William of Germany

by Stanley Shaw

Strictly speaking, there is no Imperial Court in Germany, since the King of Prussia, in accordance with the Imperial Constitution, always succeeds to the imperial throne, and therefore officially the Court is that of the King of Prussia only. The distinction is emphasized by the fact that the Court is independent of the Empire as regards its administration and finance. It is a state within a state, an imperium in imperio. In all that pertains to it the Emperor is absolute ruler and his executive is a special Ministry. At the same time it is almost needless to add that the Court of Berlin is practically that of the Empire. It is this character, apart from Prussia's size and importance, that distinguishes it from other courts in Germany and reduces them to comparative insignificance in foreign, though by no means in German, consideration.

The Court of the Empire and Prussia—and the same thing may be said of the various other courts in Germany—engages popular interest and attention to a much larger extent than is the case in England. The fact is almost wholly due to the nature of the monarchy and of its relations to the people. In England a great portion of the popular attention is concentrated on Parliament and the fortunes of its two great political parties. The attention given to the Court and its doings is not of the same general and permanent character, but is intermittent according to the occasion. The Englishman feels deep and abiding popular interest at all times in Parliament, whether in session or not, because it represents the people and is, in fact, and for hundreds of years has been, the Government.

The reverse may fairly be said to be the case in Germany. In Germany popular attention has been from early times concentrated on the monarch, his personality, sayings and doings, since in his hands lay government power and patronage. Monarchy of a more or less absolute character was accepted by the people, not only in Germany but all over the Continent, as the normal and desirable, perhaps the inevitable, state of things; and it is only since the French Revolution that parliaments after the English pattern, that is by two chambers elected by popular vote, yet in many important respects widely differing from it, were demanded by the people or finally established. Up to comparatively recent times the monarch in Prussia was an absolute ruler. Frederick William IV, after the events of 1848, was compelled to grant Prussia a Constitution which explicitly defined the respective rights of the Crown and the people in the sphere of politics; and the Imperial Constitution, drawn up on the formation of the modern Empire, did the same thing as regards the Emperor and the people of the Empire; but neither Constitution altered the nature of the monarchy in the direction of giving governing power to the people. Both secured the people legislative, but not governing power. Government in the Empire and Prussia remains, as of old, an appanage, so to speak, of the Court, and the fact of course tends to concentrate attention on the Court.

It has been said that the Court is a state within a state, an imperium in imperio. In this state, within Prussia or within the Empire, it is the same thing for our purpose, there are two main departments, that of the Lord Chamberlain (Oberstkammeramt) and that of the Master of the Household (Ministerium des Königlichen Hauses). The first deals with all questions of court etiquette, court ceremonial, court mourning, precedence, superintendence of the courts of the Emperor's sons and near relatives, and of all Prussian court offices. The second deals with the personal affairs of the Emperor and his sons, the domestic administration of the palace, the management of the Crown estates and castles, and is the tribunal that decides all Hohenzollern differences and disputes that are not subject to the ordinary legal tribunals. Connected with this Ministry are the Herald's office and the Court Archives office. The chief Court officials include, beside the Lord Chamberlain and the Master of the Household, a Chief Court Marshal. The Master of the Household is also Chief Master of Ceremonies, with a Deputy Master of Ceremonies who is also Introducer of Ambassadors, two Court Marshals, a Captain of the Palace Guards, a Court Chaplain, Court Physician, an Intendant in charge of the royal theatres, a Master of the Horse who has charge of the royal stables, a House Marshal, and a Master of the Kitchen. All these officials are princes (Fürst) or counts (Graf), with the title Highness (Durchlaucht) or Excellency.

Court officials also include the various nobles in charge of the royal palaces, castles, and hunting lodges at Potsdam, Charlottenburg, Breslau, Stettin, Marienburg, Posen, Letzlingen, Hohkönigsberg, Homberg von der Höhe, Springe, Hubertusstock, Rominten, Korfu (the "Achilleion"), Wiesbaden, Koenigsberg, etc., to the number of thirty or more. The Empress has her own Court officials, including a Mistress of the Robes and Ladies of the Bedchamber, also with the title of Excellency, the Ladies being chosen from the most aristocratic families of Germany. The Empress has her own Master of the Household, physician, treasurer, and so on. Similarly with the households of the Crown Prince, other royal princes and the Emperor's near relatives.

Every order the Emperor gives that is not of a purely domestic kind passes through one of his three cabinets—the Civil Cabinet, the Military Cabinet, or the Marine Cabinet. The cost of the first, with its chief, who receives £1,000 a year, and half a dozen subordinate officials on salaries of £200 to £350, is budgeted at about £10,000 a year. The Military Cabinet is a much larger establishment, having several departments and a staff of half a hundred councillors and clerks. The Naval Cabinet, on the other hand, is composed of only three upper officials and five clerks. The Emperor's "civil list" is returned in the Budget as £860,000 roughly. His entire annual revenue does not exceed £1,000,000. Out of this he has to pay the expenses of his married sons' households and make large contributions to public charities. He was left, however, a very considerable sum of money by the Emperor William. The Crown Prince, as such, receives a grant of £20,000 a year, chiefly derived from the royal domain of Oels in Silesia. Like all fathers of large families, the Emperor has been more than once heard to complain that he finds it difficult to make both ends meet.

The Emperor's staff of adjutants are exceptionally useful and important people. At their head is the chief of the Emperor's Military Cabinet. Not less important are the members of the Emperor's Marine Cabinet, consisting of admirals, vice-admirals, and wing-admirals. The personal adjutants divide the day and night service between them, so that there may always be three adjutants at the Emperor's immediate disposal. The adjutant announces Ministers or other visitors to the Emperor, telegraphs to say that His Majesty has an hour or an hour and a half at his disposal at such-and-such a time, or intimates that an audience of half an hour can be given in the train between two given points. They act as living memorandum books, knock at the Emperor's door to announce that it is time for him to go to this or that appointment, remind him that a congratulatory telegram on some one's seventieth birthday or other jubilee has to be sent, or perhaps whispers that Her Majesty the Empress wishes to see him. All the Emperor's correspondence passes through their hands. They accompany the Emperor on his journeys and voyages, and when thus employed are usually invited to his table. The Emperor reads of some new book and tells an adjutant to order it, and the latter does so by communicating with the Civil Cabinet.

Court society in Berlin includes the German "higher" and "lower" nobility, with the exception of the so-called Fronde, who proudly absent themselves from it; the Ministers; the diplomatic corps; Court officials; and such members of the burghertum, or middle class, as hold offices which entitle them to attend court. The wives, however, of those in the last category are not "court-capable" on this account, nor is the middle class generally, nor even members of the Imperial or Prussian Parliaments as such. Members of Parliament are invited to the Court's seasonal festivities, but as a rule only members of the Conservative parties or other supporters of the Government. The nobility, as in England, is hereditary or only nominated for life, and the hereditary nobility is divided into an upper and lower class. To the former belongs members of houses that were ruling when the modern Empire was established, and, while excluding the Emperor, who stands above them, includes sovereign houses and mediatized houses. Some of the ancient privileges of the nobility, such as exemption from taxation, and the right to certain high offices, have been abolished, but in practice the nobility still occupy the most important charges in the administration and in the army. The privileges of the mediatized princes consist of exemption from conscription, the enjoyment of the Principle called "equality of birth," which prevents the burgher wife of a noble acquiring her husband's rank, and the right to have their own "house law" for the regulation of family disputes and family affairs generally. No increase to the high nobility of Germany can accrue as no addition will ever be made to the once sovereign and mediatized families. With the exception of these houses the rest of the German nobility, hereditary and non-hereditary, is accounted as belonging to the lower nobility. That part of the German aristocracy who refuse to go to court, and are accordingly called by the name Fronde, first given to the opponents of Cardinal Mazarin, in the reign of Louis XIV, consist chiefly of a few old families of Prussian Poland, Hannover (the Guelphs), Brunswick, Nassau, Hessen, and other annexed German territories, and of some great Catholic houses in Bavaria and the Rhineland. Their dislike is directed not so much against the Empire as against Prussia. The Kulturkampf had the effect of setting a small number of ancient Prussian ultramontane families against the Government.

Not much that is complimentary can be said of the German aristocracy as a whole. "Serenissimus" is to-day as frequently the subject of bitter, if often humorous, caricature in the comic press as ever he was. A few of the class, like Prince Fürstenberg, Prince Hohenlohe, Count Henkel-Donnersmarck and some others engage successfully in commerce; many are practical farmers and have done a good deal for agriculture; several are deputies to Parliament; but on the whole the foreigner gets the impression that the class as such contributes but a small percentage of what it might and should in the way of brains, industry, or example to the welfare and the progress of the Empire.

It is difficult to communicate an impression of the Court, whether at the Schloss in Berlin or the New Palace in Potsdam, and at the same time avoid the dry and dusty descriptions of the guide-books. If the reader is not in Berlin, let him imagine the fragment of a mediæval town, situated on a river and fronted by a bridge; and on the bank of the river a dark, square, massive and weather-stained pile of four stories, with barred windows on the ground floor as defence against a possibly angry populace, and a sentry-box at each of its two lofty wrought-iron gates. It may be, as Baedeker informs us it is, a "handsome example of the German renaissance," but to the foreigner it can as equally suggest a large and grimy barracks as the five-hundred-years-old palace of a long line of kings and emperors. And yet, to any one acquainted with the blood-stained annals of Prussian history, who knows something of the massive stone buildings about it and of the people who have inhabited them, who strolls through its interior divided into sombre squares, each with its cold and bare parade-ground, who reflects on the relations between king and people, closely identified by their historical associations, yet sundered by the feudal spirit which still keeps the Crown at a distance from the crowd, above all to the German versed in his country's story—how eloquently it speaks!