New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1917-11-04
Germany's New Imperial
Chancellor

TIME Central Powers victorious drive
against Italy has enabled the
Kaiser to appoint Count George F..
Hertling Imperial Chancellor, who will
probably succeed DR.. Michaelis. Count
Hertling is strongly for the Kaiser; and
yet, as "The New York Evening Sun"
pointed out, he is also an advocate of early
peace.
Born in 1S43 at Darmstadt, Hertling,
the son of Hessian court chamberlain,
grew up in the reactionary atmosphere
Of super-loyalty TO the throne, and in
circles where people of less rank than
that of a baron are regarded as inferior
human beings. At the age of "a
privatdocent (unsalaried teacher) of
philosophy at the Bonn University, he
was promoted to an assistant professor
ship in 1880, and two years later was
appointed a professor at the Munich Uni
versity. As a scholar and as teacher he
was of an average calibre; he is noted as
a politician, not so much for his knowledge
of political economy, the keystone of all
continental European politics, as for his
strong affiliations with the ultra-reaction-
airy junkers of the Conservative party.
Hertling represented in the Reichstag
the Rhenish district of Coblenz from
1875 to 1890, the Bavarian district Of
Illertissen-Memmingen from 1896 to 1903,
and the Westphalan district Of Muenster-
Korsfeld from 1903 to 1912, when he had
to resign because he accepted the post of
Bavarian Premier. In the Reichstag as
we'll as in the Upper House of the Bava-
rian Landtag, of which he was appointed
a life member in 1891, he was one Of the
leaders of the Centrist party and the
mouthpiece of its conservative wing, con-
sisting of landed noblemen known as
junkers. This wing fought always
shoulder to shoulder with the Conserva-
tives, except in religious matters, during
the Kulturkampf, while the rest of the
Centrists had middle class or even prole-
tartan inclinations.
Hertling proved to be so reactionary
that Franz Bachem, the Rhenish Centrist
leader and publisher of the Cologne "Volks
zeitung," said at national Catholic con-
vention: "Hertling is the Manteuffel
conservative Prussian Minister during
the contre-revolution of the fifties of the
last century, of our party, and he will
utterly discredit us before the country"
Like Ballenstrem, like Huene and other
mobiles of Catholic faith, Hertling joined
the Centrist party instead of the Con-
servatives on account Of the Kulturkampf
when the Catholic Church, under the ap-
plause of the Conservative junkers, was
bitterly prosecuted in an attempt to make
a Protestant empire out Of Germany.
When the Prussian Minister of Justice,
DIR. Peter SPAIN, then member Of the
Reichstag, was derided for his statement
that private soldiers should willingly sub
nit to maltreatment by non-commis-
stoned officers because their superiors
were acting as representatives OF God,
Hertling rushed to the aid of SPAIN.
Hertling defended, twenty-five years ago,
the lex Heinze, which provided for the in
PRODUCTION of the whipping post, and was
designed to make even the publication of
Schiller's and Goetre's writings a crime
punishable by long terms in prison. He
announced that the submission to the die
tates of the crown and the better
classes" by the masses was a political,
patriotic and religious duty. In Bavaria
lie openly tried to abolish religious free
com in favor of the Catholic Church.
Hertling fought any attempt to liberal
ize Germany, with one exception He
worked for the abolition of the indirect
electoral system to the Bavarian Landtag.