German Problems and Personalities

by Charles Sarolea

IV.—A Dynasty of Upstarts.

No dynasts in modern times, not even the Bourbons nor the Habsburgs, have been more obsessed with the pride of race. A double avenue of gaudy statues in Berlin has been erected in the Siegesallee, or Alley of Victory, to illustrate the glories of the House. And Carlyle, in his “History of Frederick the Great,” devotes a whole volume—and a very tedious volume—to the medieval ancestors of the dynasty. The present Kaiser believes himself to be the lineal successor, not only of the Hohenstaufen, but of the Cæsars of Ancient Rome. It was in that spirit that he was graciously pleased recently to dedicate a monument to his predecessor, Emperor Trajan! Trajano Romanorum Imperatori, Wilhelmus Imperator Germanorum! (To Trajan, Emperor of the Romans, William, Emperor of the Germans!)

But all that Hohenstaufen-Hohenzollern genealogy is mythical history. The real history of the Hohenzollern is of recent date, and begins in 1640 with the advent of the Great Elector (1640-1688). Compared with the ancient House of Habsburg or of Bourbon, the Hohenzollern may well be called the “parvenus” of royalty. Until the seventeenth century the Electors of Brandenburg were twice vassals—lieges of the Holy Roman Empire and vassals of the Kings of Poland; and when in 1701 the first Hohenzollern King promoted himself to royal rank and ascended the throne, he made ceaseless and humiliating attempts to secure recognition. The old Houses refused to accept his title, and would not acknowledge the upstart royal “brother.”

But the very fact that the Hohenzollern are the “parvenus” of European royalty has spurred them on to more strenuous endeavours and to still higher ambitions. Their sole endeavour was to raise their position: sich considerable machen, as the Great Elector said in his quaint pidgin German. They were not born to the royal dignity. They had to make it. They were not accepted as Kings. They had to assert themselves and to impose their claims. The good sword of Frederick the Great asserted his claims with such results that, except Napoleon, no ruler ever since has disputed the right of the Hohenzollern to rank amongst the dynasts of Europe.

V.—Prussia as an Upstart State.

Even as the Hohenzollern are an upstart dynasty, so the Prussian State may be called an upstart State. It has not, like France, Great Britain, or Spain, two thousand years of history behind it. Until the end of the Middle Ages Christian civilization was bounded by the Elbe. The Prussian populations were the last in Europe to be converted to Christianity, and recent history has proved only too conclusively that the conversion never struck deep roots. Until the end of the Middle Ages the religious and military Order of the Teutonic Knights had to wage war against the Prussian heathen, and the magnificent ruin of Marienburg, the stately seat of the Teutonic Knights, still testifies to the achievements of the Order. Marienburg is the only historic city of Prussia; Berlin is but a mushroom growth of modern days. Whilst London and Paris go back to the beginning of European history, Berlin only three hundred years ago was a mean village inhabited by Wendish savages.

It cannot be sufficiently emphasized that Prussia is not a nation, but a State, and that State is an entirely artificial creation. France and Great Britain are the slow and natural growths of many centuries. They have definite geographical boundaries, their people have common traditions, common ideals, common affinities. The Prussian State is made up of a heterogeneous mosaic of provinces, the spoils of successive invasions. What hold together the artificial fabric of the Prussian State are only the dynasty, the bureaucracy, and the Army. The bureaucracy and the Army are to Prussia what the Civil Service and the British Army are to the Indian Empire. Suppress the British Army and the Civil Service, and British rule ceases to exist. Suppress the Hohenzollern dynasty, the Prussian bureaucracy, and the Junker Army, and the Prussian structure crumbles to pieces.

Nature has been niggardly to Prussia. Everything has had to be made with the hands of man. Brandenburg, Pomerania, Western and Eastern Prussia are dreary wastes; Berlin is an oasis of brick and stone amidst a Sahara of sand. The provinces of old Prussia have few industrial resources. The very soil had to be made by intensive agricultural methods. The very population had to be imported. Modern Prussia is neither the gift of Nature nor the outcome of history. It is the triumph of human statecraft. It is the achievement of the “will to power.” When that “will to power” relaxes the Prussian State collapses.

VI.—The Prussian State is not a German State.

The modern Holy German Empire is born of the unholy nuptials of the German people with the Prussian State. But the paradox is that the Prussian State, which claims the right to rule the German States, who themselves assert their right to rule over Europe, cannot even pretend to be German. The contrast between the German and the Prussian has often been pointed out.