The German Empire Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Acknowledgments

  Modern Library Chronicles

  MAPS

  CHRONOLOGY

  PREFACE

  PROLOGUE: - IMPERIAL BIRTHDAY

  1 - GERMAN ANGST, GERMAN HOPE

  2 - THE BISMARCK YEARS

  3 - MANY GERMANYS

  4 - THE WILHELMINE ERA

  5 - EUROPE—A CONCERT NO MORE

  6 - BRINKSMANSHIP

  7 - DANCE OF DEATH

  8 - A PEACE TO END ALL PEACE

  EPILOGUE

  KEY FIGURES

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  THE MODERN LIBRARY EDITORIAL BOARD

  About the Author

  ALSO BY MICHAEL STÜRMER

  Copyright Page

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I wish to thank Sam Hudson, London, for his unfailing advice on matters of substance and style. I also wish to thank the rector and staff at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Institute for Advanced Study) for the most generous hospitality during a sabbatical in the academic year 1999–2000, providing inspiration, good company, and an environment of intellectual challenge. At the Friedrich Alexander–University of Erlangen, Institut für Geschichte, Monika Frielinghaus and Markus Freidrich provided much welcome help, from library services to advice on how to make computers conform to author’s wishes.

  Modern Library Chronicles

  MAPS

  CHRONOLOGY

  Please note that some dates are approximate or speculative.

  1848–49 Social and political revolutions throughout most of continental Europe. The German parliament convenes in Frankfurt’s Paulskirche under pressure from the radical left as much as from the old guard. After the parliament adopts the “Little-Germany” concept (a nation-state excluding Austria), the Prussian king refuses the Imperial crown offered by the Frankfurt parliament. The liberal and democratic constitution drawn up there is never put into practice.

  1852 Napoleon III becomes Emperor of France after a coup d’état.

  1854–56 Crimean War. Great Britain, France and Piedmont-Sardinia go to war against Russia in the Crimean Peninsula to preserve the Ottoman Empire. Prussia is neutral, but pro-Russian. Peace of Paris. Russia surrenders her claim on the Ottoman Empire.

  1859 Piedmont-Sardinia, supported by France under Napoleon III, goes to war against Austria. Prussia, Russia and Great Britain are neutral. The Prussian army is mobilized to put pressure on Austria.

  1861–65 American Civil War. France sends troops to Mexico.

  1862 William I makes Otto von Bismarck Prime Minister of Prussia.

  1864 February–August: Prussia and Austria at war with the Kingdom of Denmark over national self-determination for the largely German-speaking provinces of Schleswig and Holstein. Condominium between Vienna and Berlin collapses. A promised referendum never takes place. After 1866 Schleswig-Holstein annexed by Prussia.

  1866 April: Bismarck concludes a military alliance with Italy to prepare for war against Austria. June–August: “the German War” between Prussia and Austria and the majority of the states of the German Confederation. Italy, on the side of Prussia, wins Lombardo-Venetia. After the battle of Königgrätz an armistice and preliminary peace are made at Nikolsburg. After the Peace of Prague the electorate of Hesse, the Grand Duchy of Nassau, the Free City of Frankfurt and the Kingdom of Hanover are annexed by Prussia.

  1867 The North German Confederation is founded under Prussian hegemony. The constitution provides for democratic elections and a liberal parliament, but control of the administration and the army remain firmly in the hands of the “presidium,” i.e., the King of Prussia. Bismarck becomes Prime Minister, foreign minister and chancellor.

  1867–68 The Customs Union, comprising both northern and southern states, acquires a parliament and passes the liberal “Gewerbeordnung” (“trading regulation”), setting free market forces. The four German states south of the river Main are linked to Prussia through military integration. There is popular resentment in the south against Prussian domination.

  1870–71 The Spanish Parliament offers the crown to a Prince from the Catholic, South German line of the Hohenzollern. King William of Prussia declines the offer, but Bismarck uses this to create a storm of French public opinion against Prussia and Napoleon III finds himself forced into war with Prussia and, by implication, the whole of Germany. After the surrender of the Imperial army, war is fought and lost by the Third French Republic. Uprising of the Commune of Paris. January 1871: King William I of Prussia proclaimed German Emperor at Versailles.

  May 1871: the Frankfurt Peace Treaty takes Alsace and Lorraine from France and demands five billion francs in reparations.

  1871–72 Deutsche Bank and Dresdner Bank founded. German population at 41 million (as compared to 68 million in 1913).

  1873 “Three Emperors’ Alliance” is initiated by Bismarck to prevent war between Russia and Austria. Kulturkampf begins—a campaign of the State against the Church.

  1874 Richard Wagner moves into Haus Wahnfried in Bayreuth.

  1876 Nikolaus Otto invents the internal-combustion engine.

  1876–77 Balkan wars: Serbia and Russia’s battle against Ottoman Empire ends in Russian victory. The Tsar dictates the peace treaty of San Stefano.

  1878 Bismarck calls the Congress of Berlin to settle the conflict between Great Britain and Russia over controls of the Eastern Mediterranean. Resentment in Russia against German interference on behalf of Austria-Hungary.

  In Germany an anti-socialist law bans the Socialist party but allows them parliamentary representation. Socialists dissociate themselves from anarchism and terrorism.

  First football club is founded in Hanover.

  1879 Germany makes a dual alliance with Austria-Hungary to deter Russian attack and to stabilize the Balkans. Anglo-Russian confrontation over Afghanistan: conflict over territory in Asia at its height.

  German agriculture comes under competitive pressure from the U.S. and Russia and Germany turns from her traditional free-trade policy to protectionism.

  Siemens Company builds first electrical locomotive.

  1881 Bismarck achieves a new secret “Three Emperors’ Alliance” to last for three years.

  A telephone network is launched in Berlin.

  1882 Robert Koch develops antidote to tuberculosis. New colonial expansion of the European powers is led by Great Britain and France. In the following years Germany acquires colonies in east Africa and south-west Africa.

  1884–85 Congo Conference in Berlin is called. To prevent major colonial confrontations boundaries are drawn to delineate spheres of influence between the great powers in Europe.

  1886 Gottlieb Daimler and Carl Benz have their four-wheel cars patented.

  1887 Emil Berliner develops the gramophone record-player. Heinrich Hertz discovers electrical waves.

  1887–90 Germany makes a secret Reinsurance Treaty with Russia specifying both their neutrality should war break out with Russia or France.

  1888 Hertz discovers the wireless telegraph, hence laying foundations for the invention of radio and television.

  Emperor William I dies aged 88; Emperor Frederick III, suffering from cancer, dies after 100 days in power and is succeeded by William II, aged 28.

  1889 Major strikes in the coalmines of the Ruhr area and in Upper Silesia.

  Great Britain begins to modernize her naval battle-fleet.

  April: Adolf Hitler is born in Braunau in Austria into the family of a customs official.

  1890 March: Bismarck resigns after 28 years in power in Prussia and Germany.

  Emil von Behring develops a serum against diphtheria and tetanus.

  1890–9
4 Count Leo von Caprivi, a general, appointed chancellor on Bismarck’s fall. He works with a center-left majority in the Reichstag. He exchanges with Great Britain Zanzibar for Heligoland in the North Sea, against heavy opposition from the nationalist right who have formed the Alldeutscher Federation. To help German export industries tariffs are considerably lowered in a trade agreement with Russia.

  1891 A Franco-Russian military alliance is formed. Gerhard Hauptmann (winner of the Nobel prize for literature in 1912) writes Die Weber.

  1894 Kaiser William II approves Admiral Tirpitz’s plans for a completely modernized German battle fleet.

  Caprivi is dismissed and Prince Hohenlohe becomes Chancellor.

  1895 Sigmund Freud and Josef Breuer publish Studien über Hysterie, the first study of psychoanalysis.

  1896 Otto Lilienthal dies in a crash in the glider that he invented.

  1897 Foreign Secretary Bernhard von Bülow decides Germany’s right to a colony “in the sun”: the Kaiser travels to Istanbul, Baalbek and Jerusalem.

  Preparations are made for the “Baghdad Railway” planned to modernize the Ottoman infrastructure and expand German influence.

  The first Zionist Congress is held in Basle.

  1898–1901 Boer War in South Africa results in pervasive anti-British sentiment in Germany.

  1900 A Civil Code is instituted for the first time in Germany. The first Zeppelin flies.

  1901 Alfred Nobel endows the Nobel Award: among the first four recipients are two Germans—Conrad Röntgen for physics and Emil von Behring for medicine. Thomas Mann’s Die Buddenbrooks is first published (and wins the Nobel Prize for literature in 1929).

  1902 Robert Bosch develops the spark plug. Historian Theodor Mommsen wins the Nobel Prize for literature.

  1904 The Entente Cordiale is made between Paris and London, in the hope of containing German power and influence.

  1904–5 War breaks out between Russia and Japan heralding the beginning of Japanese expansion in East Asia.

  1905 Richard Strauss’s Salome is first performed and Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity is published.

  The “Schlieffen Plan” is drawn up constituting a fatal narrowing of German strategic options. The strategy plans to mass the majority of the German army on the western front to force France to surrender, on the assumption the Russians will take at least six weeks to mobilize their troops on the Eastern Front.

  1906 July: German attempts to reverse the Franco-Russian alliance fail at a meeting between the Tsar and the Kaiser at Bjoerkoe near St. Peterburg.

  1908–9 Both Britain and Germany forced to find tax revenue to continue their respective Dreadnought battleship building programs. Lloyd George’s “butcher” budget fails to do so and leads to constitutional crisis in Britain. Bülow also fails to raise the necessary funds, but a special tax on champagne remains.

  October: Austria-Hungary annexes Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Russians are humiliated in defeat. Bülow announces a “Nibelungen loyalty” to Austria.

  1909 Fritz Hofmann invents artificial rubber. Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg becomes Chancellor.

  1912 British War Secretary Lord Haldane visits Berlin to seek naval arms control in Germany. An Anglo-German agreement fails, but both powers cooperate in crisis management in the Balkans and prepare plans for dividing Portuguese colonies in case of Portugal’s default. April: the unsinkable Titanic hits an iceberg. In Munich the artists’ group “der Blaue Reiter” (“the Blue Riders”) is founded by, amongst others, Franz Marc, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, August Macke.

  1912–13 Balkan wars: the smaller Balkan powers against the Ottoman Empire.

  1913 As a response to the growing strength of French and Russian armies, Germany intensifies conscription.

  Banque de France and Reichsbank inconspicuously withdraw gold from circulation.

  1914 June: Archduke Franz Ferdinand, successor to the crowns of Austria and Hungary, is assassinated by a Serb-Bosnian terrorist while on an official visit in Sarajevo.

  July: war breaks out.

  August–September: all major European powers go to

  war; German troops march through neutral Belgium towards Paris. German strategy fails in the west but in the east its troops block and reverse the Russian invasion. War begins in the trenches. Censorship is instituted and strikes are banned.

  1914–15 Turkey and Bulgaria join the war on the side of the Central Powers: Japan and Italy on the side of the Entente.

  1915 April: the Germans are the first to use gas in battle. May: The sinking of the Lusitania, with many American citizens on board, brings U.S. closer to war with Germany.

  1916 February–September: battle of Verdun. Losses on both sides come to 700,000.

  December: all out mobilization of the population in Germany begins through “Vaterländisches Hilfsdienstgesetz” (“Patriotic Emergency Drafting”). In a quid pro quo trade unions become partners of management and government.

  Central Powers offer peace negotiations; Entente powers refuse.

  Kingdom of Poland proclaimed, under German influence.

  1916–18 Third High Command under Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff assumes informal dictatorial powers.

  1917 February: the German admiralty announces the launch of unlimited submarine warfare, thus making U.S. intervention in the war almost inevitable. A revolution takes place in Russia. The moderate Aleksandr Kerensky becomes Prime Minister.

  March: the Brusilov offensive fails: a dual winged attack by Russian troops into Vilna Naroch as a counter to German activity in Verdun. The offensive grinds to a halt in the mud of the spring thaw.

  April: the Kaiser’s Easter message promises democratic reform.

  July: in the Reichstag a center-left majority forms, the predecessor of the Weimar coalition of 1919, and comes out in favor of “peace without annexations and reparations.”

  November: furnished with money from the German High Command, Lenin and his band of Bolsheviks are allowed travel through German territory to stage a coup in St. Peterburg. The Russian front breaks down and civil war ensues. Lenin’s message to his people offers peace through world revolution.

  1918 January: the “Fourteen Points” are pronounced by President Wilson in a message to both Houses of Congress. They include national self-determination institution of the League of Nations, free trade and open diplomacy.

  March: at Brest Litovsk a German peace in Eastern Central Europe is resolved: the Bolsheviks sign under the silent assumption that a German revolution is imminent and will enable them to recoup their losses.

  June–July: on the Western front German troops stage last offensives which fail. August: British tanks break through German lines at Amiens.

  September: the German High Command demands a Parliamentary government be installed to offer armistice to Entente powers.

  October–November: Chancellor Prince Baden heads a center-left coalition and initiates sweeping constitutional reform, offering an armistice to President Wilson on the basis of the “Fourteen Points.” As parts of the German battle fleet receive orders for a last-stand battle in the North Sea, mutinies cripple the ships. Breakdown of western front; revolution throughout Germany begins. The Kaiser deserts to Holland; German princes resign; beginning of civil war in Germany. Karl Liebknecht, a Communist, and Philipp Scheidemann, a Social Democrat, compete to proclaim Germany a republic. Friedrich Ebert, leader of the Social Democrats, takes over from Prince Baden.

  November: the armistice is signed at Compiègne, France.

  1918–19 “Zentralarbeitsgemeinschaft” (“Central Working Community”) is set up between industry and trade unions to transform revolution into social reform.

  1919 January: elections throughout Germany give center-left sweeping majority. National Assembly convenes in the provincial security of Weimar.

  June: Paris Peace Conference of 26 nations. Germany signs at Versailles, Hungary at Trianon, Austria at St. Germain, Turkey at Sèvres (in 1920). Russia is not
represented. John Maynard Keynes of the British delegation warns the treaty contains “the seeds of the next war.”

  April: statute of League of Nations set up.

  August: a constitutional compromise is reached in Weimar: “Verfassung des Deutschen Reiches” (“the constitution of the German Empire”). The Weimar Republic is born.

  PREFACE

  In the ancient city of Koblentz where the Moselle flows into the Rhine there is, in front of the Romanesque church of St. Castor, a neoclassical fountain with a plaque. The inscription celebrates the passage of Napoleon’s grande armée through the city en route to Russia to crush the Tsar’s despotism. It is signed, “Jules Doazan, sous préfet de la ville de Coblentz.” Underneath there is a second inscription which reads, “Vu et approuvé par nous le commandant Russe de la ville de Coblentz.”1 The first inscription is dated 1812, the second one 1813. This plaque encapsulates the German question.

  Germany is situated at the heart of Europe where all the peninsulas and lands forming the European continent are linked to Eurasia. Germany, whether its citizens are aware of the fact or not, determines through its history and geography the destinies of most countries in Europe; and, in turn, the fate of Germany is, for better or for worse, of the utmost importance for these countries. This has been the conditio Germaniae ever since Europe began to evolve a thousand years ago. Strategic and cultural interdependence made the Holy Roman Empire for many centuries the center of the European system, but far from being the imperial master of Europe’s destinies, the German lands proved time and again to be a peacetime chessboard or a wartime arena for the competition of the European powers who were rising to modern statehood and sovereignty and fighting for influence. The German constitution, forever organized in an uneasy equilibrium between the Emperor and the territorial rulers, became more “Europeanized,” and less nationalistic in outlook and intent: today’s map of Europe, the result of the changes that took place in the 1990s—Germany unified within the framework of NATO followed by a quantum leap in European integration through economic and monetary union—is nothing but a modern and more enlightened variation upon a very old theme.