The German Empire Read online

  To add to the dark mood of pessimism, German heavy industry began to suffer from British and Belgian competition. The reaction was twofold: pressure on the government to revise trade policy and protect “national work,” and the formation of special interest groups to change the mood in the Reichstag, the media and the population at large. The National Liberals proved to be most attentive to the lamentations—and the money—of the barons of heavy industry, while the Fortschrittspartei, the left wing of the liberal movement, represented more the export-oriented machine-tool industry, which saw protectionism as a threat to its booming business with the rest of the world.

  An even more serious blow to the social and political equilibrium came from Russia and the United States, which were exporting increasing tonnages of cheap wheat and rye to Germany. The vast prairies of the Midwest, recently connected by railroad to the seaports, especially Baltimore, could produce at very low cost and then ship the grain at cheap rates thanks to the impact of steamers. The landowners and farmers on the north German plains soon became desperate and brought pressure to bear on the Conservative Party and on the government. They received a sympathetic hearing from Bismarck, whose agricultural instincts had easily survived all the free-trade lessons that his banker Gerson Bleichröder might have administered. He immediately understood that here was the material to forge a solid and docile center-right coalition of Rittergut und Hochofen, the landed estate and the blast furnace.

  In 1879 the first protectionist tariff had been passed in the Reichstag, helped by vast unrest over the suspected implication of the social democrats in the two recent attempts on the old Kaiser’s life. For Bismarck the new tariff was welcome not only as a means of transforming the Reichstag and securing a loyal majority, but also as a way to increase the revenue of the Reich administration, until then often dependent on transfers from the individual states, especially Prussia. In this, however, he scored only half a victory. The states, led by the Prussian administration, were strong enough to ensure that the money collected at the customs offices went to them first, and only then, if they so wished, to the Reich.

  For decades, protectionism versus free trade continued to be the defining issue in the German parliament and in public debate. In 1887 another round of tariffs was added to save the landowners from bankruptcy and the Bismarckian coalition from falling apart. But the cost was high, not only to German industry and the ever-growing number of urban consumers, but also in terms of foreign policy. Tsarist Russia, forever dependent on the German banks to finance its industrialization and infrastructure, was hard hit by the customs duties thrown on the sole product that it could export—wheat from the Ukraine. Close to 30 percent of Russia’s imports came from Germany and close to 30 percent of its exports went to Germany. In 1876 the Russian government had imposed double import duties on German machinery and rail equipment, causing an outcry among industry, to which Bismarck was quick to respond. Through the 1880s the language became increasingly threatening, while Bismarck, for internal reasons, found it impossible to give way and grant the Russians the trade treaty and the low tariffs that they kept demanding. He must have known, better than anybody else, that he was putting at risk the vital alliance with Germany’s awesome eastern neighbor. In 1887, at the time of the reinsurance treaty, Bismarck threw the gauntlet down before the Russians by letting it be known to the board of the Berlin stock exchange that it would be unwise in the future to accept Russian bonds as first-rate securities. This was not only insulting, but also meant higher interest rates for the Russians—and so it gave support to the Franco-Russian alliance that was already in the making.

  After more than two decades at the helm of Prussia and Germany, Bismarck’s regime began to unravel. In foreign policy his system of alliances showed serious strain: France could no longer be marginalized now that the Paris–St. Petersburg alliance was in the making. On the domestic scene his anti-socialist legislation had not delivered final victory over the enemy, and even his forward looking social legislation had not been effective in curbing the rise of socialism throughout industrial Germany. Both the Catholic center party and the two liberal parties began to question the wisdom and the leadership of the old man in the Wilhelmstrasse. The Emperor with his unquestioning loyalty to Bismarck would not live forever—a change of government was in the offing. Bismarck had become, long before he fell from power, a monument to his own past.

  3

  MANY GERMANYS

  The new Germany of 1871 was deeply ambiguous about its untried European role, and so were the Germans regarding their new identity. Most of the 41 million people living within the German borders, now including France’s lost daughters Alsace and Lorraine, would have described themselves not as Germans but, full of proud regionalism and local patriotism, as Bavarians, Prussians, Badeners, Saxons, etc. In the ports of the North Sea and the Baltic, people would identify themselves as Hanseaten, referring to the medieval glories of the Hanse, a powerful merchant alliance commanding the waves and the commerce carried on them. These self-descriptions always had an undertone, and still have, setting those using them apart from the German nation at large, from Bismarck and Berlin. But even Bismarck and the Emperor whom he created would, if asked, have readily described themselves as Prussians or, even further back in the mists of history, as Brandenburgers. Bismarck at times would call himself a “kurbrandenburgischer Vasall” of the Prussian King; at times he would insist on the fact that his forefathers had held landed estates in the Altmark long before the Hohenzollern dynasty arrived, from Nuremberg, in 1416.

  German federalism was, and still is, the most tangible constitutional expression of this perennial desire of Germans to distance themselves from the center, from Bonn or Berlin, from being German. One of the long-lasting complaints against the Bismarckian construction was that it was a hegemony, thinly disguised by constitutional language referring to the “alliance of the German princes and Free Cities.” Prussia was dominant in economic, industrial, financial, administrative and military terms—in fact, two-thirds of the German territory was under the Prussian eagle, and three-fifths of the German population. It was also through the various Prussian ministries in the Wilhelmstrasse that the Reich “offices”—the Reichsämter— were run, legislation was prepared and politics was decided. The state secretaries at the helm of the Reichsämter clearly ranked below the Prussian ministers “with the title Excellency,” as the official description went.

  But even before Bavaria, Württemberg or Baden were absorbed into Bismarckian Germany—all of them put on the map by Napoleon to suit his strategic priorities—the people thus forcefully incorporated had not forgotten that their grandfathers could run their own affairs, issue their own money, decide their own taxes and had nobody above the city government or the local abbey but the faraway Holy Roman Emperor. The people of Cologne still resented the Prussian occupation that began in 1813, when the French retreated, and ended only in the mid-twentieth century. They poked fun at the Prussian heroes during their annual carnival celebrations. In 1848 the revolution there had a distinct anti-Prussian tone, and again after 1918 there was a strong wave of Rhenish separatism, away from Prussia and Berlin. In the west, where French law had been introduced, the Code Napoléon prevailed until 1900, as did the Allgemeines Landrecht für die Preussischen Staaten in the east—a much older, Enlightenment-inspired, pre-revolutionary concept of civil law.

  This German diversity was deeply rooted in daily life, in bread and beer, in costume, language and local law. People spoke their local vernacular, except the classes of Besitz und Bildung, wealth and education, who used high German among themselves, but had to resort to local usage when talking to their servants, or to lowly neighbors. Bismarck, a writer of poetic letters and a great performer on the parliamentary rostrum, talked Plattdeutsch to his peasants on the Elbe, a language that no one would understand in the south. The people of Straubing on the Danube in Lower Bavaria would have felt on a different continent if they had ever traveled to Schlesw
ig-Holstein in the north—for which, of course, they saw no need. German had many different melodies and incompatible idioms, mutually regarded as either funny or incomprehensible, or both. The people of Saxony, being blessed with a dialect at best funny, at worst offensive, were only saved through their awe-inspiring intellectual and industrial achievements.

  But language was only one expression of diversity. The way houses were built or villages were laid out was vastly different throughout the country, often reflecting ancient forms of agriculture or feudal holdings. Some parts of eastern Germany, thinly populated anyway, were constantly losing people to the big cities, most notably Berlin. In the south, in Württemberg, for many centuries weaving and metal trades had allowed people a modest living in small cities, which were now almost invariably turning into thriving industrial centers.

  Food, of course, added to the diversity, especially beer, as it could not be stored or transported and so had to be consumed locally. Bread and cake in curious forms often referred to historical or magic origins. The classical German bread roll came in a form that resembled the female genitals, leaving no doubt that it symbolized fertility. Bread was mostly of the dark, crusty variety, wheat being so expensive that even for the middle classes white bread was a luxury. The same was true for meat: only on Sundays. Fish was the cheap staple in the north; so cheap, indeed, that servants in Cologne, when the Rhine was still a green-and-white river revealing its alpine origins, complained of too much salmon. In the south, such fish as carp, first reared in monastic stew ponds, was popular among the rich and the poor. Cheese was anything but a delicacy. The finer varieties could not be imported from France or Switzerland, and the local, smelly varieties were mostly for the modest tables of the lower classes.

  Beer was for the masses; champagne, cognac and wine for the upper classes. The wine was mostly Riesling from the Rheinpfalz or, even more sought after, from the Rheingau—what the British call Hock after Hochheim. Or else there was Silvaner in the strange Bocksbeutel bottles from Franconia, once again referring to the magic powers of fertility in a ram’s testicles. Or again, Riesling from the Moselle, the lower Saar and the upper Rhine valley in Baden. Wine was even produced in the Elbe valley near Dresden and on the steep and stony slopes of the Saale valley not far from Weimar. German champagne had to be called Sekt after the Treaty of Versailles, while the German answer to French cognac consisted of many local spirits: plums or cherries turned into brandy in the south, potatoes and rye turned into schnapps in the north.

  Even the times when people took their meals differed. For the workers, the day began at sunrise and ended, more or less, with sunset: lighting was expensive. Working days were long, often ten or more hours a day, over fifty hours a week. By contrast, having time to sleep after sunrise and being able to wine and dine into the night were clear signs of high living. Workmen would take some bread and wurst and soup with them—canteens came much later. In contrast, the day of the well-to-do would begin with a light Sattelfrühstück and a ride, followed by déjeuner—the upper-class term for lunch—and later five o’clock tea in a hotel, with elegant music, or a visit to friends. Dinner would be late in the evening: to begin before eight o’clock would have been seen as distinctly lower-class. To negotiate six or eight courses would not be regarded as outrageous: in fact, the host’s business standing would be gauged by the luxuries displayed on his table, whether the Meissen, Berlin or Nymphenburg porcelain, or the caviar and champagne, fish, venison and out-of-season fruit.

  Piped water was a luxury that began to be introduced only at the turn of the century, while hot water was reserved for the well-to-do. Water closets were a sign of a higher form of living, and certainly costly. Most lavatories were smelly affairs, often shared by many and usually situated outside the house in a yard, with a heart (why a heart remains an enigma) cut out of the wooden door. Bathtubs were not unknown in the old days, but were regarded as a luxury. When the old Emperor wanted a bath, he had the tub brought into the royal palace from a nearby hotel at Unter den Linden. It was only the wholesale introduction of electricity during the last years of the nineteenth century—electrical bulbs, furnished by Emil Rathenau’s AEG (Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft), lit imperial Berlin as early as 1876—that made daily life a little brighter, servants more expendable, conditions healthier.

  Modern technology had an egalitarian dimension. The universe of the poor and the universe of the rich began to show some overlap. The bicycle allowed speed, until then an expensive commodity, to the relatively poor, and so did the railway. There were still four different classes in a passenger train: fourth class for the poor carrying unwieldy luggage, third for the middle class of modest means, second for ladies, and first for the rich. But the King of Saxony complained about the equalizing effect of railway travel, as the king and the laborer would start, and arrive, on the same train and at the same time. Time was also a great equalizer. The railways and industry required standard time, not something to be found in the old days. This and the spread of pocket watches at reasonable prices meant that the measurement of time was no longer a privilege, but a condition of daily life.

  Of course, holidays were only for the affluent, greatly facilitated by the speed and safety of the railways. From Berlin, one would take the train northwards to Heiligendamm to spend a weekend on the Baltic coast in elegant neoclassical surroundings. To the south there was the French Riviera, and in between the Swiss Alps, which lost their awesome terror and began to attract the urban middle classes. Johanna Spyri’s popular story of Heidi, the innocent and healthy little girl from the mountains near the ancient spa of Ragaz, promised health for body and soul alike. Trains and trams enabled suburbs to spread, realizing the idea of the garden city, or even a house in the country at weekends. What Hampstead was for Londoners, Grünewald and Wannsee were for Berliners, and Ebenhausen for the rich nature-lovers in Munich.

  Health became a serious preoccupation as never before, and so did sport. Again, the rich and the poor divided: the upper classes proudly displayed a little English, played golf and rode horses. Students, at least the more militant ones, learned fencing, not so much for health reasons as for honor and prestige. The occasional carefully stage-managed duel was seen as a distinction of social status and would, it was hoped, result in some carefully cultivated scars on the face which were worn like a decoration, securing promotion through the invisible but powerful old boys’ network. The soccer-playing masses also took part in bicycle races and boxing, the socialists seeing to it that working-class sports were well organized within their all-encompassing system of care from the cradle to the grave.

  There was no one German society in the strict sense of the word. Life on an East Prussian estate, small like that of the average Rittergut, or vast like the landholdings of the Dönhoffs, the Dohnas or the Lehndorffs, remained pretty much in its traditional mold. But even here the agricultural depression would be felt, from the mid-1870s on, as competition came from Ukraine’s fertile black soil, from the green pastures of Argentina and from the vast prairies of the American Midwest. Berlin, by contrast, was a million-strong metropolis constantly on the move, tearing down old buildings and building new ones, linking villages through rapid transit and in turn creating new industrial centers. It housed not only the power elites of old Prussia, but also the new banks, modern mass media, organized interests and political parties. In the west, the Ruhr industries were expanding rapidly. In the south, with no coal mines and no steel mills, a different kind of industrialization was under way, traditionally based on brain power and attention to detail, on the textile industry and metallurgy. There were thus many societies, but all of them were on the move. Emigration, almost exclusively to North America, continued unabated: in fact, after the 1870 war it rose to new highs. For the next twenty years, an average of 100,000 young men and women left home and family in Germany each year to seek a better life in the New World. Most of them had relatives there, who described in glowing terms the land of unlimited oppo
rtunity after the American Civil War was over and the Wild West had been opened. This stream of emigrants continued until the great crash of 1893 occurred in North America, when the free distribution of land by the railways ended and economic prospects at home looked brighter.

  Numbers emigrating were small compared to the quantity of people migrating from east to west, from Upper and Lower Silesia and the Poznan province, West Prussia and East Prussia to Berlin and beyond. Unabated population growth on the land not only created a vast reservoir of consumption, but also supplied the workforce for industry. The number of the Kaiser’s subjects grew by more than 1 percent a year, from 41 million in 1871 to no fewer than 68 million in 1913. The increase in population, steadying only during the recession years 1906–7, meant that around the turn of the century the Germans were, on average, the youngest nation in Europe, with the sole exception of Russia. France’s population, by contrast, had been stagnating ever since the bloodletting of the Napoleonic Wars.