Otto von Bismarck

V

Chancellor of the Empire

Bismarck was made chancellor of the new German Empire. At home, he concentrated on building a powerful German state and encouraged nationalism and the ideal of a German national identity. In foreign affairs, his goal was to make Prussia the dominant power in the German Empire and to establish that empire as the primary power in Europe.

A

Domestic Policy

Between 1871 and 1879 Bismarck developed the Empire’s federal infrastructure. Uniform legal codes, nationalized railways, and a common bureaucracy helped develop Germany as a major economic power. Additionally, compulsory military service indoctrinated generations of young men into the new German system, a system that offered great rewards for loyalty while at the same time allowing some room for diversity. However, this diversity had its limits.

For Bismarck, those limits were marked by Catholicism on one side and socialism on the other. Neither Germany’s Catholics nor its working classes were ever fully integrated into the new national community. Bismarck considered both, along with the liberals, to be threats to his power.

Bismarck believed that German Catholics were subservient to the pope and that the political power of the Center Party (composed of Catholic groups) threatened his authority over the empire. To combat this, in the early 1870s Bismarck initiated the so-called Kulturkampf (“culture struggle”). This movement, fueled by nationalist propaganda, attempted to portray Catholic allegiances as intellectually backward and dangerous to German security.

---

---

However, what was originally a conflict with the Center Party quickly became a conflict with the Roman Catholic Church itself. In 1872 and 1873 Bismarck passed several laws limiting the powers of the Roman Catholic Church in Germany. One of these laws expelled from the empire all members of the Society of Jesus (see Jesuits), a religious order known for its service to the pope.

Bismarck could not win this struggle in an empire where Catholics made up 40 percent of the population. Bismarck’s persecution only consolidated support for the Center Party, which doubled its popular vote in 1874. By 1879 Bismarck had repealed several of the laws and was negotiating an end to the conflict.

At the same time, Bismarck also turned against the liberals, whom he suspected of seeking to share power. Nationalist propaganda previously directed against Catholics was now used against the liberals and their policy of free trade—a move that appealed to a broad spectrum of German conservative business, financial, and agricultural interests. This time Bismarck’s campaign was successful, and in the elections of 1877 liberal presence in government was drastically reduced, and the liberals ceased to be a political threat.

The election also marked the beginning of the chancellor’s campaign against socialism. Germany’s rapid industrialization in the 1870s had multiplied its urban working classes. Bismarck feared these workers might support socialist parties whose presence in parliament might threaten his direct control of that institution. A series of laws and regulations outlawing socialist political activity began to be established in 1878. At the same time, Bismarck introduced a large-scale program of health, accident, and old-age insurance. This program was designed to bind the workers to the state and to draw them away from socialist movements. Despite these social and welfare reforms, Bismarck’s attempts to suppress the socialists only increased their popularity.

By 1890 Bismarck’s domestic policy had fragmented his political opposition into mutually exclusive interest groups. Because of their disorganized nature, Bismarck was able to manipulate these groups by playing one off against the others. While this political system proved very convenient for Bismarck, it was so complicated that it would be impossible to maintain for anyone who lacked his personal abilities and stature as the architect of the German Empire. The political structure of the empire had come to be dependent on Bismarck (and only Bismarck) to lead it.

B

Foreign Policy

Bismarck’s foreign policy began to change in the early 1870s, when it became clear that the other European powers would not tolerate further German expansion. As a result, Bismarck began to establish Germany as a European peacemaker and preserver of the status quo. In 1873 Bismarck negotiated the Three Emperors’ League with Austria-Hungary and Russia. The league was intended primarily to isolate France and forestall a European conflict that would be costly to the German Empire. At the Congress of Berlin in 1878, Bismarck forced Russia to abandon some of its recent diplomatic gains in the Balkan Peninsula. In order to maintain peace, these Russian losses were balanced by later concessions in other areas.

Bismarck was, however, unable to resolve growing tensions between Russia and a comparatively weak Austria-Hungary in the Balkans. To maintain the balance of power, Germany was forced to throw more and more weight behind Austria-Hungary. In 1879 Bismarck negotiated the Dual Alliance with Austria-Hungary, which required the two countries to stand together in case of an attack by Russia. At the same time, Bismarck tried to placate the French, who were still hostile to Germany because of the Franco-Prussian War, by encouraging French overseas expansion.

Bismarck’s remaining worry was the British, who refused to commit to alliances with nations on the European continent. This refusal seemed to Bismarck to represent a potential threat to the stability of Europe. The chancellor’s solution was the two Mediterranean Agreements of 1887, designed to preserve the status quo from any threats from Russia. Britain joined with Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Germany in these agreements in order to protect its interests in the Middle East from Russian expansion. Bismarck then negotiated a separate treaty of nonaggression with Russia.

These alliances brought all the powers of Europe into a network in which any aggressor would, in theory, confront a powerful defensive coalition of the other major powers. Ideally this would deter any one power from acting alone, and maintain the peace in Europe. The weaknesses of this system, however, were its complexity and the fact that it was based on a common commitment to the status quo. Over the next 25 years this commitment to the status quo weakened, as the interests of the different nations diverged over such issues as arms buildups, territorial disputes, and trade practices. The complex web of alliances gradually began to collapse, eventually leading to World War I (1914-1918).

VI

Final Years and Legacy

In 1890 the young emperor William II dismissed Bismarck. His dismissal was as much a product of the chancellor’s age and inflexibility as of any specific political issues. Retiring to his estate, Bismarck lived the rest of his life at odds with the emperor and the government that had succeeded him. Bismarck, who had been made a prince at the end of the Franco-Prussian War, was made the Duke of Lauenburg after his retirement. He died on July 30, 1898.

The crucial question in evaluating Bismarck’s achievements centers around his contribution to Germany’s 20th-century behavior. Did the German catastrophe—two world wars and the National Socialist (Nazi) movement—have its roots in Bismarck’s 19th-century policies? The issue remains controversial. What is known is that, by the time of Bismarck’s resignation, Germany’s domestic politics were so deadlocked that Bismarck himself was considering either a coup d’etat or a return to the “crisis management” techniques of the 1860s. In foreign affairs Bismarck had created a web so complex that it frightened even his associates in the foreign office, who considered it a house of cards unsustainable in any serious crisis. Bismarck’s legacy, in short, was at best an extremely intricate system which depended on the abilities and personality of not merely one man, but one particular man whose talents proved impossible to replicate. In the absence of such talents, the elaborate structure Bismarck had created in both Germany and Europe quickly collapsed.

	More from Encarta
	•  Presidential Myths Quiz •  Coffee break: Recharge your brain