German People Not Blinded
By Karl Lamprecht
[Published in New York by the German Information Service, Feb. 3, 1915.]
Denying flatly that the German people were swept blindly and ignorantly into the war by the headlong ambitions of their rulers—the view advanced by Dr. Charles W. Eliot, President Emeritus of Harvard University, and Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia—Dr. Karl Lamprecht, Professor of History in the University of Leipsic and world-famous German historian, has addressed the open letter which appears below to the two distinguished American scholars. Dr. Lamprecht asserts that under the laws which govern the German Empire the people as citizens have a deciding will in affairs of state and that Germany is engaged in the present conflict because the sober judgment of the German people led them to resort to arms.
Dr. C.W. Eliot, President Emeritus of Harvard University; Dr. N.M. Butler, President of Columbia University.
Gentlemen: I feel confident that you are not in ignorance of my regard and esteem for the great American Republic and its citizens. They have been freely expressed on many occasions and have taken definite form in the journal of my travels through the United States, published in the booklet "Americana," 1905.
My sentiments and my judgment have not changed since 1905. I now refer, gentlemen, to the articles and speeches which you have published about my country and which have aroused widespread interest. I will not criticise your utterances one by one. If I did that I might have to speak on occasion with a frankness that would be ungracious, considering the fine appreciation which both of you still feel for old Germany. It would be specially ungracious toward you, President Eliot, for in quite recent times you honored me by your ready help in my scientific labors. All I want to do is to remove a few fundamental errors—in fact, only one. I feel in duty bound to do so, since many well-disposed Americans share that error.
The gravest and perhaps most widely spread misconception about us Germans is that we are the serfs of our Princes. (Fuerstenknechte,) servile and dependent in political thought. That false notion has probably been dispelled during the initial weeks of the present war.
With absolute certainty the German Nation, with one voice and correctly, diagnosed the political situation without respect to party or creed and unanimously and of its own free will acted.
But this misconception is so deep rooted that more extended discussion is needed. I pass on to other matters.
The essential point is that public opinion have free scope of development. Every American will admit that. Now, public opinion finds its expression in the principles that govern the use of the suffrage. The German voting system is the freest in the world, much freer than the French, English, or American system, because not only does it operate in accordance with the principle that every one shall have a direct and secret vote, but the powers of the State are exercised faithfully and conscientiously to carry out that principle in practice. The constitutional life of the German Nation is of a thoroughly democratic character.
Those who know that were not surprised that our Social Democrats marched to war with such enthusiasm. Already among their ranks many have fallen as heroes, never to be forgotten by any German when his thoughts turn to the noble blood which has saturated foreign soil—thank God, foreign soil! Many of the Socialist leaders and adherents are wearing the Iron Cross, that simple token that seems to tell you when you speak of its bearer, "Now, this is a fearless and faithful soul."
Let it be said once and for all: He who wants to understand us must accept our conception that constitutionally we enjoy so great a political freedom that we would not change with any country in the world. Everybody in America knows that our manners and customs have been democratic for centuries, while in France and England they have been ever aristocratic. Americans, we know, always feel at home on German soil.
But the Kaiser, you will say, speaks of "his monarchy," therefore must the Germans be Fuerstenknechte, (servants of Princes.)
First of all, as to the phrase "Fuerstenknechte." Does not the King of England speak of his "subjects"? That word irritates a German, because he is conscious that he is not a subject, but a citizen of the empire. Yet he will not infer from the English King's use of the term in formal utterances that an Englishman is a churl, a "servant of his King." That would be a superficial political conception.
As to our Princes, most of us, including the Social Democrats, are glad in our heart of hearts that we have them. As far back as our history runs, and that is more than 2,000 years, we have had Princes. They have never been more than their name, "Fuerst," implies, the first and foremost of German freemen, "primi inter pares." Therefore they have never acted independently, never without taking the people into counsel. That would have been contrary to the most important fundamental principles of German law; hence our people have never been "de jure" without their representatives. Even in the times of absolute monarchy the old "estates of the realm" had their being as a representative body, and wherever and whenever these privileges were suppressed it was regarded as a violation of our fundamental rights and is so still regarded.
Our princely houses are as old as our monasteries, our cities, and our cathedrals. A thousand years ago the Guelphs were a celebrated family, and the Wettins have ruled over their lands for eight centuries. In the twelfth century the Wittelsbachs and Thuringians were Princes under the great Kaisers of the Hohenstaufen dynasty. Among these great families the Hapsburgs (thirteenth century) and the Hohenzollerns (fifteenth century) are quite young. All have their roots in Germany and belong to the country.
We glory in our Princes. They link our existence with the earliest centuries of our history. They preserve for us the priceless independence of our small home States.
We are accused of militarism. What is this new and terrible crime? Since the years of the wars of liberation against France and Napoleon we have had what amounts practically to universal conscription. Only two generations later universal suffrage was introduced. The nation has been sternly trained by its history in the ways of discipline and self-restraint. Germans are very far from mistaking freedom for license and independence for licentiousness.
Germany has a long past. She enjoys the inheritance of an original and priceless civilization. She holds clearly formulated ideals. To the future she has all this to bequeath and, in addition, the intellectual wealth of her present stage of development. Consider Germany's contributions to the arts, the poetical achievements of the period of Schiller and Goethe, the music of Handel, Bach, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven; the thought systems of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel!
The last decade has reawakened these great men in the consciousness of the German Nation. Enriched by the consciousness and message of an intellectual past, our people were moving forward to new horizons.
At that moment the war hit us. If you could only have lived these weeks in Germany I do not doubt that what you would have seen would have led your ripe experience to a fervent faith in a Divinely guided future of mankind. The great spiritual movement of 1870, when I was a boy growing up, was but a phantom compared to July and August of 1914. Germany was a nation stirred by the most sacred emotions, humble and strong, filled with just wrath and a firm determination to conquer—a nation disciplined, faithful, and loving.
In that disposition we have gone to war and still fight. As for the slanders of which we have been the victims, ask the thousands of Frenchmen who housed German soldiers in 1870 and 1871, or ask the Belgians of Ghent and Bruges! They will give you a different picture of the "Furor Teutonicus." They will tell you that the "raging German" generally is a good-natured fellow, ever ready for service and sympathy, who, like Parsifal, gazes forth eagerly into a strange world which the war has opened to his loyal and patriotic vision.
KARL LAMPRECHT.