61. Bismarck, The Man of Political Success

Napoleon the First certainly expressed the creed of most great politicians when he said: "Events must never determine politics, but politics must determine events. To be carried away by every incident is to have no political system at all." Bismarck's greatness is based on the fact that he made exactly the opposite profession of faith to his own. When we look at the life of a great politician, we are inclined to ask: What political idea did he have in mind? What did he want? And the more of his goals he realized, the more we value him. If someone had asked Bismarck at the beginning of his political career what he wanted, he would hardly have answered anything other than: I want to conscientiously fulfill the duties imposed on me by my office. And if he had been asked about a guiding political idea that determined him, he would probably not have known what to do with such a question. How far removed from the idea of such a German Reich, the realization of which he served, his political thoughts may have been in the revolutionary years, when he believed he could best fill his place in the ranks of the Frankfurt members of the Bundestag by opposing every modern stirring of the German spirit as the bitterest enemy.

There were idealists at the time who wanted to create a unified empire for the German people through the power of thought. Bismarck had not the slightest understanding for such idealism. And twenty-three years later, Bismarck realized what those idealists then thought possible, and what he then thought was a ridiculous fantasy.

At the risk of being mistaken for a diminutive Bismarck by those who believe they can only recognize a great man through superlatives of praise, I will say it: Bismarck owes his successes to the fact that he was never even a few years ahead of his time. The idealists of 1848 had to fail because they wanted to realize an idea that was only ripe for realization in 187x. Bismarck was only available for this idea at the moment when it was ripe to come into existence.

Goethe characterized problematic natures in this way: they are "natures that are not up to any situation, and for whom none is enough". If you transform this sentence into its opposite, you have a characterization of Bismarck: He was a man who was equal to any situation and for whom each one was enough.

The idea that one can have an ideal and want to work towards its realization was far from Bismarck's mind. Anyone who has such an ideal will always be more or less of a problematic nature, because the real state of things - which does not correspond to the ideal - will never be enough for him. But Bismarck had a keen sense for the real state of affairs, for the real demands of his time; and he had the ruthless will to realize what the time, the moment demanded. In the period before 1870, he could have been given a thousand reasons in favor of bringing about the national unity of North and South Germany: he would have smiled at them. In 1870, the facts spoke to him and he brought about this unity.

I say it unreservedly: Bismarck became the greatest politician because he knew how to turn his coat to the wind in the very best sense of the word. But I am only parroting Bismarck's words. In the session of the Prussian House of Representatives on June 2, 1865, Bismarck replied to Deputy Virchow, who accused him of having no firm principles, but of making his political decisions one way or the other, depending on how the wind blew: "Virchow accused us of turning our rudder depending on how the wind changed. Now I ask, what else should one do when sailing a ship but turn the rudder according to the wind, if one does not want to create wind oneself?"

Bismarck never thought about how the world should be. He regarded such thinking as idle activity. He let events tell him what should be; his job was to act powerfully in line with the demands made by events.

But his power has a very specific direction. No one else would have given it this direction. Bismarck was born on ı. April 1815 in a Prussian Junker family. His upbringing led him to act as the personality who had to inscribe himself on his tombstone: " A loyal German servant of Wilhelm I."

You will search in vain if you want to find two men in world history who were as destined for each other as Bismarck and Wilhelm I. A monarch who grasps his tasks in the only worthy, only right way for a hereditary ruler: to make use of the man who knows how to harmonize the interests of his throne with the long-cherished ideals of the majority of the people out of innate selflessness and with enormous strength. And a servant who is educated to place the titanic power that belongs to him at the service of the ruler, whom he recognizes without further question as his "master".

One wonders about the causes of such harmony. I recognize the effects of religion. You can be a ruler like Wilhelm I and you can be a statesman like Bismarck only as a Christian.

Bismarck was equal to any situation in his life. He did what events demanded of a loyal German servant of the Prussian king. He did not think about the justification of his actions. He left that to God. We can look into Bismarck's heart. We can know how he came to terms with his task through his relationship with God. Moritz Busch reports of a conversation in Varzin during which Bismarck said: "Nobody loved him because of his political activities. He had not made anyone happy with it, not himself,.... but many unhappy. Without me, there would not have been three great wars, eighty thousand people would not have died, and parents, brothers, sisters and widows would not have mourned. Meanwhile, he continued, I made a deal with God."

And Bismarck also arranged his relationship with his king with God. God gave him the office of making this king great. And he knew nothing other than to fulfill the duties of this office honestly. It was not his ideal to found a German Empire. It was the office entrusted to him by God and his king. He was not there to fulfill ideals; he was only equal to any office.

Bismarck's principle was to make the Hohenzollern house powerful. If one may speak of a principle in his case. Because that was what the times demanded.

And the times demanded something else. It demanded that the king go with the people. Bismarck also recognized this. Bismarck wanted to create a people loyal to the king and later to the emperor. That is why he introduced universal suffrage. That is why he made a start with socio-political reforms.

It is a lie to claim that Bismarck was ever a friend of the liberal bourgeoisie. In truth, he was always their greatest enemy. He saw it as the embodiment of the republican spirit. Liberalism wants the republic, or if it pretends not to want it, then the king should be nothing more than the hereditary president. This is Bismarck's opinion. I would like to quote the words he himself spoke in the German Reichstag on November 26, 1884: "What is the distinguishing feature between republic and monarchy? Certainly not the hereditary nature of the president. The Polish republic had a king, he was called king and was hereditary under certain circumstances. The English aristocratic republic has a hereditary president, who is king or queen; but the English constitution does not fit into the concept of a monarchy according to the German definition. I distinguish between monarchy and republic on the line where the king can be compelled by parliament, ad faciendum, to do something which he does not do of his own free will. I still count a constitution on this side of the line as monarchical, where, as with us, the king's assent to the laws is required, where the king has the veto and parliament also ... . The monarchical institution ceases to bear this name when the monarch can be compelled by the majority of Parliament to dismiss his ministry, when institutions can be imposed on him by the majority of Parliament which he would not voluntarily sign, against which his veto remains powerless." Bismarck believed that the liberalism of the bourgeoisie was striving for institutions that would force the ruler to simply place his name under the resolutions of the majority in parliament without any will. Of the proletarians, however, he believed that they placed their physical and spiritual well-being higher than a particular form of government. A social royalty, he thought, would be supported by the proletariat against the republican inclinations of the bourgeoisie. And he thought that a king-friendly proletariat could be raised through universal suffrage.

I believe there would have been an opportunity for Bismarck to realize his social royalty. This possibility would have materialized if Lassalle had not lost his life in 1864 as a result of Rakowitza's frivolous pistol shot. Bismarck could not cope with principles and ideas. They lay outside the circle of his world view. He could only negotiate with people who held real facts against him. Had Lassalle remained alive, he would probably have brought the workers to the point where they could have found a solution to the social question for Germany in agreement with Bismarck by the time Bismarck was ready for social reformist plans. In order to solve the social question at the right time in the spirit of Bismarck, Lassalle was missing. Bismarck could do nothing with the socialist parties, which soon after Lassalle's death asserted themselves as a political factor not under the leadership of a living man but under the abstract theories of Marzen. If Lassalle had stood opposite him as a power factor, with the workers as this power: Bismarck could have founded the social state with the king at its head. But Bismarck did not know what to do with party doctrines.

He knew how to reckon with power factors. He was indifferent to theories and principles. On November 26, 1884, he told MP Rickert: "It makes no difference to me whether my view fits into a scientific theory: it fits into my view of constitutional law, and in my view of the king I will know how to preserve the executive power and hereditary monarchy of this freedom."

Bismarck was a loyal German servant of his ruler. An enemy of the liberal bourgeoisie no less. And if this bourgeoisie has its most enthusiastic supporters today, it is because the worship of success is the most widespread virtue in their circles. It is curious that only national enthusiasm helped the German bourgeoisie for a time to overcome Bismarck's opposing attitude. The lasting monument to this deception is the National Liberal Party. It is an idealistic party. National sentiments have always held it together. It cheered Bismarck for a while. He made use of it as long as he believed that an ideal group could serve the demands of the time.

But the mass of the people also forced Bismarck to recognize his greatness. He enjoyed unprecedented popularity. He, who said in a Reichstag session on May 5, 1885: "I would become very thoughtful about what harmful things I might have intended or unintentionally brought about for the country if I had gained popularity there (to the left). The previous speaker can rest assured that I am not striving for this, just as I have never striven for popularity in my entire life."

No, Bismarck never strove for popularity. And if the crowd had cried out loudly for ideals that could have been realized after ten years: Bismarck would not have cared about the loud cries of the crowd. He was always the right man who knew how to seize the moment.

But he always used the moment in such a way that his actions were in line with the historical traditions and religious convictions in which he had grown up. He had grown up in the convictions of a Prussian nobleman and was able to adapt to the similar convictions of his master, King and Emperor Wilhelm I. With this ideal of a monarch, Bismarck's world view had sunk into the grave with him.

He could not have chosen a better epitaph than: "A loyal German servant of Wilhelm I"

And so they may resent me as much as they like, those who can only recognize when they praise in superlatives. I say with Bismarck, the great deceased, that the best maxim of the politician is:

" What else should one do when sailing a ship but turn the rudder to the wind, if one does not want to make the wind himself?"

[Postscript on the occasion of a reprint of the above essay in the weekly magazine "Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus", Stuttgart 1921:]

The above observations were written after Bismarck's death in 1898. Now, after the publication of the third volume of his "Thoughts and Memories", they can appear without their content being changed. For it is precisely through this publication that the colors in which Bismarck's picture could be sketchily painted at that time show their full justification. At the end of this third volume is the sentence: "The task of politics lies in the most correct foresight possible of what other people will do under given circumstances. The capacity for this foresight will rarely be innate to the extent that it does not require a certain amount of business experience and knowledge of personnel in order to be effective..." This sentence is accompanied by the following: "Bismarck never thought about how the world should be. He regarded such thinking as an idle activity. He let events tell him what should be. His business was to act forcefully in accordance with the demands of events." It can be said that Bismarck judged his dismissal with admirable objectivity from the point of view on which he had always stood. He considered it necessary for him to remain in the service because he saw no one in the field of those who came into consideration to whom the events of the time could tell what should be, and because they did not want to know what they told him. One reads about this in "Thoughts and Memories": "How exactly, I would like to say subalternly, Caprivi followed the "Consigne was shown by the fact that he did not address any kind of question or inquiry to me about the state of the affairs of state he was about to take over, about the previous aims and intentions of the imperial government and the means to carry them out."

The title page of the third volume reads: "To the sons and grandchildren for an understanding of the past and a lesson for the future." Today, this dedication must be read with the most painful feelings. One cannot help thinking that Bismarck had an inkling of what was to come if there were no politician with ears to hear what events were saying. If he had experienced what had happened, he would probably still have sometimes said something like: "I cannot help feeling uneasy when I consider the extent to which these qualities have been lost in our leading circles." He means the qualities that allow one to recognize what other people will do under given circumstances and that one must acquire through experience. In politics, you have to feel the wind and steer by it if you don't want to make wind yourself.