Chancellors Of Germany

"I will further every endeavour which positively aims at improving the condition of the working classes. ... As soon as a positive proposal came from the Socialists for fashioning the future in a sensible way, in order that the lot of the working-man might be improved, I would not at any rate refuse to examine it favourably, and I would not even shrink from the idea of State help for the people who would help themselves."

"I leave undecided the question whether complete mutual freedom of international commerce, such as is contemplated by the theory of Free Trade, would not serve the interests of Germany. But as long as most of the countries with which our trade is carried on surround themselves with customs barriers...it does not seem to me justifiable, or to the economic interest of the nation, that we should allow ourselves to be restricted in the satisfaction of our financial wants by the apprehension that German products will thereby be slightly preferred to foreign ones. ... The minority of the population, which does not produce at all, but exclusively consumes, will apparently be injured by a customs system favouring the entire national production. Yet if by means of such a system the aggregate sum of the values produced in the country increase, and thus the national wealth be on the whole enhanced, the non-producing parts of the population...will eventually be benefited."

"In all these questions [of economics] I pay as little regard to science as I do in any other judgment of organic institutions. Our surgery has made splendid progress during the last two thousand years; but medical science has made no progress in regard to the internal conditions of the body, into which the human eye cannot see, and here we stand face to face with the same riddles as before. So it is with the organic formation of States. In this respect the abstract doctrines of science do not influence me: I judge according to the experience which we have. I see that the countries which protect themselves prosper, that the countries which are open are declining, and that great and powerful England, that strong combatant, who, after strengthening her muscles, entered the market and said: “Who will contest with me? I am ready for any one,” is gradually going back to protective duties, and will in a few years adopt them so far as is necessary to preserving at least the English market."

"Let us close our doors and erect somewhat higher barriers and let us thus take care to preserve at least the German market to German industry. The chances of a large export trade are nowadays exceedingly precarious. There are now no more great countries to discover. The globe is circumnavigated, and we can no longer find any large purchasing nations. Commercial treaties, it is true, are under certain circumstances favourable to foreign trade; but whenever a treaty is concluded, it is a question of Qui trompe-t-on ici?—who is taken in? As a rule one of the parties is, but only after a number of years is it known which one."

"Der alte Jude, das ist der Mann."

"For me there has been but one compass, one pole-star, after which I have steered: Salus publica. Since I entered public life I have often, perhaps, acted rashly and imprudently. But when I have had time for reflection I have always been guided by the question,—what is most beneficial, most expedient, and proper for my dynasty so long as I was only in Prussia, and nowadays for the German nation? I have never in my life been doctrinaire. All systems by which parties are divided and bound together are of secondary moment to me. My first thought is of the nation, its position abroad, its independence, our organisation in such a way that we may breathe freely in the world."

"In the development of our tariff I am determined to oppose any modification in the direction of Free Trade, and to use my influence in favour of greater protection and of a higher revenue from frontier duties."

"I do not comprehend with what right we acknowledge the commands of Christianity as binding upon our private dealings, and yet in the most important sphere of our duty—participation in the legislation of a country having a population of forty-five million people—push them into the background and say, here we need not trouble. For my part I confess openly that my belief in the consequence of our revealed religion, in the form of moral law, is sufficient for me, and certainly for the position taken up on this question by the Emperor, and that the question of the Christian or non-Christian State has nothing to do with the matter. I, the minister of the State, am a Christian, and as such I am determined to act as I believe I am justified before God."

"Many measures which we have adopted to the great blessing of the country are Socialistic, and the State will have to accustom itself to a little more Socialism yet. ... I am glad that this Socialism was adopted, for we have as a consequence secured a free and very well-to-do peasantry, and I hope that we shall in time do something of the sort for the labouring classes. ... The establishment of the freedom of the peasantry was Socialistic; Socialistic, too, is every expropriation in favour of railways; Socialistic to the utmost extent is the aggregation of estates—the law exists in many provinces—taking from one and giving to another, simply because this other can cultivate the land more conveniently; Socialistic is expropriation under the Water Legislation, on account of irrigation, etc., where a man's land is taken away from him because another can farm it better; Socialistic is our entire poor relief, compulsory school attendance, compulsory construction of roads, so that I am bound to maintain a road upon my lands for travellers. That is all Socialistic, and I could extend the register further; but if you believe that you can frighten any one or call up spectres with the word “Socialism,” you take a standpoint which I abandoned long ago, and the abandonment of which is absolutely necessary for our entire imperial legislation."

"I am not antagonistic to the rightful claims of capital; I am far from wanting to flourish a hostile flag; but I am of opinion that the masses, too, have rights which should be considered."

"The whole matter centres in the question, Is it the duty of the State, or is it not, to provide for its helpless citizens? I maintain that it is its duty, that it is the duty not only of the “Christian State,” as I ventured once to call it when speaking of “practical Christianity,” but of every State. It would be foolish for a corporation to undertake matters which the individual can attend to alone; and similarly the purposes which the parish can fulfil with justice and with advantage are left to the parish. But there are purposes which only the State as a whole can fulfil. To these belong national defence, the general system of communications, and, indeed, everything spoken of in article 4 of the constitution. To these, too, belong the help of the necessitous and the removal of those just complaints which provide Social Democracy with really effective material for agitation. This is a duty of the State, a duty which the State cannot permanently disregard."

"If an establishment employing twenty thousand or more workpeople were to be ruined...we could not allow these men to hunger. We should have to resort to real State Socialism and find work for them, and this is what we do in every case of distress. If the objection were right that we should shun State Socialism as we would an infectious disease, how do we come to organise works in one province and another in case of distress—works which we should not undertake if the labourers had employment and wages? In such cases we build railways whose profitableness is questionable; we carry out improvements which otherwise would be left to private initiative. If that is Communism, I have no objection at all to it; though with such catchwords we really get no further."

"Give the working-man the right to work as long as he is healthy, assure him care when he is sick; assure him maintenance when he is old. If you do that, and do not fear the sacrifice, or cry out at State Socialism directly the words “provision for old age” are uttered,—if the State will show a little more Christian solicitude for the working-man, then I believe that the gentlemen of the Wyden (Social-Democratic) programme will sound their bird-call in vain, and that the thronging to them will cease as soon as working-men see that the Government and legislative bodies are earnestly concerned for their welfare."

"Peasants and large landed proprietors recognise more and more that they form one and the same class, the class of land-owners, and follow one and the same industry of agriculture. ... The land-owners are, on the whole, a support of the monarchy, and their entire disposition is favourable to the existing Government; and you try to sow discord amongst them because you are displeased that the unification is proceeding gradually and unceasingly. This is the salutary effect of legislation which at first was painfully felt by many of the privileged class: the abolition of all the legal and axiomatic prerogatives of the greatest land proprietors, and especially of the earlier knighthood. We larger land-owners are in our industry to-day nothing more than the largest peasants, and the peasant is nothing more than the smaller land-owner. Indeed, most peasants call themselves land-owners, while some call themselves husbandmen and others countrymen."

"Wir Deutsche fürchten Gott, aber sonst nichts in der Welt - und die Gottesfurcht ist es schon, die uns den Frieden lieben und pflegen lässt."

"Your map of Africa is really quite nice. But my map of Africa lies in Europe. Here is Russia, and here... is France, and we're in the middle — that's my map of Africa."

"The German who is still free from all Slav or Celtic alloy has a distinctive character and vies with all his equals. When he is allied with other races, provided he has the necessary patience and endurance he always succeeds in becoming, the chief, the directing will, as the husband must be in a household. I have no desire to offend the Slavs, but it is very necessary to recognise that their character has much of the feminine in it: they have charm, intelligence, artifice, address, and often the Germans appear heavy and clumsy beside them. But we always carry the day, and that is why I would like to say to you: when you are doing business with your Slav rivals, even at moments of the most violent anger and in the most critical situations, always retain the profound conviction, the most profound but secret conviction, that you are fundamentally their superiors, and that you always will be so."

"The interests of the state alone have guided me, and it has been a calumny when publicists, even well-meaning, have accused me of having ever advocated an aristocratic system. I have never regarded birth as a substitute for want of ability; whenever I have come forward on behalf of landed property, it has not been in the interests of proprietors of my own class, but because I see in the decline of agriculture one of the greatest dangers to our permanence as a state. The ideal that has always floated before me has been a monarchy which should be so far controlled by an independent national representation—according to my notion, representing classes or callings—that monarch or parliament would not be able to alter the existing statutory position before the law separately but only communi consensu; with publicity, and public criticism, by press and Diet, of all political proceedings."

"I received the first intelligence of the events of March 18 and 19, 1848, while staying with my neighbour, Count Wartensleben, at Karow. ... I thought the King would soon be master of the situation if only he were free; I saw that the first thing to be done was to liberate him, as he was said to be in the power of the insurgents. On the 20th I was told by the peasants at Schönhausen that a deputation had arrived from Tangermünde with a demand that the black, red, and gold flag should be hoisted on the tower, as had already been done in the above-named town; threatening, in case of refusal, to visit us again with reinforcements. I asked the peasants if they were willing to defend themselves. They replied with a unanimous and brisk “Yes,” and I advised them to drive the townspeople out of the village; which was attended to, the women zealously co-operating. I then had a white banner with a black cross in the shape of the , which happened to be in the church, hoisted on the tower, and ascertained what supply of weapons and ammunition was available in the village."

"I went the round of the villages and found the peasants already eager to march to the help of the King in Berlin. Especially enthusiastic was an old dyke-surveyor named Krause of Neuermark, who had been a sergeant in my father's regiment of carabineers. Only my next-door neighbour sympathised with the Berlin movement, accused me of hurling a firebrand into the country, and declared that if the peasants really prepared to march off, he would come forward and dissuade them. I replied, “You know that I am a quiet man, but if you do that I shall shoot you.” “I am sure you won't,” said he. “I give you my word of honour that I will,” I replied, “and you know that I keep my word: so drop that.”"

"I immediately went quite alone to Potsdam, where, in the railway station, I saw Herr von Bodelschwingh. ... It was plain that he had no desire to be seen in conversation with me, the reactionary. He returned my greeting in French, with the words, “Do not speak to me.” “The peasants are rising in our part,” I replied. “For the King?” “Yes.” “That rope-dancer!” said he, pressing his hands to his eyes while the tears stood in them. ... I [then] visited in the ‘Deutsches Haus’ General von Mollendorf, whom I found still stiff from the treatment he had suffered when negotiating with the insurgents, and General von Prittwitz, who had been in command in Berlin. I described to them the present temper of the country people. ... Prittwitz, who was older than I, and judged more calmly, said: “Send us none of your peasants, we don't want them. We have quite enough soldiers. Either send us potatoes and corn, perhaps money too, for I do not know whether the maintenance and pay of the troops will be sufficiently provided for. If auxiliaries came up I should receive, and should have to carry out, an order from Berlin to drive them back.” “Then fetch the King away,” I said. He replied: “There will be no great difficulty about that; I am strong enough to take Berlin, but that means more fighting. What can we do after the King has commanded us to play the part of the vanquished? I cannot attack without orders.”"

"It was not then possible to forecast with certainty whether and how long the Czar's friendship would remain a realisable political asset. In any case, however, simple common sense enjoined us not to let it fall into the possession of our enemies, whom we might discern in the Poles, the philo-Polish Russians, and, ultimately, probably in the French."

"An agreement between Russia and the German foe of for joint action, military and political, against the Polish ‘Bruderstamm’ movement was a decisive blow to the views of the philo-Polish party at the Russian court. ... The convention said ‘checkmate’ in the game which anti-Polish monarchism was then playing against philo-Polish Panslavism within the Russian cabinet."

"Even in 1864 it certainly cost us much trouble to loosen the threads by which the King, with the co-operation of the Liberalising influence of his consort, remained attached to that camp. Without having investigated the complicated legal questions of the succession, he stuck to his motto: “I have no right to Holstein.” ... At that time, however, the acquisition of the duchies by Prussia was regarded as an act of profligacy by all those who, since 1848, had set up to play the part of representatives of national views. My respect for so-called public opinion—or, in other words, the clamour of orators and newspapers—has never been very great, but was still further materially lowered as regards foreign policy in the two cases compared above. How strangely, up to this time, the King's way of looking at things was impregnated with vagabond Liberalism through the influence of his consort and of the pushing Bethmann-Hollweg clique."

"A decision, memorable in the world's history, of the secular struggle between the two neighbouring peoples [France and Germany] was at stake [in 1870], and in danger of being ruined, through personal and predominantly female influences with no historical justification, influences which owed their efficacy, not to political considerations but to feelings which the terms humanity and civilisation, imported to us from England, still rouse in German natures. ... [I]f the conclusion of the French war had been a little less favourable to Germany, then would this mighty war, with its victories and its enthusiasm, have remained without the effect it produced on our national unification. I never doubted that the victory over France must precede the restoration of the German kingdom, and if we did not succeed in bringing it this time to a perfect conclusion, further wars without the preliminary security of our perfect unification were full in view."

"Austria was no more in the wrong in opposing our claims than we were in making them."

"A statesman cannot create anything himself. He must wait and listen until he hears the steps of God sounding through events; then leap up and grasp the hem of His garment."

"I have always found the word Europe on the lips of those politicians who wanted something from other Powers which they dared not demand in their own names."

"Struggle is everywhere, without struggle no life, and if we want to go on living, we must be ready for further struggles."

"I have never judged international disputes by the standards which prevail at a student's duel."

"In the domain of political economy the abstract doctrines of science leave me perfectly cold, my only standard of judgment being experience."

"If we really came to a position in which we could no longer produce the grain which we must necessarily consume, then in what state would we be if in wartime we had no Russian grain imports and perhaps simultaneously were blockaded along our coasts – in other words, if we had no grain at all?"

"Concerning the blunders which had been made in our foreign policy public opinion is, as a rule, first enlightened when it is in a position to look back upon the history of a generation, and the Achivi qui plectuntur are not always immediately contemporary with the mistaken actions."

"Every state must be aware that its peace, its security rests on its own sword."

"Who is master of Bohemia is master of Europe."

"Crowned heads, wealth and privilege may well tremble should ever again the Black and Red unite!"

"Europe today is a powder keg and the leaders are like men smoking in an arsenal … A single spark will set off an explosion that will consume us all … I cannot tell you when that explosion will occur, but I can tell you where … Some damned foolish thing in the Balkans will set it off."

"There is a special providence for drunkards, fools, and the United States of America."

"Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made (Gesetze sind wie Würste, man sollte besser nicht dabei sein, wenn sie gemacht werden)."

"At no time there is more lying than before the elections, during the war and after the hunt. (Original: "Es wird niemals so viel gelogen wie vor der Wahl, während des Krieges und nach der Jagd.")"

"I am firmly convinced that Spain is the strongest country of the world. Century after century trying to destroy herself and still no success"

"Put all the Dutch people in Ireland, and Ireland would be the garden of Europe. Put all the Irish people in the Netherlands, and it would sink."

"Mr Balfour was very interesting on what he considers the great gulf between Bismarck and the present rulers of Germany, not only in strategy but ambition. Bismarck, he is certain, would never have staked his country on the chances of this war—even though they may have been five to four at the outset—and in his opinion Bismarck would never have hankered after "world empire". All he wanted was the unity of the German Empire and commercial prosperity which they were peacefully enjoying before this desperate sort of "double or quits" gamble."

"When asked what was the greatest political fact of modern times, Bismarck is reported to have responded, that it was "the inherited and permanent fact that North America speaks English." Whether the saying be authentic or not, the remark is certainly worthy of its reputed author's keen insight into political fundamentals."

"The great European figures of the later nineteenth century were Disraeli and Bismarck, who strove to weld together the "two nations" into one through the agencies of the social service state, popular education and imperialism, refuted the taunt that "the worker has no country", and paved the way for "national labour", "national socialism" and even "national communism"."

"Bismarck soars above all: he is six foot four I shd. think, proportionately stout; with a sweet and gentle voice, and with a peculiarly refined enunciation, wh. singularly and strangely contrasts with the awful things he says: appalling from their frankness and their audacity. He is a complete despot here, and from the highest to the lowest of the Prussians, and all the permanent foreign diplomacy, tremble at his frown and court most sedulously his smile. He loads me with kindnesses, and, tho' often preoccupied, with an immediate dissolution of Parliament on his hands, an internecine war with the Socialists, 100's of whom he puts daily into prison in defiance of all law, he yesterday exacted from me a promise that, before I depart, I will once more dine with him quite alone. His palace has large and beautiful gardens. He has never been out since I came here, except the memorable day when he called on me to ascertain whe[the]r my policy was an ultimatum. I convinced him it was, and the Russians surrendered a few hours afterwards."

"He asked me today whether racing was still much encouraged in England. I replied never more so; that when I was young, tho' there were numerous race meetings, they were at intervals and sometimes long intervals—Epsom, Ascot, Doncaster, Goodwood—and Newmarket frequently; but now there were races throughout the year—it might be said, every day of the year—and all much attended. "Then," cried the Prince eagerly, "there never will be Socialism in England. You are a happy country. You are safe, as long as the people are devoted to racing. Here a gentleman cannot ride down the street without twenty persons saying to themselves, or each other, 'Why has that fellow a horse, and I have not one?' In England the more horses a nobleman has, the more popular he is. So long as the English are devoted to racing, Socialism has no chance with you." This will give you a slight idea of the style of his conversation. His views on all subjects are original, but there is no strain, no effort at paradox. He talks as Montaigne writes. When he heard about Cyprus, he said: "You have done a wise thing. This is progress. It will be popular; a nation likes progress." His idea of progress was evidently seizing something. He said he looked upon our relinquishment of the Ionian Isles as the first sign of our decadence. Cyprus put us all right again."

"Is it wrong to begin with Bismarck? On several levels, he was a key figure in the coming of the Third Reich. For one thing, the cult of his memory in the years after his death encouraged many Germans to long for the return of the strong leadership his name represented. For another, his actions and policies in the mid-to-late nineteenth century helped create an ominous legacy for the German future. Yet in many ways he was a complex and contradictory figure, as much European as German, as much modern as traditional. Here, too, his example pointed forwards to the tangled mixture of the new and the old that was so characteristic of the Third Reich. It is worth calling to mind that a mere fifty years separated Bismarck's foundation of the German Empire in 1871 from the electoral triumphs of the Nazis in 1930-32. That there was a connection between the two seems impossible to deny. It was here, rather than in the remote religious cultures and hierarchical polities of the Reformation or the 'Enlightened Absolutism' of the eighteenth century, that we find the first real moment in German history which it is possible to relate directly to the coming of the Third Reich in 1933."

"The great statesman has always used tariffs deliberately. It is only when political energy is dead that people refer to them as expedients. Bismarck understood the subject at a time when the mind of the Englishman was becoming confused. Like all statesmen he asked himself first where he was going, and secondly what was his object in arriving. He knew that trade could be raised to any state of artificiality if it could be controlled within a self-sufficient unit. Although he did not possess such a unit he was not frustrated, and counted on an armed conquest at some future date... In 1834 he used Free Trade to unify Germany by the Zollverein. The same policy used Protection to encourage intensively the larger unit of the Nation. Here was an example of the use of each system according to the end in view and proof of the subservience of economics to the politic will."

"Otto von Bismarck was no social reformer in the Frances Perkins mold. His motives were defensive. He feared that the public would turn to the revolutionary ideas of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels unless the German government intervened. Bismarck hoped his welfare provisions would be just generous enough to keep the public quiescent. That is a time-honored political tactic: when the Roman emperor Trajan distributed free grain, the poet Juvenal famously grumbled that citizens could be bought off by “bread and circuses.” You could tell much the same story about Italy’s welfare state, which took shape in the 1930s as the fascist Mussolini tried to undercut the popular appeal of his socialist opponents."