This preponderance of Hebrews in the liberal professions seems unnatural to the Tory German, who has vainly tried to break it down by political action and by social ostracism. These attempts in turn have thrown the Jews into opposition. Of the seven Israelites in the present Reichstag six are Socialist Democrats and one is a Freisinnige leader. Every paper in Germany owned or edited by a Jew is uncompromisingly Radical in its politics. This in turn further exasperates the German Tories and keeps alive the latent fires of hatred which bigots like Stocker from time to time fan into flame.
In finance, too, the German aristocrats find themselves getting more and more helplessly into Jewish hands. Their wonderful new city of Berlin not only acts as a sieve for the great wave of Hebrew migration steadily moving westward from Russia, but it is becoming the Jewish banking and money centre of Europe. The grain trade of Russia is concentrated in Berlin. To buy wheat from Odessa you apply to one of the three hundred Jewish middleman firms at Berlin. To borrow money in Europe you go with equal certainty to Berlin. The German nobleman was never very rich; he has of late years become distinctly poor—and all the mortgages which mar his sleep o’ nights are locked in Jewish safes at Berlin.
To revenge himself the German aristocrat can only assume an added contempt for literature and the peaceful professions generally because they are Jewish; insist more strongly than ever that the army is the only place for German gentlemen because it is not Jewish, and dream of the time when a beneficent fate shall once more hand Jerusalem over to conquest and rapine.
This German nobleman, however, does not disdain in the meanwhile to lend himself to the spoliation of the loathed tribes when chance offers itself. There is a famous Jewish banker in Berlin, who, in his senile years, is weak enough to desire social position for his children. One of his sons, a stupid and debauched youngster, is permitted to associate with sundry fashionable German officers—just up to the point where he loses his money to them with sufficient regularity—and, of course, never gets an inch beyond that point.
A daughter of this old banker had an even more disastrous experience. She was an ugly girl, but with her enormous dower the ambitious parents were able to buy a titled husband in the person of a penniless German Baron. Delighted with this success, the banker settled upon the couple a handsome estate in Silesia, The Baron and his bride were provided with a special train to convey them to their future home, and in that very train the Baron installed his mistress, and with her a lawyer friend who had already arranged for the sale of the estate. The Jewish bride arrived in Silesia to find herself contemptuously deserted by her husband and robbed of her estate. She returned to Berlin, obtained a divorce, and as soon as might be was married again—this time to a diamond merchant of her own race.
As for the Baron who perpetrated this unspeakably brutal and callous outrage, I did not learn that he had lost caste among his friends by the exploit. Indeed, the story was told to me as a merry joke on the Jews.
Prince Bismarck, almost alone among the Junker group, did not associate himself with this anti-Semitic agitation. In the work which he was carrying forward Jewish bankers were extremely useful. Both in a visibly regular way, and by subterranean means, capitalists like Bleichroder played a most important part in his performance of the task of centralizing power at Berlin. Hence he always held aloof from the movement against the Jews, and on occasions made his dislike for it manifest.
Doubtless it was his counsel which restrained the impetuous young William from openly identifying himself with this bigoted and proscriptive demonstration. At all events, the youthful Prince avoided any overt sign of his sympathy with the anti-Jewish outcry, yet continued to find all his friends among the class which supported the Judenhetze. It seems a curious fact now that in those days he created the impression of a silent and reserved young man—almost taciturn. As to where his likes and dislikes lay, no uncertainty existed. He was heart and soul with the aristocratic Court party and against all the tendencies and theories of the small academic group attached to his father. He made this obvious enough by his choice of associations, but kept a dignified curb on his tongue.
In addition to his course of studies at Bonn and his practical labours with his regiment, the Prince devoted a set amount of time each week to instruction of a less common order. He had regular weekly appointments with two very distinguished professors—the Emperor William, who spoke on Kingcraft, and Chancellor Bismarck, whose theme was Statecraft. The former series of discourses was continued almost without intermission, even during the old Kaiser’s period of retirement after Nobiling’s attempt on his life. The Prince saw these eminent instructors regularly, but it did not enter into their scheme of education that he should profess to learn anything from his father.
Among the ideas which the impressionable young man imbibed from Bismarck there could be nothing calculated to increase his filial affection or respect. Bismarck had cherished a bitter dislike for the English Crown Princess, conceived even before her marriage, at a time when she represented to him only the girlish embodiment of an impolitic matrimonial alliance, and strengthened year by year after she came to Berlin to live. He did not scruple to charge to a conspiracy between her and the Empress Augusta all the political obstacles which from time to time blocked his path. He not only believed, but openly declared, that the Crown Princess was responsible for the whole Arnim episode; and it is an open secret that even the State papers emanating from the German Foreign Office during his Chancellorship contain the grossest and most insulting allusions to her. As for the Crown Prince, Bismarck was at no pains to conceal his contempt for one of whom he habitually thought as a henpecked husband.