BY
CARL SCHURZ

ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS

In the autumn of 1867 my family went to Wiesbaden, where my wife was to spend some time on account of her health, and I joined them there about Christmas time for a few weeks. Great changes had taken place in Germany since that dark December night in 1861 when I rushed through the country from the Belgian frontier to Hamburg on my way from Spain to America. The period of stupid reaction after the collapse of the revolutionary movements of 1848 was over. King Frederick William IV. of Prussia, who had been so deeply convinced and arduous an upholder of the divine right of kings, had died a helpless lunatic. King William I., afterwards Emperor William I., his brother and successor, also a believer in that divine right, but not to the extent of believing as well in the divine inspiration of kings—in other words, a man of good sense and capable of recognizing the superior ability of others—had found in Bismarck a minister of commanding genius. The sweeping victory of Prussia over Austria in 1866 had resulted in the establishment of the North German Confederacy under Prussian hegemony, which was considered a stepping-stone to the unification of all Germany as a constitutional empire. Several of the revolutionists of 1848 now sat in the Reichstag of the North German Confederacy, and one of the ablest of them, Lothar Bucher, was Bismarck’s confidential counsellor. The nation was elated with hope, and there was a liberal wind blowing even in the sphere of the government.

I did not doubt that under these circumstances I might venture into Germany without danger of being seriously molested; yet, as my personal case was technically not covered by any of the several amnesties which had been proclaimed in Prussia from time to time, I thought that some subordinate officer, either construing his duty with the strictness of a thorough Prussian, or wishing to distinguish himself by a conspicuous display of official watchfulness, might give me annoyance. I did not, indeed, entertain the slightest apprehension as to my safety, but I might have become involved in sensational proceedings, which would have been extremely distasteful to me, as well as unwelcome to the government. I therefore wrote to Mr. George Bancroft, the American Minister at Berlin, requesting him if possible to inform himself privately whether the Prussian government had any objection to my visiting Germany for a few weeks, and to let me have his answer at Bremerhaven upon the arrival there of the steamer on which I had taken passage. My intention was, in case the answer were unfavorable, to sail at once from Bremen to England and to meet my family there. Mr. Bancroft very kindly complied with my request, and assured me in his letter which I found at Bremerhaven that the Prussian government not only had no objection to my visiting Germany, but that I should be welcome.

After having spent Christmas with my family in Wiesbaden, I went to Berlin. I wrote a note to Lothar Bucher, whom I had last seen sixteen 368 years before as a fellow refugee in London, and whom I wished very much to meet again. Bucher answered promptly that he would be glad indeed to see me again, and asked if I would not like to make the acquaintance of “the Minister” (Bismarck), who had expressed a wish to have a talk with me. I replied, of course, that I should be happy, etc., whereupon I received within an hour an invitation from Count Bismarck himself (he was then only a count) to visit him at eight o’clock that same evening at the Chancellor’s palace on the Wilhelmstrasse. Promptly at the appointed hour I was announced to him, and he received me at the door of a room of moderate size, the table and some of the furniture of which were covered with books and papers,—evidently his working cabinet. There I beheld the great man whose name was filling the world—tall, erect, and broad-shouldered, and on those Atlas shoulders that massive head which everybody knows from pictures—the whole figure making the impression of something colossal—then at the age of fifty-three, in the fulness of physical and mental vigor.

He was dressed in a General’s undress uniform, unbuttoned. His features, which evidently could look very stern when he wished, were lighted up with a friendly smile. He stretched out his hand and gave me a vigorous grasp. “Glad you have come,” he said, in a voice which appeared rather high-keyed, issuing from so huge a form, but of pleasing timbre.

“I think I must have seen you before,” was his first remark, while we were still standing up facing one another. “It was some time in the early fifties on a railway train from Frankfort to Berlin. There was a young man sitting opposite me who, from some picture of you which I had seen in a pictorial paper, I thought might be you.”

I replied that this could not be, since at that period I was not in Germany. “Besides,” I added—a little impudently perhaps—“would you not have had me arrested as a malefactor?”

“Oh,” he exclaimed, with a good, natural laugh, “you mistake me. I would not have done such a thing. You mean on account of that Kinkel affair? Oh, no! I rather liked that. And if it were not that it would be highly improper for His Majesty’s minister and the Chancellor of the North German Confederacy, I should like to go with you to Spandau and have you tell me the whole story on the spot. Now let us sit down.”

He pointed out to me an easy-chair close to his own and then uncorked a bottle which stood, with two glasses, on a tray at his elbow. “You are a Rhinelander,” he said, “and I know you will relish this.” We touched glasses, and I found the wine indeed very excellent.