The making of modern Germany; six public lectures delivered in Chicago in 1915

Front matter

Sculptor: Ranch

Statue of Frederick ii in Berlin

Six Public Lectures Delivered in Chicago in 1915

Contents

LECTURE PAGE

I The End of the Elder Germany, and the Rise of Brandenburg after the Thirty

Years' War 3

II Frederick the Great and the Advent

of Prussia as a European

Power

SieconD Lecture

FREDERICK THE GREAT AND THE ADVENT OF PRUSSIA AS A EUROPEAN POWER

T N my first lecture I discussed the gradual overthrow -■■ of the elder Germany founded in medieval times, and showed that by the year 1648, at the end of the Thirty Years' War, that overthrow was as good as complete. I also pointed out that the older German state was no sooner dead than there began a quiet, Inconspicuous work of reconstruction which centered in the little north-German state of Brandenburg. Encouraging signs of vigor became apparent In Brandenburg Immediately after the treaty of Westphalia, largely owing to the presence at the head of affairs of a born ruler of men, Frederick William, the Great Elector, and to his calling Into existence a central administration and a professional army. In Frederick William, a man of solid attainments, intelligent without brilliance, cautious and yet enterprising, we hail the first of the makers of Modern Germany.

In my lecture today I purpose to speak of Frederick II, called the Great. He was the great-grandson of the Great Elector and looms as large In the eighteenth century history of the state as did Frederick William In that of the seventeenth century. Frederick 11 came to the throne in 1740, exactly one hundred years after the Great Elector, and held the scepter until his death In 1786. By constant vigilance and extraordinary audacity he was enabled to strengthen and enlarge his inheritance, thereby lifting himself and his dominion to the dignity of a great European power.

But before I pursue Frederick's remarkable story, I wish to discuss a few general issues and developments, the removal of which from our path will greatly facilitate our progress. First of all, let me dispose finally of the change of name from Brandenburg to Prussia. I have already pointed out that by the accident of inheritance the ruler of Brandenburg gradually accumulated a number of other dominions, among which was a province, Prussia by name, on the southern shore of the Baltic sea. Now in the year 1700 the then ruler of Brandenburg, son and heir of the Great Elector and an insignificant man taken up with pomp and ceremony, got the idea into his head of calling himself king, a title thus far unknown in Brandenburg where, as we have seen, the current designation for the sovereign was elector. If his vanity had taken counsel of historical logic, he would have blossomed forth to the world as king of Brandenburg. But he preferred, on grounds which need not be examined here, to adopt the style of king of Prussia, taking his royal title from his relatively recent Baltic acquisition. From that moment the custom struck root of including all the scattered dominions of the Hohenzollerns under the name of Prussia.

The need of some common name for the increasing territories of the house was imperative, and what, after all, was more natural than to take it from the title of the sovereign? If he was king of Prussia, then Prussia was a satisfactory name to designate the totality of his dominions. None the less Brandenburg and not the Baltic shoreland of Prussia Is the true kernel of the Hohenzollern state. Let us dismiss the relatively unimportant question by repeating that, beginning with the year 1700, we are justified in calling the state with which we are concerned Prussia, and In distinguishing Its ruler with the title king.*

Another matter that It seems to me important to discuss before going on with the achievements of Frederick II Is the eighteenth-century theory of the Prussian state. Permit me to remind you that the Idea is often put forth that states originate In theories and that the laws and institutions of a given state are no more than the practical application of a theory mysteriously inherent in that state. In spite of the prevalence of the Idea, I find myself unable to accept It. Like most pragmatic students I hold that the institutions of every state under the sun have their origin In the necessities and habits of the community, and that only long after the institutions have taken shape, certain reflective students, given to generalization in the field of politics, come forward and deduce from the institutions a set of fundamental principles which they announce as constituting the spiritual essence or theory of the state.

Assuming for the sake of argument that I am right, and that the laws and institutions of Prussia were born out of the country's political necessities. It is none the

* For further details concerning Prussia — the original Baltic Prussia — see Appendix F.

less true that they are reducible to theoretic statement, and that a consideration of this statement may serve to throw a welcome light on the fundamental character of the government. The usual declaration with regard to eighteenth-century Prussia Is that its basic principle was patriarchal control, that Is, that the state was omnipotent and that It totally overshadowed the Individual citizen by subordinating his activity and happiness to its own ends and interests. Accepting this definition, we become aware that the spirit of eighteenth-century Prussia was in sharp contrast with the contemporary spirit of such countries as England and our own United States. In the eighteenth century we instituted and, for that matter stiU possess, the individualist state.

The theory of the Individuahst state may be phrased in some such form as this: that the government be obliged to keep as aloof as possible from the affairs and activities of the citizens, and that it permit the development of the social and economic life of the community under the free play of competition. Thus Prussia and the United States in the eighteenth century were dedicated to opposed theories of control. However, the point to which I desire to return and on which, as a student of history, I must lay stress. Is that our Individualist state is just as much the result of special American conditions as the patriarchal state of Prussia is the result of special conditions In Germany. It is not as If the American and Prussian peoples in the eighteenth century exercised a free choice In the matter of their state and, like Hercules In the ancient Greek fable, stood for a while in deep reflection at the parting of the ways. Nothing In their history would remotely justify us in representing them as ever making a conscious choice among two or more state-theories; rather each solved certain difficult besetting problems as best It could and the result In one case was the Prussian monarchy, In the other the government of the United States. Excellent testimony in support of this view of the connection between social conditions and political institutions is supplied by what has happened in the United States within the last twenty years. In that period the terms of many of our American problems suffered a considerable change. Certain economic phenomena, notably the great trusts, aroused an alarmed attention and caused a sharp criticism to be leveled at our too rampant individualism, hitherto our chief source of pride. Social and political conditions, too, bringing bosses, graft, and labor struggles to the fore, seemed to betoken a growing measure of national 111 health. More and more we inchned to ascribe the fundamental cause to our captains of industry and to their secret control of the elections and the government. Mr. Roosevelt coined the phrase about malefactors of great wealth, and earnestly invited us to beware of them as a menace to the republic. Though certainly not unanimously converted to this view, we have generally come around to the decision to bind the rich and powerful with restrictions hitherto unknown in our history, in order that they may not use their individualist freedom, coupled as It is with disportlonate political power, against the Interests of the community. Accordingly, we have put the railroads under the supervision of the Interstate Commerce Commission, we have prosecuted and dissolved the trusts, and we have passed scores of laws intended to protect the factory workers against excessive exploitation.

In consequence of this development our loosely arranged individualist state has assumed community functions which it formerly eschewed, and has measurably adopted the practice and theory with which Prussia became identified as early as the days of the Great Elector. There we may let the matter of the informing spirit behind the institutions of Prussia and the United States rest for the present, merely reasserting, as we pass on, that our eighteenth-century individualist liberty was no more our merit than the subjection to an allpowerful state was a Prussian fault, and that the Prussian patriarchal system represented the historical, and therefore the only conceivable, solution of the special problems that confronted Frederick William and his successors.

From the theory of the Prussian state we pass by a natural transition to the dynasty of the Hohenzollerns who wielded the patriarchal power. Now this dynasty has undoubtedly produced a number of remarkable men. But the idea occasionally propounded by certain Prussian super-patriots that the members of the Hohenzollern dynasty represent a higher level of capacity than the dynasties of other European states is difficult to uphold. Let us look at the facts. Of noteworthy men there is, first, the Great Elector who founded the state and who stands like a Gulliver amidst the Lilliputian shapes of seventeenth century Germany; then there is Frederick ii, called the Great, with whom we are about to deal; finally, two nineteenth-century sovereigns, William i and William ii, whom we shall treat later, appear to be above the average in natural endowment for their appointed task. But against this list of distinguished rulers there must be set an equally large group which does not rise above mediocrity, and brings down the efficiency index to about the figure maintained by the other reigning houses of Europe.

There remains, however, an observation to submit on this head which opens a path to an understanding of the success which the HohenzoUerns have undeniably achieved. The organization of the Prussian state, as I have disclosed it, called for a very active kind of sovereign since his authoritative position put upon him an enormous number of duties. Now such duties, regularly exercised, made for a tradition of work and service which, once established, would prove a support for the weaker spirits and hold them to a standard far beyond their personal worth.

This is well illustrated if we compare the sovereigns of Prussia in the eighteenth century, when kings counted for more than ever before or since in the history of Europe, with the sovereigns of a country like France. The prominent eighteenth century figure of France was Louis XV. This king found himself at the head of a brilliant state, with countless resources at his disposal but with no very solidly established tradition of royal service, and in consequence he fell victim to the many insidious temptations of power. He ended by becoming a self-indulgent oriental despot passing his days in a ceaseless round of pleasures. Now Prussia never had a Louis XV either in the eighteenth or in any other century, and it is not because there is anything In the moral stamina of the house of Hohenzollern that is superior to the moral stamina of the house of Bourbon. It Is simply because an honorable tradition of state service imposed itself on the rulers of Prussia from generation to generation. Though this Hohenzollern conception of office is a difficult factor to evaluate precisely In the upgrowth of the country, it is, without any doubt, of signal Importance.

I am now ready to turn to Frederlclc ll, commonly called the Great, who occupied the throne of Prussia for well nigh half a century ( 1740-86) . When he succeeded to the crown he was a young man, twenty-eight years old. He had shown from his birth a merry, pleasurable disposition which made him love the society of his kind, and he had exhibited a receptive intelligence eager to assimilate the products of literature, music, science, and philosophy. In the years when he was growing up, the most impressive literature and art of Europe hailed from France, and it was therefore quite natural that, lured by Its novelty and charm, he should have directed his study to the stirring movement among his western neighbors.

Like many young men of similar tastes and enthusiasm he nursed the hope of a literary career and planned to link his name with the Immortals of the French Parnassus — Racine, Montesquieu, Voltaire, and their peers. Of course nothing came of it in the end, if we except a solemn row of unimportant volumes entitled Oeiivres de Frederic II, and a passionate but hectic friendship with Voltaire. This was so characteristic of Frederick and summarized so many of the hopes and disappointments of his life, that I must be permitted to say a few words about it, however insignificant, from the point of view of our story of the Prussian state, a purely personal relationship may seem to be.

Voltaire, half a generation older than Frederick, was singled out by the impressionable youth as the man of men, the authentic prophet with an intimate and saving message. On his own initiative, and with the usual palpitations of a young enthusiast, he entered into correspondence with his idol, desiring nothing so much as to become Voltaire's friend. This early courtship was the happiest period of their association; but later, when Frederick became king and master of his own destiny, he resolved to go farther, and invited Voltaire to visit him in his dominions. The French author made several stays, more or less prolonged, under the roof of his royal friend, but alas ! friction developed, due to temperamental differences, and finally led to a grievous clash. The violent breach between king and philosopher gave birth to much malicious comment which has not entirely subsided to the present day. It is not worth while repeating, since it does not contribute to our true knowledge of Frederick; but what is worth while saying is that the early courtship of Voltaire drew the young Prussian prince into the fresh intellectual currents of the eighteenth century, supplied him with a Voltairean or rationalist mentality, and at least materially helped in fitting him for that role of enlightened despot with which he is Identified.

Though the strong natural bent disclosed by Frederick in his youth toward the literature and philosophy of his day seemed to his tutors and friends the earnest of a great future, it flatly failed to win the approval of his father. That was King Frederick William i, who ruled the state from 17 13 to 1740, and who in a fuller account of Prussia than Is possible here would have to be conceded a prominent place. As an administrator Frederick William i displayed a remarkable initiative and zeal, and in view of the care he gave to the problems of agriculture and colonization well deserves the title of the Great Economist (der grosse Wirth) which he has won from Prussian scholars. But though honest and capable, he had a boorish disposition and was filled with a frank scorn for the refinements of the mind and of society. The constant playing on the flute by the young prince and his writing of French verses were In the father's eyes the symptoms of an intolerable effeminacy. Der Fritz ist ein efeminirter Kerl, was his oft repeated slur upon his son and he gradually made up his mind that unless matters changed radically, Fritz should never succeed him on the Prussian throne.

At first he only nagged and criticised; then, his patience outdone, he gave commands. The result was a clash between father and son culminating in one of the most notorious court-scandals of the eighteenth century. I can not stop to sketch the whole drama here with its plots and passions, its tragic and comic episodes.

I can only state briefly that the son refusing to yield to parental tyranny at last formed the resolution to seek safety in flight. But before he could carry out his plan he was apprehended and summarily cast into prison. The father, excited almost to the pitch of insanity, talked wildly of having the prince shot as a deserter from the army and a traitor to the country. The bosom friend and accomplice of Frederick, young lieutenant Katte, the grim parent actually had tried by a military court and executed under the eyes of his recalcitrant and wayward heir. Then gentler counsels won the upper hand and the young man was reprieved, but not until he had eaten prison fare for one whole year and taken a solemn vow to the effect that he would henceforth curb his self-willed course and subject himself in all things to his father's authority.

There now dawned a new and Spartan period for the prince who at the age of nineteen entered upon an austere curriculum, the purpose of which was to prepare him as thoroughly as possible for his kingly duties. He was first apprenticed to a minor bureau in the civil service and, starting as a common clerk reporting for work at six o'clock in the morning, he had to make his way through the various stages of the Prussian administration. Then he was readmitted to the army, and by similar close application worked his way up as an oflicer until he became familiar with every minute requirement of the military system.

Probably no royal heir-apparent has ever received so thorough a schooling In the practical duties of his oflice as was imposed upon the chastened Fritz by his stern parent and taskmaster. Of course his fresh spirit suffered from this discipline and something bright and confident went out of Frederick's life never to return; but may we not affirm that the hard father contributed that quality of iron which, originally lacking, was necessary to give a foundation of solid strength to the gifts and graces of the young prince?

When, after ten years of strict apprenticeship, Frederick came to the throne, the expectation in Prussia and Europe, founded on the young man's well-known literary inclinations, was that there would now be a radical change of system in the Prussian state, and that presently, in the place of the shrill cry of the drill sergeant, there would be heard in the sandy wastes of rough and backward Brandenburg the song of the muses to the accompaniment of lyre and harp. Needless to say that all such expectations were cruelly deceived. Without denying his love of letters, Frederick II lived and moved from the first day of power in the traditions of the Prussian crown, and recognized as his main task the support and enlargement of his inherited state. Hardly on the throne, he plunged into the political whirlpool of Europe and thus created that issue which dominated Germany for the next one hundred years, the rivalry between Prussia and Austria. At this juncture it becomes necessary to refer briefly to the situation of Austria in the eighteenth century.

Austria was a south-German state which, beginning in a small feudal way, gradually rose to eminence in the valley of the Danube. Its dynasty was the family of the Hapsburgs, and its capital the city of Vienna, favorably located on the blue waters of the great central artery. By a successful policy of wars and marriagealliances the Hapsburgs, In the course of many generations, accumulated the various provinces and dominions, such as Hungary, Bohemia, and the Tyrol, which still in this twentieth century make up the bulk of their possessions. Even before the Reformation, Austria was the most considerable German state, and had acquired a kind of ascendancy over the rest of Germany which expressed itself In the recurrent election of a Hapsburg prince to the Imperial office. When in the Thirty Years' War, Germany, as we have seen, went to pieces, Austria continued to enjoy a position of preeminence, for her ruler continued to be elected German emperor, though under a constitution so emasculated as to make his position merely ornamental.

Under these narrowing circumstances, political life in Austria might have been smitten with paralysis if an opening had not been afforded elsewhere. From an Austrian viewpoint the greatest event of the eighteenth century was the decay of Turkey. In measure as the weakness of the Sultan became apparent, Austria was encouraged to engage In a policy of expansion down the Danube and Immediately met with considerable success. In consequence, she could afford to neglect Germany and desist from any effort to change the desolate situation there. In fact, Austria substantially resigned herself to the view that it was best to accept the settled German stagnation on the understanding that she be left in the undisturbed enjoyment of the few decorative German rights which were still hers.

Matters standing thus, the continued exercise by Austria of the nominal headship of Germany meant nothing more or less than the perpetuation of the country's impotence. Right here belongs the significance of Frederick the Great in the eyes of history. He took it on himself to challenge the traditional ascendancy of Austria, thereby inaugurating a fierce competition between that state and upstart Prussia. By Frederick's bold act the dead German life, which lay like a wide, ice-covered marsh, was stirred for the first time in a hundred years and showed a faint movement as though spring were in the wind. In the eyes of the historian at least, if not in Frederick's own eyes or in those of his contemporaries, he was the innovator at whose challenge sounded the knell of the old order in Germany.

The rivalry between Austria and Prussia, which Frederick called into being, lasted for more than a hundred years, from 1740 to 1866, and led in its final consequences to the rebirth of Germany. Of this far conclusion the Prussian king had hardly a remote inkling. He was no German patriot, and no wonder, since there were no German patriots in existence anywhere and could not well be because there was no Germany that called for patriotism. He was the king of Prussia and a political realist, with a roving eye searching the horizon for opportunities to better the position of his state. It was in this spirit, as a practical Prussian statesman, I say again, not as an idle German dreamer, that he took up, on his accession, the nearby question of Silesia and therewith precipitated an Austro-Prussian war; and like many a man building better than he knew, when, a century later, the harvest of his deeds had ripened, he was seen as the forerunner who had unconsciously prepared the ground for a new Germany.

The province of Silesia, which caught the eye of the young king, was an Austrian territory along the Oder river. By virtue of it, the Hapsburg possessions extended into northern Germany and bordered upon Brandenburg. To certain limited sections of Silesia the house of Hohenzollern held a claim which the Great Elector had vigorously pressed, but Austria had resisted persuasion and threats alike and the controversy had made as good as no headway in half a hundred years.

In October, 1740, some five months after Frederick had mounted the Prussian throne, the Emperor Charles VI, the last male of the Hapsburg line, died, and immediately the question as to who would succeed him at Vienna leaped to the front and engaged the attention of the European cabinets. Charles had made the testamentary provision that, in default of male heirs, he should be succeeded by his daughter, Maria Theresa, and his arrangements, embodied in a so-called Pragmatic Sanction, had been very generally accepted by the courts of Europe. But, as usual, a paper treaty was found to be a very inadequate barrier against the assaults of cupidity, and Charles vi was no sooner laid in the vault of his fathers than ominous movements on the part of Bavaria, France, and Spain made it clear that these powers would vamp up old claims of one sort or another wherewith to assert a prerogative to a portion of Maria Theresa's rich dominions.

Young and clear-eyed Frederick of Prussia saw from what quarter the wind was blowing, and quickly resolved not to be behind his neighbors. He, too, had a claim — the aforesaid claim to parts of Silesia — and to his calculating mind the young Austrian heiress was in so perilous a position that Prussia would probably only have to present its ancient bill energetically to cause her to pay it in full. In consequence he marched an army into Silesia. The act meant war — a war which, regardless of the validity or non-validity of his Silesian claims, can not reasonably be called other than a war of aggression. Frederick himself in his Histoire de mor. temps, has taken substantially the same view. As I read his simple and unpretentious account, he saw unfolded before him an opportunity to carry his state to a new level of importance, and considered it pusillanimous to let the chance slip by unused. Of course Maria Theresa resisted an attack, for which, to her mind, there was no possible warrant, but as her other enemies, Bavaria, France, and Spain, descended upon her at the same time, she became engulfed in a vast struggle known as the War of the Austrian Succession and lasting from 1740 to 1748. In the course of it, in order to ease the pressure exercised upon her from so many sides she resolved to come to terms with Frederick. The result was that in a treaty signed in 1742 and confirmed, after a second struggle, in 1745, she made over the province of Silesia to Prussia. Courageously continuing the war with her other opponents, she was enabled not only to hold her own but finally to force a settlement which greatly enhanced the Austrian prestige in the eyes of Europe.

The young woman who sustained the terrible trial of this war proved, in the course of a long reign, to be the most capable sovereign that Austria ever had. Holding the rudder firm as any man, the Empress Maria Theresa was none the less a very feminine spirit, closely attached to her family, and profoundly swayed by her feelings whether of love or resentment. In the late war she had avenged herself on all her enemies who had come down upon her unawares — on all but Frederick, who, firmly possessed of the Silesian prize, was in her sight a sorry instance of how the wicked flourish in this evil world. She had surrendered to him a precious territory, but since it had been wrested from her by armed force, she not unnaturally considered herself free to take it back in the same way at the first opportunity.

With deliberate and extraordinary persistence Maria Theresa undertook to create a political system which would give her an assured preponderance over Prussia, and so, reversing the tables, bring Silesia back into the Austrian fold. Having first attached Russia to herself by formal treaty, she next turned to France. The French negotiations proved extremely difficult, owing to the long-standing feud between the houses of Hapsburg and Bourbon, and the reluctance of France to see the desirability of a changed course. However, by 1756 an Austro-French treaty was perfected, and now Prussia was surrounded on three sides and could be crushed, it might reasonably be hoped, in a single vigorous campaign.

Still the matter was, after all, not so simple as Maria

Theresa's confident resentment pictured It. With unequalled political daring Frederick ii coupled a military skill which made him the greatest captain of his time, and although he did not for a moment underestimate the force of the gathering tempest, he did not quail before It. He looked around for aid and found a helper in Great Britain. Great Britain In the eighteenth century was Involved with France In a tremendous struggle for the rule of the seas and the trans-oceanic continents, and this quarrel, dating back In Its origin over a hundred years, happened to be ripe for settlement at the exact moment which the Empress Maria Theresa had chosen to even scores with Frederick. In the year 1756 an Anglo-French conflict was a certainty, and if France was to have the aid of Austria In that struggle, Great Britain was sure to make an eager bid for Prussian help. Through the respective necessities of London and Berlin the two cabinets were forced into an alliance, and thus It was, with Great Britain at his side, that Frederick met the descent upon him of his three continental neighbors, Austria, France, and Russia.

The struggle that followed, one of the most gigantic and far-reaching In history. Is familiar to us all as the Seven Years' War (1756-63). How It was fought out by England and France on all the seas and not only confirmed Britannia as the ruler of the waves but gave her India and Canada as well, is sufficiently known. To Americans this chapter of the Seven Years' War Is so preeminently Important that the Austro-Prusslan combat sinks by comparison Into Insignificance. And yet

It is the Austro-Prusslan phase with which we are here alone concerned. Therefore having reminded you of the world-wide ramifications of the Seven Years' War, I shall confine my attention to the struggle in Central Europe.

It was eminently like Frederick, perhaps the most nimble and collected spirit of his time, that, as soon as he was certain in his mind the blow was about to fall, he sprang to anticipate it. A quick offensive would at least enable him to strike his enemies before they had combined their movements, and naturally he pounced upon Austria, his main enemy, first. But the campaign of 1756 was only partially successful, for Austria was not surprised and parried the blow. The next year the concerted advance of Austria from the south, of France from the west, and of Russia from the east was only stopped by two sweeping victories, one over the French at Rossbach, the other over the Austrlans at Leuthen; as for the Russians, when the news of these swift strokes reached them they retired from the scene without awaiting an attack.