William of Germany

by Stanley Shaw

The difference of opinion between the Emperor and Bismarck regarding the Emperor's visit to Russia seems to have left no permanent ill-will in the Emperor's mind, for on returning in October, 1889, from visits to Athens, where he attended the wedding of his sister Sophie with the Heir-Apparent of Greece, Prince Constantine (now King Constantine), and Constantinople, where he was allowed to inspect the Sultan's seraglio, he sent a letter to the Chancellor praying God to grant that the latter's "faithful and experienced counsel might for many years assist him in his difficult and responsible office." In January, 1890, however, the question of renewing the Socialist Laws, which would expire shortly, came up for settlement. A council of Ministers, under the Emperor's presidency, was called to decide it. When the council met, Bismarck was greatly surprised by a proposal of the Emperor to issue edicts developing the principles laid down by his grandfather for working-class reform instead of renewing the Socialist Laws. The Reichstag took the Emperor's view and voted against the renewal of the Laws. It only now remained to give effect to the Emperor's edicts. They were considered at a further council of Ministers, at which the Emperor exhorted them to "leave the Social Democracy to me, I can manage them alone." The Ministers agreed, and Bismarck was in a minority of one. This, however, was only the beginning of the end. Bismarck decided to continue in office until he had carried through Parliament a new military Bill, which was to come before it in May or June. Meanwhile fresh matters of controversy between the Emperor and the Chancellor arose regarding the grant of imperial audiences to Ministers other than the Chancellor. Bismarck insisted that the Chancellor alone had the right to be received by the Emperor for the discussion of State affairs.

The quarrel was accentuated by a lively scene which occurred between the Emperor and the Chancellor about this period in connexion with a visit the leader of the Catholic Centre party had paid the Chancellor, and on March 17th the Emperor sent his chief Adjutant, General von Hahnke, to say he awaited the Chancellor's resignation. Bismarck replied that to resign at this juncture would be an act of desertion; the Emperor could dismiss him. At the same time the Chancellor summoned a meeting of Ministers for the afternoon, but while they were discussing the situation a message was brought from the Emperor telling them he did not require their advice in such a matter and that he had made up his mind about the Chancellor. The messenger on the same occasion expressed to Bismarck the Emperor's surprise at not having received a formal resignation. Bismarck's reply was that it would require some days to prepare such a document, as it was the last official statement of a "Minister who had played a meritorious part in the history of Prussia and Germany, and history should know why he had been dismissed." Three days later, on March 20th, an hour or two after the formal resignation reached the palace, the Emperor's letter granting the Chancellor's request for his release, naming him Duke of Lauenburg and announcing the appointment of General von Caprivi as his successor, was put into the old Chancellor's hands.

VI.

THE COURT OF THE EMPEROR

While the ex-Chancellor is bitterly meditating on the unreliability and ingratitude of princes, yet having in his heart, as the records clearly show, the loyal sentiments of a Cardinal Wolsey towards his royal master, even though that master had cast him off, we may be allowed to pause awhile in order to give some account of the Court of which the Emperor now became the centre and pivot.

Human imagination, in its worship of force as the source of ability to achieve the ends of ambition and desire, very early conceived the courts of kings as fairylands of power, wealth, luxury, and magnificence—in a word, of happiness. The same imagination represents the Almighty, whose true nature no one knows, as a monarch in the bright court of heaven, and his great antagonist, Satan, who stands for the king of evil, is enthroned by it amid the shades of hell. The fiction that courts are a species of earthly paradise is still kept up for the entertainment of children; while the adult, whom the annals of all countries has made familiar with a long record of monarchs, bad as well as good, is disposed to regard them as beneficial or otherwise to a country according to the character and conduct of the occupant of the throne, and to believe that they are at least as liable to produce examples of vice and hypocrisy as of virtue and honesty.

The court of the German Emperor in this connexion need not fear comparison with any court described in history. True, courts all over the world have improved wonderfully of recent years. Their monarchs are more enlightened, they are frequented by a very different type of man and woman from the courts of former times, their morale and working are more closely scrutinized and more generally subjected to criticism, and they are occupied with a more public and less selfish order of considerations. The Court of the Emperor is, so far as can be known to a lynx-eyed and not always charitably thinking public, singularly free from the vices and failings the atmosphere of former courts was wont to foster. There is at all times, no doubt, the competition of politicians for influence and power acting and reacting on the Court and its frequenters, but of scandal at the Court of Berlin there has been none that could be fairly said to involve the Emperor or his family. Dame Gossip, of course, busied herself with the Emperor in his youth, but whatever truth she then uttered—and it is probably extremely little—on this head, there is no question that from the day he mounted the throne his Court and that of the Empress has been a model for all institutions of the kind.

The life of courts, the personages who play leading parts in them, their wealth and luxury, and the currents of social, amorous, and political intrigue which are supposed to course through them have in all countries and in all ages strongly appealed to writers, fanciful and serious. Perhaps one-third of the prose and poetic literature of every country deals, directly or indirectly, with the subject, and determines in no small degree the character of its rising generations. The great architects of romance, depicting for us life in high places, and often nobly idealizing it, or working the facts of history into the web of their imaginings and thus pleasantly combining fact with fiction, aim at elevating, not at debasing, the mind of the reader. A second valuable source of information on the topic are the memoirs of those who have set down their observations and recorded experiences made in the courts to which they had access. Among this class, however, are to be found unscrupulous as well as conscientious authors, the former obviously cherishing some personal grievance or as obviously actuated by malice, while the latter are usually moved by an honest desire to tell the world things that are important for it to know, and at the same time, it is not ill-natured to suspect, enhance their own reputation with their contemporaries or with posterity. The multitudinous tribe of anecdote inventors and retailers must also be taken into account. In our own day there is still another source of information, which, agreeably or odiously according to the temperament of the reader, keeps us in touch with courts and what goes on there—the periodical press; while afar off in the future one can imagine the historian bent over his desk, surrounded by books and knee-deep in newspapers, selecting and weighing events, studying characters, developing personalities, and passing what he hopes may be a final judgment on the court and period he is considering.

For a study of the Emperor's life, as it passes in his Court, a large number of works are available, but not many that can be described as authoritative or reliable. Among the latter, however, may be placed Moritz Busch's "Bismarck: Some Secret Pages of His History," three volumes that make Busch almost as interesting to the reader as his subject; Bismarck's own "Gedanke und Erinnerungen," which is chiefly of a political nature; and the "Memorabilia of Prince Chlodwig Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst," who was for several years Statthalter of Alsace-Lorraine and subsequently became Imperial Chancellor in succession to General von Caprivi. These works, with the collections of the Emperor's speeches and the speeches and interviews of Chancellor Prince von Bülow, may be ranked in the category of serious and authentic contributions to the Court history of the period they cover. Then there are several German descriptions of the Court, reliable enough in their way which is a dull one, to those who are not impassioned monarchists or hide-bound bureaucrats. In the category of works by unscrupulous writers that entitled "The Private Lives of William II and His Consort," by a lady-in-waiting to the Empress from 1888 to 1898, easily takes first place. Certainly it gives a lively and often entertaining insight into the domestic life of the palace, but it is so clearly informed by spite that it is impossible to distinguish what is true in it from what is false or misrepresented. Finally, for the closer study of individual events and the impressions they made at the time of their happening, the daily press can be consulted. For the Bismarck period the biography of Hans Blum is of exceptional value.

What may be termed the anecdotic literature of the Court is particularly rich and trivial, and this is only to be expected in a country where the monarchy and its representative are so forcibly and constantly brought home to the people's consciousness. Yet it has its uses, and is referred to, though sparingly, in the present work. "The Emperor as Father of a Family," "The Emperor and His Daughter's Uniform," "The Amiable Grandfather," "The Emperor as Husband," "The Emperor as Card Player," "How the Emperor's Family is Photographed," "What does the Emperor's Kitchen Look Like," "Adieu, Auguste" ("Auguste" is the Empress), "The English Lord and the Emperor's Cigarettes," "When My Wife Makes You a Sandwich," "What the Emperor Reads," "The Emperor's Handwriting," "Can the Emperor Vote?" (the answer is, opinions differ), "Washing Day at the Emperor's," "The Emperor and the Empress at Tennis," "Emperor and Auto," are the sort of matters dealt with. Literature of this kind is beyond question intensely interesting to vast numbers of people, but helps very little towards understanding a singularly complex human being placed in a high and extraordinarily responsible position.