[Footnote 25: Minister for the Interior, and Vice President of the
Ministry of State.]
* * * * *
FROM "THOUGHTS AND RECOLLECTIONS" [26]
TRANSLATED UNDER THE SUPERVISION OF A.J. BUTLER
Late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge
I
TO THE FIRST UNITED DIET
Left school at Easter, 1832, a normal product of our state system of education; a Pantheist, and, if not a Republican, at least with the persuasion that the Republic was the most rational form of government; reflecting too upon the causes which could decide millions of men permanently to obey one man, when all the while I was hearing from grown up people much bitter or contemptuous criticism of their rulers. Moreover, I had brought away with me "German-National" impressions from Plamann's preparatory school, conducted on Jahn's drill-system, in which I lived from my sixth to my twelfth year. These impressions remained in the stage of theoretical reflections, and were not strong enough to extirpate my innate Prussian monarchical sentiments. My historical sympathies remained on the side of authority. To my childish ideas of justice Harmodius and Aristogeiton, as well as Brutus, were criminals, and Tell a rebel and murderer. Every German prince who resisted the Emperor before the Thirty Years' war roused my ire; but from the Great Elector onwards I was partisan enough to take an anti-imperial view, and to find it natural that things should have been in readiness for the Seven Years' war. Yet the German-National feeling remained so strong in me that, at the beginning of my university life, I at once entered into relations with the Burschenschaft, or group of students which made the promotion of a national sentiment its aim. But, after personal intimacy with its members, I disliked their refusal to "give satisfaction," as well as their want of breeding in externals and of acquaintance with the forms and manners of good society; and a still closer acquaintance bred an aversion to the extravagance of their political views, based upon a lack of either culture or knowledge of the conditions of life which historical causes had brought into existence, and which I, with my seventeen years, had had more opportunities of observing than most of these students, for the most part older than myself. Their ideas gave me the impression of an association between Utopian theories and defective breeding. Nevertheless, I retained my own private National sentiments, and my belief that in the near future events would lead to German unity; in fact, I made a bet with my American friend Coffin that this aim would be attained in twenty years.
In my first half-year at Göttingen occurred the Hambach festival[27] (May 27, 1832), the "festal ode" of which still remains in my memory; in my third the Frankfort outbreak[28](April 3, 1833). These manifestations revolted me. Mob interference with political authority conflicted with my Prussian schooling, and I returned to Berlin with less liberal opinions than when I quitted it; but this reaction was again somewhat mitigated when I was brought into immediate connection with the workings of the political machine. Upon foreign politics, with which the public at that time occupied itself but little, my views, as regards the War of Liberation, were taken from the standpoint of a Prussian officer. On looking at the map, the Possession of Strasburg by France exasperated me, and a visit to Heidelberg, Spires, and the Palatinate made me feel revengeful and militant. In the period before 1848 succeed in laying a coat of European varnish over the specifically Prussian bureaucrat. How these observations acted in practice is clearly shown when we go through the list of our diplomatists of those days: one is astonished to find so few native Prussians among them. The fact of being the son of a foreign ambassador accredited to Berlin was of itself ground for preference. The diplomatists who had grown up in small courts and had been taken into the Prussian service had not infrequently the advantage over natives of greater assurance in Court circles and a greater absence of shyness. An especial example of this tendency was Herr von Schleinitz. In the list we find also members of noble houses in whom descent supplied the place of talent. I scarcely remember from the period when I was appointed to Frankfort anyone of Prussian descent being appointed chief of an important mission, except myself, Baron Carl von Werther, Canitz, and Count Max Hatzfeldt (who had a French wife). Foreign names were at a premium: Brassier, Perponcher, Savigny, Oriola. It was presumed that they had greater fluency in French, and they were more out of the common. Another feature was the disinclination to accept personal responsibility when not covered by unmistakable instructions, just as was the case in the military service in 1806 in the old school of the Frederickian period. Even in those days we were breeding stuff for officers, even as high as the rank of regimental commander, to a pitch of perfection attained by no other state; but beyond that rank the native Prussian blood was no longer fertile in talents, as in the time of Frederick the Great. Our most successful commanders, Blücher, Gneisenau, Moltke, Goeben, were not original Prussian products, any more than Stein, Hardenberg, Motz, and Grolmann in the Civil Service. It is as though our statesmen, like the trees in nurseries, needed transplanting in order that their roots might find full development.
Ancillon advised me first of all to pass my examination as Regierungs-Assessor, and then, by the circuitous route of employment in the Zollverein to seek admittance into the German diplomacy of Prussia; he did not, it would seem, anticipate in a scion of the native squirearchy a vocation for European diplomacy. I took his hint to heart, and resolved first of all to go up for my examination as Regierungs-Assessor.