At all events, it was an intelligent and proper thing to give the palace the name of Friedrichskron, and one would think that, even if the change had been less fitting than it was, the wish of the dying man about the house of his birth could not but command respect.
One of William’s first acts was to order the discontinuance of the new name, and in his proclamation he ostentatiously reverted to the former usage of “New Palace.”
To glance ahead for a moment, there came in September an even more painful illustration of the unfilial attitude to which William had hardened himself. The Deutsche Rundschau created a sudden sensation by printing the diary of Frederic, from July 11, 1870, to March 12th of the following year, covering the entire French campaign and all the negotiations leading up to the formation of the German Empire. Quotations have already been made in these pages showing that this diary demonstrated authoritatively the fallacy of Bismarck’s claim to be the originator of the Empire. Frederic and the others had had, in fact, to drag him into a reluctant acceptance of the imperial idea. The shock of now all at once learning this was felt all over Germany. Every mind comprehended that the blow had been aimed straight at the Chancellor’s head. Nobody seemed to see, least of all Bismarck, that the diary really gave the Chancellor a higher title than that of inventor of the Empire, and revealed him as a wise, far-seeing statesman, who would not submit to the fascination of the imperial scheme until he made sure that its realization would be of genuine benefit to all Germany. So far, indeed, was he from recognizing this that he allowed the publication to rob him of all control over his temper.
The edition of the Rundschau was at once confiscated, and on September 23rd Bismarck sent a “report” to the Emperor upon the diary. He set up the pretence of doubting its genuineness as a cloak for saying the most brutal things about its dead author. The charge was openly made that Frederic could not be trusted with any State secrets owing to the fear of “indiscreet revelations to the English Court,” and therefore “stood without the sphere of all business negotiations.” Further, he asserted that the portions of the diary expressing willingness to force the Southern States into the Empire must be forgeries, because “such ideas are equally contemptible from the standpoint of honourable feeling and that of policy.” In conclusion he pointed out that, even if the diary were genuine, Frederic in giving it for publication would be a traitor under Article XCII of the Penal Code.
Of the genuineness of the diary there was, of course, no question whatever in anybody’s mind, least of all in Bismarck’s or William’s. Yet the young Kaiser permitted this gross attack by the Chancellor upon his father’s honour and patriotism to be officially published, and gave his consent to a prosecution of those responsible for the appearance of the diary in the Rundschau.
The story of the prosecution is a familiar one. Dr. Geffcken was found to be the friend to whom Frederic had entrusted this portion of his diary, and he was arrested and thrown into prison, to be brought before the imperial tribunal at Leipsic. The ingrate Friedberg put his talents at the disposal of the Bismarcks to draw up the case against him. The houses of Geffcken and Baron von Roggenbach were ransacked, and a correspondence covering many years was seized and searched by Bismarck’s emissaries. These letters were said to contain many compromising references to the Crown Princess, Princess Alice, Sir Robert Morier, and others whom Bismarck alleged to be in a conspiracy against him. This charge of being desirous of the Chancellor’s downfall grew indeed to be the principal item in the attack upon Geffcken.
The indictment for high treason was at last, on January 2, 1889, brought before the Judges of the Supreme Court of Judicature at Leipsic, and they threw it out with ignominious swiftness. Geffcken himself, badly broken in health and mind, was released on the 4th. This was Bismarck’s first public mishap under the new reign, and it attracted much surprised attention at the time, as showing both the Chancellor’s lack of intelligent self-restraint in getting into a fury over a revelation which really redounded to his credit, and his ignorance of German law. The opening month of the year 1889, in which this happened, was invested with importance in another way, as we shall see in due course.
But for the time, returning now to the middle of 1888, William seemed to delight in exhibiting himself to the public eye as the man of the Bismarcks. One of his earliest acts was to make a special journey to Friedrichsruh to visit the Chancellor, and the most popular photograph of the year was that representing him standing on the lawn in front of this château, in company with Bismarck and the famous “Reichshund.” In Berlin, too, people noted his custom of paying early morning calls at the house of Herbert Bismarck, and wondered how long this enthusiastic self-abasement would last.
While it did last, this influence of the Bismarcks was so powerful and all-pervasive that it is very difficult to follow the thread of the young Kaiser’s own personality through the busy period of his first half-year’s reign. One continually confronts this embarrassment of inability to separate what he himself wanted to do from what was suggested by these powers behind the throne. We know now that the Kaiser possesses a strongly-marked individuality and an unusually active and fertile mind. Doubtless these asserted themselves a great deal at even this early stage, but there is little or nothing to guide us in distinguishing their effects.
The truth seems to be that at this time, in these opening months of his reign, William’s inclinations ran so wholly in Bismarckian channels that even what he himself initiated was in practice a part of the Bismarcks’ work.