Chapter 9
"We must make German the foundation for the gymnasium: we must produce patriotic young Germans, not young Greeks and Romans. We must depart from the centuries-old basis, from the old monastic education of the Middle Ages, when Latin was the main thing and a tincture of Greek besides. That is no longer the standard. German must be the standard. The German exercise must be the pivot on which all things turn. When in the exit examination (_Abiturientenexamen_) a student hands in a German essay, one can judge from it what are the mental acquirements of the young man and decide whether he is fit for anything or not. Of course people will object--the Latin exercise is very important, very good for instructing students in other languages, and so on. Yes, gentlemen, I have been through the mill. How do we get this Latin exercise? I have often seen a young man get, say 4-1/2 marks, for his German exercise--'satisfactory,' it was considered--and 2 for his Latin exercise. The youngster deserved punishment instead of praise, because it is clear he did not write his Latin exercise in a proper way; and of all the Latin exercises we wrote there was not one in a dozen which was done without cribbing. These exercises were marked 'good,' but when we wrote an essay on 'Minna von Barnhelm' (one of Lessing's dramas) we got hardly 'satisfactory.' So I say, away with the Latin exercise, it only harms us, and robs us of time we might give to German."
The Emperor goes on to recommend the study of the nation's history, geography, and literature ("Der Sage," poetry, he calls it).
"Let us begin at home," he says; "when we have learned enough at home, we can go to the museums. But above all we must know our German history. In my time the Grand Elector was a very foggy personage, the Seven Years' War was quite outside consideration, and history ended with the close of the last century, the French Revolution. The War of Liberation, the most important for the young citizen, was not taught thoroughly, and I only learned to know it, thank God, through the very interesting lectures of Dr. Hinzpeter. This, however, is the _punctum saliens_. Why are our young men misled? Why do we find so many unclear, confused world-improvers? Why is our government so cavilled at and criticized, and so often told to look at foreign nations? Because the young men do not know how our conditions have developed, and that the roots of the development lie in the period of the French Revolution. Consequently, I am convinced that if they understood the transition period from the Revolution to the nineteenth century in its fundamental features, they would have a far better understanding of the questions of to-day than they now have. At the universities they can supplement their school knowledge."
The Emperor then turned to other points. It was "absolutely necessary" to reduce the hours of work. When he was at school, he said, all German parents were crying out against the evil, and the Government set on foot an inquiry. He and his brother (Henry) had every morning to hand a memorandum to the head master showing how many hours it had taken them to prepare the lessons for the day. In the Emperor's case it took, "honestly," from 5-1/2 to 7 hours' home study. To this was to be added 6 hours in school and 2 hours for eating meals--"How much of the day," the Emperor asks, "was left? If I," he said, "hadn't been able to ride to and from school I wouldn't have known what the world even looked like." The result of this, he continued, was an
"over-production of educated people, more than the nation wanted and more than was tolerable for the sufferers themselves. Hence the class Bismarck called the abiturienten-proletariat, all the so-called hunger candidates, especially the Mr. Journalists, who are often broken-down scholars and a danger to us. This surplus, far too large as it is, is like an irrigation field that cannot soak up any more water, and it must be got rid of."
Another matter touched on by the Emperor was a reduction in the amount to be learned, so that more time might be had for the formation of character. This cannot be done now, he remarks, in a class containing thirty youngsters, who have such a huge amount of subjects to master. The teacher, too, the Emperor said, must learn that his work is not over when he has delivered his lecture. "It isn't a matter of knowledge," he concludes "but a matter of educating the young people for the practical affairs of life."
The Emperor lastly dealt with the subject of shortsightedness. "I am looking for soldiers," he said.
"We need a strong and healthy generation, which will also serve the Fatherland as intellectual leaders and officials. This mass of shortsightedness is no use, since a man who can't use his eyes--how can he do anything later?"
and he went on to mention the extraordinary facts that in some of the primary classes of German schools as many as 74 per cent, were shortsighted, and that in his class at Cassel, of the twenty-one pupils, eighteen wore spectacles, while two of them could not see the desk before them without their glasses.
The Englishman in Germany often attributes German shortsightedness to the Gothic character of German print. It is more probable that the long hours of study spent poring over books without fresh-air exercise, judiciously interposed, is responsible for it.
It has been said that every one, like the Emperor, has his own theory of education, but there is one passage in the Emperor's speech with which almost all men will agree--that, namely, in which he urges that knowledge is not the only--perhaps not the chief--thing, but that young people must be educated for the practical affairs of life. Unfortunately, as to how we are successfully to do this, the Emperor is silent; and it may be that there is no certain or exact way. One could, of course--but we are concerned with the Emperor.
The difference of opinion between the Emperor and Bismarck regarding the Emperor's visit to Russia seems to have left no permanent ill-will in the Emperor's mind, for on returning in October, 1889, from visits to Athens, where he attended the wedding of his sister Sophie with the Heir-Apparent of Greece, Prince Constantine (now King Constantine), and Constantinople, where he was allowed to inspect the Sultan's seraglio, he sent a letter to the Chancellor praying God to grant that the latter's "faithful and experienced counsel might for many years assist him in his difficult and responsible office." In January, 1890, however, the question of renewing the Socialist Laws, which would expire shortly, came up for settlement. A council of Ministers, under the Emperor's presidency, was called to decide it. When the council met, Bismarck was greatly surprised by a proposal of the Emperor to issue edicts developing the principles laid down by his grandfather for working-class reform instead of renewing the Socialist Laws. The Reichstag took the Emperor's view and voted against the renewal of the Laws. It only now remained to give effect to the Emperor's edicts. They were considered at a further council of Ministers, at which the Emperor exhorted them to "leave the Social Democracy to me, I can manage them alone." The Ministers agreed, and Bismarck was in a minority of one. This, however, was only the beginning of the end. Bismarck decided to continue in office until he had carried through Parliament a new military Bill, which was to come before it in May or June. Meanwhile fresh matters of controversy between the Emperor and the Chancellor arose regarding the grant of imperial audiences to Ministers other than the Chancellor. Bismarck insisted that the Chancellor alone had the right to be received by the Emperor for the discussion of State affairs.
The quarrel was accentuated by a lively scene which occurred between the Emperor and the Chancellor about this period in connexion with a visit the leader of the Catholic Centre party had paid the Chancellor, and on March 17th the Emperor sent his chief Adjutant, General von Hahnke, to say he awaited the Chancellor's resignation. Bismarck replied that to resign at this juncture would be an act of desertion; the Emperor could dismiss him. At the same time the Chancellor summoned a meeting of Ministers for the afternoon, but while they were discussing the situation a message was brought from the Emperor telling them he did not require their advice in such a matter and that he had made up his mind about the Chancellor. The messenger on the same occasion expressed to Bismarck the Emperor's surprise at not having received a formal resignation. Bismarck's reply was that it would require some days to prepare such a document, as it was the last official statement of a "Minister who had played a meritorious part in the history of Prussia and Germany, and history should know why he had been dismissed." Three days later, on March 20th, an hour or two after the formal resignation reached the palace, the Emperor's letter granting the Chancellor's request for his release, naming him Duke of Lauenburg and announcing the appointment of General von Caprivi as his successor, was put into the old Chancellor's hands.
VI.
THE COURT OF THE EMPEROR
While the ex-Chancellor is bitterly meditating on the unreliability and ingratitude of princes, yet having in his heart, as the records clearly show, the loyal sentiments of a Cardinal Wolsey towards his royal master, even though that master had cast him off, we may be allowed to pause awhile in order to give some account of the Court of which the Emperor now became the centre and pivot.
Human imagination, in its worship of force as the source of ability to achieve the ends of ambition and desire, very early conceived the courts of kings as fairylands of power, wealth, luxury, and magnificence--in a word, of happiness. The same imagination represents the Almighty, whose true nature no one knows, as a monarch in the bright court of heaven, and his great antagonist, Satan, who stands for the king of evil, is enthroned by it amid the shades of hell. The fiction that courts are a species of earthly paradise is still kept up for the entertainment of children; while the adult, whom the annals of all countries has made familiar with a long record of monarchs, bad as well as good, is disposed to regard them as beneficial or otherwise to a country according to the character and conduct of the occupant of the throne, and to believe that they are at least as liable to produce examples of vice and hypocrisy as of virtue and honesty.
The court of the German Emperor in this connexion need not fear comparison with any court described in history. True, courts all over the world have improved wonderfully of recent years. Their monarchs are more enlightened, they are frequented by a very different type of man and woman from the courts of former times, their morale and working are more closely scrutinized and more generally subjected to criticism, and they are occupied with a more public and less selfish order of considerations. The Court of the Emperor is, so far as can be known to a lynx-eyed and not always charitably thinking public, singularly free from the vices and failings the atmosphere of former courts was wont to foster. There is at all times, no doubt, the competition of politicians for influence and power acting and reacting on the Court and its frequenters, but of scandal at the Court of Berlin there has been none that could be fairly said to involve the Emperor or his family. Dame Gossip, of course, busied herself with the Emperor in his youth, but whatever truth she then uttered--and it is probably extremely little--on this head, there is no question that from the day he mounted the throne his Court and that of the Empress has been a model for all institutions of the kind.
The life of courts, the personages who play leading parts in them, their wealth and luxury, and the currents of social, amorous, and political intrigue which are supposed to course through them have in all countries and in all ages strongly appealed to writers, fanciful and serious. Perhaps one-third of the prose and poetic literature of every country deals, directly or indirectly, with the subject, and determines in no small degree the character of its rising generations. The great architects of romance, depicting for us life in high places, and often nobly idealizing it, or working the facts of history into the web of their imaginings and thus pleasantly combining fact with fiction, aim at elevating, not at debasing, the mind of the reader. A second valuable source of information on the topic are the memoirs of those who have set down their observations and recorded experiences made in the courts to which they had access. Among this class, however, are to be found unscrupulous as well as conscientious authors, the former obviously cherishing some personal grievance or as obviously actuated by malice, while the latter are usually moved by an honest desire to tell the world things that are important for it to know, and at the same time, it is not ill-natured to suspect, enhance their own reputation with their contemporaries or with posterity. The multitudinous tribe of anecdote inventors and retailers must also be taken into account. In our own day there is still another source of information, which, agreeably or odiously according to the temperament of the reader, keeps us in touch with courts and what goes on there--the periodical press; while afar off in the future one can imagine the historian bent over his desk, surrounded by books and knee-deep in newspapers, selecting and weighing events, studying characters, developing personalities, and passing what he hopes may be a final judgment on the court and period he is considering.
For a study of the Emperor's life, as it passes in his Court, a large number of works are available, but not many that can be described as authoritative or reliable. Among the latter, however, may be placed Moritz Busch's "Bismarck: Some Secret Pages of His History," three volumes that make Busch almost as interesting to the reader as his subject; Bismarck's own "Gedanke und Erinnerungen," which is chiefly of a political nature; and the "Memorabilia of Prince Chlodwig Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst," who was for several years Statthalter of Alsace-Lorraine and subsequently became Imperial Chancellor in succession to General von Caprivi. These works, with the collections of the Emperor's speeches and the speeches and interviews of Chancellor Prince von Bülow, may be ranked in the category of serious and authentic contributions to the Court history of the period they cover. Then there are several German descriptions of the Court, reliable enough in their way which is a dull one, to those who are not impassioned monarchists or hide-bound bureaucrats. In the category of works by unscrupulous writers that entitled "The Private Lives of William II and His Consort," by a lady-in-waiting to the Empress from 1888 to 1898, easily takes first place. Certainly it gives a lively and often entertaining insight into the domestic life of the palace, but it is so clearly informed by spite that it is impossible to distinguish what is true in it from what is false or misrepresented. Finally, for the closer study of individual events and the impressions they made at the time of their happening, the daily press can be consulted. For the Bismarck period the biography of Hans Blum is of exceptional value.
What may be termed the anecdotic literature of the Court is particularly rich and trivial, and this is only to be expected in a country where the monarchy and its representative are so forcibly and constantly brought home to the people's consciousness. Yet it has its uses, and is referred to, though sparingly, in the present work. "The Emperor as Father of a Family," "The Emperor and His Daughter's Uniform," "The Amiable Grandfather," "The Emperor as Husband," "The Emperor as Card Player," "How the Emperor's Family is Photographed," "What does the Emperor's Kitchen Look Like," "Adieu, Auguste" ("Auguste" is the Empress), "The English Lord and the Emperor's Cigarettes," "When My Wife Makes You a Sandwich," "What the Emperor Reads," "The Emperor's Handwriting," "Can the Emperor Vote?" (the answer is, opinions differ), "Washing Day at the Emperor's," "The Emperor and the Empress at Tennis," "Emperor and Auto," are the sort of matters dealt with. Literature of this kind is beyond question intensely interesting to vast numbers of people, but helps very little towards understanding a singularly complex human being placed in a high and extraordinarily responsible position.
Strictly speaking, there is no Imperial Court in Germany, since the King of Prussia, in accordance with the Imperial Constitution, always succeeds to the imperial throne, and therefore officially the Court is that of the King of Prussia only. The distinction is emphasized by the fact that the Court is independent of the Empire as regards its administration and finance. It is a state within a state, an _imperium in imperio_. In all that pertains to it the Emperor is absolute ruler and his executive is a special Ministry. At the same time it is almost needless to add that the Court of Berlin is practically that of the Empire. It is this character, apart from Prussia's size and importance, that distinguishes it from other courts in Germany and reduces them to comparative insignificance in foreign, though by no means in German, consideration.
The Court of the Empire and Prussia--and the same thing may be said of the various other courts in Germany--engages popular interest and attention to a much larger extent than is the case in England. The fact is almost wholly due to the nature of the monarchy and of its relations to the people. In England a great portion of the popular attention is concentrated on Parliament and the fortunes of its two great political parties. The attention given to the Court and its doings is not of the same general and permanent character, but is intermittent according to the occasion. The Englishman feels deep and abiding popular interest at all times in Parliament, whether in session or not, because it represents the people and is, in fact, and for hundreds of years has been, the Government.
The reverse may fairly be said to be the case in Germany. In Germany popular attention has been from early times concentrated on the monarch, his personality, sayings and doings, since in his hands lay government power and patronage. Monarchy of a more or less absolute character was accepted by the people, not only in Germany but all over the Continent, as the normal and desirable, perhaps the inevitable, state of things; and it is only since the French Revolution that parliaments after the English pattern, that is by two chambers elected by popular vote, yet in many important respects widely differing from it, were demanded by the people or finally established. Up to comparatively recent times the monarch in Prussia was an absolute ruler. Frederick William IV, after the events of 1848, was compelled to grant Prussia a Constitution which explicitly defined the respective rights of the Crown and the people in the sphere of politics; and the Imperial Constitution, drawn up on the formation of the modern Empire, did the same thing as regards the Emperor and the people of the Empire; but neither Constitution altered the nature of the monarchy in the direction of giving governing power to the people. Both secured the people legislative, but not governing power. Government in the Empire and Prussia remains, as of old, an appanage, so to speak, of the Court, and the fact of course tends to concentrate attention on the Court.
It has been said that the Court is a state within a state, an _imperium in imperio_. In this state, within Prussia or within the Empire, it is the same thing for our purpose, there are two main departments, that of the Lord Chamberlain (_Oberstkammeramt_) and that of the Master of the Household (_Ministerium des Königlichen Hauses_). The first deals with all questions of court etiquette, court ceremonial, court mourning, precedence, superintendence of the courts of the Emperor's sons and near relatives, and of all Prussian court offices. The second deals with the personal affairs of the Emperor and his sons, the domestic administration of the palace, the management of the Crown estates and castles, and is the tribunal that decides all Hohenzollern differences and disputes that are not subject to the ordinary legal tribunals. Connected with this Ministry are the Herald's office and the Court Archives office. The chief Court officials include, beside the Lord Chamberlain and the Master of the Household, a Chief Court Marshal. The Master of the Household is also Chief Master of Ceremonies, with a Deputy Master of Ceremonies who is also Introducer of Ambassadors, two Court Marshals, a Captain of the Palace Guards, a Court Chaplain, Court Physician, an Intendant in charge of the royal theatres, a Master of the Horse who has charge of the royal stables, a House Marshal, and a Master of the Kitchen. All these officials are princes (_Fürst_) or counts (_Graf_), with the title Highness (_Durchlaucht_) or Excellency.
Court officials also include the various nobles in charge of the royal palaces, castles, and hunting lodges at Potsdam, Charlottenburg, Breslau, Stettin, Marienburg, Posen, Letzlingen, Hohkönigsberg, Homberg von der Höhe, Springe, Hubertusstock, Rominten, Korfu (the "Achilleion"), Wiesbaden, Koenigsberg, etc., to the number of thirty or more. The Empress has her own Court officials, including a Mistress of the Robes and Ladies of the Bedchamber, also with the title of Excellency, the Ladies being chosen from the most aristocratic families of Germany. The Empress has her own Master of the Household, physician, treasurer, and so on. Similarly with the households of the Crown Prince, other royal princes and the Emperor's near relatives.
Every order the Emperor gives that is not of a purely domestic kind passes through one of his three cabinets--the Civil Cabinet, the Military Cabinet, or the Marine Cabinet. The cost of the first, with its chief, who receives £1,000 a year, and half a dozen subordinate officials on salaries of £200 to £350, is budgeted at about £10,000 a year. The Military Cabinet is a much larger establishment, having several departments and a staff of half a hundred councillors and clerks. The Naval Cabinet, on the other hand, is composed of only three upper officials and five clerks. The Emperor's "civil list" is returned in the Budget as £860,000 roughly. His entire annual revenue does not exceed £1,000,000. Out of this he has to pay the expenses of his married sons' households and make large contributions to public charities. He was left, however, a very considerable sum of money by the Emperor William. The Crown Prince, as such, receives a grant of £20,000 a year, chiefly derived from the royal domain of Oels in Silesia. Like all fathers of large families, the Emperor has been more than once heard to complain that he finds it difficult to make both ends meet.