Blood and Iron Part 6

Among the men Bismarck met at this bar was Albrecht von Roon, who many years later was to become the great Prussian military drill-master.

-- Bismarck finally left Goettingen in August, '33; his last duel was with an Englishman who had made fun of the German peasant, describing that worthy as "a dunce in a night cap, whose night-dress is made of 39 rags." The 39 rags was an allusion to the 39 petty German states.

Bismarck was already becoming imbued with the "national German faith,"

as it was called, and could not let the insult go by.

-- As a rule, Bismarck was lucky in his sword play. The biggest slash he received was made by Biedenweg, whose sword broke and cut Otto from jaw to lip, on the left cheek--a scar that Bismarck carried to his grave.

-- Giesseler, the proctor, gave Bismarck a very doubtful letter of recommendation; the duelist and beer-drinker had asked for a transfer to Berlin university. Otto wanted to hear law lectures by Savigny.

-- He began his Berlin course in a mocking way. There was an unserved jail sentence hanging over Bismarck's head at Goettingen; and with sham seriousness, as though he were going to turn over a new leaf, Otto humbly set up that, to be strictly honest with the professors, to jail Otto must go and to jail they sent him! But no sooner was he out than he forgot all his good resolutions, and began his mad existence again.

-- Finally, in May, 1835, he pa.s.sed his examination in law, or "advocate a.s.sistant," but not without hiring a professional "crammer"

to drill him hours and hours--to make up for wasted weeks in beer cellars and with the pretty girls.

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Deficient in discipline, young Otto makes a fizzle of his first office-holding; his shocking conduct against his superior officer; back to the old estates, he looks after the cattle, dogs and horses.

-- Harum-scarum days are over--and now for the serious business of life. Years later, in the days of his great renown, Bismarck, thinking of his early preparation, always regretted, he said, that he did not join the army. As a matter of fact, he had no serious plans for years to come--and it would appear that, on the whole, his career was decided by accident. Of this more, at the right time, later.

-- When Bismarck was 20, he served several months at Aix-la-Chapelle, in court work, then was transferred to Potsdam, to the administrative side.

He soon showed himself deficient in discipline. An over-officer kept him waiting, and Bismarck took personal offense. At last Bismarck was admitted. The over-officer was sitting there, calmly killing time smoking a cigar. Bismarck leaned over and in his gruff way asked, "Give me a match!" This in itself was highly insolent, a violation of Prussian ideas of discipline. But the astonished over-officer complied. The young clerk thereupon sprawled in a chair and lighted his cigar.

It was, you see, merely to show his independence. Also, it meant that he had to get out of the service.

-- Bismarck was glad to go; he hated intensely the clock-like regularity of the Prussian bureaucracy.

-- His mother died in 1839, at which time Otto was 24; and on the young chap now fell the management of the Pomeranian estates.

-- In 1844, Otto went to live with his father at Schoenhausen; here, Otto and his brother looked after the farms. Otto was later appointed d.y.k.e-captain of the Elbe.

-- Along about this time, a religious revival swept through Prussia and Otto was carried away on the flood; also, he began showing himself a strong monarchical man.

Always religious and always a King's man, at heart, Otto now seriously studied religion and state affairs. When the call came, he was not found wanting!

-- We hasten along. In 1847, Otto's naturally deep religious convictions were strengthened by his wife's uncompromising orthodoxy.

-- It was in this year, also, that he made his entry into Prussian politics--to the study of which he was to devote his long life and his surprising genius. However, to present a clear idea of the work Bismarck was to do, it is necessary to return, briefly, to an earlier day, and to trace a complex historical movement through the past. We shall summarize, on broad lines, the problem presented by the question of German national unity. The German problem comprised a political, sociological and racial situation toward whose solution hundreds, if not thousands, of notable men and women, for several generations past, had sought in vain.

-- "Nothing," says Wilhelm Gorlach, "can more clearly prove Bismarck's historical importance than the fact that we are obliged to go back several centuries to understand the connection of his actions."

BOOK THE SECOND

The German National Problem

CHAPTER V

The Great Sorrow

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The German crazy-quilt, of many hues and colors, and how this blanket was patched and mended through the years.

-- From the 18th Century, and indeed before that time, to say nothing of years to come as late as 1871, there was in fact no Germany. The term was a mere geographical "designation." We shall hear more of this, as Bismarck a.s.sumes the stupendous task of German unity, in a real sense of the word; but we will never understand what Bismarck and other statesmen who hoped for German unity had to deal with, unless we take a broad survey of conditions in Germany from the year 1750; not only from the political but also from the social and domestic side, as represented in 300-odd German princ.i.p.alities that like a crazy-quilt were thrown helter-skelter from Hamburg on the North to Vienna on the South.

-- Many of the holdings were gained through musty papers from rulers of the ancient Holy Roman Empire, a nation Voltaire declared "neither holy, nor empire, nor Roman."

-- There were free cities, great landlords, and there were great robber-barons--thieves of high or low degree.

-- At Cologne, Treves and Mayence archbishops held the lower valley of the Moselle, also some of finest parts of the Rhein valley.

-- Next, came dukes, landgraves, margraves, cities of the Empire, and then still smaller, duchies in duodecimo, down through some 800 minor landlords who as the owners of some borough or village walked this earth genuine game c.o.c.ks on their own dunghills. Political conditions were distressing; old feuds, old hates prevailed.

There were restrictions on commerce, statute labor, barbarous penal laws, religious persecution and Jew-baiting.

-- In short, to make 300-odd jealous princelings join hands in national brotherhood is the complex problem that goes down through the years; generation after generation; till at last the one strong man appears, Otto von Bismarck, who in his supreme rise to power sees clearly that the only hope for Germany is in a complete social and political revolution, in which the changes in the German mind concerning political unity in governmental affairs must be as unusual as the transformations in the German mode of life.

-- During the early part of the 18th Century, of which we are now writing, a certain bold political doctrine still stood unchallenged.

It had come out of the dim and h.o.a.ry past, and in effect it proclaimed the power of the fist. For centuries unnumbered the idea prevailed that a state defends itself against foreign foes, and otherwise conserves its existence through the direct will of a strong ruler, preferably a king brought up in arms.

Thus the "genius of the people" meant in effect the wisdom or the ignorance of the line of kings.

Under this theory, Prussia by slow degrees and through many sacrifices of blood and treasure, had become a great power.

-- Fred: Wm. I., (1713-40), who was indeed a miser and a scoffer, freed little Prussia from debt and rebuilt cities ruined by the wars. He likewise established a system of compulsory education, made schoolmasters state officers, and contributed mightily to a higher standard.

And he went further still: he welcomed religious exiles from other parts of Germany; he settled thousands of immigrants on the raw lands; he saved his money, economized to the last pfennig, was prudent in a worldly sense, and to the end of his life remained intolerable foe of idleness.

-- It was from this severe master that the Great Frederick (1740-86) learned the trick of laying his cane over the backs of peasants and crying out in rage: "Get to work!"

-- Old Fritz continued his line of battle from 1740 to 1763, in various unequal contests with the Allies. He fought Austria, France, Russia, Sweden, Saxony, and Poland, and for a while he fought their allied strength. The upshot was that Prussian enemies at home and abroad were defeated and Prussia won first rank as a military and political power.

This idea of military discipline, united with large worldly sagacity in the management of state affairs, marks and explains Prussia's rise to power.