The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X | Page 5

place nearest to the monarch himself; and not even his enemies
dared to assert that his political conduct was guided by other motives
than the consideration of public welfare. Indeed, if there is any phrase
for which he, the apparent cynic, the sworn despiser of phrases, seems
to have had a certain weakness, it is the word salus publica. To it he
sacrificed his days and his nights; for it he more than once risked his
life; for it he incurred more hatred and slander than perhaps any man of
his time; for it he alienated his best friends; for it he turned not once or
twice, but one might almost say habitually, against his own cherished
prejudices and convictions. The career of few men shows so many
apparent inconsistencies and contrasts. One of his earliest speeches in
the Prussian Landtag was a fervent protest against the introduction of
civil marriage; yet the civil marriage clause in the German constitution
is his work. He was by birth and tradition a believer in the divine right
of kings; yet the King of Hanover could tell something of the manner in

which Bismarck dealt with the divine right of kings if it stood in the
way of German unity. He took pride in belonging to the most feudal
aristocracy of western Europe, the Prussian Junkerdom; yet he did more
to uproot feudal privileges than any other German statesman since 1848.
He gloried in defying public opinion, and was wont to say that he felt
doubtful about himself whenever he met with popular applause; yet he
is the founder of the German Parliament, and he founded it on direct
and universal suffrage. He was the sworn enemy of the Socialist
party--he attempted to destroy it, root and branch; yet through the
nationalization of railways and the obligatory insurance of workmen he
infused more Socialism into German legislation than any other
statesman before him.
Truly, a man who could thus sacrifice his own wishes and instincts to
the common good; who could so completely sink his own personality
in the cause of the nation; who with such matchless courage defended
this cause against attacks from whatever quarter--against court intrigue
no less than against demagogues--such a man had a right to stand above
parties; and he spoke the truth when, some years before leaving office,
in a moment of gloom and disappointment he wrote under his portrait,
Patrice inserviendo consumor.
III
There is a strange, but after all perfectly natural, antithesis in German
national character. The same people that instinctively believes in
political paternalism, that willingly submits to restrictions of personal
liberty in matters of State such as no Englishman would ever tolerate, is
more jealous of its independence than perhaps any other nation in
matters pertaining to the intellectual, social, and religious life of the
individual. It seems as if the very pressure from without had helped to
strengthen and enrich the life within.
Not only all the great men of German thought, from Luther down to the
Grimms and the Humboldts, have been conspicuous for their freedom
from artificial conventions and for the originality and homeliness of
their human intercourse; but even the average German official--wedded
as he may be to his rank or his title, anxious as he may be to preserve
an outward decorum in exact keeping with the precise shade of his
public status--is often the most delightfully unconventional,
good-natured, unsophisticated, and even erratic being in the world, as

soon as he has left the cares of his office behind him. Germany is the
classic land of queer people. It is the land of Quintus Fixlein, Onkel
Bräsig, Leberecht Hühnchen, and the host of Fliegende Blatter
worthies; it is the land of the beer-garden and the Kaffeekranzchen, of
the Christmas-tree and the Whitsuntide merry-making; it is the land of
country inns and of student pranks. What more need be said to bring
before one's mind the wealth of hearty joyfulness, jolly
good-fellowship, boisterous frolic, sturdy humor, simple directness,
and genuinely democratic feeling that characterizes social life in
Germany.
And still less reason is there for dwelling on the intellectual and
religious independence of German character. Absence of constraint in
scientific inquiry and religious conduct is indeed the very palladium of
German freedom. Nowhere is higher education so entirely removed
from class distinction as in the country where the imperial princes are
sent to the same school with the sons of tradesmen and artisans.
Nowhere is there so little religious formalism, coupled with such deep
religious feeling, as in the country where sermons are preached to
empty benches, while Tannhauser and _Lohengrin, Wallenstein_ and
Faust, are listened to with the hush of awe and bated breath by
thousands upon thousands.
In all these respects--socially, intellectually, religiously--Bismarck was
the very incarnation of German character.