Part 1219

"The idea of the unity of the empire in its purest and most unadulterated form is most clearly typified by the German diet. This assembly, resulting from general elections of the whole people, shows all the clefts and schisms which partisanship and the spirit of faction have simultaneously brought about among the different classes of the people and among their representatives. But there is not one among all the prominent factions of the German diet which owes its formation to territorial differences. The changing majorities and minorities have assumed their form more curiously in our parliament than in any other in the world, but there never has been a single case where in taking a vote North Germans have come forward in a body against South Germans or vice versa, or where small and medium states have been pitted against the one large state. If the constitution of the empire reminds each deputy that he is a representative of the whole people, the best part of the provision is that it comes to be looked upon as a matter of course; it belongs to the very essence of a parliamentary assembly that it should see in a particular constellation of opposing factions only something exceptional. How indispensable a parliamentary organ which actually represents the unity of the people is to every state in a confederation is best shown by the energy with which the Prussian government again and again demanded a German parliament at the very time when it fairly despaired about coming to an understanding with its own body of representatives. In the middle between the head of the empire and such a diet as we have described is the place occupied by the Federal Council (Bundesrath): not until we have made this clear to ourselves can we fully understand the nature of this latter institution. Each of its members is the plenipotentiary of his sovereign just as were the old Regensburg and Frankfort envoys. It is a duty, for instance, for Bavaria's representative to investigate each measure proposed and to see whether it is advantageous or not for the land of Bavaria. The Federal Council is and is meant to be the speaking-tube by which the voice of the separate interests shall reach the ear of the legislator. But all the same, held together as it is by the firm stability of the seventeen votes which it holds itself and by the balancing power of the emperor and of the diet, it is the place where daily habit educates the representatives of the individual states to see that by furthering the welfare of the common fatherland they take the best means of furthering their own local interests. Taken each by himself the plenipotentiaries represent their own individual states; taken as a whole the assembly represents a conglomeration of all the German states. It is the upholder of the sovereignty of the empire. If, then, the federal council already represents the whole empire, still more is this true of the general body of officials, constituted through appointment by the emperor although with a considerable amount of co-operation on the part of the federal council. The imperial chancellor is the responsible minister of the emperor for the whole of the empire. At his side is the imperial chancery, a body of officials who, in turn, have to do in each department with the affairs of the whole empire. The imperial court, too, in spite of all its limitations, is none the less a court for the whole empire. Not less clearly is the territorial unity expressed in the unity of legislation. In the circumstances in which we left the old empire there could scarcely be any question any longer of real imperial legislation. Under the confederation beginnings were made, nor were they unsuccessful; but once again it was primarily the struggle against the strivings for unity that chiefly impelled the princes to united action. The 'Carlsbad decrees' placed limits to separate territorial legislation to an extent that even the imperial legislation of to-day would not venture upon in many ways. The empire of the year 1848 at once took up the idea of imperial legislation; a 'Reichsgesetzblatt' [imperial legislative gazette] was issued. In this the imperial ministry, after first passing them in the form of a decree, published among other things a set of rules regulating exchange. The plan was broached of drawing up a code of commercial law for all Germany for the benefit of that class of the population to which a uniform regulation of its legal relationships was an actual question of life and death. So firmly rooted was such legislation in the national needs that even the reaction of the fifties did not venture to undo what had been done. Indeed the idea of a universal code of commercial law was carried on by most of the governments with the best will in the world. A number of conferences were called and by the end of the decade a plan had been drawn up, thoroughly worked out and adopted. It has remained up to this very day the legal basis for commercial intercourse. It is true it was not the general decrees of these conferences that gave legal authority to this code, but rather its subsequent acceptance by the governments of the individual states. But the practical result nevertheless was that, in one important branch of law, the same code was in use in all German states. Never before, so long as Germany had had a history, had a codification of private law been introduced by means of legislation into the German states in common; for the first time princes and subjects learned by its fruits the blessing of united legislation. But a few years later they were ready enough to give over to the newly established empire all actual power of legislation: only, indeed, for such matters as were adapted for common regulation, but, so far as these were concerned, so fully and freely that no local territorial law can in any way interfere. {3785} What the lawgiver of the German empire announces as his will must be accepted from the foot of the Alps to the waves of the German Ocean. Thus after long national striving the view had made a way for itself that, without threatening the existence of the individual states, the soil of the empire nevertheless formed a united territorial whole. But not only the soil, its inhabitants also had to be welded together into one organization. The old empire had lost all touch with its subjects—a very much graver evil than the disintegration of its territory. So formidable an array of intermediate powers had thrust itself in between the emperor and his subjects that at last the citizen and the peasant never by any chance any more heard the voice of their imperial master. … In three ways the German emperor now found the way to his subjects. Already as king of Prussia the emperor of the future had been obeyed by 19 millions of the whole German population as his immediate subjects. By the entrance of a further 8 millions into the same relationship on the resignation of their own territorial lords by far the majority of all Germans became immediate subjects of the emperor. The German empire, secondly, in those branches of the administration which it created anew or at least reorganized, made it a rule to preserve from the very beginning the most immediate contact with its subjects: so in the army, so in the department of foreign affairs. The empire, finally, even where it left the administration to the individual states, exercised the wholesome pressure of a supreme national authoritative organization by setting up certain general rules to be observed. The empire, for instance, will not allow any distinctions to be made among its subjects which would interfere with national unity. If the Swabian comes to Hesse, the Hessian to Bavaria, the Bavarian to Oldenburg, his inborn right of citizenship gives him a claim to all the privileges of one born within those limits. For all Germany there is a common right of citizenship; and this common bond receives its true significance through numerous actual migrations from one state to another, the right of choosing a domicile being guaranteed. … It belongs in the nature of a federative state that it should not claim for itself all state-duties but should content itself with exercising only such functions as demand a centralized organization. In consequence we see the individual states unfolding great activity in the field of internal administration, in the furtherance of education, art and science, in the care of the poor: matters with which the empire as a whole has practically nothing to do. All those affairs of the states, on the other hand, which by their nature demand a centralized administration have been taken in hand by the empire, and the unity of public interests to which the activity of the empire gives utterance is shown in the most different ways. There are certain affairs administered by the empire which it has brought as much under a central organization as ever the Prussian state did the affairs of the amalgamated territories within its limits. With regard to others the empire has preserved for itself nothing more than the chief superintendence; with regard to others still it is content to set up principles which are to be generally followed and to exercise a right of supervision. It would be wrong, however, to imagine that the two last-mentioned prerogatives are only of secondary importance. The superintendence which the German emperor exercises over the affairs of the army, the chief part of which, indeed, is under his direction as king of Prussia, is sufficient in its workings to make the land-army, in time of war, as much of a unit as is the consolidated navy. … Customs' matters form a third category, with regard to which the empire possesses only the beginnings of an administrative apparatus: all the same we have seen in the last years how the right of general supervision was sufficient in this field to bring about a change in the direction of centralization, the importance of which is recognizable from the loud expressions of approval of its supporters and also in equal measure from the loud opposition of its antagonists. … In the field of finance the empire has advanced with caution and consideration and at the same time with vigor. In general the separate states have retained their systems of direct and indirect taxation. Only that amount of consolidation without which the unity of the empire as a whole would have been illusory was firmly decreed: 'Germany forms one customs and commercial unit bounded by common customs limits.' The internal inter-state customs were abolished. The finances that remained continued to belong to the individual states—the direct taxes in their entirety, the indirect to a great extent. The administration of the customs on the borders even remained in the hands of the local customs-officials, only that when collected they were placed to the general account. But the unconditional right of the empire to lay down the principles of customs legislation gave it more and more of an opportunity to create finances of its own and to become more and more independent of the scheduled contributions from the separate states. … Judicial matters are the affair of the individual state. With his complaints and with his accusations the citizen whose rights have been infringed turns to the court established by his territorial lord. But already it has been found possible to organize a common mode of procedure for this court throughout the whole empire; the rules of court, the forms for criminal as well as civil suits are everywhere the same. … The general German commercial code and the exchange regulations, which almost all the states had proclaimed law on the ground of the conferences under the confederation, were proclaimed again in the name of the empire and were supplemented in certain particulars. As to criminal law a general German criminal code has unified the more important matters and, with regard to those of less importance, has legally fixed the limits to be observed by the individual states. Work is constantly going on at a civil code which is to be drawn up much on the same lines. The German nation is busily engaged in creating a German legal system according to which the Prussian as well as the Bavarian, Saxon or Swabian judge is to render his decisions. Furthermore, a century-long development in our civilized states has brought it about that a supervision, itself in the form of legal decisions, should be exercised over the legality of judicial sentences. Here again it was in commercial matters that the jurisdiction of a supreme court first showed itself to be an unavoidable necessity. {3786} Then it was, however, that after a slumber of seventy years the old imperial court rose again from the dead, not entirely without limitations, but absolutely without the power to make exceptions. The imperial court at Leipzig is a court for the whole empire and for one and all of its subjects. If we turn to the internal administration it is chiefly matters concerning traffic and intercommunication which call by their very nature for regulation under one system. Although the management of local and to some extent also of provincial postal affairs is left as far as possible to the individual states themselves, the German post is nevertheless imperial, all the higher officials are appointed by the emperor, the imperial post office passes its rules and regulations and sees that they are carried out with reference to the whole empire. Just this branch of the administration indeed has had to halt at the Würtemberg and Bavarian frontiers, but in these two states also the legal foundations of the postal system have been adopted in all essential points. And if in the actual administration the differences likewise begin to vanish, the reason for this is more gratifying than is the fact itself: the extraordinary triumphs, namely, of our imperial post, which of themselves invite imitation and a breaking down of barriers. The introduction of the penny tariff has increased the amount of mail matter to four or five times what it was before. Postcards, invented by the director of our postal system, are already [1885], issued annually by the 150 million. The parcels-post, made cheaper and more convenient, has attained such importance that it has actually come to serve as a regulator of prices for the retail business of mercantile houses. Great differences of price in different parts of the empire become more and more an impossibility so soon as one only has to pay ten pfennigs per kilo (2 pounds) to procure the same goods in two or three days from the cheapest place, be it ever so far off. What is true of the post is true also of the telegraph which has come again to be one with it. Here, too, we can observe how the centralization in the empire has been of especial advantage to just those places which lie most out of the way. Chiefly in connection with existing or newly created post offices, the imperial post office, in the first five years after the direction of the telegraph came into its hands, opened more than four thousand telegraph counters—on an average two new counters a day! Through an extended system of treaties the German imperial post has regulated its relations to foreign lands and paved the way for the World-postal-association, the first such association in the history of the world to take in states from all four quarters of the globe. … Compared with the postal system the other branches of inter-communication and of internal administration seem to be only in the first stages of centralization; but here, too, much has been accomplished. The railroads stand under the direction or supervisory administration of the individual states, but unity with regard to time-tables, connections, fares and forwarding has been in so far preserved that differences which might interrupt traffic are avoided as far as possible. The governments of the confederated states are under obligations 'to allow the German railroads, in the interests of general communication, to be administered as one unbroken network.' A separate Imperial Railroad Bureau watches over the fulfillment of this agreement. Nothing, however, has given clearer expression to a unified system of intercommunication in Germany than the equalization of the coinage. In old times, when all or at least the chief territorial lords possessed the unrestricted right of coinage, each state did not, indeed, have its own standard, for how would it have been possible to invent several hundred standards of coinage? But when the territorial lord did make up his mind to adopt some existing system he usually chose one that was not in vogue in the state next to him, so that the boundaries of his own state might be the more clearly defined. That was how it came about that a map of the coinage standards of Germany looked almost as variegated as the map of its states. … Still worse than with regard to coined money—which, after all, always had a natural regulator in the actual market value of the silver or gold—did the want of unity show itself in the matter of paper money. Not only did the various states have different principles on which they issued it, and a different system of securities in funding it, but one and the same state would continue to use its old paper money even when issuing new on another principle. Hundreds of different bank-notes were in use, many which had long been called in continued still to circulate until some unfortunate last holder had to pay the costs. He who had thus learned a lesson at his own expense became very cautious and would refuse even the best paper money. The black Schwarzburg notes looked so grimy that the petty folk in their own land considered them out of date and preferred Prussian money. … In the matter of coins the empire found no general European model to go by. The mark, which was finally chosen as the unit of coinage, had the double advantage of facilitating a transition from the old thaler days and of inaugurating a firm relationship to the franc of the Romanic coinage system, the pound of the English world, the gulden of the Austrian empire (so soon as the latter power resumed metal coinage). The introduction of a gold basis gave the young coinage system a solid basis on the most precious metal. The mints remained in the hands of the separate states, but the coin was issued 'on account with the empire.' The coins accordingly bear on one side the image of the territorial lord who issues them, on the other, to give them general validity, the coat of arms of the empire. … Founded thus on a system of firm finances, on the uniform administration of justice in all lands, on an internal administration which, however varied, nevertheless fulfills the necessary demands of unity, the German empire shows a measure of consolidation the best outward expression to which is given by its army. Among the two million men on land and on sea who are ready to protect the Fatherland's boundaries there is not one who has not sworn fidelity to his imperial master: among the generals, not one who has not been appointed by the emperor. The most cherished of all duties binds the German to his German Fatherland. If, as regards the land-army, the princes still have a certain right of administration over their own contingents: on the man-of-war, where the sons of all the states that border on the sea come together, every possible distinction vanishes. The German navy knows no other flag, no other cockade, than the black-white-and-red."

_I. Jastrow, Geschichte des deutschen Einheitstraumes und seiner Erfüllung (translated from the German), pages 285-303._

{3787}

GERMANY: A. D. 1883-1889. Bismarck's Sickness, Accident and Old-Age Insurance Laws.

See SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: A. D. 1883-1889 (page 2955).

GERMANY: A. D. 1883-1894. Acquisitions in Africa.

See (in this Supplement) AFRICA: 1883, and after.

GERMANY: Libraries.

See LIBRARIES, MODERN (page 2010).

GERMANY: End--------

GHENT, Treaty of (the text).

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1814 (pages 3355-3358).

GIRTON COLLEGE.

See EDUCATION (page 745).

GODIN, and his Social Palace at Guise.

See SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: A. D. 1859-1887 (page 2947).

GODOY, The Ministry of.

See (in this Supplement) SPAIN: A. D. 1788-1808.

GOLD AND SILVER, Production of.

See MONEY AND BANKING: A. D. 1848-1893 (page 2217).

GORTON, Samuel, in Rhode Island.

See RHODE ISLAND: A. D. 1641-1647 (page 2641).

GRANGERS, The.

See SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: A. D. 1866-1875 (page 2951).

GRANT, General U. S.: Report on affairs in the South.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1865 (page 3562).

GREAT SEAL, Lord Keeper of the.

See LAW, EQUITY: A. D. 1538 (page 1990).

GREECE: Outline Sketch of ancient history.

See EUROPE (pages 991-996).

GREECE: Commerce, ancient.

See (in this Supplement) COMMERCE, ANCIENT.

GREECE: Libraries.

See LIBRARIES, ANCIENT (page 2002.)

GREECE: Medical Science.

See MEDICAL SCIENCE, GREEK (page 2124).

GREECE: Money and Banking.

See MONEY AND BANKING (pages 2201 and 2202).

GREELEY, Lieutenant, Polar expedition of.

See (in this Supplement) ARCTIC EXPLORATION: 1881-1884.

GREGORY I., Pope (called the Great).

See PAPACY: A. D. 461-604 (page 2422).

GREGORY VII., Pope, and the Empire.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1056-1122 (page 2427); GERMANY: A. D. 973-1122 (page 1441); and CANOSSA (page 386).

GRINNELL EXPEDITIONS.

See (in this Supplement) ARCTIC EXPLORATION: 1850-1851, 1853-1855.

GRIPPE, La, Early appearances of.

See PLAGUE, ETC.; A. D. 1485-1593, and 18TH CENTURY (page 2542).

GUILDS, OR GILDS.

See SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: A. D. 1720-1800 (page 2933).

GUNBOATS, Jefferson's.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1804-1805 (page 3332).

H.

HABEAS CORPUS, President Lincoln's suspension of the writ of.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1861-1863 (page 3447).

HAHNEMANN, and the system of Homœopathy.

See MEDICAL SCIENCE: 17-18TH CENTURIES (page 2139).

HALL, Captain Charles F., Arctic explorations of.

See (in this Supplement) ARCTIC EXPLORATION: 1860-1862; 1864-1869; and 1871-1872.

HALLER, Albrecht von, The medical system of.

See MEDICAL SCIENCE: 18TH CENTURY (page 2141).

HANSA, The.

See (in this Supplement) COMMERCE, MEDIÆVAL; and GERMANY: 13-15TH, and 15-17TH CENTURIES. Also, HANSA TOWNS (page 1624).

HAPSBURG, Early fortunes of the family of.

See (in this Supplement) AUSTRIA: A. D. 1273-1349.

HARMONY SOCIETY, The.

See SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: A. D. 1805-1827 (page 2937).

HARVEY, and the discovery of the Circulation of the Blood.

See MEDICAL SCIENCE: 17TH CENTURY (page 2133).

HAYES, Dr. Isaac I., Arctic explorations of.

See (in this Supplement) ARCTIC EXPLORATION: 1860-1861, and 1869.

HELMONT, John Baptist, The medical system of.

See MEDICAL SCIENCE: 16TH CENTURY (page 2133).

HENRY, Professor Joseph, Invention of the electric telegraph.