It's a case of man overboard!" In
this conception we have the most exact expression
of the mentality of the army officer, which has
constituted the ultimate foundation of the strength
of Prussia in this and the previous century, and
will, it is to be hoped, continue to do so. But
when it charges itself with legislation and politics,
foreign and domestic, this element, which in its
own sphere is worthy of all admiration, has none
the less its dangers: the modern policy of the
German Empire, with a free press and a parlia
mentary Constitution, in the thick of European dif
ficulties, would not be carried out, as a royal decree
is executed, by general officers, even if the talents
134

COUNT CAPRIVI
of the German Emperor and King of Prussia con
cerned were more than equal to those of Friedrich II.
In Herr von Caprivi's place I should not have
accepted the position of Imperial Chancellor; a
Prussian general of high rank, who enjoys more
than others the confidence of our corps of officers,
is too distinguished a man to become Cabinet
Minister or adjutant in a sphere which is strange
to him; and politics is, after all, not a battlefield,
but merely the expert handling of the problem
whether and when war is necessary, and how one
can honorably guard against it. I can only regard
Caprivi's theory as valid in situations where the
existence of the monarchy and the Fatherland is
at stake — situations in connection with which the
idea of dictatorship has developed during the
course of history; for example, I regard the situa
tion of 1862 as one of this nature.
How strictly, I might say with what subordina
tion, Caprivi followed his "orders" is shown by
the fact that he asked me no questions, made no
inquiry of me, concerning the condition of the
state affairs which he was on the point of taking
over, nor concerning the aims and intentions
hitherto pursued by the imperial government
and the means of their accomplishment. I gath
ered from this that he had definite orders to refrain
from discussing any question with me, in order not
to weaken the impression that the Kaiser intended
to rule by himself, without a Chancellor. It has
never been my experience that the transfer of a
lease did not demand a certain understanding
10 135

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
between the outgoing and the incoming tenant;
but in the government of the German Empire,
with all its complicated relations, no such neces
sity was apparent. The indication in my dis
charge, that the Kaiser would make use of my
advice, was never applied in practice, and it so
happens that I never saw my successor's signature,
either at the time of my dismissal or later, whether
officially or privately, excepting at the foot of a
decision — unfavorable to me — relating to my pen
sion.1 My experience in German politics went
back forty years, and my successor was no more
familiar with the political situation as a result of
the change of office than he had been at the head
of the Tenth Army Corps.
The reason why His Majesty had decided to dis
miss me, and to order me, in my old age, to accept
a sudden change of residence and of activities,
I never learned from him, either officially or by
word of mouth, even when I saw him again after
the lapse of four years : I have only been able to
arrive at a conjectural explanation, which is
possibly quite incorrect. All sorts of lies may have
reached my sovereign; he has told me nothing
of them and has asked me for no explanation. I
have had the impression that the Kaiser did not
wish me to appear in Berlin before and after
the New Year of 1890, because he knew that I
should express myself in the Reichstag with regard
to Social Democracy in accordance with my own
1 1 was required, among other things, to return the proportion of my
quarterly salary (paid on January ist) for the eleven days from the date of
my dismissal (March 20-31). 136

COUNT CAPRIVI
convictions, and not in accordance with the con
victions which had in the meantime become his,
and which were first made known to me at the
State Council of the 24th of January. According
to information which reached me directly and
through my son, His Majesty had reserved his
decision as to the date of my retirement. I
received it in the form of an invitation to the
Council on the 25th of January, with the command
that I should appear half an hour before the
deliberations commenced. I assumed that I was
to learn what was to be discussed in the Council.
But I did not, and I followed His Majesty through
the Nun's walk to the council-chamber just as
ignorant of the disclosures about to be made to us
as were my colleagues, with the exception of
Boetticher. Even after my dismissal the greatest care was
taken not to enter into any sort of relations with
me, apparently in order to avoid arousing the
suspicion that any need was felt of profiting by
my experience and my knowledge of men and
things. I was strictly boycotted, and kept under
quarantine, as the source of the germs of the
infectious disease from which we had suffered,
politically, when I was Chancellor. His military
fashion of understanding things, accentuated, in
office and previously, by the psychological con
sequences of a tantalizing youth, which in a
Guards officer without means was not free from
bitterness and privation, may have contributed, in
Caprivi, to the feeling that to end his years in the
i37

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
highest position in the state meant an act of just
compensation on the part of fate. That the re
sentment toward people in my position from which
he must have suffered for twenty years or more
had survived this period, I gather from the fact
that his relations with me, from the moment
of the first overtures which the Kaiser made to
him, were not actuated, either in Berlin or in
Vienna, by straightforward, downright, essential
considerations, as my relations with him had
always been, in spite of his unfriendly feeling
toward me, of which I was aware. I did not
succeed in overcoming this feeling during the
period when we were colleagues in the imperial
service, at the time of his administration of the
navy, in spite of all the expenditure of personal
amiability which I devoted to this purpose; in
the presence of persons of substance and position
the youthful impressions of an officer who for
years was tantalized by possessing no allowance
invariably came to the surface.1
1 1 cannot deny that my confidence in the character of my successor suf
fered a shock when I heard that he had cut down the ancient trees in front of
the garden of his — formerly my — residence. These trees constituted an
adornment of the official imperial premises of the Residence which it would
take centuries to renew and which cannot be replaced. Kaiser Wilhelm I,
who spent many happy days of his youth in the Chancellor's garden, would
have no rest in his grave if he knew that his former Officer of the Guard
had cut down his beloved old trees, which had not their like in Berlin or the
neighborhood, in order to obtain un poco piu di luce. This extermination of
trees is not a German, but a Slavish trait. The Slavs and the Celts, both un
doubtedly related races, and both akin to the Germans, are no tree-lovers,
as every one knows who has been in Poland and France. Their towns and
villages stand treeless amid the fields, like a Nuremburg toy on the table.
I would pardon Herr von Caprivi many differences of political opinion
rather than the ruthless destruction of ancient trees, in which he infringed
the law regarding state premises by causing the deterioration of the same.
138

COUNT CAPRIVI
I had for a long time had the feeling that
I was regarded, by a considerable proportion of
my Prussian colleagues, and of my subordinates
in the Empire, as an incumbrance, an incubus
whose pressure would hinder their own progressive
promotion, but I believe that any Prime Min
ister and Imperial Chancellor would have had the
same feeling who had striven, as long as I did,
unremittingly to do his duty, in that he sought,
as far as was humanly possible, to maintain the
unity and moderation of the various departments
in respect of one another, and in the face of the
justified expectations of the governed and their
individual class interests.
The duty here indicated can without violation
of our institutions be performed by the monarch
in his character of German Emperor and King of
Prussia just as well as by an Imperial Chancellor
and Prime Minister, if the monarch possesses the
requisite preparatory training and capacity for
work, and discusses matters with his Ministers in
a pertinent manner, not as a monarch. Even if
he does the latter he should nevertheless always
feel it necessary — and indeed he is compelled by
his oath in respect of the Prussian Constitution —
to listen to the advice of his Ministers before he
comes to a decision, and to consider what his con
stitutional responsibility requires of him. But if
he did not do so, and if his mere command as the
King of Prussia were to meet with silent obedience
from his place-hunting Ministers, and if this
obedience were to be communicated to the Prus-
i39

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
sian voters in the Bundesrath — in other words, if
the King of Prussia in his Cabinet were to as
sume the position of the French king in the lit de
justice (hoc volo, sic jubeo), and if he were then to
find a Minister who would accept the still existing
position of private secretary, the kingdom would
be left in a state of unprotectedness in the face
of parliamentary and press criticism which is not
compatible with our present arrangements. The
Ministers are entitled to urge upon parliament the
consideration that the King, who in Prussia is the
third term of the legislative power, stands behind
them, but not, I think — as has happened since my
resignation — to absolve themselves from the vindi
cation of their own convictions, by the argument
that the King has commanded such and such a
measure. The weight of the King's personal
opinion may well be appealed to by a Minister in
recommendation of the measure which he is advo
cating, but never in order to cover his own respon
sibility for the measure advocated. Abuses of this
kind are apt to dissipate the responsibility which
should be the Minister's, and to transfer it to the
monarch, who is not present in parliament.
A Minister would be justified in saying, in the
Prussian Chamber of Deputies, that any motion
in the House of Peers would not be approved and
had better be modified for the sake of agreement.
With equal constitutional justification he might
say that any other motion would not pass the
highest and equally privileged legislative factor —
the King. (Art. 62 of the Constitution.)
140

CHAPTER X
KAISER WILHELM II
As regards his natural endowment with the
characteristics of his forbears, the Kaiser has
inherited a certain diversity of talents. He has
the love of splendor, the leaning toward court
ceremonial, enhanced, on solemn occasions, by
costume, of our first kings, combined with a lively
susceptibility to adroit approbation. The auto
cratic temper of the age of Friedrich I has been
essentially modified by the lapse of time; but if it
had lain within the legal possibilities of the present
period, I believe I should not have been spared the
fate of Count Eberhard Danckelmann as the con
clusion of my political career. Considering the
brief duration of life on which I can count in my
old age, I should not have tried to evade a dramatic
conclusion of my political career, and I would
have endured even this irony of fate with cheerful
submissiveness to the will of God. Even in the
most serious situations in life I have never lost
my sense of humor.
The Kaiser displayed inherited sympathies sim
ilar to those of Friedrich Wilhelm I, first of all in
the superficiality of his predilection for a "tall
fellow." If the Kaiser's aides-de-camp were passed
141

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
under the measure you would find that they were
almost all officers of unusual stature, six feet or
more in height. It once happened that a tall,
unknown officer announced himself at the court
residence in the Marble Palace, demanding access
to His Majesty, and on being questioned declared
that he was appointed aide-de-camp) — a statement
which at first, after further inquiry, was accepted
in good faith by His Majesty. The new aide
towered above his comrades, but it was not with
out difficulty that he convinced them of his title
to the post at the time of his first appearance in
the palace.
The inclination of Friedrich Wilhelm I and
Friedrich II toward the autocratic control of
governmental affairs,1 and their faith in the
justification of hoc volo, sic jubeo,2 are still im
pressed upon the inheritance of the race. But
these sovereigns governed as autocrats, as was
the tendency of their age, without considering
whether the way in which they governed gained
applause for them or otherwise. It is scarcely

1 1 remember that in 1859, at the time of my departure for Petersburg, I
received the ungracious answer to my criticism of the incapacity of the
Ministers of the Regent, as a body, "Perhaps you take me for a blockhead!"
To which I replied that even a Prussian Landrath at the present day would
administer its district neither willingly nor well without a useful district
secretary, but that the monarchy had long ago grown beyond the possi
bility of Cabinet government. Even Frederick the Great had avoided
selecting incapable Ministers for his tools.
2Juvenalis Satirae, Sat. IV, lines 220-224:
Pone crucem servo; meruit quo crimine servus
Supplicium? quis testis adest, quis detulit? audi,
Nulla unquam de morte hominis cunctatio longa est.
O demens, ita servus homo est? nil fecerit, esto.
Hoc volo, sic jubeo, sit pro ratione voluntas.
142

KAISER WILHELM II
possible to discover whether the contemporaries
of Friedrich Wilhelm I gave him their approbation,
as did posterity, because in his violent intervention
he was free from any regard for the opinion of
others, as his father had been. To-day the
judgment of history has decided that the supreme
law of his being was salus publica, not approbation.
Frederick the Great did not propagate his race;
but his position in our early history must have
worked upon each of his successors as a challenge
to resemble him. He had two peculiar gifts,
each of which enhanced the other: he had the
qualifications of a commander-in-chief and a
homely bourgeois understanding of the interests
of his subjects. Without the first he would not
have been in a position to make lasting use of the
second, and without the second his military success
would not have won him the recognition of pos
terity in such a degree as has been the case —
although one may say of the European nations in
general that that king is the most truly national
and the most beloved who has won the bloodiest
laurels for his country; sometimes even when he
has lost them again through his own neglect.
Charles XII obstinately led his Sweden toward
the ruin of her powerful position, yet one finds
his portrait in the houses of the Swedish peasants,
as a symbol of Sweden's glory, more frequently
than that of Gustavus Adolphus. A lover of
peace, -a benefactor to his people, and a civilizing
agent does not as a rule influence the Christian
nations of Europe so deeply and so inspiringly as
i43

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
one who is ready to make victorious use of the
blood and treasure of his subjects on the battle
field. Louis XIV and Napoleon, whose wars
ruined the nation and in the end had little result,
have remained the pride of the French, and the
more homely services of other monarchs and
governments remain thrust into the background.
If I picture to myself the history of the European
peoples, I find no instance in which honorable and
self-sacrificing care for the peaceful prosperity of
the nations has had a stronger power of attraction
for the sympathies of the people than martial
glory, victorious battles, and the conquest of
even rebellious territories.
In contrast to his father, Friedrich II, under the
influence of the changing period, and his inter
course with foreign scholars, felt a need of approba
tion which early betrayed itself in little things.
In his correspondence with Count Seckendorff he
sought to impress this ancient sinner by his sexual
excesses and the maladies following thereupon,
and his aggressive onslaught upon Silesia directly
after his accession to the throne he himself de
scribed as the result of his longing for fame. He
dispatched poems from the battlefield with the
appended remark, "Pas trop mal pour la veille
d'une grande bataille" ("Not so bad for the eve
of a great battle"). But this longing for applause,
this love of approbation, is in a sovereign a power
ful and sometimes a profitable motive; when it is
lacking the monarch is more than usually prone
to lapse into epicurean inactivity. Un petit roi
144

KAISER WILHELM II
d' Yvetot, se levant tard, se coucnant tot, dormant fort
bien sans gloire, does not conduce to the success of
his country.
Would the world have lived to behold the
"great" Frederick, or the heroic pledge of Wil
helm I if neither of these monarchs had felt the
need of approbation? Ambition in itself is a
mortgage which must be deducted from the
capacity for work of the man who is incumbered
by it, in order to arrive at the net profit which
remains as the available sum of his talents. In
the case of Frederick the Great genius and spirit
were so lofty that they could not be depreciated
by any excess of self-esteem, and his extravagant
self-confidence, as in the case of Colin1 and
Kunersdorf,2 the violence used toward the su
preme court of judicature in Arnold's3 trial, and
the ill usage of Trenck, may all be swallowed
without prejudicing the general opinion of this
monarch. In Wilhelm I the consciousness that
he was a Prussian officer and a Prussian king was
extremely active, but the noble qualities of his
heart, the trustworthiness and uprightness of his
character, were great enough to bear the burden,
the more so as his love of approbation was free
from excessive self-esteem; on the contrary, his
eminent modesty was as great as his sense of duty
and his valor. The element which atoned for all
the severities of character and behavior of our
1 A battle fought on June 18, 1757.
z A battle fought on August 12, 1759.
'Arnold was the tenant of a watermill, whom Frederick the Great
protected against pretended injustice. I4S

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
earlier kings lay in their hearty and honorable
good will toward their subjects and servants, and
in their loyalty to both.
Frederick the Great's custom of interfering in the
departments of his Ministers and his magistracy
and in the circumstances of his subjects' lives some
times hovered before His Majesty as an example.
The inclination to make marginal notes in Fred
erick the Great's style, of a critical or peremptory
nature, was during my administration so active
that it resulted in official inconvenience, because
the drastic contents and expression of these notes
made it necessary to keep the annotated docu
ments in the strictest secrecy. Representations
which I made to His Majesty met with a far from
gracious reception; meanwhile the result was that
the marginal notes were no longer written on the
edge of indispensable documents, but pasted to
them. The less complicated Constitution and the
smaller area of Prussia enabled Frederick the
Great to obtain an easier survey of the general
situation of the state, at home and abroad, so
that for a monarch who had his experience of
business, his inclination for solid work, and his
clear insight, the practice of writing brief marginal
instructions for the benefit of the Cabinet offered
fewer difficulties than under modern conditions.
The patience with which he informed himself
before arriving at final decisions in legal or practical
affairs, and listened to the opinion of competent
and expert men of business, gave his marginal
notes their business-like authority.
146

KAISER WILHELM II
There are two directions in which Kaiser Wil
helm II shares in the inheritance of Friedrich
Wilhelm II. One is the powerful sexual develop
ment, the other a certain susceptibility to mystical
influences. As to the manner in which the Kaiser
assures himself of the will of God, to whose service he
devotes his activities, we can scarcely cite a classical
witness. The intimations in the imaginative essay,
"King and Minister: A Midnight Coversation," x
concerning a" Book of Vows, "and the miniatures of
his three great predecessors, are by no means clear.
I find no similarity of appearance between Fried
rich Wilhelm III and Wilhelm II. The former was
shy and reserved, and had no inclination for ex
hibiting himself, nor did he strive after popularity.
I remember at a review in Stargard, at the begin
ning of his thirtieth year, in connection with the
ovations by which his ease in the midst of his
Pomeranian subjects was disturbed, that at the
moment when "Heil Dir im Siegerkranz," mingled
with cries of "Hurrah," was being sung into his
face at short range, he flew into a rage whose loud
and energetic expression at once silenced the
singers. Wilhelm I was not without his share of
this paternal inheritance of self-conscious diffi
dence, and was painfully affected when the homage
paid him overstepped the limits of good taste.
Flattery a brule pourpoint irritated him greatly;
his reception of any expression of sympathetic
loyalty was chilled for the time being by the
impression of exaggeration or aggressiveness.
1 The Contemporary Review, April, 1890, p. 457.
147

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
In common with Friedrich Wilhelm IV, the
present Kaiser has the gift of eloquence and the
need of employing it more frequently than is de
sirable. His words flow readily; but in the choice
of them his great-uncle was more discreet and
perhaps more laborious and scientific. In the
case of the great-nephew the presence of a short
hand writer is not always desirable; but it was
very seldom that a grammatical criticism could be
brought against Friedrich Wilhelm's speeches.
These latter were the eloquent and sometimes po
etical expression of ideas which at that time would
have been capable of stimulating men to action,
had the words been followed by deeds to cor
respond. I very well remember the enthusiasm
aroused by the Coronation Speech and the King's
utterances upon other public occasions. If they
had been followed by energetic resolutions of the
same emphatic character, they might at that time
have produced a powerful effect, all the more as
people's feelings were not yet blunted in respect of
political emotions. In the years 1841 and 1842
more was to be achieved with fewer means than
in 1849. We can form an impartial judgment of
those matters now that the then desirable object
has been attained, and the need of 1840 is no
longer present in the national mind; on the con
trary, Le mieux est Vennemi du bien is one of the
soundest of proverbs, against which the Germans
are theoretically more inclined to trespass than
other nations. Wilhelm II resembled Friedrich
Wilhelm IV in this, that the foundation of their
148

KAISER WILHELM II
policy was rooted in the conception that the King,
and he alone, is more closely acquainted with the
will of God than other men, governs in accordance
with the same, and therefore confidently demands
obedience, without discussing his aim with his
subjects or announcing it to them. Friedrich
Wilhelm IV had no doubt of his specially privileged
position in respect of the Deity; his honest belief
corresponds with the picture of the high priest of
the Jews, who alone stepped behind the curtain.
In certain respects we shall seek in vain for any
resemblance between Wilhelm II and his father,
grandfather, and great-grandfather; peculiarities
which were the principal features of the characters
of Friedrich Wilhelm III, Wilhelm I, and Fried
rich III were not to the fore in the young sovereign.
A certain timid distrust of their own capacity for
work had, through the four generations, made
way for a certain degree of assured self-confidence,
such as we have not seen upon the throne since the
time of Frederick the Great; but only, I think, in
the person of the reigning sovereign. His brother,
Prince Henry of Prussia, seems to possess the same
distrust of his own powers and the same secret
diffidence as are found, on closer acquaintance, at
the bottom of the characters of Kaisers Friedrich
and Wilhelm I, despite all their consciousness of
their Olympian rank. In the latter his profound
and pious trust in God was needed as surety, in the
face of his unassuming and humble conception,
before man and God, of his own personality, for
the steadfastness of those resolutions which he
149

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
made manifest in the time of conflict. Both
rulers atoned by their goodness of heart and their
honest love of the truth for their occasional devia
tions from the current estimation of the practical
influence of kingly birth and anointing.
If I seek to paint a portrait of the present Kaiser
after the conclusion of my relations with his ser
vice, I find in him the characteristics of his prede
cessors incarnated in a manner which would for
me possess a strong attractive power, and result
in my attachment to his person, if they were ani
mated by the principle of reciprocity between
monarch and subject, between master and servant.
The Germanic feudal law gives the vassal few pre
tensions save to the property of the subject, except
that the fealty between him and his feudal lord
is reciprocal, and the infraction of this fealty by
either party is reckoned to be felony. Wilhelm I,
his son, and his predecessors possessed the cor
responding sentiment in a high degree; and this
is the essential basis of the attachment of the
Prussian people to their monarchs, which may be
explained psychologically, for the tendency to
bestow a one-sided affection has no existence as an
enduring motive in the human soul. In the pres
ence of Kaiser Wilhelm II, I could not get away
from the impression of a one-sided affection; the
feeling which is the firmest foundation of the con
stitution of the Prussian army, the feeling that the
soldier will never leave the officer in the lurch, but
also that the officer will never leave the soldier in
the lurch, a sentiment to which Wilhelm I con-
15°

THE GERMAN EMPEROR AND EMPRESS. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH
TAKEN IN 1899

KAISER WILHELM II
formed in respect of his servants almost to exag
geration, cannot so far be recognized as entering,
in any adequate degree, into the mentality of the
young sovereign; his pretension to absolute sacri
fice, confidence, and unshakable fealty has in
creased; and the inclination to guarantee a return
of confidence and security on his own part has so
far failed to make its appearance. The ease with
which he dismisses trusted servants, even those
whom he has hitherto treated as personal friends,
without explanation of his motive, does not pro
mote, but weakens, the spirit of confidence as it
has prevailed for generations in the service of the
kings of Prussia.
With the transition from the Hohenzollern spirit
to the Coburg-English conception an imponderable
factor was lost which will be difficult to restore.
Wilhelm I protected and rewarded his servants,
even when they were unfortunate or unskillful,
possibly more than was profitable, and in conse
quence of this he had servants who were more
attached to him than was profitable to themselves.
In particular his warm-hearted good will toward
others was unchangeable, if his gratitude for ser
vices performed came into play. He was always
far from regarding his own will as the sole rule of
conduct, nor could he contemplate the wounding
of other people's feelings with indifference. His
manner toward subordinates was always that of a
royal and benevolent master, and alleviated the
ill humor arising in the course of official business.
Ill-natured gossip and calumny, when they came
" 151

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
to his ears, could obtain no hold upon his noble
and upright nature, and place hunters whose
only source of profit lay in the shamelessness
of their flattery had no prospect of success with
Wilhelm I. To backstairs influences and accusa
tions against his servants he was insensible, even
if they proceeded from people holding high posi
tions about his person, and if he did take the
matter imparted to him into consideration, this was
done in open conversation with the person behind
whose back it was meant to take effect. If his
opinion differed from mine he expressed himself
openly as differing from me, discussing the matter
with me, and if I did not succeed in winning him
over to my views I gave in when it was possible;
if it was not possible I postponed the affair or
let it drop for good. My independence as a po
litical leader has been honestly overestimated by
my friends, and for their own purposes by my
adversaries, because I surrendered all hope of
fulfilling desires to which the King had as a matter
of conviction offered lasting resistance, without
continuing to advocate them until they resulted
in a dispute. What was attainable I took on
account, and on my side it only came to a strike
in cases where my personal sense of honor was
involved, as in the affair of the Reichsglocke,1 by
the Kaiserin, or in the Usedom2 affair, by Masonic
influences; I have never been either a courtier or
a Mason.
1 An opposition newspaper started in 1870.
2 Guido Count von Usedom, Prussian jurist and diplomatist; 1863-69,
ambassador to the Italian court. 152

KAISER WILHELM II
The Kaiser endeavors, by making concessions to
his enemies, to make the support of his friends
unnecessary. His grandfather, at the time of his
accession to the Regency, endeavored to insure the
general content of his subjects, without losing their
obedience and thereby endangering the security of
the state; but after four years' experience he recog
nized the errors of his advisers and of his wife, who
assumed that the opponents of the monarchy
would by liberal concessions be transformed into
its friends and supporters. In 1862 he was in
clined to abdicate rather than surrender further to
parliamentary Liberalism, and accepted battle,
supported by the latent but decisively stronger
loyal elements.
The Kaiser, with his Christian, but not always
(in the worldly sense) successful tendency to con
ciliation, began with his worst enemy, Social De
mocracy. This first mistake, which was embodied
in the management of the strike of 1889, led to
increased pretensions on the part of the Socialists
and fresh ill humor on the part of the monarch,
as soon as it became evident that under the new
government, just as under the old, the monarch
could not, with the best will in the world, change
the nature of things and of the human race. The
Kaiser was without experience in the sphere of
human desires and human covetousness ; but that
he had lost his early confidence in the judgment
and experience of others was a result of intrigues
by which he was confirmed in his underestimation
of the difficulty of governing, not only by officious
i53

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
advisers, such as Hinzpeter, Berlepsch, Heyden,
Douglas and other impudent flatterers, but also by
place-hunting generals and aides, and colleagues to
whom I was referred for support, such as Boet
ticher, who as Minister had no other function than
to support me, and even by individual members of
my Council, who immediately and willingly went
over in secret to President von Berlepsch if the
Kaiser questioned them behind the backs of their
superiors. Perhaps he will suffer the same disil
lusion in respect of Social Democracy as his grand
father suffered in 1862 in respect of the progressives.
This policy of making advances to, not to say
running after, the enemy, has been adopted by the
Center, by Windthorst — only to have spoken to
whom was seized upon by the Kaiser as one of the
external causes of his breach with me — and whose
official honors after my dismissal were increased
to apotheosis after his death. A curious Prussian
saint! It is to be feared that even these favored
props of the monarchy will give way in the mo
ment of need. At all events, the complete satis
faction of the confederates, which the Prussian
monarchy and the Protestant Empire might find
in the Center and the Society of Jesus, will prove
to be just as unattainable as that of the Socialists,
and in the event of danger and difficulty we shall
see results not unlike those which followed the
downfall of the Teutonic Order in Prussia, in con
nection with the mercenary soldiers, whom the
Order was unable to pay. The Kaiser's inclina
tion to employ antimonarchical and even anti-
i54

A PUNCH CARTOON PUBLISHED A MONTH OR TWO AFTER BISMARCK's DISMISSAL.
THE KAISER IS SHOWN "ROCKING THE BOAT," WHICH HE SUBSEQUENTLY SUCCEEDED
IN CAPSIZING

KAISER WILHELM II
Prussian elements, such as the Poles, in the ser
vice of the Crown, gave His Majesty a temporary
means of bringing pressure to bear upon parties
and factions which in principle were loyal to the
antimonarchical tradition. The threat that if
he were not unconditionally obeyed he would turn
yet farther to the Left ; that he might place the
Socialists, the Crypto-Republicans of the Free
thinkers' Party, and the Ultramontane forces at
the helm: in a word, the Acheronta movebo, which
was the distinctive trait of this running after ir
reconcilable opponents, intimidated the established
supporters of the monarchy. They feared that
"things might become even worse," and the Kaiser
is to-day, as far as they are concerned, in the po
sition of a ship's captain whose navigation arouses
the apprehensions of the crew and who sits
smoking a cigar over the powder barrel.
Even in the case of foreign countries, whether
friendly or inimical or doubtful, amiability had
been carried to a greater length than is compatible
with the conception that we should feel secure
by virtue of our own attractive force. There
was no one, either in the Foreign Office or at
court, who was sufficiently familiar with inter
national psychology justly to calculate the effect
of these political proceedings on our side; neither
the Kaiser nor Caprivi nor Marschall was qualified
to do so by his previous experience, and the
political sense of honor of the Kaiser's advisers
was satisfied by the Kaiser's signature, independ
ently of the consequences to the Empire.
iS5

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
The attempt to win the liking of the French
(Meissonier1), in the background of which the
idea of a visit to Paris may have been slumbering,
and the willingness once more to allow the right of
thoroughfare through the boundary wall of the
Vosges, had had no other result than that the
French became bolder and the Statthalter more
anxious. The Kaiser's announcement in the au
tumn of 1889 that he intended to pay a second
visit to Russia in 1890 — an announcement which
was personally inconvenient to the Russian mon
arch — had disagreeable results. Our attitude to
ward England and Austria seemed to me equally
incorrect. Instead of fostering the idea in these
countries that even if the worst came to the worst
we should not be lost without them, a system of
gratuities was employed, which we found to be
extremely costly, and which made us appear to
be in need of help, whereas both our helpers needed
it more than we did. ^England/u^owing to her
lack of troops, "ske were mreatened by France, or by
Russia in India and the Eastvmight find protection
from either of these threats in the assistance of
Germany. But if on our side more importance
were attributed to England's friendship than
England attributed to ours, then England's over-
estimation of herself with reference to us would be
confirmed, as also the conviction that we should
feel ourselves honored if, without any return
services, we were allowed to burn our fingers in
achieving England's aims. Even more certain,
1 The artist. 156

KAISER WILHELM II
in our relations with Austria, was the greater lack
of need on our part, and it is not possible to see
why, at the meeting in Silesia, we should have
had to buy our otherwise secure reliance on
reciprocal support by the promise of economic
concessions or to confirm our need of such support.
The saying that fusion of economic interests — that ,
is, the favoring of Austrian at the cost of German \
interests — is a necessary result of our political
intimacy, has reached me from Vienna in varying
forms, for ten long years, and I have turned aside
the underlying expectations without a blunt re
fusal, but also without giving way in the slightest
degree, meeting them with friendly courtesy, until
they were recognized to be hopeless even in Vienna,
and were abandoned. But at Rohnstock1 the
Austrian expectations appear to have been so
skillfully thrust into the foreground between the
two Kaisers that the natural inclination to be
agreeable to one's guest may have been the origin
of the promise on our part which Kaiser Franz
Joseph had utiliter accepted. In the following
deliberations of the Ministers, moreover, the
routine-trained business dexterity of the Austrians
would in any case have gained an advantage over
our novices and free-traders. It may be that my
friend and colleague Kalnoky1 would not have
been a match for my successor in a military sense,
but in the sphere of economic diplomacy he was his
superior, although not fundamentally an expert.
1 A town and royal hunting lodge in Silesia.
2Gustav Kalnoky (1832-98), Austrian diplomatist; 1881-95, Minister
of the Interior. 157

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
A change in the personal relations between
Wilhelm II and Alexander III had at first an
effect upon the former's ill humor that was not to
be observed without some apprehension.
In May, 1884, Prince Wilhelm was sent by his
grandfather to Russia in order to congratulate the
heir to the throne upon the attainment of his
majority. His close relationship and the Tsar's
veneration of his great-uncle assured him of a
kindly reception and distinguished treatment, to
which he was not at that time accustomed in his
own family; instructed by his grandfather, he
proceeded with circumspection and reserve; the im
pression was on both sides a gratifying one. In the
summer of 1886 the Prince again went to Russia,
in order to greet the Tsar, who was holding re
views in the Polish provinces, at Brest-Litovsk.
Here he was received in an even more friendly
fashion than during his first visit, and had the
opportunity of expressing opinions which were
to the Emperor's liking since his breach with
Prince Alexander of Bulgaria had occurred, while
the Russian influence in Constantinople had
clashed with the English until the position became
one of dangerous tension. The Prince, in his
earliest youth, was prejudiced against England
and all things English, and very much incensed
against Queen Victoria; moreover, he would hear
nothing of a marriage between his sister and one
of the Battenbergs.1 The Potsdam officers at
1 Alexander Prince of Battenberg (1857-93) was from 1879 to 1886 Prince
of Bulgaria. 158

KAISER WILHELM II
that time used to tell of drastic expressions of the
Prince's Anglophobe temper. It was natural to him,
in the political conversation into which the Tsar
drew him, to acquiesce fully in the latter's opinions,
perhaps going even farther than the Tsar ventured
to do. The impression that he had won the full
confidence of Alexander III was possibly incorrect.
With the design of making political profit out
of his relations with the Tsar, who, on returning
from Copenhagen in November, 1887, broke his
journey at Berlin, he traveled by night to meet the
Tsar at Wittenberg. There the Tsar was still
asleep, and the Prince just contrived to see him
shortly before their arrival in Berlin, in the
presence of a portion of his retinue. After dinner
in the palace he remarked to a gentleman, as he
was going downstairs with him, that he had had
no opportunity of speaking to the Tsar of Russia.
The discretion of the guest, who, if not as a result
of previous observation, was at all events then in a
position to explain that in Copenhagen the Tsar
had been informed of the opinion of the Prince
of Wales and the Guelph party, which at that time
prevailed in the English royal family among the
Queen's descendants, aroused a natural irritation
in Prince Wilhelm, which was noted by his circle,
and was increased and exploited by the officious
military element, which at that, time held that
war with Russia was bound to come. The
General Staff was so full of this idea that the
General-Quartermaster,1 Count Waldersee, dis-
1 Head of the General Staff. (Trans.) 159

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
cussed it with the Austrian ambassador, Count
Czechenyi. The latter reported on the conversa
tion to Vienna, and not long afterward the Tsar
asked the German ambassador, Von Schweinitz,
"Why are you stirring up Austria against me?"
The arguments by which Prince Wilhelm had
been influenced may be learned from a letter
which he, having meanwhile become Crown Prince,
wrote me on May 10, 1888, whose tenor I ascribe
to the increasing influence of Count Waldersee,
who considered the moment a favorable one for
making war, and for claiming, for the General Staff,
a more powerful influence over imperial politics.
Berlin, May 10, 1888.
Your Highness,
I have read with great interest your letter of the 9th inst.,
but I think I am to gather from its contents that Your High
ness attributes an exaggerated significance to my marginal
notes to the Vienna report of the 28th of April, and that you
have thereby gained the impression that I have become an
opponent of our hitherto pacific and expectant policy, which
Your Highness has directed with so much wisdom and pru
dence, and, it is to be hoped, will long continue to direct, for
this would be a blessing to the Fatherland. For this policy
I have repeatedly interceded — at St. Petersburg and Brest-
Litovsk — and in all decisive questions have constantly, as is
well known, taken Your Highness's part. What should
have happened to make me suddenly change my opinion?
My marginal notes, in which Your Highness thinks to recog
nize a call on my part for a modification of what has hitherto
been our policy, were merely intended to hint that the politi
cal and military opinions concerning the necessity or expedi
ency of this war — which military opinions I intended thereby
to bring to your knowledge — have become divergent; and
160

KAISER WILHELM II
that the military opinions, considered in themselves, are not
without justification. I thought such a hint would be not
without interest for Your Highness, but never that it would
lead to the belief that I wished to subordinate policy to the
desires of the military circle.
In order to obviate any mistaken conceptions and in partial
recognition of the reasons urged by Your Highness I will in
future abstain from making marginal notes on political re
ports, with the stipulation that at some other time I will
bring my opinions with complete candor to Your Highness's
knowledge. I find myself compelled, by the importance of the ques
tions raised by Your Highness, to go into this matter more
closely. I am absolutely of Your Highness's opinion that even with
a fortunate outcome of a war with Russia we should not suc
ceed in entirely destroying Russia's means of offense and de
fense, yet I believe that that country, after an unsuccessful
war as a result of critical internal political conditions, would
fall into quite a different state of impotence from that of any
other European state, including France. I remember in this
connection that after the Crimean War Russia was helpless
for almost twenty years before she so far recovered her posi
tion that she was in a position to attack.1
France's combatant forces were not largely destroyed, for
under the eyes, indeed with the help of the benevolent and
victorious adversary, it was possible to create and shape a
new army, in order to besiege the Commune and save the
whole nation from ruin; the existing defenses of Paris in the
hands of the victors were not demolished; they were not
even dismantled; the fleet was left to a France which was
not destroyed, but only politically humiliated. These facts
just quoted prove that we, far from having really destroyed
the enemy,2 have preserved the nucleus of the enormous
forces now threatening us on the part of the Republic, on
land and by sea. This was mistaken from a military point
of view, but politically was completely in accordance with
161

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
the situation of things in Europe and was at the moment
correct. The stronger the Republic grew the greater was the
tendency shown by Russia — despite the most loyal behavior
and intentions on the part of the Tsar — without having been
in the least degree injured by Germany, merely to wait for
the favorable moment to fall upon us in alliance with the
Republic.3 This threatening situation exists and continues,
not after a war voluntarily undertaken by us against Russia,
but because of the common interest of the Pan-Slavists and
republican France in overthrowing Germany as the bulwark
of the monarchy.
With this object both nations are systematically strength
ening their combatant forces on the decisive frontiers, al
though this unseemly proceeding has not in any way been
provoked by us, nor have they put forward any valid excuse
for the same.
For this reason the wise policy of my late grandfather,
directed by Your Highness, created alliances which have
greatly contributed to our protection against the invasion of
our born and hereditary enemy in the west. This policy
also includes persuading the Russian ruler to favor us.4
This influence will persist as long as the present Tsar really
possesses the power to make his will effective; if that were
lost — and there are many signs that it might be5 — it is highly
probable that Russia would allow herself to be separated
from our born enemy no longer, in order to make war with
her, if the combatant forces on both sides appeared suffi
ciently developed to destroy us with impunity.
In such circumstances the value of our allies is increased;
to bind them to us6 without allowing them any considerable
influence in the Empire will be and must remain the great,
and, I grant you, the difficult7 task of a prudent German
policy. But it must be remarked that a portion of these
allies are of Romish stock and are provided with a machinery
of government whose absolute security is not so fully guaran
teed as with us. For this reason we are scarcely able to
162

KAISER WILHELM II
count upon a longer alliance, and the war in whose defensive t~
operations they will be called upon to co-operate had better |
be fought earlier than later.8 I
Our enemies will assuredly not neglect to make all sorts of
attempts to isolate us, to alienate our allies from us; every
mistake we commit, every weak point which the German
policy has left uncovered, will assist such endeavors. Among
such mistakes I must count any sort of protection given to
the Battenbergs;9 Austria10 would regard this as an en
croachment upon her special interests; and Russia would
have the satisfaction of seeing us parted from our best
ally; also you will realize that a war which had broken out
on account of the Battenbergs could not be a popular, na
tional war for Germany, for that furor Teutonicus which is
so necessary in such a war would be absolutely lacking.
Russia would then easily be able to create conditions
which would necessarily lead to war; but public opinion
would certainly regard Germany as the originator of the
war. I grant that the danger of war would thereby be ac
celerated; yet at what a cost? Far be it from me to strive
to bring it nearer.11 As the war against the west would be
carried on within range of the eye, and as corresponding
military preparations would be made, which, as Your High
ness has pointed out, would promise far greater benefit in
the west than in the east, the military authorities would be
particularly grateful to the policy which, as soon as the war
was recognized to be inevitable, would be in a position
effectively to insure that it should be fought in the west.12
However, I am of the opinion that we shall have war on
both sides, if we begin it in the east; France would refrain
from attacking us only if she were passing through a par
ticularly difficult domestic crisis, or if military difficulties
should once more intervene, as it seems they certainly existed
last autumn (disappointments over melinite, uselessness of
the new rifle, and the crushing impression produced by the
result of the firing of the outer fort at Jiiterbogk). On the
other hand, we cannot with absolute certainty foretell14
163

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
that if we were forced to go to war against France, Russia
eo ipso would remain passive where we were concerned.
At any time, but most particularly under conditions such
as existed last autumn, it is the duty of the Great General
Staff15 to keep their eyes fixed sharply upon our own military
situation and that of our neighbors, so that they can carefully
weigh the advantages and disadvantages which may offer in
a military connection. The opinion thus formed, not of
the policy to be followed, but of the military measures to be
taken in the service itself, and conditioned by its position
at the moment, must be brought to the knowledge of the
political leader16 by the head of the General Staff with com
plete candor and with strict reference to the military stand
point. Herein resides, in my opinion, an absolutely necessary
aid to the direction of even the most pacific policy.17
I should Hke to be sure that my ominous marginal notes
to the report of the 28th of April were understood in this
sense. They were meant at the same time to hint that
although the German policy must be directed in a manner
best calculated to insure peace, the military authorities of
Germany and Austria should, in duty, and with the fullest
right, have called attention in the autumn of last year to the
favorable16 military opportunity for a warlike procedure
which offered itself to both countries.19
In spite of my marginalia, which caused so much agita
tion, I should yet like to be convinced that Your Highness,
in the event of a possibly imminent change of government,
will be in a position, with the best of consciences, and with
the same certainty as hitherto, to afford us a prospect of the
peaceful attitude on the part of our German policy.20
Wilhelm,
Crown Prince of the German Empire and of Prussia.

Notes, amplifications, etc., of the Imperial Chancellor's in respect of the
foregoing letter: (1) In the margin: Waldersee. (2) In the margin: 40 mil
lions! And Europe? (3) To fall upon us put in brackets; a note of interro
gation over it, as in the margin, and in the latter: To win the Bosporus.
(4) Sentence underlined, and a line in the margin. (5) Note of interrogation.
(6) In the margin: In these words assuredly lay the embryo of the Com-
164

KAISER WILHELM II
On June 15, 1888, the Crown Prince became
Kaiser. Just a week later I heard indirectly of an
imperial utterance to the effect that the Kaiser
was most unpleasantly affected by various articles
in the Berlin newspapers, in particular by an
article in the Berliner Tageblatt evening edition of
the 20th of June and another in the Berliner
Zeitung and the Berliner Presse of the 21st of
June, which appeared to be written to arouse the
belief that there was a dispute between His
Majesty and the Imperial Chancellor in connec
tion with Count Waldersee — that is, that there was
already friction in the authoritative governmental
circles in connection with recent appointments.
They were repeatedly and publicly blamed for the
same thing during the reign of Kaiser Friedrich;
His Majesty was afraid that the foreign press
would comment upon these articles, and on this
account was anxious that the government press
should be correctly informed as to the state of
affairs, so that it might assume a defensive position
in respect of the press attacks alluded to. The
Kaiser ended, as he began, with the same point of
view as that which he had unfolded in May — that
mercial Treaty of 1891. (7) Note of interrogation. (8) better . . . later
underlined, note of interrogation after earlier and note of exclamation in the
margin. (9) The Battenbergs underlined, note of exclamation and line in
margin. (10) Note of interrogation, (n) from me underlined, and over it:
But Waldersee? (12) Note of interrogation. (13) After it in brackets over
the line: only this? (14) we . . . foretell underlined, and in the margin cer
tainly not, yet would rather do this than the reverse! (15) of the Great
General Staff doubly underlined and over it: Waldersee. (16) political to
Staff underlined. (17) Amplification: Waldersee's policy! if he were to
direct it! and who is to be Chancellor? (18) favorable doubly underlined;
m the margin notes of exclamation and interrogation. (19) Two notes of inter
rogation. (20) Between text and signature: it would be a misfortune if 
12 165

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
he never allowed Count Waldersee an unjustified
influence over foreign policy, in spite of his esteem
for him; and that no court camarilla would exist
under his government; much more was he con
vinced that no parties existed among the persons
to whom he had given his confidence, and who were
serving him, but that all were following him on the
path which led to the goal which he recognized
as the right one.1
From the 19th to the 24th of July the Kaiser
was on a visit to Peterhof. The impressions
which he left behind him there did not fully come
to my knowledge until a later period. They are
alluded to on p. 100. That he himself introduced
a discordant note into our policy first became per
ceptible in two incidents which occurred in the
June of the following year, while I was in Varzin.
Count Philip Eulenburg, our diplomatic repre
sentative in Oldenburg, was to a notable degree in
His Majesty's favor, by reason of his social gifts,
and was frequently summoned to court. He con
fided to my son that the Kaiser regarded my
policy as pro-Russian, and asked whether my
son or I myself would not endeavor, by means of
interviews and explanatory statements, to alter
His Majesty's opinion. My son asked, what was
meant by pro-Russian? Political actions which
were too friendly to the Russians — that is, injurious
to our own policy — should be pointed out to him.
Our foreign policy is a carefully thought out and
carefully manipulated whole, which the amateur
1 See Appendix III, p. 195. 166

A SUPPRESSED PHOTOGRAPH OF THE KAISER TAKEN WHEN HE WAS
EXPERIMENTING WITH A BEARD

KAISER WILHELM II
and military politicians who whisper in His Maj
esty's ear do not perceive. If His Majesty has no
confidence in us, and allows himself to be deceived
by intriguers, then, in God's name, let him allow
me and my son to go our ways; he has, with the
clearest conscience and to the best of his ability,
co-operated in my policy, and sacrificed his health
amid the unendurable squabbles of which he was
always the central point. If he still wishes to
carry out a policy of "harmony," he will succeed
more easily to-day than to-morrow. Count Eulen
burg, who may have expected a different answer,
broke off here with the urgent request that his
remarks should go no farther; he must have ex
pressed himself very awkwardly.
A few days later, while the Shah of Persia was
visiting Berlin, the Kaiser informed my son that
the press must write against the new Russian
loan; he did not wish still more German gold to
go to Russia in return for Russian paper, since the
money was used only for military equipment and
armaments. One of his generals of high rank — as
was ascertained during the day, it was General
von Verdy, the Minister of War — had just called
his attention to this danger. My son replied that
the matter was not as stated; it was merely a
question of the conversion of an earlier Russian
loan, and of the best opportunity which offered
itself to the German investors of accepting ready
money and getting rid of Russian paper, which
in the event of war would perhaps pay no interest
to Germany. The Russians also wanted to make a
167

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
profit, paying a smaller percentage on a given
loan in the future; the gold market was favorable,
and therefore the matter should not be postponed.
The French would take the Russian paper which
we returned; the business would be carried out
in Paris. His Majesty insisted that articles must
appear in the German press attacking this finan
cial operation, and he had arranged for a meeting
of the council of the Foreign Office in order to
instruct it accordingly. My son said that if he
had not succeeded in informing His Majesty of the
state of affairs, he would have asked that he might
be allowed to make a report from the Ministry for
Finance; for semiofficial articles of this kind could
not be written without hearing what the Imperial
Chancellor had to say, since they would influence
the general policy of the Empire. His Majesty
thereupon induced my son to write to me urgently
that he wished a press campaign to be undertaken
against the Russian loan, and had the representa
tive of the then absent Minister for Finance in
formed by the aide-de-camp that the Senior Board
of the Stock Exchange must be instructed to pro
hibit the loan.
I, myself, some months later, received a proof of
His Majesty's temper in the shape of an incident
which could not be passed over (see p. 56), and may
be recapitulated here for the sake of coherence.
When the Tsar's visit to Berlin in October, 1881,
had come to a close, and I was driving back with
the Kaiser from the Lehrter railway station, to
which we had accompanied the Tsar, who was
168

KAISER WILHELM II
traveling to Ludwigslust, he told me that he had
seated himself, at Hubertusstock, on the box of
the drag, giving up to his guest the full enjoyment
of the hunt, and concluded with the words, "Now
I think you will praise me!" After I had satisfied
this demand he continued to tell me that he had
done more; he had announced that he would pay
the Russian Emperor a longer visit, part of which
he proposed to spend with him at Spala. I ven
tured to doubt whether this would be welcome to
the Tsar; he is fond of quiet and seclusion, and
his life with his wife and children; Spala is too
small a hunting lodge, and not arranged for visits.
I reflected that both the royal persons would be
unable to avoid the closest intercourse, and in the
intimate conversations which would be held during
so long a period there might be a danger of touching
upon sensitive points.
I took it upon myself to do what I could to
prevent this visit. The difference of character
and mentality in the two monarchs was perhaps
known to no contemporary so well as to myself;
and this knowledge made me fear that a longer
companionship might lead, without any effective
control, to friction, dislike, and ill humor, and
that the latter, in the Tsar, might already have
been aroused by the idea of a more protracted dis
turbance of his solitude, even though he had
naturally accepted his host's announcement of his
visit with courtesy. In the interest of the under
standing between the two Cabinets I thought it a
ticklish matter to bring the suspicious defensive-
169

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
ness of the Tsar and the aggressive amiability of
our sovereign into close and protracted contact
without necessity, the more so as the advances
were made in an insinuating manner, which was
hardly applicable to our Russian policy, and still
less to the distrustful self-esteem of the Tsar.
How well founded my anxieties were will be seen
on p. ioo, where I speak of the secret reports from
Petersburg, which, even assuming that they were
exaggerated or falsified, must have been written
with a knowledge of the situation.
The Kaiser was disagreeably affected by my
opinion where he had expected approbation, and
set me down in front of my dwelling instead of
coming in with me for a further chat over official
affairs. The visit which the Kaiser paid the Tsar from
the 17th to the 23 d of August in Narva and
Peterhof led to the increased personal aversion
which I had feared.
Narva was followed by the meeting at Rohn-
stock and the commercial treaty with Austria.
His Majesty's leaning toward England had been
furthered on the English side with skillful calcula
tion since the visit to Osborne at the beginning of
August, 1889, and had led to the treaty relating to
Zanzibar and Heligoland. The uniform of the
Admiral of the Fleet may be regarded as the
symbol of the end of a chapter of the Empire's
foreign policy.

CHAPTER XI
THE TREATY RELATING TO HELIGOLAND AND
ZANZIBAR
That the Treaty of Heligoland was a disap
pointing business for us, as was that between
Glaucus and Diomedes, is now the opinion of other
circles than those in which our overseas posses
sions were the prevailing interest. In the official
justification of this affair the compensation which
was invisible to the naked eye was sought rather
in the sphere of things imponderable, in the
fostering of our relations with England. Refer
ence has been made to the fact that I, while I
was in office, had set a high value on these rela
tions. This is undoubtedly correct, but I had
never believed in the possibility of a lasting
guaranty of the same, and I should never have
aimed at the sacrifice of a German possession in
order to gain a good will whose duration would
have had no prospect of surviving an English
Ministry. The policy of every great Power will
always be subject to modification by changing
events and interests, but in addition to this the
English nation is subject to the change which
has to be made, every five or ten years on an
average, in the personal constitution of the
171

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
House of Commons and the Ministry. The task
that lay before me was to help to strengthen the
well-disposed Salisbury Ministry, as far as that
was possible, by demonstrations of sympathy.
But as for seeking to purchase the good will or the
continuation of an English Ministry with last
ing sacrifices, the English Cabinets are too short
lived and too little dependent upon their relations
with Germany; its relations with France and
Russia, and even with Italy and Turkey, are,
as a rule, of greater importance to an English
Ministry. But the renunciation of equal privileges in the
commercial city of Zanzibar was a lasting sacrifice
for which Heligoland guaranteed no equivalent.
Free trade with that one great market on the
East African coast was our connecting link with
the mainland, which to-day we can neither dis
pense with nor replace. That this means of com
munication would at some future time devolve
upon us as exclusively as we have delivered it
over to the English I had regarded, owing to the
progress which German influence had made in the
last four years before 1890, not as certain, but
as probable enough for such an aim to be re
garded not as a necessity in our plans for the
future, but as a possibility worth taking trouble
over. I was guided in this by the conviction that
England's friendship was indeed of great value
to us, but that Germany's friendship was in
the circumstances of yet greater value to Eng
land. If England — and this did not lie beyond
172

HELIGOLAND AND ZANZIBAR
the natural development of politics — were seriously
threatened by France, then only Germany could
help her; without our permission France could
not profit by even a momentary superiority at sea,
and India as well as Constantinople could be de
fended against the Russian peril more easily on the
Polish than on the Afghan frontier. Situations
like that in which Wellington at Belle-Alliance1
said or thought, "I wish it were evening or that
the Prussians would arrive," may readily be
recalled, in the development of the greater Euro
pean politics, as the historical moments in respect
of which the practical proof of England's friendship
is present to the recollection. In the Seven
Years' War that friendship was refused at the
time when we needed it most urgently, and at the
Congress of Vienna a seal would have been set
upon it in conformity with the treaty with France
and Austria had not the return of Napoleon from
Elba shifted the scenes of the political stage in a
surprising fashion. England is one of those
dexterous Powers with whom it is not only im
possible to form any lasting alliance, but who
cannot be relied upon with any certainty, because
in England the basis of all political relations is
more changeable than in any other state; it is
the product of elections and the resulting majori
ties. Only a treaty brought to the knowledge of
Parliament guarantees some security against sud
den transformations, and even this security, to
my thinking, has lost much of its value since the
1 June 18, 1815. 173

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
ingenious interpretation which the treaty of May
n, 1867, relating to the neutrality of Luxemburg,
was given at the hands of England.
While in my opinion Germany's friendship is
more secure, for the nation that wins it, than
England's, I also believe that if the German policy
is rightly directed England will all the sooner be
in such a position that she will feel the practical
need of our friendship as we feel the need of hers.
By rightly directed I mean that we must not
neglect to cultivate our relations with Russia
because we feel ourselves to be protected against
Russian aggression by the present Triple Alliance.
Even if this protection were unshakable in its
solidity and duration, we should, nevertheless,
have no right and no reason to bring nearer to the
German people, for the sake of English or Austrian
interests in the east, the heavy and unfruitful
burden of a Russian war, unless it were incumbent
upon us in pursuance of genuinely German inter
ests, and in defense of the integrity of Austria.
In the Crimean War we were expected to fight
England's warlike vassal Indian princes. Is the
stronger German Empire more dependent than
Friedrich Wilhelm IV then proved himself to be ?
Perhaps only more complaisant? But at the ex
pense of the Empire.
Caprivi's tendency to foist upon me the respon
sibility for hazardous political measures, which he
undoubtedly put forward at the command of a
superior, was not precisely a proof of political
honesty; nor was the attempt to ascribe to me
i74

HELIGOLAND AND ZANZIBAR
the treaty relating to Zanzibar. On February 5,
1 89 1, he said in the Reichstag (Shorthand Reports,
i33i):
I will nevertheless consider one reproach which has re
peatedly been brought against us — namely, that Prince Bis
marck would hardly have been responsible for this cession.
The present government has been compared with the pre
vious one, and the comparison was to our disadvantage.
Now I should have been absolutely disloyal if, when I en
tered upon this office and took over such transactions, even
if my predecessor had not been the important personality
that he was, I had not seen for myself what sort of trans
actions were going forward and what the government was
engaged in, and what sort of a standpoint it had taken up.
That was a perfectly obvious duty, and you may believe
that I fulfilled this duty most zealously.
How he had obtained his information I do not
know. If it was by reading the minutes of trans
actions, he could not have read in these minutes
that I had advised the Zanzibar treaty. The
proposition that England was of greater impor
tance to us than Africa — which had occasionally
been advanced in connection with overhasty and
extravagant colonial projects — may under certain
circumstances be as pertinent as the statement
that Germany is of greater importance to Eng
land than East Africa; but it was not so at the
time when the Heligoland treaty was concluded.
It had by no means occurred to the English to de
mand or to expect of us the renunciation of Zanzi
bar; on the contrary, in England people were
becoming familiarized with the idea that German
*7S

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
trade and influence were increasing there, and
would finally obtain the upper hand. The Eng
lish in Zanzibar itself were convinced, at the first
news of the treaty, that there was a mistake; they
Could not imagine for what reason we could have
made such a concession. It was not the case
that we had to choose between retaining one of
our African possessions and a rupture with Eng
land; and it was not the need of maintaining
peace with England, but the desire of possessing
Heligoland and of being complaisant to England,
that explained the conclusion of the treaty. The
possession of this rock satisfies our sense of na
tionality; at the same time it means either a
diminution of our national security against a su
perior French fleet or the necessity of turning Heli
goland into a Gibraltar. Hitherto, in the event
of a French blockade of our coasts, Heligoland
would have been protected by the British flag,
and could not have been used by the French as a
coaling station and a food store. But this will
happen if in the next French war the island is
protected neither by an English fleet nor by ade
quate fortifications. Considerations of this sort,
which had become audible in the press, really had
to be refuted, as Caprivi said in the Reichstag on
November 30, 1891:
England has requirements in many parts of the world,
has possessions all over the globe, and after all it might not
have been very difficult for England to find an illusory ob
ject which would have been welcome to her and for which
she might well have been disposed to surrender the island.
176

HELIGOLAND AND ZANZIBAR
I should like for once to have seen the storm of indignation —
and in this case I should have held it to be justified — if in
the course of a year or so, or shortly before the outbreak of a
future war, the English flag on Heligoland had been hauled
down, and one less friendly had appeared before our harbors.
Did he himself really believe this?
It is further worthy of remark that in his speech
of February 5, 1891, there is a contradiction which
casts a doubt upon the speaker's conviction of
the credibility of his own arguments. If he had
regarded the treaty as intrinsically and objectively
useful, he would not have attempted by risky
arguments to attribute the responsibility for it
to his predecessor; he would not have found it
necessary to seek to share with me the merit of
an advantageous transaction, and with this object
to search the records of the department for expres
sions of mine which, taking into consideration
time, occasion, association, and destination, had
not the significance which was attributed to them.
In his speech of November 30, 1891, he had no
longer any need to foist part of the responsibility
upon me; he declared, "A year has sufficed to show
how rightly we have acted in this matter."

CHAPTER XII
COMMERCIAL TREATY WITH AUSTRIA
The attempt to exploit the intimate political
relations in which Austria stands toward us, by
virtue of the traditions and the development of
Germany, for the winning of economic privileges
was first made, as has been mentioned in a previous
volume, in the time of Prince Schwarzenberg,1 in
the shape of an endeavor to establish a customs
union, and was later repeated on various occasions.
At the very outset it has always been frustrated
by the impossibility of finding a correct standard
of distribution of the revenues resulting from the
dutiable consumption of the interested popula
tions. The recognition of the impossibility of a
complete customs union has not been able to sup
press the natural endeavor to secure ourselves
advantages by means of a commercial treaty.
The weakening of the monarchical power and the
need of votes in parliament increase the im
portance of the covetousness of certain classes of
voters. The Hungarian half of the Empire had
acquired an excessive significance during the last
decade, and the Galician vote is of greater im-
1 Felix Prince von Schwarzenberg (1800-52): from 1848, Austrian Prime
Minister. I78

TREATY WITH AUSTRIA
portance than formerly, not only in respect of
parliamentary majorities and foreign eventualities.
The agrarian greed of the eastern portion of the
Empire has acquired a considerable influence over
the resolutions of the government, and if the latter
is in a position to satisfy its inordinate desires by
its complaisance at the cost of Germany, and in
virtue of Germany's inexperience, it will naturally
exploit every unskillful advance on the part of
German policy, in order to aggravate our domestic
difficulties and to win over the agrarian party of
Hungary and Galicia. The cost of all this, in so
far as it is not defrayed by Germany's good nature,
will have to be reimbursed by the industrial
rather than the agrarian elements of cis-Leithania
less Galicia. These elements are less dangerous
to Austrian policy, and less capable of opposition
than the malcontents of Poland and Hungary
would be. The Germans are more submissive to
their rulers and less adroit in the sphere of domestic
politics than the other nationalities of Austria, as
was demonstrated by the doctrinaire course of the
constitutional campaign, which was directed by a
party2 of academicians, parliamentarians, and Min
isters who never did anything at the right time,
against the strongest and most natural allies of the
Germans, against their own dynasty, until the
breach occurred.
It is explicable that the economic policy of the
1 That part of the old Austro-Hungarian Monarchy lying on the nearer
side of the river Leitha. (Trans.)
2 The Herbstzeitlosen, as Bismarck called them.
179

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
Danubian Empire has less regard for the German
industrial population than for the non-German
agrarian population. Even in the Bohemian
schism Czechdom was more strongly represented
on the agrarian and the Germans on the industrial
side. That it afforded the Hungarians, Poles, and
Czechs a lively satisfaction when their interests
were given the first place, and the Germans, first
of all in cis-Leithania, but particularly in the
German Empire, had to pay the score, is not to be
wondered at; although we are certainly bound to
ask ourselves how the German imperial govern
ment came to offer to abandon the German agrarian
interests in Vienna. The reason given as valid in
the press, that the political alliance must neces
sarily result in a process of economic fusion, is an
empty phrase which signifies practically nothing.
We have enjoyed the greatest political intimacy
with Russia, and in the past with England, when
our mutual fiscal relations have been very refrac
tory, and the German Federal Treaty, too, even
though it was not paid for by a customs union,
has existed for a long time with full reciprocal
confidence as regards its political stipulations.
Our treaty of alliance with Austria also is in no
danger of abrogation because we decline to-day to
pay an economic tribute to Austria-Hungary for
eventual military assistance, as forty years ago.
If we picture to ourselves the future of Austria,
we see that she needs an alliance with Germany
more than Germany needs an alliance with her.
The substitute for Germany's friendship which
180

TREATY WITH AUSTRIA
Austria might find in Russia's could be obtained
only by abandoning all her efforts in the east,
which have made Hungary Russia's adversary.
Austria's dependence upon France and even upon
the united western powers of the Crimean League
would assign to the Austrian monarchy the most
exposed position of all those taking part in a war
against Russia and Germany, and would mean a
surrender to the Russian efforts to develop the
pro-Slavish seeds of destruction which are to be
found among the numerically greater half of the
population. For Austria the German alliance,
based upon racial sympathies, is always the most
natural and least dangerous ; it may be said to be
an ever-recurring need of Austria's in all situa
tions. I should think it a lamentable thing if the Ger
man Empire were to abandon the alliance with
Austria, which I won by hard fighting, and should
again seek to retain a perfectly free hand in respect
of its European relations. But if our political
affection for Austria proves to be unreturned
unless we give practical proof of it by economic
sacrifices, I should, of course, prefer a free hand in
political matters, as I am convinced that our
alliance, if it is conceived and maintained by
Austria in the above-mentioned spirit, cannot be
lasting and in decisive moments will not be
tenable. The best alliances fail to render the
services which are expected of them when they
are concluded, if the moods and the convictions
in which they were created, at the time of the
13 181

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
casus foederis, are extinct; and if the conviction
already prevails among the Austro-Hungarian
Agrarians that our alliance is valueless, I fear
that our treaty will be no more effective, when
the day of reckoning comes, than were those of
1792 to 1795 — the more so in that the conviction
has in the meantime become firmly established
in Germany that our treaty of alliance was accom
panied by a commercial treaty, which is equivalent
to the payment of tribute on the part of Germany,
and that this payment for the maintenance of an
alliance which is more necessary to Austria than
to us is based upon promises which the leading
statesmen of Austria, in virtue of their riper ex
perience and more expert knowledge of affairs of
the kind, obtained from the representatives of the
German interests in convivial intercourse with
them in Silesia and Vienna.1 It is possible that
the German guests in Vienna, in the hope of
valuable political and commercial "tips," were
given an even more friendly reception than would
otherwise have been the case; but the revision of
the German calculations by the public opinion
of the nation will nevertheless follow, even if

1 A communication received from Berlin by the Pesther Lloyd reminds us
of the recognized fact that the beginnings of the Commercial Treaty go back
to the Rohnstock Conference of 1890, with the additional information that
the new Chancellor, immediately after he had taken office, had the course
which he was to follow in his commercial policy dictated to him by the
highest personage in the Empire. The Munchener Allgemeine Zeitung
makes the following comment: "This would justify the often published
assumption that the real author of this change of commercial policy is Herr
Miquel, and that the change dates from the Kaiser's visit to Frankfurt in
November, 1889." (B'ersenzeitung, December 16, 1891.)
182

TREATY WITH AUSTRIA
years must elapse first. Perhaps at an inconven
ient moment when, looking back upon the loss
which we have suffered, the opinion will make
itself felt that we have been suffering from Aus
tria's highly profitable interference in our domestic
legislation.1 The way in which the superior, man-of-the-
world experience of Prince Schwarzenberg was
employed by Austria, at Olmiitz and the Dresden
Conference, against the then representatives of
Prussia, contributed essentially to bring about a
situation which could finally no longer be resolved
by the method of friendly partnership.
Concerning the blunders which had been made
in our foreign policy public opinion is, as a rule,
first enlightened when it is in a position to look
back upon the history of a generation, and the
Achivi qui plectuntur are not always immediately
contemporary with the mistaken actions. The
task of politics lies in forming as correct an antici
pation as possible of what other peoples will do
under given circumstances. The qualification for
forming this anticipation is seldom innate to such
a degree that it does not require, before it can
be effective, a certain amount of professional
experience and personal knowledge, and I cannot
avoid certain disquieting impressions when I con
sider to what an extent these attributes have been
lost by our leading circles. At all events, they

1 Financial damage, surrender of customs dues, to the extent of 40 million
marks yearly; Center, Poles, Socialists — friends of Caprivi's.
183

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
are at the moment more abundantly in evidence
in Vienna than with us, and on this account the
apprehension is justified that the interests of
Austria are more successfully safeguarded on the
conclusion of treaties than are our own.

APPENDICES I
THE CROWN PRINCE FRIEDRICH WILHELM TO BISMARCK
(See p. 31)
Morris Castle, Isle of Wight,
August 17, 1881.
I turn to you with the question, what does the newspaper
rumor, "Baden ought to be a kingdom," really portend?
At first, like many others, I was amused by this canard
and laughed at the announcement as a jest of the "silly
season." But the thing is continually repeated. I begin to grow
suspicious.1 I have, to be sure, too good an opinion of my
brother-in-law, and at the same time too great a confidence
in his German sentiments, to regard it as possible that he
should meddle with such folly. But this being so, where
does the newspaper rumor come from ? *
You know what I think about the three German kingdoms
which we received in the most disgraceful period of Napoleon
I, in order that the dismemberment of Germany might for
ever be established thereby. From your own experience
you know better than I what difficulties, indeed what daily
provocations, these Cabinets, filled with empty titles, oppose
to the welfare of the Empire. Are we perhaps to put up
with yet another crown which will increase these difficulties ?
Does not this mean a yet farther degradation of monarchical
authority already sufficiently weakened nowadays, while a
small state is promoted, which by itself can do nothing, and
'Marginal remark of Bismarck's: Roggenbach.
185

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
is not in a position to endow a kingly display with either
power or validity! But before all we should have to justify
ourselves to the German people, in that we wantonly al
lowed such an obstacle to arise in the path of unity, which
is establishing itself only with the extremest deliberation.
I am expressing myself as openly as I would if we two were
alone in your room in Berlin. But should anything be
afoot — which Heaven forbid — you are hereby authorized to
announce that my reply to this matter of creating a King of
Baden is a categorical "No." But then I beg to be imme
diately informed of the position of this affair, so that I can
intervene in the matter effectively, as I expect that no con
clusions will be arrived at before I have been given a hearing.
Schlozer ought to be back from Rome, and it would in
terest me to learn what his impressions are, and whether
anything can be attempted as a result of his stay there.
I leave London on the 23 d, shall be in Brussels on the
25th, in Coblenz on the 25th, in Frankfort on the 27th,
and from the 28th to the 30th in Bavaria, whence I return
to Berlin on the ist of September.
It is to be hoped that your holiday at Kissingen has
brought you recovery and strength, and will before all make
you forget your sufferings in the spring. Here Parliament is
in the throes of the suspense and anxiety of the Land bill,
which is recognized as a necessary evil, but which may avert
yet greater disorder in Ireland in the coming winter. Some
of the Lords have abstained from voting; they have disap
peared on board their yachts or gone after the grouse; others
speak against the bill, but none the less vote in favor of it.
We have been thriving both on and in the sea in this
glorious country, which I leave to visit first the Bavarians,
then the Hanoverians, then the West Prussians, and finally
the Schleswig-Holsteiners, curious to see whether the "pearl
Von Meppen," the Minister in Brunswick, will really be a
credit to the Guelphish "agitation"?
Your truly devoted,
Friedrich Wilhelm, Crown Prince.

II
minutes of the ministerial session of march 17, 1890
(See p. 97) Berlin, March 17, i8go.
Confidential Deliberations of the Prussian Cabinet.1
Present:
The president of the Cabinet,2 and Imperial Chancellor,
Prince von Bismarck.
The vice-president of the Cabinet, Secretary of State3
von Boetticher.
The Secretary of State of Prussia, Von Maybach; Dr.
Freiherr Lucius von Ballhausen, Dr. von Gossler, Dr. von
Scholz, Count von Bismarck-Schonhausen, Herrfurth, Dr.
von Schelling, Von Verdy, Freiherr von Berlepsch.
The Under-Secretary of State Acting Privy Councilor
Homeyer. The Minister-president4 convened the Cabinet to a con
fidential meeting at his official residence and advised the
same that he has to-day addressed to His Majesty the Kaiser
and King a petition to be relieved of his offices, the ac
ceptance of which is probable. He cannot but question
whether he can still accept the responsibility, which is con
stitutionally incumbent upon him, for His Majesty's policy,
since His Majesty's co-operation, which is indispensable to
such acceptance, will not be conceded to him.
1 Slaatsministerium. (Trans.)
2 Prime Minister. (Trans.)
• Staatsminister. (Trans.)
* Prime Minister. These equivalents are necessarily approximate.
(Trans.) I87

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
He has already been surprised that His Majesty has
formed definitive resolutions in respect of the so-called pro
tection of labor legislation without previously consulting
him and the Cabinet. He immediately expressed his ap
prehension that this proceeding would arouse great agitation
in the country at election time, and awaken expectations
in the electors which could not be fulfilled, and finally, by
the chimerical nature of the hopes aroused, would operate
to the detriment of the respect entertained for the Crown.
He had hoped that the unanimous remonstrances of the
Ministry might induce His Majesty to abandon the designs
which he cherished; however, he had not found this una
nimity in the Ministry, but was forced to conclude that in
several quarters it had been considered advisable to acquiesce
in His Majesty's suggestion.
Again, after this he was compelled to feel doubtful whether
he still possessed the secure authority as Prime Minister
that he had enjoyed in virtue of the confidence vouchsafed
him in his time by His Majesty Kaiser Wilhelm I. Now the
Kaiser discusses matters without him, not only with in
dividual Ministers, but even with councilors of the Minis
tries subordinate to him. The Minister of Commerce has
delivered memoranda to His Majesty without previously
consulting him. In the interests of the unanimity of the
Ministry as a body he brought to the notice of the last-
named Minister the royal order of the 8th of September,
1852, which was unknown to him, and after he had convinced
himself, in the course of the Cabinet meeting of the 2d of
this month, that the Ministers generally were not all aware
of this order, he had a copy of it sent to all, and in the ac
companying letter he laid stress upon the fact that he applied
the order only to memoranda or reports submitted to His
Majesty, which aimed at the modification of legislation and
the existing legal situation.
Tactfully handled in this manner, the instructions of the
said order comprise no more than is indispensable to any
Prime Minister who wishes to fill this position in a fitting

APPENDICES
manner. He does not know from what quarter His Majesty
learned of this proceeding, but His Majesty commanded
that the said order, by which the Ministers were forbidden
to present memoranda or reports directly to him, should no
longer be in force. He explained that the Ministers were
not subjected to restraint thereby; that at most it resulted
in his being present at audiences. His Majesty is then
always free to decide in favor of the departmental Minister
and against the Prime Minister. The order is necessary,
and least of all can he deny this now that he has just drawn
attention to the matter.
This difference of opinion in itself would not have induced
him to resign, still less would he have resigned on account of
the labor question. In this province he has honestly done
his best to support the imperial initiative, and to demon
strate, by diplomatic advocacy and by receiving the Inter
national Conference on his official premises, that he was
promoting the labors of the Conference.
His Majesty the Kaiser has given him a further sign of a
lack of confidence in the reproach that he, without His
Majesty's permission, should not have received the deputy
Windthorst. He receives all deputies as a matter of prin
ciple, and after Windthorst had requested an interview he
had him admitted, with the result that he is now completely
informed concerning the deputy's intentions. He could not
submit to His Majesty's control over his personal inter
course in and out of service.
He is confirmed in his resolution to resign all his offices
now that he has to-day convinced himself that he can no
longer represent even His Majesty's foreign policy.
Notwithstanding his confidence in the Triple Alliance, he
has none the less never lost sight of the possibility that it
might at some time be renounced. In Italy the monarchy
does not stand upon a firm footing; the concord between
Italy and Austria is imperiled by the Irredenta; and in
Austria, despite the absolute reliability of the reigning
Emperor, a different frame of mind might supervene; Hun-
189

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
gary's attitude can never safely be relied upon; Hungary
and Austria might engage in disputes from which we should
have to stand aloof; on this account he has always en
deavored to avoid breaking down the bridge between our
selves and Russia; and he believes that he has so far con
firmed the Tsar in peaceful intentions that he has scarcely
any fear of a Russian war, by which nothing could be gained
even if it ran a victorious course. At most we might be
attacked from that side if in a victorious war against France
we sought to enforce the cession of territory by the latter.
Russia needs the existence of France as a great Power as we
need that of Austria.
Now the German consul in KiefF sent in fourteen ex
haustive reports, making in all a good two hundred pages,
concerning the Russian situation, many of which dealt with
military measures. Of these reports he (Bismarck) submitted
a few of a political nature to His Majesty; others, of a mili
tary nature, to the Great General Staff, in the expectation
that the latter would lay them before the Kaiser, in case
they were of a character to require his attention, while the
rest he returned in order that they might be brought forward
in the ordinary course of procedure (p. 106).
Concerning these reports he received the following auto
graph letter from His Majesty:
The reports make it as clear as possible that the Russians are strategically
fully prepared to go to war — and I must greatly deplore the fact that I have
received so few of the reports. You ought to have drawn my attention
long ago to the terrible danger threatening! It is more than high time to
warn the Austrians and to take counter-measures. In such circumstances
I can of course no longer think of a journey to Krasno.
The reports are excellent. [Signed] W.
In this letter the reproach is made that he has withheld
reports from His Majesty and has not in due time called His
Majesty's attention to the danger of war; further, the opinion
is expressed, which he does not share, that a "terrible"
danger threatens us from Russia, that Austria must be
190

APPENDICES
warned and counter-measures taken, and finally that the
Kaiser's visit to the Russian maneuvers, to which he had
invited himself, must be abandoned.
It is not, as a general thing, incumbent upon him to lay all
reports which reach him before His Majesty; he has the
right to select, according to their contents, those in respect
of which he thinks he can vouch for the impression which
they will produce upon His Majesty. In the present in
stance he made a selection to the best of his judgment, and
can but perceive in this letter an undeserved and mortifying
lack of confidence.
Moreover, he is unable, in the face of his still unshaken
opinion of the Tsar's peaceful intentions, to advocate such
measures as His Majesty demands.
In this connection he hears that His Majesty the Kaiser,
who previously approved of his proposals concerning the po
sition to be taken up as regards the Reichstag, and the
eventual dissolution of the latter, is now of the opinion that
the military proposals should be introduced only in so far
as one can count upon their acceptance. The Minister of
War has recently expressed himself in favor of the introduc
tion of these proposals in their complete form, and if it is
desired to take counter-measures against the warlike prepara
tions of Russia, and if danger is seen to be approaching from
that direction, this is all the more the right course to take.
After what has been said he assumes that he is no longer
in full agreement with his colleagues, and no longer possesses
a sufficient measure of His Majesty's confidence. He re
joices that a King of Prussia should himself wish to govern.
He himself recognizes the disadvantage of his resignation in
the public interest, and he has no longing for an idle life;
his health is now good, but he feels that he is in His Majesty's
way, that His Majesty wishes him to resign, and on this
account he has justifiably begged for his discharge from
service. The vice-president of the Cabinet declared that this
communication had deeply grieved him, and, assuredly, all
191

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
his colleagues. He had until now hoped that differences of
opinion existed between His Majesty and the Prime Minister
only in the sphere of domestic politics, and that therefore
the procedure recently indicated by His Highness, according
to which he would confine himself to the direction of foreign
affairs, would prove a suitable solution. His Highness's
resignation from all his offices would mean interminable
difficulties, and even though he found His Highness's dis
pleasure comprehensible, he could only urgently beg that
the way to an arrangement might, if anyhow possible, be
found. The Prime Minister remarked that the expedient that he
should resign from the service of the Prussian state and con
fine himself to the position of Imperial Chancellor was made
impossible of consideration by the Reichstag and the fed
erated governments. In those quarters it was desired that
the Imperial Chancellor should find himself in an official
position in which he would cease to lead the Prussian vote,
and he could not accept a position in which he would receive
instructions from the Prussian Cabinet, in whose creation
he had not co-operated. Consequently even this expedient,
which he had recently proposed, would not be without its
difficulties. The Minister of Finance explained that the Cabinet order
of September 8, 1852, especially in conformity with the
statement which the Prime Minister had appended in
the accompanying letter, did not in any way exceed what
was requisite. This could not present an insuperable diffi
culty. But even in respect of the difficulties in the sphere
of foreign policy, he could only repeat the prayer of the
Secretary of State, Herr von Boetticher, that an arrange
ment might be sought for. For the rest, if His Highness's
resignation is not, as was recently alleged, the result of rea
sons of health, but of political reasons, and if it affects all
his offices, the Cabinet will possibly be obliged to consider
whether it should not join him in taking this step. Perhaps
this would contribute to averting this ominous event.
192

APPENDICES
The Ministers of Public Worship and of Justice remarked
that with reference to the points of difference laid before
them there existed merely a misunderstanding, which would
be explained to His Majesty; and the Minister of War
added that in his presence no word had fallen from His
Majesty for a long time which referred in any way to warlike
developments in respect of Russia.
The Minister of Public Works declared that His High
ness's resignation would be a national disaster in respect of
the security of the country and the peace of Europe, and they
must seek for every means of preventing it. In his opinion
in such a case as this the Ministers ought to place their port
folios at His Majesty's disposal, and he at least was deter
mined to do so.
The Minister of Agriculture declared that if the Prime
Minister was convinced that his resignation was desired by
His Majesty it was not possible to dissuade him from this
step. The Cabinet would in any case consider what it
would then have to do on its own part.
The Minister of Commerce observed that he personally
was not affected by this question, but with reference to the
remarks made by the Prime Minister concerning the peti
tion which he had presented he begged to be allowed to
explain that this did not apply to new problems of any sort,
but to His Majesty's decree of the 4th of February of this
year, which he found upon entering into office, and indeed
had been confined to the protection of labor legislation
in general, which was touched upon in the said decree.
Against the imperial order of September 8, 1852, he had
nothing to say, and had not mentioned it in His Majesty's
presence. The Prime Minister replied that he was fully persuaded
that the Minister of Commerce had been far from desiring
to injure him in any way.
The Minister of War observed that the current pro
posals of the Minister of War were expressly excluded from
the stipulations of the order of September 8, 1852, but
193

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
without regard to this he had assuredly, when any important
event took place in his department, kept in touch with the
Prime Minister.
The Prime Minister replied that he had throughout recog
nized the attitude of the Minister of War as his colleague,
and closed the session.
[Signed] Prince von Bismarck, Von Boetticher, Von May-
bach, Freiherr Lucius von Ballhausen, Von Gossler, Von
Scholz, Count von Bismarck, Herrfurth, Von Schelling, Von
Verdy, Freiherr von Berlepsch. [Signed] Homeyer.

Ill
AIDE-DE-CAMP VON BISSING TO BISMARCK
(See p. 166)
The Marble Palace, June 22, 1888.
Your Excellency:
I am honored by His Majesty by the charge of most
dutifully informing you that His Majesty the Kaiser and
King has taken cognizance of divers articles in the Berlin
newspapers which have displeased His Majesty excessively.
These are, principally, an article in the Berliner Tageblatt,
the evening edition of the 20th of this month, and an article
in the Berliner Zeitung and the Berliner Presse, both of the
2 ist of June, which appear to be written in order to ipake the
world believe that there is a difference of opinion between
His Majesty and the Imperial Chancellor in connection with
the Quartermaster General Count Waldersee; and these
articles, in their views, more or less resemble those which
appeared in the freethinking newspapers before the over
throw of the Minister von Puttkamer.
While on the one hand these articles, and in particular
that in the Berliner Tageblatt, may be aimed at the Imperial
Chancellor himself, they are, on the other hand, apparently
intended to awaken the belief that there is friction in the
authoritative circles of the government in respect of a
recent appointment, such as was repeatedly announced
during the brief reign of the lately deceased Kaiser.1
Since the questions of foreign policy touched upon by these
articles are of burning interest to the whole world, the
1 Marginal note of Bismarck's: But did not exist.
I9S

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK
foreign newspapers will certainly pay more or less attention
to their contents. His Majesty therefore considers it desir
able that Your Excellency, with the assistance of that part
of the press which has close relations with the government,
should put the matter straight and commence an energetic
opposition to this press attack.
His Majesty has empowered me to assure Your Excel
lency that he now, as formerly, occupies the same standpoint
as that which he unfolded in his conversation with the
Imperial Chancellor in May of this year; that he has never
permitted Count Waldersee, despite his esteem for him, to
exercise an unjustified influence upon foreign policy; and
that under His Majesty's government no court camarilla
will exist. And he is all the more convinced that among
those persons to whom he has given his confidence, and who
serve him, no parties exist, but that all follow him along the
path which leads to the goal recognized by His Majesty as
the true one.
Your Excellency's most obediently devoted
Freiherr von Bissing,
Lieutenant-Colonel and Aide-de-Camp.

INDEX

Achenbach, Von, 2
Africa, importance of free trade with,
172. 173
Alexander III, reported to have
spoken unfavorably of Wilhelm
II, 100, 101, 102, 158, 162; visits
Berlin, 168, 169; character, 169,
191
Alsace-Lorraine, 31
Alvensleben, Count von, 124; re
fuses appointment to the Foreign
Office, 125, 126
Anti-Socialist legislation, 39, 48;
proposed renewal of, 65; aban
donment of, 86
Arnin, Count, 114
Arnold, trial of, 145
Auerswald, Von, 114
Austria, instability of, no; German
policy toward, 156, 157, 163; com
mercial treaty with, 170, 178-184;
treaty of alliance with, 180; cost
of same, 182; instability of, 190

B
Baare, 82
Baden, rumors of a Kingdom of, 31;
revolt of troops in, 33
Baden, Grand Duchess of, 37
Baden, Grand Duke of, 29-40; his
aims and policy, 29-31; his re
ported ambition to become a king,
31, 32; annoyed with the press,
36, 37; his influence over the
Kaiser, 39; turns against Bis
marck, 40, 45, 49, 95, 126; the
Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm

on rumors of his monarchical am
bitions, 185, 186
Baden-Baden, freedom of, conferred
on Bismarck, 40
Ballhausen, von, 187, 194
Banish, authority to, 65, 66
Battenbergs, the, Wilhelm IPs atti
tude toward, 158, 163
Bavaria, 18
Belgium, King of, 30
Benda, Von, 11, 13, 21
Berlepsch, Freiherr von, 49, 64, 72,
85, 109, 133, 154, 187, 194
Berlin, suggested removal of Prince
Wilhelm (Wilhelm II) to, 4
Berlin, City Mission, the, 7, 10; a
committee appointed, 10, 12
Berliner Presse, 165, 195
Berliner Tageblatt, 165, 195
Berliner Zeitung, 165, 195
Bethmann-Hollweg, 76
Bismarck, Prince, tries to remove
the Crown Prince from Potsdam
and prepare him for the throne,
I, 2; letter to, from the Crown
Prince (Friedrich Wilhelm), 2,
3; letter to, from Prince Wil
helm re the city missions or
home missions, 9-14; and re
the imperial dignity, 15, 16; his
answer to both, 16-24; his con
ception of his duty, 22; sent for
by the Crown Prince, 36; offends
the Grand Duke of Baden, 38;
Boetticher attempts to force him
to resign, 47; suggestion that he
should remain Chancellor, but re
sign Prussian offices, 49; the
Kaiser's jealousy of, 55; no cour
tier, 57; opposes the protection

197

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK

or compulsion of labor, 65; dis
inclined to resign, 70, 71; pre
pares drafts of imperial decrees,
78; thoughts of resignation, 85-
87; decides to retire from the
Prussian service, 89, 90, 91; his
dismissal, 97-129; his resigna
tion demanded, 106, 112, 113;
hands in his resignation, 113-117;
replies to Wilhelm's letter offering
dukedom, 122, 123; takes leave
of the Kaiser, 126; leaves Berlin,
127, 128; letter to, from Franz
Joseph, 127, 128; letter to Wil
helm II, 128, 129; his pension,
136; is boycotted after dismissal,
122, 137; his economic policy,
179, 180, 187; his address to the
Ministry previous to resignation,
187-194
Bismarck, Count Herbert, 7; his
opinion of Stocker, 8, 27; defends
his father, 47, 61 ; Wilhelm II begs
him to continue in office, 119-120,
123-125, 166-168, 193, 194
Bismarck — Schonhausen, Count,
.l87
Bissing, Freiherr von, letter from,
195. 196
Bleichroder, Von, 98
Bloodshed, Wilhelm IPs fear of, at
beginning of reign, 67
Board of Trade, the, 105
Bodelschwingh, Von, 88
Bodenhausen, Freiherr von, 47
Boetticher, Dr., 41
Boetticher, Von, 38, 41-50; ap
pointed ad latus to Bismarck, 41,
43, 44; his disloyalty to Bismarck,
45; his attempts to supplant him,
46, 47, 49; his criticisms of Bis
marck's policy, 59, 60, 62, 63 ; his
dishonesty, 73, 82; machinations
against Bismarck, 85, 89, 93; the
Black Eagle conferred on, 93, 109,
III, 133, 187, 192, 194
Bohemian schism, the, 180
Boyen, Von, 94
Brandenburg, Count, 114

Brandestein, Von, 5
Brunswick, Karl, Duke of, 32
Biilow, Adolf von, 40
Bundesrath, the, see Federal Council
Bureaucracy in South Germany, 32

Cabinet, see Ministry, 112
Cabinet, Civil, the, 117
Cabinet, English, the, 172
Cabinet government, the monarchy
has outgrown, 142
Cabinet, Military, the, 117
Cabinets of federated states, 185
Camarilla, the, 76; Wilhelm II de
nies possibility of, 166, 196
Camp, Maxime du, 40
Camphausen, Count, 114
Caprivi, Bismarck recommends, as
ad latus to Moltke, 27; as a suit
able Premier, 89; succeeds Bis
marck as Chancellor, 113, 124,
125, 126, 130-140; accuses Bis
marck of enmity to the army, 130,
134; his misgivings as to the
Chancellorship, 134; his charac
ter, 137, 138; cuts down trees in
the garden of the Chancellor's
residence, 138; attempts to
ascribe treaty relating to Zanzi
bar to Bismarck, 174, 175; speech
on Heligoland, 176
Celts not tree-lovers, 138
Center, the, 89, 154
Chancellor, Imperial, imperial proc
lamation to, 78, 79; Bismarck re
signs office as, 113; Caprivi ap
pointed, 113
Charles XII of Sweden, 143
Christian Socialism, Prince Wilhelm
suspected of, 7
Christian Socialist party, 23
City Mission Aid Societies, 12
City Missions, suggested by Prince
Wilhelm as instruments for fight
ing Social Democracy, 11, 12; the
proposed Committee, 14; see
Home Mission

198

INDEX

Clericalism and revolution, 18
Coburg, see Saxe-Coburg-Gotha
Colin, 145
Commune, the Paris, 162
Conference, International, on Labor
Protection, etc., 76
Conservative party, the, 21
Constitution, the imperial, 30; the
Prussian, 114
Council of State, the, 75, 76
Crimean War, the, 174
Crown Council of January 24th, 49,
55-72; sudden convening of, 61,
137
Crown Prince (Friedrich Wilhelm),
see Friedrich III
Crown Prince Wilhelm, see Wilhelm,
Prince (Wilhelm II)
Crown Princess, the, 5
Czechenyi, Count, 160
D
Delbriick, assistant to Bismarck, 42
Douglas, Count von, 49, 63, 133, 154
Dresden Conference, the, 183
Dukedom conferred on Bismarck,
120, 121 E
East, benefits of war in the, 163, 164
Elections to the Reichstag, 64, 75,
77, 88, 90
England, German policy toward,
156; relations with, 171; policy
of, 171; value of friendship with,
172; basis of relations unstable,
173; needs German friendship, 174
English Ministry, the, 172
Eulenburg, Count, 105
Eulenburg, Count Philip, 166, 167
Evangelical clergy, the, 21

Federal Council, the, 18, 58, 59, 90
Federal Treaty, the, 18, 180
Federated princes, the, 15, 17; rights
of, 18, 29

Finance, Ministry of, in
Foreign Office, Prince Wilhelm works
in the, 2, 3
France, kings of, 69, 70; German
occupation of, 74; withdrawal of
troops from, 75; possibilities of
war with, 162, 164, 172, 173, 190
Frankfort, Treaty of, 74
Franz Joseph, Kaiser, 128
Frederick the Great, 3, 14, 19, 21,
4°, 55. 69. I3S. I4L 144. 146;
genius of, 145, 146, 149
Freisinnige Zeitung, 23
French National Assembly, 74
Friedrich Wilhelm, Crown Prince
(Friedrich III), letter from, re
specting political education of
Prince Wilhelm, 2, 3 ; his concep
tion of the imperial dignity, 16,
3i» 36. 37. 38; death of, 114, 131,
147, 148, 149, 165, 166; letter to
Bismarck, 185, 186
Friedrich Wilhelm I, 3, 70, 142, 143
Friedrich Wilhelm II, 147
Friedrich Wilhelm IV, 100, 148, 149,
174 G
Gemmingen, Court Marshal von,
38, 45
General Staff, the, 27; method of
dealing with consular reports, 107,
no, 159, 160, 164, 190
German Emperor, function of the,
139
German Empire, Constitution of,
30; modern policy of, 134, 165
Gossler, Von, n, 13, 192, 194
Guelph party, the, 159
Gustavus Adolphus, 143
H
Hahnke, General von, 105, 106, 118,
119
Hatzfeldt, Count, 101, 102, 103, 104
Heligoland, treaty relating to, 171-
177; use of, to Germany, 176,
177

199

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK

Henry, Prince, of Prussia, 149
Herrfurth, recommended to instruct
Prince Wilhelm, 4, 5, 51-95; 5J»
52, 53, 60, 88, 187, 194
Heyden, August, 49
Hinzpeter, G. E., 41, 49
Hochberg, Count von, II, 13
Hofmann, appointed assistant to
Bismarck, 42, 43, 63
Hohenlohe, Prince, 114
Hohenzollern, Prince von, 1 14
Home Department, Prince Wilhelm
instructed in the affairs of the, 4
Home Mission, the, Bismarck's ob
jection to, 19; he warns Prince
Wilhelm to avoid the, 19, 20; his
objection to Stocker as president
of, 21; results of Prince Wilhelm' s
connection with, 23; Prince Wil-
helm's letter on, 24, 25
Household administration, the, 5
Hungary, excessive importance of,
179; agrarian party of, 179

Imperial Decree of February 4, 1890,
73-84; opposed by Bismarck, 73
Imperial dignity, the, Prince Wil-
helm's device for enhancing, 15,
16; Friedrich Ill's conception of,
16; Bismarck's opinion of Prince
Wilhelm's document, 17; Wilhelm
I's reluctance to assume, 30, 31
Imperial manifesto relating to social
reforms, 23
Imperial proclamations, 79-81
Insurrection, danger of, 67; Bis
marck considers a firm attitude
necessary to avert, 67
International conference on protec
tion, etc., of labor, 79, 80, 81, 82,
83
Irredenta, the, no, 184
Italy, the monarchy in, no, 189, 190

J

Jencke, 82

K
Kaiserin Augusta, the, 20, 58, 74, 152
Kalnoky, Gustav, 157
Kaunitz, General Count, 13
Kieff, reports from consul at, 116,
190
King of Prussia, the, 23
Kreuzzeitung, Die, 7, 24
Krupp, 82
Ktdturkampf, the, 153

Labor, legal restriction of female,
child and Sunday, 57-60; opposed
by workers, 59, 60, 70; the impe
rial proclamation relating to, 79-
81; international conference on,
82-84
Landgemeindeordnung, the, 54
Landtag, the Prussian, 113, 114
Lauenburg, Dukedom of, conferred
on Bismarck, 121
Lebbin, Von, 130
Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, King of
Belgium, 30
Letzlingen, hunt dinner at, 8
Local Government Bill, the, 54
Louis Philippe, 33
Louis XIV, 144
Lucanus, 113, 118, 120, 123
Luxemburg, neutrality of, 174
M
Maltzahn, 94
Manteuffel, Field Marshal von, 43,
77. H4
Marschall, Freiherr von, 38, 45, 95,
124, 126
Maybach, Von, 194
Meppen, Von, 186
Meysenbug, Freiherr von, 30
Military conquerors, popularity of,
144
Military requisitions, 87, 93, 94, 103,
no, 132
Ministers, function of, 140

200

INDEX

Ministerial session of March 17th,
1890, 192-194
Ministry, the Prussian, 62, 64, 65,
67, 72; Bismarck's declaration be
fore, 109-111; attitude of, toward
Bismarck's resignation, in
Moltke, Count von, 27, 118, 131
Monarchy, the, 18; enhanced power
of, 50, 67; absolute, 69, 70, 77
Morphia, Boetticher accuses Bis
marck of abusing, 50, 67
Minchener Allegemeine Zeitung, Die,
182 N
Napoleon I, 144, 173. 185
Napoleon III, 29
Narva, Wilhelm II visits, 170
Nassau, 32
Nation in arms, the, 90
Nationalist ideal, the, 18; policy,
the, 29
Nicolas II of Russia, 158
Nobiling, Dr., 76
Norddcutsche Allegemeine Zeitung,
Die, 9, 36, 38

Pape, Von, 89
Particularism of Wilhelm I, 31; in
Baden, 33
Persia, the Shah of, 167
Pesther Lloyd, the, 182
Peterhof, Wilhelm II visits, 166, 170
Petersburg, secret reports from, 100,
170
Potsdam, military society of, 1
Press, the, attitude of, toward the
Stocker-Waldersee affair, 8, 9
Prime Minister, functions of, 41, 114
Protection of labor, 57, 188
Prussia, efforts of, toward hege
mony, 29
Prussia, King of, the, function of,
139, 140
Prussian Constitution, the, 139
Public works and trade and indus
try, Ministry of, imperial procla
mation to, 80, 81
Puttkamer, Von, II, 13, 44> 5i» 195

Q
Quarreling, German love of, 19
R
Railways, imperial, the, 33
Red Cross Society, the, 20
Regent, the Prince, 77
Reichsglocke, the, 152
Reichstag, the, 58, 59, 61, 64, 65, 66,
67, 104, no
Reichs- und Staats- Anzeiger, 79
Reports, Ministerial, the Cabinet
order of September, 1852, concern
ing, 99, 100; the Kaiser demands
its withdrawal, 104, 106; Count
Eulenburg on, 105; Bismarck de
fends, 109
Responsibility, Ministerial, 140
Revolution and clericalism, 18, 19
Rich ter, 18
Roggenbach, Von, 31, 38, 185
Rohnstock, conference at, 157, 170
Roon, Von, 130
Rottenburg, von, 9, 36
Russia, communications from, 97;
Wilhelm II suggests a visit to,
100; complains of danger of ag
gression from, 106; abandons idea
of visit, 106, 108; treaty with,
108; consular reports from, 106,
107; Wilhelm II again proposes
visit to, 156; war with, believed
inevitable, 159; the Crown Prince
(Wilhelm II) on possibilities of
war with, 160-164; dangers of war
with, 174; relations between Aus
tria and, 181
Russian loan, Wilhelm II opposes,
167, 168
Russian peril, the, 172, 190

Salisbury Ministry, the, 172
Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Albert, Duke
of (Prince Consort), 30
Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Ernst, Duke of,
29, 112
201

THE KAISER vs. BISMARCK

Saxony, 18; King of, 57
Scharnhorst, Von, 94
Schelling, Von, 88, 187, 194
Schlozer, 186
Scholz, 94, 187, 194
Schuvalov, Count Paul, 108, 117,
118, 119, 123, 124
Schwarzenburg, Prince, 178, 183
Schweinitz, Von, 125, 160
Schweninger, Professor, 47
Seven Years' War, the, 173
Seydel, Pastor, 23
Slavs not tree-lovers, 138
Social Democracy, 7; Prince Wil
helm on a campaign against, n;
in Switzerland, 34; too luxurious
growth of, 48, 68, 87; campaign
against, abandoned, 118; a cause
of dispute between Bismarck and
Wilhelm II, 136; Wilhelm II
encourages, by concessions, 153,
154
Social Democratic press, the, 10, 13
Social reform, imperial manifesto re
lating to, 23, 47, 48
Social revolution, campaign against,
9?
Socialism, legislation against, 39, 48;
proposed renewal of, 65; abandon
ment of, 118
Socialist peril, the, 91
Society of Jesus, the, 154
South German states, the, 32
Spala, Wilhelm II proposes a visit
to, 169
Staats- Anzeiger, the, 123
State Council, the, 81, 82
Stocker, Adolf, proposed head of
City or Home Mission, 6; his sup
posed influence against Social De
mocracy, 8; the Stocker " affair,"
8 et seq.; the idea of Stocker as
president abandoned, 12; Bis
marck's opinion of, 21, 27, 131
Stolberg-Wernigerode, Count, 10
13
Stosch, General von, 131
Strike of miners, 48, 68, 69, 70
Sunday labor, 59, 60, 132
Switzerland, Social Democracy in,

33, 34; Baden's relations with,
33. 34. 35 T
"Tall fellows," Wilhelm IPs predi
lection for, 142
Teutonic Knights, the, 154
Trade, Board of, 71
Trenck, Baron, 145
Triple Alliance, the, no, 174, 189
U
Usedom, Von, 152

Verdy, Von, 60, 73, 85; Bismarck
regards as a spy, 87, 88, 89, 90, 93,
94, 107, 132, 187, 194
Versailles, 1871, 30
Victoria, Queen, 158, 159
Vienna, Congress of, 173
W
Waldersee, Countess, 131
Waldersee, Von, meeting at his house
relating to the City Missions, 6,
n, 13; Bismarck on, 26, 27, 40,
55, 118, 131, 159, 160, 166, 195,
196
Wedding, the old man of, 64
West, advantages of war in the, 163,
164
Widel, Count, 1 19
Wilhelm I, 1, 30, 31; illness of, 37;
influenced by women Freemasons,
etc., 74; an example of feminine
influence, 74, 75; death of, 95;
character of, 145, 146, 149, 150,
151, 152, 188
Wilhelm, Prince (Crown Prince
Wilhelm II), Bismarck hopes to
remove from Potsdam, 1; his
father's ideas as to his political
education, 2, 3; Bismarck's ditto,
4, 5; the influence of Potsdam, 5;
letter to Bismarck concerning the
City Mission and Stocker, 9-15;

202

INDEX

document to be presented to the
federated princes on his accession,
15, 16; replies to Bismarck's letter
on the Home Mission, 24, 25 ; in
fluenced by the Grand Duke of
Baden, 39, 40; his jealousy of Bis
marck, 39, 40; his dislike of expert
collaborators, 41; his method of
taking the initiative, 41; he se
duces Boetticher from his alle
giance, 44, 45, 46, 47; differs from
Bismarck on the matter of social
reform, 48; his jealousy of Bis
marck, 55; writes to Bismarck
after succeeding to the throne, 56;
turned against Bismarck by his
advisers, 60; holds Crown Coun
cil, 62; introduces two projects,
62; proposes a manifesto concern
ing social reform, 64, 65; gives
way to strikers, 68, 69; inclines to
popular absolutism, 69; prefers
mediocre Ministers, 72; issues
proclamations against Bismarck's
advice, 79; increasing restiveness,
85; agrees to Bismarck's retire
ment from Prussian service, 86,
87, 90, 91; takes steps to force his
resignation, 96; objects to Bis
marck's reception of Windthorst,
98, 99; demands withdrawal of
the Cabinet Order of September,
1852, 105, 106; demands Bis
marck's resignation, 106: his reply
to Bismarck's resignation, 120-
122; his policy of conciliating op

ponents, 134; his intention to rule
by himself, 136; his reasons for
dismissing Bismarck, 136, 141-
170; characteristics of, 141, 147;
inherited qualities, 147-150; pol
icy of concession to adversaries,
152-156; encouragement of So
cialism, 153, 154; his general
policy, 154, 155; foreign policy,
155-157; relations with Alexan
der III, 158, 159; prejudice against
England, 158, 159; letter to Bis
marck on war with Russia, 160-
165; accession to the throne, 165;
Press reports of friction with Bis
marck, 165; opposes the Russian
loan, 167, 168; proposes a further
visit to Russia, 167, 168; inde
pendence of action, 187-194; let
ter relating to reports from Kieff,
190; Press reports of friction with
Bismarck, 195.
Wilhelm, Princess, 9, 10, 11
Windthorst, 18, 24, 89; calls on Bis
marck, 97-99, no, 154, 189
Workers, emancipation of the, 69
Wiirtemburg, 18

Zanzibar, treaty relating to the ces
sion of, 171-177; Caprivi's at
tempt to ascribe it to Bismarck,
174, 175; England's surprise at
the cession, 176
Zeithen-Schwerin, Count, 13

THE END