"He believed in a mysterious enlightenment which is granted 'von Gottes Gnaden' to kings rather than other mortals. All the blessings of peace, which his People could expect under a Christian monarch, should Proceed from the wisdom of the Crown alone; he regarded his high office like a patriarch of the Old Testament and held the kingship as a fatherly power established by God Himself for the education of the people. Whatever happened in the State he connected with the person of the monarch. If only his age and its royal awakener had understood each other better! He had, however, in his strangely complicated process of development, constructed such extraordinary ideals that though he might sometimes agree in words with his contemporaries he never did as to the things, and spoke a different language from his people. Even General Gerlach, his good friend and servant, used to say: 'The ways of the King are wonderful;' and the not less loyal Bunsen wrote about a complaint of the monarch that 'no one understands me, no one agrees with me,' the commentary—'When one understood him, how could one agree with him?'"
It was this king, be it parenthetically remarked, who said, when his people were clamouring for a Constitution, in 1847: "Now and never will I admit that a written paper, like a second Providence, force itself between our God in Heaven and this land"—and a few months later had to sign the document his people demanded.
Von Treitschke, writing on the last birthday of Emperor William I, thus spoke of the doctrine:
"A generation ago an attempt was made by a theologizing State theory to inculcate the doctrine of a power of the throne, divine, released from all earthly obligations. This mystery of the Jacobins never found entrance into the clear common sense of our people."
Prince Bismarck's view of the doctrine was explained in a speech he made to the Prussian Diet in 1847. He was speaking on "Prussia as a Christian State." "For me," he said,
"the words 'von Gottes Gnaden,' which Christian rulers join to their names, are no empty phrase, but I see in them the recognition that the princes desire to wield the sceptre which God has assigned them according to the will of God on earth. As God's will I can, however, only recognize what is revealed in the Christian gospels, and I believe I am in my right when I call that State a Christian one which has taken as its task the realization, the putting into operation, of the Christian doctrine…. Assuming generally that the State has a religious foundation, in my opinion this foundation can only be Christianity. Take away this religious foundation from the State and we retain nothing of the State but a chance aggregation of rights, a kind of bulwark against the war of all against all, which the old philosophers spoke of."
On the second occasion, thirty years later, the Chancellor's theme was
"Obedience to God and the King."
"I refer," he said,
"to the wrong interpretation of a sentence which in itself is right—namely, that one must obey God rather than man. The previous speaker must know me long enough to be aware that I subscribe to the entire correctness of this sentence, and that I believe I obey God when I serve the King under the device 'With God for King and Country.' Now he (the previous speaker) has separated the component parts of the device, for he sees God separated from King and Fatherland. I cannot follow him on this road. I believe I serve my God when I serve my King in the protection of the commonwealth whose monarch 'von Gottes Gnaden' he is, and on whom the emancipation from alien spiritual influence and the independence of his people from Romish pressure have been laid by God as a duty in which I serve the King. The previous speaker would certainly admit in private that we do not believe in the divinity of a State idol, though he seems to assert here that we believe in it."
In these passages, it may be remarked, Bismarck avoids an unconditional endorsement of the Hohenzollern doctrine of divine "right" or even divine appointment. Indeed all he does is to express his belief in the sincerity of rulers who declare their desire to rule in accordance with the will of God as it appears in Holy Scripture. In addition to his dislike of a "Christianity above the State," the fact that he did not subscribe to the doctrine of divine right, as these words are interpreted in England, is shown by another speech in which he said, "The essence of the constitutional monarchy under which we live is the co-operation of the monarchical will and the convictions of the people." But what, one is tempted to ask, if will and convictions differ?