The Governments of Europe

by Frederic Austin Ogg

I. The German States and their Governments

261. Variations of Type.—Within the bounds of Germany to-day there are twenty-five states and one Imperial territory with certain attributes of statehood, Alsace-Lorraine. During the larger portion of the nineteenth century each of these states (and of the several which no longer exist) was possessed of substantial sovereignty, and each maintained its own arrangements, respecting governmental forms and procedure. Under the leadership of Prussia, as has been pointed out, the loose Confederation of 1815 was transformed, during the years 1866-1871, into an Imperial union, federal but yet vigorous and indestructible, and to the constituted authorities of this Empire was intrusted an enormous aggregate of governmental powers. The powers conferred were, however, not wholly abstracted from the original prerogatives of the individual states. In a very appreciable measure they were powers, rather, of a supplementary character, by virtue of which the newly created central government was enabled to do, on a broadly national scale, what, in the lack of any such central government, there would have been neither means of doing, nor occasion for doing, at all. Only at certain points, as, for example, in respect to the levying of customs duties and of taxes, was the original independence of the individual state seriously impaired by the terms of the new arrangement.

The consequence is that, speaking broadly, each of the German states maintains to this day a government which is essentially complete within itself. No one of these governments covers quite all of the ground which falls within the range of jurisdiction of a sovereign state; each is cut into at various points by the superior authority of the Empire; but each is sufficiently ample to be capable of continuing to run, were all of the other governments of Germany instantly to be blotted out.[357] Of the twenty-five state governments, three—those of the free cities of Bremen, Hamburg, and Lübeck—are aristocratic republics; all the others are monarchies. Among the monarchies there are four kingdoms: Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, and Württemberg; six grand-duchies: Baden, Hesse, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Oldenburg, and Saxe-Weimar; five duchies: Anhalt, Brunswick, Saxe-Altenburg, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, and Saxe-Meiningen; and seven principalities: Lippe, Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, Schwarzburg-Sonderhausen, Schaumburg-Lippe, Reuss Älterer Linie, Reuss Jüngerer Linie, and Waldeck-Pyrmont.

262. The Preponderance of Prussia.—From whatever angle one approaches German public affairs, the fact that stands out with greatest distinctness is the preponderant position occupied by the kingdom of Prussia. How it was that Prussia became the virtual creator of the Empire, and how it is that Prussia so dominates the Imperial government that that government and the Prussian are at times all but inextricable, has already been pointed out.[358] Wholly apart from the sheer physical fact that 134,616 square miles of Germany's 208,780, and 40,163,333 people of the Empire's 64,903,423, are Prussian, the very conditions under which the Imperial organization of the present day came into being predetermined that Prussia and things Prussian should enjoy unfailing pre-eminence in all that pertains to German government and politics. Both because they are extended immediately over a country almost two-thirds as large as France, and because of their peculiar relation to the political system of the Empire, the institutions of Prussia call for somewhat detailed consideration.

II. The Rise of Constitutionalism in Prussia

263. Regeneration in the Napoleonic Period.—By reason of the vacillating policies of her sovereign, Frederick William III., the successive defeats of her armies at Jena, Auerstädt, and elsewhere, and the loss, by the treaty of Tilsit in 1807, of half of her territory, Prussia realized from the first decade of the Napoleonic period little save humiliation and disaster. Through the years 1807-1815, however, her lot was wonderfully improved. Upon the failure of the Russian expedition of Napoleon in 1812, Frederick William shook off his apprehensions and allied himself openly with the sovereigns of Russia and Austria. The people rose en masse, and in the titanic struggle which ensued Prussia played a part scarcely second in importance to that of any other power. At the end she was rewarded, through the agency of the Congress of Vienna, by being assigned the northern portion of Saxony, Swedish Pomerania, her old possessions west of the Elbe, the duchies of Berg and Julich, and a number of other districts in Westphalia and on the Rhine. Her area in 1815 was 108,000 square miles, as compared with 122,000 at the beginning of 1806; but her loss of territory was more than compensated by the substitution that had been made of German lands for Slavic.[359] The homogeneity of her population was thereby increased, her essentially Germanic character emphasized, and her capacity for German leadership enhanced.

It was not merely in respect to territory and population that the Prussia of 1815 was different from the Prussia of a decade earlier. Consequent upon the humiliating disasters of 1806 there set in a moral regeneration by which there was wrought one of the speediest and one of the most thoroughgoing national transformations recorded in history. In 1807 Frederick William's statesmanlike minister Stein accomplished the abolition of serfdom and of all legal distinctions which separated the various classes of society.[360] In 1808 he reformed the municipalities and gave them important powers of self-government. By a series of sweeping measures he reconstructed the ministerial departments, the governments of the provinces, and the local administrative machinery, with the result of creating an executive system which has required but little modification to the present day. In numerous directions, especially in relation to economic conditions, the work of Stein was continued by that of the succeeding minister, Prince Hardenberg. By Scharnhorst and Gneisenau the military régime was overhauled and a body of spiritless soldiery kept in order by fear was converted into "a union of all the moral and physical energies of the nation." By Wilhelm von Humboldt the modern Prussian school system was created; while by Fichte, Arndt, and a galaxy of other writers there was imparted a stimulus by which the patriotism and aspiration of the Prussian people were raised to an unprecedented pitch.[361]

264. Obstacles to the Establishment of a Constitution.—Such an epoch of regeneration could not fail to be a favorable period for the growth of liberal principles of government. In June, 1814, and again in May, 1815, King Frederick William promised, through the medium of a cabinet order, to give consideration to the question of the establishment of a constitution in which provision should be made not merely for the estates of the provinces but also for a national diet. After the Congress of Vienna the task of framing such a constitution was actually taken in hand. But the time was not ripe. Liberalism had gained headway as yet among only the professional classes, while the highly influential body of ultra-conservative landholders were unalterably opposed. Between the eastern provinces, still essentially feudal in spirit, and the western ones, visibly affected by French revolutionary ideas, there was, furthermore, meager community of interest. So keen was the particularistic spirit that not infrequently the various provinces of the kingdom were referred to in contemporary documents as "nations." Among these provinces some retained the system of estates which had prevailed throughout Germany since the Middle Ages, but in some of those which had fallen under the control of Napoleon the estates had been abolished, and in others they were in abeyance. In a few they had never existed. Votes were taken in the assemblages of the estates by orders, not by individuals, and the function of the bodies rarely extended beyond the approving of projects of taxation. Within the provinces there existed no sub-structure of popular institutions capable of being made the basis of a national parliamentary system.

Notwithstanding these deterring circumstances, it is not improbable that some sort of constitution might have been established but for the excesses of the more zealous Liberals, culminating in the murder of the dramatist Kotzebue in 1819, whereby the king was thrown into an attitude, first of apprehension, and finally of uncompromising reaction. By assuming joint responsibility for the Carlsbad Decrees of October 17, 1819, he surrendered completely to the régime of "stability" which all the while had been urged upon him by Metternich. June 11, 1821, he summoned a commission to organize a system of provincial estates;[362] but at the same time the project of a national constitution and a national diet was definitely abandoned. Under repression Prussian liberalism languished, and throughout the remainder of the reign, i.e., to 1840, the issue of constitutionalism was not frequently raised. In Prussia, as in Austria, the widespread revolutionary demonstrations of 1830 elicited little response.

265. The Diet of 1847.—Upon the accession of Frederick William IV., son of Frederick William III., in 1840, the hopes of the Liberals were revived. The new sovereign was believed to be a man of advanced ideas. To a degree he was such, as was manifested by his speedy reversal of his father's narrow ecclesiastical policy, and by other enlightened acts. But time demonstrated that his liberalism was not without certain very definite limits. February 13, 1847, he went so far as to summon a Vereinigter Landtag, or "united diet," of Prussia, comprising all members of the existing eight provincial assemblies, and organized in two chambers—a house of lords and a house containing the three estates of the knights, burghers, and peasants. But the issue was unhappy. As Metternich had predicted, the meeting of the Diet but afforded opportunity for a forceful reassertion of constitutional aspirations, and the assemblage refused to sanction loans upon which the sovereign was bent until its representative character should have been more completely recognized. The king, on his part, declared he would never allow "to come between Almighty God in heaven and this land a blotted parchment, to rule us with paragraphs, and to replace the ancient, sacred bond of loyalty." The deadlock was absolute, and, June 26, the Diet was dissolved.