Document – Bismarck on German nationalism, from his Memoirs (1899)

Document

Never, not even at Frankfort, did I doubt that the key to German politics was to be found in princes and dynasties, not in publicists, whether in parliament and the press, or on the barricades.ⁱ The opinion of the cultivated public as uttered in parliament and the press might promote and sustain the determination of the dynasties, but perhaps provoked their resistance more frequently than it urged them forward in the direction of national unity. . . . The Prussian dynasty might anticipate that the hegemony in the future German Empire would eventually fall to it, with an increase of consideration and power. It could foresee its own advantage, so far as it were not absorbed by a national parliament, in the lowering of status so much dreaded by the other dynasties. . . . I acquired the conviction that . . . it would not be possible even to recover for Prussia that position which she had held . . . before the events of March,ⁱⁱ to say nothing of such a reform . . . as might have afforded the German people a prospect of the realization of their pretension to a position recognized by international law as one of the great European nations. . . .

. . . The Gordian knot of German circumstances was not to be untied by the gentle methods . . . [and] could only be cut by the sword; it came to this, that the King of Prussia, conscious or unconscious, and with him the Prussian army, must be gained for the national cause. . . . So much was clear to me, and I hinted at it when . . . I made the much misrepresented deliverance concerning iron and blood. . . .

Prussia was nominally a Great Power, at any rate the fifth. The transcendent genius of Frederick the Greatⁱⁱⁱ had given her this position, and it had been reestablished by the mighty achievements of the people in 1813^iv. . . . Prussia’s material weight did not then correspond to her moral significance and her achievement in the war of liberation.

In order that German patriotism should be active and effective, it needs as a rule to hang on the peg of dependence upon a dynasty; independent of dynasty it rarely comes to the rising point. . . . [I]n practice the German needs either attachment to a dynasty or the goad of anger, hurrying him into action; the latter phenomenon, however, by its own nature is not permanent. It is as a Prussian, a Hanoverian, a Wurtemberger, a Bavarian or a Hessian, rather than as a German, that he is disposed to give unequivocal proof of patriotism; and in the lower orders and the parliamentary groups it will be long before it is otherwise. We cannot say that the Hanoverian, Hessian, and other dynasties were at any special pains to win the affections of their subjects; but nevertheless the German patriotism of their subjects is essentially conditioned by their attachment to the dynasty after which they call themselves. It is not differences of stock, but dynastic relations upon which in their origin the centrifugal elements repose. It is not attachment to Swabian, Lower Saxon, Thuringian,^v or other particular stock that counts for most, but the dynastic incorporation with the people of some severed portion of a ruling princely family, as in the instances of Brunswick, Brabant, and Wittelsbach^vi dynasties. . . . The German’s love of Fatherland has need of a prince on whom it can concentrate its attachment. Suppose that all the German dynasties were suddenly deposed; there would then be no likelihood that German national sentiment would suffice to hold all Germans together from the point of view of international law amid the friction of European politics. . . . The Germans would fall a prey to more closely welded nations if they once lost the tie which resides in the princes’ sense of community of rank. . . .

The other nations of Europe have need of no such go-between for their patriotism and national sentiment. Poles, Hungarians, Italians, Spaniards, Frenchmen would under any or without any dynasty preserve their homogeneous national unity. . . . The preponderance of dynastic attachment, and the use of a dynasty as the indispensable cement to hold together a definite portion of the nation calling itself by the name of a dynasty is a specific peculiarity of the German Empire.

Whatever may be the origin of this factitious union of Particularist elements, its result is that the individual German readily obeys the command of a dynasty to harry with fire and sword, and with his own hands to slaughter his German neighbors and kinsfolk as a result of quarrels unintelligible to himself. To examine whether this characteristic be capable of rational justification is not the problem of a German statesman, so long as it is strongly enough pronounced for him to reckon upon it. The difficulty of either abolishing or ignoring it, or making any advance in theory towards unity without regard to this practical limitation, has often proved fatal to the champions of unity; conspicuously so in the advantage taken of the favorable circumstances in the national movements of 1848–50. . . .

In the German national sentiment I see the preponderant force always elicited by the struggle with particularism; for particularism—Prussian particularism too—came into being only by resistance to the collective German community, to Emperor and Empire, in revolt from both, leaning . . . in all cases on foreign support, all alike damaging and dangerous to the German community. . . .

So far, however, as dynastic interests threaten us once more with national disintegration and impotence, they must be reduced to their proper measure.

The German people and its national life cannot be portioned out in private possessions of princely houses.

Notes

Review

1. 1. Why couldn’t the Germans have united without leadership from a monarchy, according to Bismarck? What caused this situation, in Bismarck’s view?

2. 2. Bismarck served the King of Prussia and made him into the emperor of Germany. In your opinion, based on this text, was Bismarck a Prussian loyalist or a German nationalist?

3. 3. What was the role of the state in German nationalism, according to Bismarck?

4. 4. How did Bismarck use history to justify his view of German nationalism?