Chapter 7

THE SERVICE OF THE CITY IN GERMANY[19]

[19] Written in 1913.

I.

All English students interested in Germany owe a deep debt of gratitude to the unremitting labours of Mr. William Harbutt Dawson in the fields of Teutonic scholarship. He is one of a gallant band of some half-dozen publicists who, amidst universal neglect, have done their utmost to popularize amongst us a knowledge of German life and German people. Mr. Dawson's last book is certain to take rank as a political classic. It is a lucid exposition of "Municipal Life and Government in Germany" (Longmans and Co., 12s. 6d. net). City administration and city regulations are a subject which no literary art can make very exciting, but, difficult and forbidding though it be, it is a subject which yields in importance and interest to no other. There is certainly no other subject which will reveal to us more of the secrets of German greatness.

II.

For the greatness of Germany is not to be explained by her unwieldy army, her red-tape bureaucracy, her impotent Reichstag, her effete Churches. Her army, Parliament, and Churches are symptoms of weakness and not of strength. The true greatness of Germany is largely due to a factor ignored by most writers, ignored even by Mr. Dawson in all his previous works--namely, the excellence of German municipal institutions, the intensity of her civic life. We have been too much accustomed to think of Germany only as a despotic empire. She might be far more fittingly described as a country of free institutions, a federation of autonomous cities. We fondly imagine that ours is the only country where self-government prevails. Readers who might still entertain this prejudice will carry away from Mr. Dawson's book the novel political lesson that Germany, much more than Great Britain, deserves to be called a self-governing nation, and that, at least in her civic government, which, after all, affects 70 per cent. of her population, Germany enjoys a measure of political liberty which is absolutely unknown in our own country.

III.

The tradition of municipal freedom in Germany is as old as German culture. It still lingers in the haunting charm of the German cities to-day. The Holy Roman Empire possessed only the trappings and the shadow of power; the reality belonged to the burghers of the towns. The _Städtewesen_ gives its original character to the German Middle Ages. The Hansa towns and the Hanseatic League recall some of the most stirring memories of German history. The League still survives in the three independent republics of Hamburg, Bremen, and Lübeck. The dominant fact that German medieval civilization was a civilization of free cities is driven home to the most superficial tourist. In every corner of the German Empire, in north and south, on the banks of the Rhine and the Elbe, in Rothenburg and Marienburg, in Frankfurt and Freiburg, the thousand monuments of the past prove to us the all-important truth that in Germany, as in Italy and in Flanders, it is the service of the city which has made for national greatness.

IV.

War and anarchy put an end to municipal prosperity. Protestantism brought with it the confusion of spiritual and temporal power, which brought with it the despotism of the Princes, which meant the suppression of civic liberty. The Thirty Years' War completed the ruin of the cities. The end of the seventeenth century put in the place of city governance the tyranny of a hundred petty Princes. Everywhere we see the ancient town halls crumbling into ruin, and we see arising pretentious palaces built on the model of the Palace of Versailles. Germany had to go through the bitter humiliation of Jena before she realized the necessity of reverting to her glorious civic traditions. The statesmanship of Stein (see Seeley's "Life and Times of Stein") understood that such return was the prime condition of a German political renaissance. By his memorable Municipal Law of 1808 Stein restored civic liberty. He made local self-government the corner-stone of German internal policy. The ordinance of Stein remains to this day the organic law and Great Charter of the German city. It has stood the test of one hundred years of change, and even the iron despotism of the Hohenzollern has not been able to challenge it. In every other political institution Germany is lamentably behind. Only in her municipal life is she in advance of most European countries.

V.

As we hinted at the outset, the municipality has far greater powers in Germany than in Great Britain. It is true that the police authority is under the control of the central power, that education inspection is under the control of the Church, which is another kind of spiritual police. It is true that the City Fathers are debarred from mixing with party politics. But within those limitations, and in the province of economics and social welfare, municipal powers are almost unrestricted. It is thus that German towns have been the pioneers in school hygiene. Every German child is under the supervision of the school dentist and the school oculist. It is thus that German cities have established their public pawnshops, and have saved the poor man from the clutches of the moneylender. It is thus that they have initiated gratuitous legal advice for the indigent. They have even established municipal beerhouses and _Rathhauskeller_. In one word, they have launched out in a hundred forms of civic enterprise.

VI.

One of the most striking fields of municipal enterprise is the policy of Land Purchase. The people were encouraged to enter on this policy by the evils of private land speculation, and by the shocking housing conditions in some of the big cities, and especially in Berlin, where the curse of the barrack system still prevails.

Nearly every German city is an important landowner, owning on an average 50 per cent. of the municipal area.

"While the powers of English urban districts in relation to land ownership are severely restricted by law, German towns are free to buy real estate on any scale whatever, without permission of any kind, unless, indeed, the contracting of a special loan should be necessary, in which event the assent of the City Commissary is necessary. This assent, however, entails no local inquiry corresponding to the inquiries of the Local Government Board, simply because the German States have no Local Government Board, and no use for them; the proceeding is almost a formality, intended to remind the communes that the State, though devolved upon them their wide powers of self-government, likes still to be consulted now and then, and it is arranged expeditiously through the post. For, strange as it may sound to English ears, the Governments of Germany, without exception, far from wishing to hamper the towns in their land investments, have often urged the towns to buy as much land as possible and not to sell" (Dawson, p. 123).

"Within the present year the little town of Kalbe, on the Saale, expended just £14 a head on its 12,000 inhabitants in buying for £468,000 a large estate for the purpose of creating a number of smallholdings and labourers' allotments. During the period 1880 to 1908 Breslau expended over one million and a half pounds in the purchase of land within the communal area. Berlin has an estate more than three times greater than its administrative area. In 1910 alone seventy-three of the large towns of Germany bought land to the aggregate extent of 9,584 acres and to the aggregate value of over four million pounds sterling. Charlottenburg now owns 2,500 acres of land as yet not built upon, with a value of over a million and a quarter pounds, and the value of all its real estate is about four and a half million pounds sterling. In 1886 Freiburg, in Baden, owned nearly 11,000 acres of land with a value of £925,000. In 1909 its estate was only 2,000 acres larger, but its value was then £2,300,000."

"Since 1891 Ulm, under the rule of a mayor convinced of the wisdom of a progressive land policy and strong enough to carry it out, has bought some 1,280 acres of land at different times for £316,000, while it has sold 420 acres for £406,000, showing a cash profit of £900,000, apart from the addition of 860 acres to the town estate. As a result of Ulm's land policy, its assets increased between 1891 and 1909 from £583,500 to £1,990,000, an increase of £1,407,000, equal to £25 a head of the population. Another result is that of the larger towns of Würtemberg only one has a lower taxation than Ulm. It is solely owing to its successful land policy that this enterprising town, without imposing heavy burdens on the general body of ratepayers, has been able to undertake a programme of social reforms which has created for it an honourable reputation throughout Germany."

VII.

In quite a different direction, in the encouragement of Art and Literature, the German municipality plays a leading part.

"The budgets of most large and many small German towns contain an item, greater or less according to local circumstances, which is intended to cover 'provision for the intellectual life of the town.' This item is independent of expenditure on schools, and, if analyzed, will be found often to include the maintenance of or subsidies to municipal theatres, bands, and orchestras, as well as grants to dramatic and musical societies of a miscellaneous order. In this provision the theatre takes an altogether dominant position, and the fact is significant as reflecting the great importance which in Germany is attributed to the drama as an educational and elevating influence in the life of the community. It may be that the practice of subsidizing the theatre is not altogether independent of the fact that the repertory theatre is universal in Germany, except in the smallest of provincial towns, with the result that a far more intimate tie exists between the drama and the community than is possible in the case of travelling companies."

"If the question be asked, Is the higher drama encouraged by the municipal theatre? the answer must be an emphatic affirmative of the high standard of education in Germany. Speaking generally, no theatres in Germany maintain the drama at a higher level than the municipal theatres in the large towns. The lower forms of the drama will find no home here, for public taste looks for the best that the stage can offer, and as the demand is, so is the supply. Many a provincial theatre of this kind presents more Shakespearean plays in a week than the average English theatre outside London presents in a couple of years. A glance at the repertory of any of the municipal theatres which have been named is enough to convince one that an elevated aim is steadily kept in view. For example, in a recent year the two Mannheim municipal theatres presented 161 separate works, including 93 dramas, 62 operas and operettas, and 6 ballets, and of these works 442 repetitions were given in the aggregate, making for the year 604 performances, a number of which were at popular prices. The dramas given included fifteen by Schiller, ten by Shakespeare, three by Goethe, three by Lessing, five by Molière, four by Hans Sachs, four by Sheridan, eleven by Grillparzer, two each by Kleist and Hebbel, and several by Ibsen, while the operas included three by Beethoven, three by Cherubini, six by Mozart, three by Weber, and several by Wagner. Could an English provincial theatre--could all English provincial theatres together--show a record equal to this? That plays of this kind are given is proof that the German public looks to the municipal theatre for the cultivation of the highest possible standard of dramatic taste and achievement."

VIII.

The German city has managed to combine efficiency with freedom. She has managed to establish a strong executive and yet to safeguard the will of the people. In France the Mayor is appointed by the State, and he is the tool of the Ministry. In Great Britain the City Fathers are honorary and unpaid. In Germany they are salaried servants, and yet elected by the people. In Great Britain magistrates are temporary, ephemeral figure-heads. They are not even allowed time to serve their apprenticeship. They remain in office one, two, or at most three years, receive a knighthood in the larger provincial towns, and retire into private life. In Germany the Burgomaster and Aldermen are permanent servants, at first elected for twelve years, and on re-election appointed for life. Their whole life is identified with the interests of the city.

There lies the originality of German civic government, and there lies the secret of municipal efficiency. The German Mayor and council are experts. City government is becoming so technical a science that there are now schools of civic administration established in several parts of the German Empire. The city administrator is not a grocer or a draper temporarily raised to office, nor are they only town clerks and officials. They have both the confidence of the people and the responsibility of power, and they are given time to achieve results, to follow up a systematic policy.

IX.

The whole secret of German municipal government is told by Mr. Dawson in a footnote of his book:

"The chief Mayor of Duisburg is about to seek well-earned rest after thirty-four years of work. When in 1880 he took over the direction of the town's affairs, Duisburg had 34,000 inhabitants. To-day Duisburg, with the amalgamated Ruhrort and Meiderich, has a population of 244,000. This remarkable development is specially due to the far-sighted municipal policy pursued by the chief Mayor, who made it his endeavour to attract new industries to the State for the creation of the docks--as the result of which Duisburg is the largest inland port in the world--and the incorporation of Ruhrort and Meiderich in 1905."

This footnote illustrating the history of Duisburg might serve equally well as an illustration for the history of other German towns. On reading that footnote I could not help thinking of a famous English statesman whose recent death has closed a stirring chapter of British history. German and Austrian municipalities give the widest scope for political genius and attract the ablest men. If the same conditions had prevailed in this country, Mr. Chamberlain would have been content to identify himself with the prosperity of his adopted city, as the Mayor of Duisburg identified himself with the greatness of Duisburg; as Lueger identified himself with the greatness of Vienna. And if Birmingham had given full scope to the genius of Mr. Chamberlain, how different would have been the life-story of the late statesman, and how different would be the England in which we are living to-day!