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Index
- John C. G. Röhl, University of Sussex
- Translated by Terence F. Cole
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- The Kaiser and his Court
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- 10 November 1994, pp 267-275
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6 - The splendour and impotence of the German diplomatic service
- John C. G. Röhl, University of Sussex
- Translated by Terence F. Cole
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- The Kaiser and his Court
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- 10 November 1994, pp 150-161
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Summary
‘Mistakes in internal administration can be rectified by a change of minister. Financial errors can normally be put right within a few months, economic errors within a few years. Even defeats on the battlefield can be compensated for, if usually only after decades. But gross, flagrant errors in the field of foreign policy can often never be made good.’ With these words of warning Bernhard von Bülow, then German ambassador in Rome and soon to become Foreign Secretary and Reich Chancellor, anticipated as early as 1895 the catastrophic course of German history in the first half of the twentieth century, thereby touching on a question which will always preoccupy historians of the German nation-state: why was the German diplomatic corps unwilling or unable to guide the promising political, economic and cultural rise of Prussia-Germany as a Great Power along a peaceful trajectory; why did it participate, actively or passively, in the self-destruction of Germany – and the self-destruction of Europe – in two European civil wars?
No serious historian will wish to challenge the view that the second of these wars was deliberately unleashed by Germany. The only question here is whether the traditional ruling elites – in this instance the diplomatic corps – collaborated willingly in this second attempt to establish German hegemony over Europe, or whether instead they overlooked certain ‘excesses’ of the National Socialist régime and allowed themselves to be ‘shot dead’ for Hitler. The part played by Germany in the causation of the First World War is of course much more controversial. But even if we assume for the moment that Germany's role in July 1914 was of a similar order to that of the other Great Powers involved, the German diplomatic corps of the Wilhelmine epoch cannot escape censure for failing to prevent this war by warning in good time of its hopelessness. It is a difficult thing for me to say, but German diplomacy could also be open to censure on the grounds that, if war really was unavoidable, it should have created a more favourable starting-position, one more likely to produce a swift victory, and thus have averted the death of millions of human beings and unspeakable political catastrophes.
5 - Higher civil servants in Wilhelmine Germany
- John C. G. Röhl, University of Sussex
- Translated by Terence F. Cole
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- The Kaiser and his Court
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- 10 November 1994, pp 131-149
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Summary
Administrer, c'est gouverner; gouverner, c'est régner: tout se réduit lȧ.
Mirabeau to Louis XVI, 3 July 1790In the last two or three decades of the nineteenth century, the scope of governmental activity began to increase at an unprecedented rate in the industrialised countries of Europe and North America. As it did so, as governments came to intervene more and more in the day-to-day lives of individuals, demands for a thorough reform of recruitment methods in the higher branches of the civil service grew more insistent. In Britain, France and the United States, patronage had to make way for recruitment by competition, for it was intolerable that the affairs of a modern industrialised society should be in the hands of people who might barely be able to read or write. In Prussia-Germany the problem was the very reverse. Ever since the days of Frederick William I, Prussia had recruited talented commoners to the bureaucracy. Frederick the Great had set up a commission to test aspirants to public office, and candidates were expected to have a university education and to pass two or even three examinations. The Prussian Allgemeines Landrecht of 1794 laid down that ‘no-one must receive a post who is not sufficiently qualified and has not given proof of his ability. Whoever has achieved office through bribery or other impermissible means must be dismissed forthwith.’ In the Government Instruction of 23 October 1817 the Prussian departments of state were directed to ‘act always with strict checks and impartiality in the matter of appointments, looking first and foremost to loyalty, industriousness and skill rather than length of service’. ‘Public offices are open to all those who have the talent thereto’, read clause 4 of the Prussian Constitution of 1850, ‘provided they fulfil the conditions laid down by the law.’ By the time Bismarck united Germany and transferred the Prussian tradition to the Reich administration, candidates had to study jurisprudence for three years at university, undergo a four-year training period in the law courts, and pass two stiff civil service examinations before qualifying for the higher grade of the civil service.
It is therefore not surprising that the machinery of administration in the parliamentary systems of western Europe was frequently seen in Germany as corrupt and incompetent.
The Kaiser and his Court
- Wilhelm II and the Government of Germany
- John C. G. Röhl
- Translated by Terence F. Cole
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- 05 October 2015
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- 10 November 1994
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Kaiser Wilhelm II, Queen Victoria's eldest grandchild, took over the running of the powerful German Reich from Bismarck and within a couple of decades had led it into world war and collapse. How did the Kaiser come to have so much power? Why was there no one to help him steer a less disastrous course? This book analyses these crucial questions with the help of a wealth of new archival sources. The book begins with a character-sketch of the Kaiser which provides new and alarming insights into his personality. It then looks, crucially, at the Kaiser's friends and favourites, the neo-absolutist culture of the court and of Berlin court society, and at the nature of his relationship with the court on the one hand and with the administrative 'pyramid' in Prussia and the Reich on the other. The book makes clear that these bureaucrats and diplomats had neither the means nor the will to oppose the overwhelming determination of the Kaiser and his close friends and advisers in directing the policies of the most dynamic and volatile state in Europe. The dangerous consequences of this situation led to the brink of world war as early as December 1912. A final chapter reveals for the first time the appalling extent and nature of the exiled Kaiser's anti-semitism.
1 - Kaiser Wilhelm II: a suitable case for treatment?
- John C. G. Röhl, University of Sussex
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- The Kaiser and his Court
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- 10 November 1994, pp 9-27
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Summary
I have the feeling that we are being governed by a herd of lunatics
Max WeberAt the outbreak of war in 1914, a Prussian officer in Brazil wrote to a friend in Germany that people were at last attributing to Kaiser Wilhelm II ‘more greatness than Bismarck and Moltke put together, a higher destiny than Napoleon I’, seeing in him the Weltgestalter - the ‘shaper of the world’.
Who is this Kaiser [the officer exclaimed], whose peacetime rule was so full of vexation and tiresome compromise, whose temperament would flare up wildly, only to die away again? … Who is this Kaiser who now suddenly throws caution to the winds, who tears open his visor to bare his Titanic head and take on the world? … I have misunderstood this Kaiser, I have thought him a waverer. He is a Jupiter, standing on the Olympus of his iron-studded might, the lightning-bolts in his grasp. At this moment he is God and master of the world.
Even if Germany were to lose the war, the officer predicted, ‘the figure of Wilhelm II will stand out in history like a colossus’. He was mistaken. To this day not a single full-scale biography of Kaiser Wilhelm II has come from the pen of a German historian in a university position. Worse still, the prevailing tendency of historical research among the younger generation in Germany precludes any treatment of him - or indeed of the role of any individual in history. That, they declare, is Personalismus, the relapse into a ‘personalistic’ historical methodology which has long since been superseded. The ‘new orthodoxy’ insists on writing the history of the Kaiserreich without the Kaiser, that of Wilhelminism without Wilhelm.
And yet, for a number of reasons, there could hardly be a more suitable case for treatment than ‘The Incredible Kaiser’, the ‘Fabulous Monster’, this ‘most brilliant failure in history’. For one thing, the Kaiser's curious character poses a fascinating riddle in its own right, as we shall see in a moment. Second, it must be remembered that Wilhelm ruled not over Bayreuth, Bremen or Bückeburg, but over the most powerful, dynamic and volatile state in Europe, and he did so for no less than thirty crucial years, from 1888 to 1918 – that is to say for even longer than Bismarck, and two and a half times as long as Hitler.
Dedication
- John C. G. Röhl, University of Sussex
- Translated by Terence F. Cole
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- The Kaiser and his Court
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- 10 November 1994, pp vii-viii
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7 - Dress rehearsal in December: military decision-making in Germany on the eve of the First World War
- John C. G. Röhl, University of Sussex
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- The Kaiser and his Court
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- 10 November 1994, pp 162-189
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Summary
For Fritz Fischer
Few documents on the history of imperial Germany have caused as much of a stir – but also as much racking of brains – amongst historians as the entry for 8 December 1912 in the diary of the Chief of the Kaiser's Naval Cabinet, Admiral Georg Alexander von Müller. It reads:
Sunday. Ordered to see His Maj. at the Schloss at 11 a.m. with Tirpitz, Heeringen (Vice Admiral) and General von Moltke. H.M. speaks to a telegraphic report from the Ambassador in London, Prince Lichnowsky, concerning the political situation. Haldane, speaking for Grey, has told Lichnowsky that England, if we attacked France, would unconditionally spring to France's aid, for England could not allow the balance of power in Europe to be disturbed. H.M. greeted this information as a desirable clarification of the situation for the benefit of those who had felt sure of England as a result of the recent friendliness of the press.
H.M. envisaged the following:
Austria must deal energetically with the foreign Slavs (the Serbs), otherwise she will lose control of the Slavs in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. If Russia supports the Serbs, which she evidently does (Sasonoff's declaration that Russia will immediately move into Galicia if Austria moves into Serbia) then war would be unavoidable for us too. We could hope, however, to have Bulgaria and Rumania and also Albania, and perhaps also Turkey on our side. An offer of alliance by Bulgaria has already been sent to Turkey. We have exerted great pressure on the Turks. Recently H.M. has also pressed the Crown Prince of Rumania, who was passing through on his way back from Brussels, to come to an understanding with Bulgaria. If these powers join Austria then we shall be free to fight the war with full fury against France. The fleet must naturally prepare itself for the war against England. The possibility mentioned by the Chief of the Admiralty Staff in his last audience of a war with Russia alone cannot now, after Haldane's statement, be taken into account. Therefore immediate submarine warfare against English troop transports in the Scheldt or by Dunkirk, mine warfare in the Thames. To Tirpitz: speedy build-up of U-boats, etc. Recommendation of a conference of all naval authorities concerned.
Content
- John C. G. Röhl, University of Sussex
- Translated by Terence F. Cole
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- The Kaiser and his Court
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Frontmatter
- John C. G. Röhl, University of Sussex
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- The Kaiser and his Court
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Notes
- John C. G. Röhl, University of Sussex
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- 10 November 1994, pp 213-266
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8 - Kaiser Wilhelm II and German anti-semitism
- John C. G. Röhl, University of Sussex
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- The Kaiser and his Court
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- 10 November 1994, pp 190-212
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Summary
In 1894, when Kaiser Wilhelm II had been on the throne for only six years and Bismarck in angry retirement for four, when Adolf Hitler was not yet old enough to go to school, an obscene broadsheet costing 30 Pfennigs appeared on the streets of Berlin which, seen from the vantage point of the present day, poses the question of continuity in modern German history about as starkly as it is possible to pose it. Entitled ‘In the 20th Century’, an ornate cartoon (fig. 2) pictures the German capital in the year 1950. It projects two scenarios: either the Germans have defeated the Jewish menace, or the Jews have taken over Berlin.
In the latter case, Rothschild rules over Germany, the anti-semites – Böckel, Foerster, Dühring, Schönerer, Stoecker, etc. – are in prison and Ahlwardt is being beheaded. The German people is enslaved in a socialist ‘German Workers' Colony’ run for the benefit of Jewish profiteers. Opposite the colony, beyond the statue commemorating the Liberal parliamentarian Heinrich Rickert, we see the flourishing stock exchange, the Jewish National Theatre and the Jewish National Museum, whereas the Christian Church is being closed down. Germans are being expelled from their own country, their ‘fresh’ young children sold along with geese for Jewish kitchens. Everywhere, Jewish ‘world supremacy temples’ in the form of kiosks are being erected to mark their domination over the ‘German slavenation’.
An altogether different world reveals itself as we raise our eyes to the higher section of the picture. In 1950, Kaiser Wilhelm the Third and his empress have just come to the throne. German artisans and peasants march happily through the streets shouting ‘Heil!’ and ‘Gott mit uns!’ German athletes compete in German Games; the people stream into the Deutsches Volks-Haus to celebrate the glories of Beethoven, Mozart, Goethe and Schiller; German children listen once more to German fairy tales. The Church is back at the centre of society; a statue depicts St George slaying the Jewish dragon. The canonical laws discriminating against Jews have been reinstated, the synagogue has been closed and the Rabbi has committed suicide.
Introduction
- John C. G. Röhl, University of Sussex
- Translated by Terence F. Cole
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- The Kaiser and his Court
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Summary
The eight studies collected together in this book were written at various times and in a variety of contexts over a period of some twenty-five years. They are nevertheless all concerned with the same fundamental theme, the system of government of the German Reich under Kaiser Wilhelm II. The book opens with a character-sketch of this remarkable ruler, who was not merely some exotic ‘Fabulous Monster’, as one British writer dubbed him, but who in a number of ways embodied the split personality of that ‘transitional generation’ which bridged the old Prussian world of Wilhelm I and Bismarck on the one hand and the ‘modern’ world of mass industrial society on the other. It ends with an investigation into the nature and extent of the Kaiser's anti-semitism which enables us to see how close he came, in the bitterness of exile, to the Weltanschauung of Adolf Hitler. Most of the studies in this book, however, are not primarily concerned with the Kaiser. Their main focus is, first, on the mentality of the Kaiser's friends and advisers; second, on the structural foundations on which his so-called ‘personal rule’ was first erected and then sustained, including the court and court society, the higher civil service and the diplomatic corps; and third, and above all, on the interdependent relationship between the Kaiser, his court and the state. The book is therefore predominantly a work of cultural and social history. It sets out to analyse the structure and the mentality of the German ruling elite in the era of Kaiser Wilhelm II.
The studies are all based closely on original sources. Rather than providing a sweeping essayistic interpretation, each chapter is perhaps more like a pointillist painting, or like a photomontage composed of several individual photographs. Each of these pictures is an independent composition which originated as such and which can therefore be read and judged on its own merits. These individual pictures, however, can and should also be seen as facets of a larger totality. If I may stay with the artistic analogy for a moment longer, this means that the book works in the same way as a Cubist painting in which an object can be seen in several different perspectives simultaneously.
4 - The ‘kingship mechanism’ in the Kaiserreich
- John C. G. Röhl, University of Sussex
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- The Kaiser and his Court
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- 10 November 1994, pp 107-130
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Summary
For Walther Peter Fuchs
il miglior fabbroTo the two volumes of documents which have been available since 1927 on the role of Grand Duke Friedrich I of Baden in the unification of Germany are now added four further volumes covering the period from the foundation of the Reich to the Grand Duke's death on 28 September 1907. These documents, superbly edited by Walther Peter Fuchs, not only extend the chronological range of the original edition; they also enlarge its theme. This collection is without question one of the most important sources for the political and social history of the German Reich, containing as it does some 2,644 hitherto unknown documents on German politics as seen from the viewpoint of Baden, backed up with numerous parallel documents in the footnotes. The volumes emphasise the need for the publication of similarly detailed collections from the Baden archives (and indeed from those of the other federal states) for the years 1907-14, years for which - not entirely coincidentally - there is a relative paucity of source material. One Baden source - perhaps the most significant of them all - does not appear in the four volumes edited by Fuchs, however. Like many documents from the years immediately prior to the First World War, including some which survived the Second World War, this source will be unavailable to historians for ever more. For when in November 1918 certain foreign newspapers demanded ‘the publication of the letters of His Majesty the Kaiser’ to his aunt, Grand Duchess Luise of Baden (she was the sister of Kaiser Friedrich III), the Senior Court Chamberlain of Baden, Richard von Chelius, decided on his own initiative ‘to have all of the [Kaiser's] letters, and especially His Majesty's letters from the war years, transferred as quickly as possible from the castle to the Victoria boarding school’. The evacuation of the Grand Duchess's papers took place during the night of Saturday 30 November 1918. One week later the headmaster of the school, Dr von Engelbert, informed the Chamberlain ‘that as a result of the sharpened mood and situation’ in Karlsruhe he had no choice but ‘to burn the whole collection of correspondence as quickly as possible’.
3 - The Kaiser's court
- John C. G. Röhl, University of Sussex
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- The Kaiser and his Court
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Summary
As Germany under Kaiser Wilhelm II approached the apogee of its industrialisation, there simultaneously occurred a ‘monstrous’ blossoming of a court culture of a kind not seen before in the whole of its history. Whether they enthused over the ‘splendour of the Crown’ in that ‘magnificent imperial epoch’, or alternatively complained about the ‘bombastic character, the showy glitter and ostentation’ of this phenomenon, contemporaries were united in their view that, alongside its rise to preeminence as an industrialised Great Power, alongside the universally admired organisation of its state and military institutions, the Wilhelmine Reich was characterised by the efflorescence of a sumptuous neo-absolutist court culture. Yet this key aspect of German history has until recently barely been touched upon by historians of the period.
The reasons for this neglect can be indicated only briefly here. After both 1918 and 1945 there were weighty political motives behind the attempts to trivialise the role of the Kaiser and of his court. During the Weimar Republic the historical profession was preoccupied by the war guilt question and by the trauma of 1918. To the historians of the time, who were almost without exception of a ‘patriotic’ disposition, it seemed wiser, for reasons both of domestic and of foreign policy, to concentrate on Frederick the Great and Bismarck as formative historical influences and to pass over in silence not only the widespread aspirations to ‘world power’ but also the absolutist speeches and marginalia of Wilhelm II, the scandal-ridden court society and the gradual corruption of the old Prussian civil service and officer corps by the Byzantinism of the Kaiser's court. To this ‘national’ historiographical tendency was added after 1945 a new preoccupation with the southern, Catholic tradition, and with the liberal and social democratic impulses of the German past, and these needless to say also distracted attention from the Hohenzollern court. Those historians who did concern themselves with the state organs of the Kaiserreich were inclined to paint a one-sidedly bureaucratic or legalistic picture. A preference was shown for the history of official institutions and of the constitution, politics was confused with administration, the written constitution with constitutional reality, the political structure of the Reich - even after Bismarck's fall from power - was seen as a hierarchy of officialdom headed by the Reich Chancellor.
2 - Philipp Eulenburg, the Kaiser's best friend
- John C. G. Röhl, University of Sussex
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- The Kaiser and his Court
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Summary
In a man's letters his soul lies naked
Ben Jonson (1572–1637)The name of Philipp, Count zu Eulenburg, later Prince zu Eulenburg-Hertefeld (1847-1921) is associated so closely with the history of the Wilhelmine period that one could call him the Wilhelminian par excellence if that were not at best only a half-truth. It is certainly correct that Eulenburg, perhaps more than any other individual, acted as crisis manager for the Prussian-German monarchy in the long governmental crisis following Bismarck's fall; that he prevented a reversion to the status quo ante 1866, and averted the twin dangers threatening the Reich's future, namely a dictatorship of either a military or Bismarckian character, or else parliamentarisation; and that he was the intellectual founder of the so-called ‘personal rule’ of Kaiser Wilhelm II, established in 1897 on the basis of Sammlungspolitik and Weltpolitik. On the other hand it is equally true not only that this system soon became trapped in a blind alley under the pressure of massive armaments costs, but also that, just ten years after the victory of his strategy, Philipp Eulenburg suffered human and political destruction at the hands of a second generation of Wilhelminians. However, this bourgeois, liberal-imperialist generation (Albert Ballin was born in 1857, Friedrich Naumann in 1860, Maximilian Harden in 1861, Bernhard Dernburg in 1865 and Walter Rathenau in 1867) similarly failed to achieve decisive influence for themselves. They intensified the expansionist tendencies in the Kaiserreich by means of their economic might and their ‘world power’ aspirations without being able to break the power of the court and, most important, of the generals who stood behind it. On the contrary, they paved the way for an increase in the political influence of the military by overthrowing Eulenburg and by seriously undermining confidence in the Kaiser in the Daily Telegraph crisis of 1908, and in this sense they aided the self-destruction of the Prussian-German monarchy as well as the collapse of the old order throughout Europe.
Philipp Count zu Eulenburg stood out in contrast to this second Wilhelmine generation by virtue of his age and also his social standing. He was born in Königsberg on 12 February 1847, the first son of an officer of one of the oldest aristocratic clans of East Prussia.