Part 1218

In the German Parliament, May 14, 1872, on the question of a grant of 19,350 thalers for the German embassy at the See of Rome, Prince Bismarck spoke as follows: "I can easily understand how in considering this item of the estimates, the opinion may be held that the expenditure for this embassy was superfluous, as it does no longer consider the protection of German citizens in foreign parts. Still I am glad that no motion for the striking out of this post was made, which would be unpleasant to the Government. The duties of an embassy consist not merely in affording protection to their countrymen, but also in keeping up the political relations of the Government which it represents with that to which it is accredited. Now there is no foreign sovereign, who, in the present state of our laws, might be called upon to exercise, in accordance with those laws, prerogatives in the German empire like those of His Holiness, approaching almost to sovereignty, limited by no constitutional responsibility. There is therefore great importance for the German empire in the character that is given to our diplomatic relations with the head of the Roman Church, wielding, as he does, an influence in this country unusually extensive for a foreign potentate. I scarcely believe, considering the spirit dominant at present in the leading circles of the Catholic Church, that any ambassador of the German empire could succeed, by the most skilful diplomacy, or by persuasion (comminatory attitudes conceivable between secular powers are out of the question here)—I say no one could succeed by persuasion in exerting an influence to bring about a modification of the position assumed by His Holiness the Pope towards things secular. The dogmas of the Catholic Church recently announced and publicly promulgated make it impossible for any secular power to come to an understanding with the church without its own effacement, which the German empire, at least, cannot accept. Have no fear; we shall not go to Canossa, either in body or in spirit. Nevertheless it cannot be concealed that the state of the German empire (it is not my task here to investigate the motives and determine how much blame attaches to one party or the other; I am only defending an item in the Budget)—that the feeling within the German empire in regard to religious peace, is one of disquietude. The governments of the German empire are seeking, with all the solicitude they owe to their Catholic as well as Lutheran subjects for the best way, the most acceptable means, of changing the present unpleasant state of affairs in matters of religion to a more agreeable one, without disturbing to any degree the creedal relations of the empire. This can only be done by way of legislation—of general imperial legislation—for which the governments have to rely upon the assistance of the Reichstag. That this legislation must not in the least infringe upon the liberty of conscience,—must proceed in the gentlest, most conciliatory manner; that the government must bend all its energies in order to prevent unnecessary retardation of its work, from incorrect recording or errors in form, you all will admit. That the governments must spare no efforts for the establishment of our internal peace, in a manner least offensive even to the religious sensitiveness of those whose creed we do not share, you will also admit. To this end, however, it is before all things needful that the Roman See be at all times well informed of the intentions of the German governments, much better than it has been hitherto. The reports made in the past to His Holiness, the Pope, on the state of affairs in Germany, and on the intentions of the German governments, I consider as one of the chief causes of the present disturbances of denominational relations; for those presentations were both incorrect and perverted, either by personal bias, or by baser motives. I had hoped that the choice of an ambassador, who had the full confidence of both parties, both on account of his love of truth and reliability, and on account of the nature of his views and his attitude—that the choice of such an ambassador as His Majesty had made in the person of a distinguished prince of the church [Cardinal Prince Hohenlohe] would be welcomed at Rome; that it would be taken as an earnest of our peaceable and conciliatory intentions; that it would be utilized as a means to our mutual understanding. {3782} I had hoped that it would afford the assurance that we would never ask anything of His Holiness, but what a prince of the church, sustaining the most intimate relations to the Pope, could present before him; that the forms with which one sacerdotal dignitary confers with another would continue to prevail and that all unnecessary friction in a matter so difficult in itself would be avoided. … All this we had hoped to attain. But alas! for reasons which have not yet been submitted to us, a curt refusal on the part of the Papal See frustrated the intentions of His Majesty. I dare say such an incident does not often occur. It is customary, when a sovereign has made choice of an ambassador, out of courtesy to make inquiry at the court to which the chosen ambassador is to be accredited, whether he be persona grata or not. The case of a negative reply, however, is extremely rare, bringing about, as it must, a revocation of the appointment made not provisionally, but definitely, before the inquiry. Such a negative reply is equal to a demand to annul what has been done, to a declaration: 'You have chosen unwisely.' I have now been Foreign Minister for ten years; have been busy in matters of higher diplomacy for twenty-one years; and I can positively assert that this is the first and only case in my experience of such an inquiry receiving a negative reply." Deputy Windthorst, in reply, criticised the procedure of the German Government in this affair, and justified the position taken by the papal court, saying: "I believe, gentlemen, for my part, that it was the duty of the Cardinal to ask the permission of his master, the Pope, before accepting the post. The Cardinal was the servant of the Pope, and as such, could not accept an office from another government without previous inquiry. … The case would be the same if His Holiness had appointed an adjutant general of His Majesty as papal nuncio, only more flagrant, for you will admit that a Cardinal is quite a different person from an adjutant general." Prince Bismarck replied: "I do not wish to discuss here the personal criticism which the gentleman made on His Eminence, the Cardinal, but I would say a word about the expression 'master' which was used. The gentleman is certainly well versed in history, especially ecclesiastical history, and I wish to ask him, who was the master of Cardinal Richelieu or Cardinal Mazarin. Both of these dignitaries were engaged in controversies and had to settle important differences with the See of Rome, in the service of their sovereign, the king of France; and yet they were Cardinals. … If it should please His Holiness to appoint an adjutant general of His Majesty as papal nuncio, I should unconditionally advise His Majesty to accept him. … I am an enemy to all conjectural politics and all prophesies. That will take care of itself. But I can assure the gentleman that we will maintain the full integral sovereignty of the law with all means at our disposal, against assumptions of individual subjects of His Majesty, the king of Prussia, be they priests or laymen, that there could be laws of the land not binding upon them; and we are sure of the entire support of a great majority of the members of all religious confessions. The sovereignty can and must be one and integral,—the sovereignty of the law; and he who declares the laws of his country as not binding upon himself, places himself outside the pale of the law."

_Die politischen Reden des Fürsten Bismarck (translated from the German), volume 5, pages 337-344._

The following is from a speech of Prince Bismarck in the Upper House, March 10, 1873, during the discussion of the May Laws: "The gentleman who spoke before me has entered on the same path which the opponents of these bills followed in the other house by ascribing to them a confessional, I might say, an ecclesiastical character. The question we are considering is, according to my view, misconstrued, and the light in which we consider it, a false light if we look upon it as a confessional, a church question. It is essentially a political one; it is not, as our catholic fellow citizens are made to believe, a contest of an evangelical dynasty against the Catholic Church; it is not a struggle between faith and unbelief; it is the perennial contest, as old as the human race, between royalty and priestcraft, older than the appearance of our Savior on earth. This contest was carried on by Agamemnon at Aulis, which cost him his daughter and hindered the Grecian fleet from going to sea. This contest has filled the German history of the Middle Ages even to the disintegration of the German Empire. It is known as the struggles of the popes with the emperors, closing for the Middle Ages when the last representative of the noble Suabian imperial dynasty died on the block beneath the axe of the French conqueror, that French conqueror being in league with the then ruling pope. We were very near an analogous solution of this question, translated into the manners of our own time. Had the French war of conquest been successful, the outbreak of which coincided with the publication of the Vatican Decrees, I know not what would have been narrated in Church circles of Germany of 'gestis Dei per Francos' ['Gesta Dei per Francos,' 'Deeds of God by the French' is the title of a collection by Bongars, containing the sources of the history of the crusades.—Footnote]. … It is in my opinion a falsification of history and politics, this attitude of considering His Holiness, the Pope, exclusively as the high priest of a religious denomination, or the Catholic Church as the representative of Churchdom merely. The papacy has at all times been a political power, interfering in the most resolute manner and with the greatest success in the secular affairs of this world, which interference it contended for and made its program. These programs are well known. The aim which was constantly present in its mind's eye, the program which in the Middle Ages was near its realization, was the subjection of the secular powers to the Church, an eminently political aim, a striving as old as mankind itself. For there have always been either some wise men, or some real priests who set up the claim, that the will of God was better known to them than to their fellow beings and in consequence of this claim they had the right to rule over their fellowmen. And it cannot be denied that this proposition contains the basis of the papal claims for the exercise of sovereign rights. … {3783} The contention of priesthood against royalty, in our case, of the Pope against the German Emperor, … is to be judged like every other struggle; it has its alliances, its peace conventions, its pauses, its armistices. There have been peaceful popes, there have been popes militant, popes conquerors. There have been even peace-loving kings of France, though Louis XVI. was forced to carry on wars; so that even our French neighbors have had monarchs who preferred peace to war. Moreover in the struggles of the papal power it has not always been the call that Catholic powers have been exclusively the allies of the pope; nor have the priests always sided with the pope. We have had cardinals as ministers of great powers at a time when those great powers followed an antipapal policy even to acts of violence. We have found bishops in the military retinue of the German emperors, when moving against the popes. This contest for power therefore is subject to the same condition as every other political contest, and it is a misrepresentation of the issue, calculated to impress people without judgment of their own, when it is characterized as aiming at the oppression of the church. Its object is the defense of the State, to determine the limits of priestly rule, of royal power, and this limit must secure the existence of the State. For in the kingdom of this world the rule and the precedence is the State's. We in Prussia have not always been the pre-eminent object of this struggle. The papal court for a long time did not consider us as its principal opponent. Frederic the Great was at perfect peace with the Roman See while the contemporary emperor of Catholic Austria [Joseph II.] was engaged in the most violent contention with the Catholic Church. I wish to prove thereby that the question is entirely independent of creed. I will further add that at the Vienna Congress it was King Frederic William III., thoroughly and most strictly evangelical, nay, it might be said, anticatholic in his belief, that it was he who insisted upon and carried through the restoration of the secular rule of the pope; nevertheless he departed this world while engaged in a struggle with the Catholic Church. In the paragraphs of the constitution we have under consideration we found a 'modus vivendi,' an armistice, concluded at a time when the State was in need of help and thought to obtain this help or at least some support in the Catholic Church. This hope was based upon the fact that at the election for the national assembly of 1848 the districts in which the Catholic population preponderated elected, if not royalists, yet friends of order,—which was not the case in evangelical districts. Under this impression the compromise between the ecclesiastical and secular arms was concluded, though, as subsequent events proved, in miscalculation as to its practical effects. For it was not the support of the electors who had thus voted but the Brandenburg ministry and the royal army that restored order. In the end the State was obliged to help itself; the aid that might have been given by the different churches did not pull it through. But at that time originated the 'modus vivendi' under which we lived in peace for a number of years. To be sure, this peace was bought only by an uninterrupted yielding of the State, by placing its rights in regard to the Catholic Church, without reservation, in the hands of a magistracy which was originally intended to be the guardian of the royal Prussian prerogatives against the Catholic Church, but which in fact ultimately became a magistracy in the service of the pope, in order to guard the rights of the church against the encroachments of the Prussian State. Of course, I refer to the Catholic section in the Supreme Church Council [the Church Council is a Protestant body.—Foot-note]. I mean of the Ministry of worship. … When we were yet in Versailles I was somewhat surprised to learn, that Catholic members of parliamentary bodies were asked to declare whether they were ready to join a religious party, such as we have now in the Party of the Center, and whether they would agree to vote and agitate for the insertion of the paragraphs we are at present considering into the constitution of the Empire. I was not much alarmed then at that program; I was a lover of peace to such a degree. I knew from whom it emanated; partly from an eminent prince of the church [Bishop Ketteler of Mayence] whose chief task it was to do for the papal policy what he could. … I was completely deceived. … When I returned here I saw how strong was the organization of this party of the church militant, against the state. … What, was this program? Read it. There are pamphlets in everybody's hand, written with spirit, pleasant to read. Its object was the introduction of a state dualism in Prussia, the erection of a state within the state to bring it about that all Catholics should follow the guidance of this Party of the Center in their private as well as their political conduct, a dualism of the worst kind. Under different conditions a dualistic constitution might work well in an empire. Witness the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. But yonder it is no religious dualism. With us the construction of two denominational states is aimed at, to be engaged in a dualistic struggle, one of which was to have for its supreme ruler a foreign church potentate, whose seat is in Home, a potentate who by the latest changes in the constitution of the Catholic Church has become more powerful than ever before. If this program were carried out, we were to have instead of the one formerly integral state of Prussia, instead of the German Empire then at the point of realization—we were to have two state organizations, running side by side in parallel lines; one with the Party of the Center as its general staff, the other with its general staff in the guiding secular principle, in the government and the person of his Majesty the Emperor. This situation was absolutely unacceptable for the government whose very duty it was to defend the state against such a danger. It would have misunderstood and neglected this duty if it had looked on calmly at the astounding progress which a closer examination of the affair brought to light. … The Government was obliged to terminate the armistice, based upon the constitution of 1848, and create a new 'modus vivendi' between the secular and sacerdotal power. The State cannot allow this situation to continue without being driven into internal struggles that may endanger its very existence. The question is simply this: Are those paragraphs of the constitution [of 1848] dangerous to the State, as is contended for by the government of His Majesty, or are they not? {3784} If they are, then it is your duty as conservatives to vote against the retention of those paragraphs. If you think them entirely harmless then you hold a conviction which the government of His Majesty does not share, and as it is not able to assume the responsibility for the administration of the affairs of the State with these articles of the constitution in force, it must surrender it to those who consider them harmless. The Government, in its struggle for the defense of the State, applies to the Upper House for aid and assistance for the strengthening of the State and its defense against attacks and machinations that undermine its peace and endanger its future. We trust and believe that this assistance will not fail us with the majority of the Upper House."

_Die politischen Reden des Fürsten Bismarck (translated from the German), volume 5, pages 384-391._

GERMANY: A. D. 1871-1873. Adoption of the gold standard.

See MONEY AND BANKING: A. D. 1871-1873 (page 2220).

GERMANY: A. D. 1871-1895. The organization of the modern German Empire.