5 THE FORMATION OF BISMARCK'S POLITICAL THOUGHT

could not stop until he had wrested the fire from the gods or destroyed himself in the process. But in Prussia in the 1830's greatness was not easy to come by.

For the state which in two generations had transformed itself from one of the more insignificant of many German states (principalities) to the most powerful had become afflicted with second thoughts. It still paid homage to the memory of its great kings who had expanded Prussia's power by a ruthless *tour de force*. But the homage was by way of legitimizing stagnation and in the hands of mediocrity the invocation of greatness had become a means of avoiding action. This had come about because the "War of Liberation and its aftermath seemed to have demonstrated to the King and his advisers that the forces unleashed by a policy of conquest might end by dissolving Prussia's identity and that the task Prussia had set for itself, the hegemony of Germany, was achievable only at the sacrifice of Prussia's sense of a hierarchy to theories of constitutionalism. And Metternich, directing European policy from the Hofburg at Vienna, had done his utmost to reinforce these reservations. For a dynamic Prussia was certain to undermine Austria's German position and with it the principle of the solidarity of conservative interests which enabled the polyglot Hapsburg Empire to prolong its existence in an era of nationalism.

The "Metternich System" had been based on a gamble on the reality of moral connections, on its ability to convince Prussia, the most expansionist German state, that it was the most vulnerable both to foreign and domestic upheaval and that its real interest was the defense of the German states. Its success was measured by the fact that after 1818 Prussia became diplomatically almost an Austrian satellite, while its internal policy grew increasingly rigid. For by denying the logic of its geographic position as well as the vision of it by the other German powers, Prussia doomed itself to stagnation. Whenever a society rejects its own myth its policy will tend to oscillate between sudden of hysteria and a refuge into determinacy. When the spontaneity of "what comes naturally" is given up, inward security can be found only in the transcendant attitude of a moment of exaltation or in the

6

routine of bureaucratic norms. Then an administrative rationality reigns supreme, an invocation of "objectivity" which is a denial of the need for great conceptions, a cult of routine which is a way of assimilating mediocrity, a standard of policy which measures by errors avoided, rather than by goals achieved.

So it was with Prussia. Its King, frightened by the revolutions breaking out all over Europe and indeed by the elemental passion as unleashed within Prussia during the Napoleonic Wars, came to cling to stability as an absolute value, to reject all opportunities to profit from the yearning for Greman unity or from Austria's discomfitures now in Italy, now in the Balkans. But in so doing, he doomed Prussia to institutionalized mediocrity. The very shape of the state inhibited equilibrium; its weird frontiers spoke more convincingly than the King's hesitations that its shape was tentative. Prussia could achieve hegemony in Germany or it could collapse; but under no circumstances could it stand still. Nor could it escape its task by denying that it existed. And because Prussia's ethos was growth, it required domestic institutions capable of assimilating diversity and of integrating greatness. There occurred a struggle then beneath the surface of the placid Prussian life, between the reality of Prussia and its desires, between the need for dynamism and the yearning for tranquility. And the more insecure the dominant group felt the more it sought to hide its doubts behind an insistence on calculability. Thus the two avenues for ambition, the army and the bureaucracy, placed an increasing premium on orthodoxy and on a degree of discipline certain to make them insupportable for the young Bismarck.

The impact of genius on routine will always be unsettling of course, for routine involves a quest for an average standard while genius is the effort to transcend himself. The administrator will consider 'genius' unsafe, because its insistence on uniqueness inhibits the bureaucracy's quest for determinacy. And genius must consider the bureaucracy as limited for his acceptance of standards which are not self-created. In fortunate societies a compromise occurs. Genius is, if not understood, at least believed in and therefore room is left for its appearance; while in its turn genius will not seek

7 THE FORMATION OF BISMARCK'S POLITICAL THOUGHT

fulfillment in rebellion. But much more frequent is the situation
which leads to the attempt by one side to impose its pattern on the
other. Then the incommensurability between reality and our
expectation of it becomes unbearable and there occurs the
alienation between inspiration and organization. And alienated
genius can take two forms: It can either attempt to institutionalize
its inspiration, to create a routine of exaltation—this is the solution
of dogmatism, and in its revolutionary incarnations of fanaticism.
or it can postulate the incommensurability between reality and its
vision as a symptom of the vanity and pretentiousness of the uni-
verse—this is the solution of nihilism.

This in any case was the solution of the young Bismarck. To
the outsider he appeared indolent, drifting, indecisive. But his
vacillations were the reverse side of his impetuous will which insisted
on indentifying itself with the meaning of occurrences as the condition
of any activity. In the Prussia of 1830 his elemental power could
find an outlet in only two directions, in a withering sarcasm which
spared no one, least of all himself—the symptom of his impatience
with a stagnant society; and in a masterful handling of personalities,
the forerunner of his fine diplomatic skill which revealed the apprais-
ing eye of the naturalist to whom individuals were forces on the
correct exploitation of whose peculiarities depended success.

"I left the high school (Gymnasium)," Bismarck wrote sarcastically in his memoirs, "the normal product of our educational system, as a Pantheist and if not as a Republican, at least with the conviction that the republic was the most reasonable of all forms of government."¹⁰ But republican or not, all roads were open to an aristocrat. He chose the bureaucracy not because he enjoyed its prospects but because he found its discipline less oppressive than that of the army. So it happened that the first Bismarck who ever proposed to serve his king with the pen enrolled at the University of Gottingen to study law, the prerequisite for entering the civil service. But it was in duels and drinking bouts that Bismarck excelled at Gottingen, not in his studies. He despised the pedantry of academic discipline; he disdained the political debates of the *Burschenschaften*, the patriotic fraternities, which he soon recognized

¹⁰ G. E, I. p. 1.

8

as associations of doctrinaires which had proved their futility at every critical juncture of German history. But to live unnoticed was harder still. Thus was born the "mad Junker," wondrously clad, of extraordinary physical attainment, proud of his ability to drink all his companions under the table, always ready to duel, distinguished by his caprices, his linguistic ability and his wit. Heavily in debt, physically run down, he left Gottingen after one year at the instance of his parents for the University of Berlin.

But Berlin wrought no fundamental change: "I live here like a gentleman," he wrote to a friend in Gottingen, "and gradually adopt an affected behavior. I speak a good deal of French, spend much of my time getting dressed, the remainder making visits and with my old friend, the bottle. In the eventing I sit in the first tier of the opera where I behave - as rowdily as possible." It would be difficult to draw more nihilistic picture than this bitter sarcasm so close to despair with a life which insisted on imprisoning in a stifling conformity the soaring flight of genius. "Of our friends from Gottingen," wrote Bismarck in the same letter," there is here Sch., who lacks everything for being human but nothing to be a valet, save a lock before his mouth. He lives in happy bliss with thirty cousins, whose reunion leads to nothing save an unlawful accumulation of stupidity: they do not eat, they do not drink. What is it then that they do? They count their ancestors."¹¹ Only once was that nihilism rent by a vision of the future, when in one sparse sentence, in three aphoristic clauses, Otto von Bismarck drew his prescription for his career: "Constitution inevitable; in this manner to outward glory; but is it necessary to be inwardly pious besides?"

Constitution inevitable—this was the crux of Bismarck's dilemma, that the stagnant Prussia of the 1830's required submission as the price of advancement. And it was also the cause of Prussia's stagnation, that in repressing its popular movement Prussia was denying its own historic mission. The subtle Metternich system had proposed to control Central Europe through an act of self-abnegation by Prussia, by placing legitimacy above history, and the union of conservative monarchs above the aspirations of a century.

¹¹ *Werke, 141, p. 3.*

[L]

9

Constitution inevitable—this was the maxim of an individual who could not conceive an existence on which he did not impose his own pattern, and who refused to accept submission as the price of advancement. Not because it was conformable to a theory of government, did Bismarck expect a constitution therefore, but as a means of transcending Prussia's stagnation and to give a scope to his own inspiration. Nor was it a recognition of popular currents, but the frustration with routine that led Bismarck's tendency to equate his will with the structure of the universe. And it also exhibited the analysis of a naturalist disdainful of doctrines of the solidarity of conservative interests. A constitution was inevitable because the principle of legitimacy would not be able to contain the aspirations of a century; it was inevitable because it was implicit in Prussia's history. And Bismarck had no doubt what rule he would play in a fluid situation which placed a premium on agility of mind and not determinacy of calculation.

But it is the third aphorism which is most significant: "Is it necessary to be inwardly pious besides?" This was the revolutionary's query, the inability to conceive an inward piety which involves an experienced submission to a superior order of being. It was the challenge of the Spinozist God who was ind identical with the totality of occurrences and to whom piety was as meaningless as reverence. It was the assertion of the exclusive validity of the will, that insisted on equating conception and feasibility. Neither history nor nature transcended man in Bismarck's feelings, if not in his pronouncements. And so it happended that Bismarck's relations to God were akin to those towards the monarch, that formal obedience created a claim and that the fact of piety placed the Divinity under obligation. The man who had grown up on the heaths of Pomerania would never rid himself of the spirit of his pagan ancestors who had pressed the gods into their service defiantly, by reserving the right to define their attributes.

But a constitution seemed far away and ever again there appeared the vision of the life of the country gentleman as an escape from the tedium of a bureaucratic advancement that had not even started. Moreover it seemed that the university officials were not prepared any

10

longer to tolerate their demoniac charge:"...I will consequently give up
the diplomatic career...take a wife, produce children, cultivate the land
and corrupt the morals of my peasants through excessive production
of spirits. Should you come into this neighborhood ten years hence...
you will find a fat reserve officer, complete with mustache, whose
curses make the ground tremble, possessed of a just disdain of Jews
and Frenchmen and who beats his dogs and servants most brutally
when he has been tyrannized by his wife. I will wear leather pants...
and (at the wool-market in Stettin) I shall stroke my mustache good-
naturedly if I am addressed as Baron and sell for two dollars too
cheap. On the king's birthday I shall get drunk and shout hurrah ..
in short I shall be happy in the rural circle of my family; car tel
est mon plaisir."¹²

But such was not Bismarck's pleasure as the tone of the letter had
made clear in any case His pride could not accept defeat nor his
ambition normal existence. With the aid of a private tutor he pre-
pared for the examination which would permit his entry at the lowest
run of the civil service hierarchy, as Referendar, not dissimilar to the
position of Law Clerk in the United States; "My fingers are becom-
ing crooked through the impulse of a most unphilosophical passion...
You will have guessed it, that my ambition which formerly was less
strong and took different turn, has induced in me an industry hither-
to unexampled in my life, as well as the utilization of all other means
which seem conducive to my advancement...So deluded am I that
I have come to consider mere pleasure without utility a waste of
time." But again fulfilment proved empty. If country life without
activity was enervating, study without advancement was draining.
And so this letter too ended as inconclusivly as all of Bismarck's
attempts in his search for freedom, a freedom which was identified
with independence: "Regarded by daylight, my life is some-what
miserable...I doubt that even the most complete attainment of my goal,
the longest title and the widest decoration...will be able to compensate
me for the spiritually and physically shrunk chest which will be the
consequence of this life. More often still I feel an impetus to
exchange the pen for the plow...But then that will always be

¹²Werke, 14/1, p. 4. 7 April, 1834.

11

possible.”¹³ And because it would always be possible, Bismarck after another summer spent in study was ready for his first governmental post as Referendar with the Governor of the Province of Aachen. It was only appropriate that this individual should be a friend of Bismarck's mother. Bismarck might consider himself an independent and proud noble; his career seemed ever more to be that of a Mencken!

But the life of a Referendar was insignificant and insignificance was unbearable. Soon Aachen came to know the mad Junker, therefore, who preferred associating with foreigners, a splendid conversationalist but an unpredictable companion who astonished a dinner party by first preparing and then consuming 150 oysters, and whose love affairs and gambling debts soon earned him notoriety, if not fame. One year later he left Aachen without leave and his government service was nearing its end. The formal reason was love affair with “a young British lady of blonde hair and rare beauty, who up to this date understands many a word of German.”

After two months he sent the first message to his superior that reasons which seemed important had prevented him from applying formally for leave. Six months later he returned home, the engagement broken, his position lost. Nothing is known of the whole affair save Bismarck's own cryptic account: “I had every prospect for what is called a brilliant career...had not an extraordinarily beautiful Briton induced me to change course and to sail in her wake for six months without the slightest leave. I faced her to come aside, she lowered the flag, but after possession of two months I lost the booty to a one-armed colonel of fifty years, with four horses and 15,000 dollars revenue.”¹⁴ Once more family connections obtained him governmental post, this time in Potsdam. But he lasted only three months. In 1839 Bismarck formally quit the government service from which he had long since been on leave. He was then twenty-four years of age.

The real reason for giving up his career was not to be found in Bismarck's love affair, however, but in his personality. And it came to its strongest expression in a letter to a cousin who had questioned

13 *Werke*, 14/1, p. 6. 18 June 1834.

14 *Ibid.*, p. 30. 9 January, 1845.

12

his decision by appealing to Bismarck's patriotism. Witty and brilliantly written with the full force of his powerful imagery, the letter represented a self-portrayal whose outlines even a life-time in the public gaze could only deepen. It will therefore he quoted at some length here:

> "That the... position of our public officials does not appeal to me, that I do not consider it a necessary component of happiness to be a civil servant or even a minister.. that my ambition is more directed towards not having to obey than towards giving orders, these are facts for which I can give no reasons, save my taste .. The scope of activity of the individual official with us is little independent even that of the highest... The Prussian official is like an individual in an orchestra; whether he plays the first violin or the triangle,... he must play his fraction as it is set down, may be think well of it or ill. I, however, want to make music as I consider it proper or none at all.

> "In a country with a free constitution, everyone who dedicates himself to the affairs of state has the possibility of placing his whole strength behind the accomplishment of those measures .. of whose justice and utility he is convinced... There it is indeed possible to acquire the consciousness of having exerted all one's power for the welfare of one's country... But with us, it is necessary to be a paid and dependent servant of the state in order to be politically active; it is necessary to belong completely to the bureaucratic caste, to share its correct and its false views and to forego any individuality in judgment and action... Even in my brief career I have seen very often how the valuable time... of important offices was wasted in a manner that one had no choice but to assume that the tasks were invented in order to occupy the officials and not the officials employed in order to take care of necessary tasks... How can I convince myself that I am serving my fellow citizen, when I consider this system .. much less advantageous than its opposite and indeed unjust? How should I justify myself before my conscience, to serve a government to combat whose principles... I deem one of my noblest duties towards my country?

> "Besides, patriotism was probably the motive force of but a few of the famous statesmen particularly in absolutist states; much more

13

frequently (it was) ambition, the desire to command, to be admired
and to become famous. I must confess that I am not free of this
passion and many distinctions such as those of statesmen with free
constitutions, such as Peel, O'Connell, Mirabeau (etc.), won as a
coparticipant in energetic political movements, would exert on me an
attraction beyond any abstract consideration...I am less allured how-
ever by the successes to be attained on the well-worn path through
examinations, connections, or seniority and the good will of superiors.
To be sure, there are moments when I can not think but with painful
regrets (in English in text) of all the gratifications of my vanity which
awaited me in the service: the satisfaction of seeing one's usefulness
and superiority officially recognized...the self-satisfied realization that
one is considered an able man, that one is noticed, talked about,
envied; the whole (secret) glory of a privy concillor which eventually
would surround me and my family, all this has much that is dazzling
after I have consumed a bottle of wine and I require sober reflection
to tell myself that these are the hallucinations of a foolish vanity, in
the same category as the pride of the dandy in his coat and of the
banker in his money...

"... A salary which would enable me to marry according to
my requirements...would await me, assuming the best possible
career, in my fortieth year when, dried up by the dust of official
records, I have become a hypochondriac suffering from chest and
abdominal ills brought on by the eternal sitting position and in need
of a woman primarily for medical care. For this moderate advant-
age, for the titillation of letting myself be called Mr. President, for
the consciousness of rarely being of as much use to the country as I
cost it.. for this I am firmly decided not to scarifice my independence...
at least as long as there exist thousands, and among them many
excellent individuals, to whom these prizes seem sufficiently tempting
to induce them to fill with pleasure the place I leave vacant."¹⁵

This was the letter of a revolutionary, certain of his genius,
contemptuous of his environment, frustrated by routine. It was
revolutionary not because of its pride and definance—these were
traditional in Bismarck's class—but because of its justification for it.
Not on the prerogatives of social position did Bismarck base his

¹⁴Ibid., p. 14. 29 September 1838.

14

claim to recognition, nor on the superiority of alternative principles
his rejection of the Prussian governmental structure. Rather both
his claim and his rebellion were interwoven with his fundamental
trait: his effort to identify his will with the meaning of events.
Behind all the withering contempt for mediocrity there was barely
hidden an elemental quest for power. It was freedom that Bismarck
was seeking, the liberty inherent in not having to obey which again
was unattainable without the power to command.

These were the qualities which would separate Bismarck for all
his life from all the contending forces within Prussia. He was
sufficiently a Junker to demand certain privileges as his due, but as
a personal predilection not because they reflected an order of the
universe. Whatever their disagreements with the king, it would
have been difficult to find one other member of this tight nobility
who would have generalized his grievances or who would not have
considered Bismarck's attack of Purssia's governmental system as
akin to sacrilege. Nor would the opponents of the Prussian system
have been pleased with their ally. For it was not in the name of an
alternative principle that Bismarck attacked the Prussian structure
but merely because it inhibited genius—and not just any genius but
his own. They would find little sustenance in this man who was
impatient of both doctrines and institutions but tended to transform
them into tools in his demoniac quest to scale the peak which would
reduce all things to their proper insignificance—provided only that
there was not left even one mountain top that towered above him.

And there was finally to be found in this letter the masterful
diplomatic skill which was merely the reverse side of his disdain for
all men, the ability to adjust the argument to the psychology of the
adversary and the need of the moment, to confront the antagonist
with an unanswerable dilemma. How shallow did the appeal to
patriotism sound when faced with the definition of a deeper loyalty
which commanded renunciation. How unworthy must the invoca-
tion of the glories of the bureaucratic career have seemed if Bis-
marck could visualize them but with the aid of a bottle of wines,

This cynicism would forever mark Bismarck's revolutionary
quality. That institutions will frustrate genius is inevitable, for to

15

be stable a society must be able to survive the mediocrity which will
be its usual pattern of leadership. Nor is it strange that genius
should rebel against these fetters for its distinguishing characteristic
is precisely its capacity to transcend existing norms. But it is a
rare and not always happy occurrence when genius attempts to
recast the world in its own image instead of being satisfied with
leavening it. Then institutions must disintegrate and with them the
spontaneous sense of obligation brought about by continuity. Then
too a society may embark on a *tour de force* beyond its resources.
For if the application of administrative criteria to policy leads to
stagnation, a structure dependent on producing great men in each
generation may doom itself, because both the appearance and even
more the recognition of genius is an indeterminate thing.

But it is too much to ask a revolutionary to recognisze this,
for he defines himself precisely by his psychological incapacity to
think in terms transcending him. History, tradition, all values that
justify themselves by their self-evidence must remain anathema to
the revolutionary for their very existence is a challenge to his
assertion of the exclusive validity of the will. Not for nothing was
Bismarck's most vitriolic criticism constantly directed against the
bureaucracy, which symbolized the continuity of administration;
at times against the aristocracy which asserted the supremacy of
historical existence and always against the doctrinaires who main-
tained the superiority of value over will. And it was no accident
that the three statesmen who appeared in the letter as examples
worth emulating represented either rebellion or a break with the
past: O'Connell, the Irish revolutionary using the rules of the
House of Commons to paralyze it; Peel pushing through the
Corn Laws *against* his own party and splitting it in the process;
Mirabeau who presided over an attempt at legal revolution—they
were all men of will, obeying only themselves. This to Bismarck
was the merit of a free constitution—that it gave scope to the will,
that it opened an avenue for command independent of routine.

But where was a Pomeranian Baron to find such a field of activity
in 1839? Bismarck was back on the Kniephof which he administered
for his father. But country-life soon began to pale. "I have

16

the unhappy disposition," wrote Bismarck now to his brother, "that every situation in which I might be appears desirable but burdensome and boring as I find myself in it."¹⁶ Soon the countryside was full of tales of his escapades, of his wild cross-country drives with two racing horses before his carriage, of the time at an officers' club when he drank a whole bottle of wine at one drought, or of another engagement again broken, this time by the fiancée's mother, "a woman who to do her justice is one of the most wicked I know and who still has the desire to be herself the object of tender looks."¹⁷ More humiliated by the fact of rebuff than hurt by any inward attachment, Bismarck left on a journey through England, France, and Switzerland and even made some tentative plans to serve with the British in India. But "my father wrote me a letter moist with tears which spoke of lonely old age, (73 years, widower, deaf), of death and meeting again and ordered me to retun. I came home—he did not die."¹⁸

Completely nihilistic now, Bismarck returned to government service. But this time he lasted only two weeks. When kept waiting in the ante-room of the governor of the province, he departed leaving this message; "Please tell the President that I have had to leave, but that I will not return." He began to read voraciously, and almost indiscriminately, Shakespeare and Byron; Louis Blanc and Voltaire and always Spinoza. And his escapades continued. Never before had so restless a man sat on the Kniephof. But the well-placed families in Lower Pomerania who were so self-righteously wagging their heads could not see, it was beyond their horizon that here was a man driven by the furies in search for the meaning of life. Nor that when he had found it that this energy might transform the world even while it burned itself out. And it was at this point, at the age of thirty, in the pit of despondency that Bismarck received the answer to the riddle he had posed nearly a decade previously: "Is it necessary to be inwardly pious besides?" And if the answer resembled a diplomatic pact with God more than the resolution of spiritual dilemma, it sufficed to bring about the measure of balance

¹⁶ *Ibid.* 14/1, p. 38.

¹⁷ *Ibid.* 14/1, p. 30.

¹⁸ *Ibid.* 14/1, p. 31, 9 January, 1845.

17

which enabled Bismarck to give a direction to what had seemed a random existence.

In a personality in which everything is reduced to a manifestation of will, the spiritual and the sensual are never too far apart. So it was that Bismarck came to a recognition of limits, and if not to piety, at least to a measure of acceptance through the mediation of two women.

Marie von Thadden came from a family of "Pietists," a religious sect rebelling against the "liberalism" of the orthodox Lutheran Church. Like the Christian Scientists in the United States, they believed in the most literal interpretation of the Bible and considered forbidden every thing not explicitly permitted in the Scriptures. They rejected the "superficial pleasure of life and sought fulfilment in prayer meetings and private worship, in endless theological disputes and not least in the saving of damned souls. The significance of this group resided not so much in their numbers as in their combination of rigid orthodoxy in religion and inflexible conservatism in politics. Their membership comprised several of the most influential members of the aristocracy, individuals such as Leopold von Gerlach, later chief aid-de-camp of the king, his even more rigid brother, Ludwig, and Senfft-Pilsach, the governor of a Prussian province. No group more anathema to Bismarck could be imagined. "Of Cromwell's famous phrase, 'Pray and keep your powder dry'," he mocked, "They forget the second and most important half."¹⁹ "She is a dried-up-duenna," he wrote of a member of the Pietist group, "...who is hoping to find in heaven the man who has escaped her on earth."²⁰ And he reported to his father after a boat trip in which the ship nearly capsized during a storm in the Baltic: "The silence of the cabin was punctured only by the loud prayers of a merchant from Bremen who until this moment had seemed more concerned with his waistcoat than with his God...The prayer of the gentleman from Bremen saved us, however."²¹

But Marie von Thadden was not only a Pietist but a woman. Beautiful, passionate and sensuous, she had been engaged in 1843,

¹⁹ L. G.

²⁰ E. Y. K. I, p. 40.

²¹ Werke, 14/1, p. 27. 8 August 1844.

THE FORMATION OF BISMARCK'S POLITICAL THOUGHT 18

at the age of twenty, to Bismarck's friend, Moritz von Blankenburg. On a trip to the Kniephof, Bismarck stopped at her estate to make her acquaintance. Needless to say, Marie von Thadden was attracted by this knightly figure who seemed to her a "great and interesting man of the world with a brilliant physical appearance." But how to deal with this "lower Pomeranian Phoenix known as the epitomy of wildness and arrogance." By saving his soul, answered the Pietist in Marie von Thadden and thereby achieved not only tolerance for her relationship with the friend of her fiancee, but even sanctity. And Bismarck not at all indifferent agreed to meet her half-way on this basis.

"Never before," she worte to Moritz von Blankenburg, "have I heard some one explain his pantheism so openly and so clearly. You are familiar with Otto's sad opinions, with which as you know he is himself so dissatisfied. Honest he is without doubt and therein resides a great promise...(He spoke) of the presumption of the believers to consider their judgment the correct one, of the greatness of his God who would not bother with so insignificant a piece of dust as himself, of his complete scepticism, of his total indifference towards joy and pain, of his eternal, bottomless boredom and emptiness: How can I believe, he said, since I have no faith...He was very excited and still he could not leave...A thousand times I had at the tip of my tongue: "Oh, Otto, do begin a new life, do tear yourself away from your dissolute wandering." 22 It was no mean compliment which Bismarck paid this woman, that he so bared his soul to her. And if she did not fully understand his motivation or his ability to adapt himself to the psychology of others he in turn could not have foreseen that for the first time his life was to be given a sense of direction.

Two days later Bismarck returned to Trieglaff, Marie von Thadden's estate. Once more they discussed religion and, after he left, Marie von Thadden invoked her fiancee's assistance in saving this damned soul. But three letters of Moritz von Blankenburg full of maudlin exaltation remained unanswered. Even a joint attempt at conversion carefully arranged was only partially successful. At

22 Ludwig, p. 57.

19

Whitsuntide Moritz and Marie confronted Bismarck with the letter of a woman, a friend of Marie's, dying of tuberculosis who asserted that she could not die until she knew that Bismarck had found his way back to God. But pity was not the way to humble this pride and after a few more letters Bismarck refused to discuss the problem further.

Marie von Thadden had, however, understood Bismarck better than he realized, above all that he could accept only what he could personalize. And if the dying were already too close to abstractions for this incarnation of the will perhaps there might be found another way to melt his obstinate reserve. Marie von Thadden was married now, but the intimacy of their friendship continued. One day in 1945 she introduced Bismarck to a friend, Johanna von Puttkammer. The Puttkammers belonged to the same Pietist group as the Thaddens. Although Johanna lacked Marie von Thadden's sensuousness, she was no less passionate and more unconditional in her commitments. Small but graceful, tender and natural, Johanna was the most popular member of Marie von Thadden's circle. In introducing her to Bismarck, Marie von Thadden no doubt was bringing her friend the greatest sacrifice she was capable of.

Now the Blanckenburgs used all their wiles to interest Bismarck in their friend. "A poignant flower, never touched by any blight," wrote Marie ambiguously. "She is extremely intelligent," wrote Moritz, "unusual through and through and highly original with a deep, pious heart.... If you do not want her I will take her as my second wife." ³² But any semblance of pressure only served to evoke the resistance of this unbending man. He listened to Johanna's efforts to convert him with "a sarcastic smile" and Marie had to warn the friend: "with such a nature the struggle towards the light can be neither quick nor easy and will certainly long be hidden from human eyes." Not even a journey through the Harz cleverly arranged by Marie in 1846 could induce Bismarck to surrender. It took an event of elemental power to teach Bismarck, if not a sense of limits, the meaning of finality and therefore of the inescapability of commitment. For on November 10, 1846 Marie von Thadden died.

²³ Ludwig, p. 50.

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Maria von Thadden was the victim of an influenza epidemic which had already claimed her younger brother and her mother. From the deathbed of her mother Marie had written to Bismarck asking him to come to see her as quickly as possible. When he arrived she had fallen ill herself and even now was still concerned with the salvation of his soul. She sent him a message pleading "with the utmost earnestness" that now was the time for conversion. And at this point Bismarck for the first time experienced the meaning of impotence, that only by renunciation can man conquer the world. For the first time since his sixteenth year he prayed, not to a God, much less to a theology, but for a person, that his life not be impoverished by such a loss. But for the first time he confronted a situatian which was beyond his power: "This is the first time," he wrote to his sister, "that I have lost someone...close to me and whose parting created a profound and unexpected void... The feeling of emptiness, this thought that I would never see again a dear...person, of whom I have very few...this was so new to me that the whole event does not yet make the impression of reality." And to his widowed friend he spoke these elemental words: "This is the first heart that I lose of which I truly knew that it beat for me. Now I believe in an eternity - or God has not created the world." Thus came Otto von Bismarck to his God, as a guarantor of another meeting with Marie von Thadden; so did Bismarck approach eternity as a projection of himself in time thereby to fill an intolerable void.

But Marie von Thadden's death had another and more immediate consequence: Bismarck's engagement with Johanna von Puttkammer. A brief two months before he had still written to Moritz von Blankenburg, that he did not yet trust his feelings. But now Marie von Thadden was dead and her friend must have seemed a bequest, a trust. Four weeks after Marie's death, Bismarck spoke to Johanna von Puttkammer about marriage. To accept unconditionally this man, of whom the wildest stories were circulating, was impossible nor conformable to the customs of the region. But Johanna did not refuse and encouraged Bismarck to ask formally for her hand. This was a test, however, not unworthy of that of the knights of old, save that now the trial was not a contest in arms but a spiritual struggle and the object was not to slay a dragon but to persuade an

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antagonist perhaps no less formidable, the forbidding, dour, intently religious, old Heinrich von Puttkammer. To convince this man who was not only a Pietist but a Quietist that the "mad Junker was a fit husband for his daughter, would have discouraged many a man less bold.

The result was Bismarck's first major diplomatic document, a letter asking for permission to visit the Puttkammer estate to put his case before the futher in person. It is a strange and beautifully written document, so ambiguous that ever since its publication historians have debated its sincerity. But whatever its sincerity, it was masterfully adjusted to the psychology of the recipient. As he was to do so often he completely confounded his opposite number by the completest frankress, by making explicit Puttkammer's most secret thoughts if with a sweep completely unknown in the unimaginative circle of Bible Readers: "I do not deny" Bismarck's letter began "that it may appear presumptuous, that I whom you have met but recently .. ask of you the strongest proof of confidence that you can grant anyone. I also know that I...will never be able to give you in my own person those guarantees for the future which would justify the pledge of so dear a collateral on your part, unless you make up through confidence in God, what can not be supplied by confidence in man."

Here was the case against Bismarck stated more powerfully than Heinrich von Puttkammer would ever have been able to, only to be transformed into the only argument that was recognized in the Pietist circle. Not because he was worthy of God did Bismarck ask for Johanna's hand—this would have seemed presumptuous to the Pietist in someone far more religious—but because only God could make him worthy. And to reject him would have indicated no lack of faith in the suitor but an absence of trust in God. And on this plane the subsequent account of Bismarck's fall from grace only accentuated the merit of his redemption: "...At the time of my sixteenth birthday I had no other faith than a naked deism which did not remain for long without Pantheist overtones. It was at about this time, that I stopped praying, not out of indifference but as the consequence of ripe reflection. because prayer seemed to contradict my notion of the nature of God. I told myself that either God produced everything, including my own thoughts—and that in

22

this case He was praying to Himself; or that my will was inde-
pendent of God's in which case it would be presumptuous and
indicate doubt...in the perfection of Divine decrees, to belive that
one could influence Him by human entreaties...Thus. I threw myself
blindly into life, wound up in bad company, now as a tempter,
now as tempted and considered...all sins permitted as long as they
did not seem to infringe on the rights of others taken in the widest
sense..."

To the pious von Puttkammer this could have seemed as nothing
short of the vice of the devil. But even this confession only served
to heighten the power of the moment of conversion: "...About four
years ago...I came into closer contact with Moritz von Blanckenburg
and I also became acquainted with the (Thaddens) and their circle,
There I found individuals in whose presence I felt ashamed that I
had attempted to investigate by the limited light of my intelligence
that which was assumed true and holy by such eminent minds. That
hope and peace were with them did not surprise me, for I had never
doubted that they accompanied faith. But faith can not be given
nor taken away and I was of the opinion that I would have to wait
resignedly until it was vouchsafed to me. Soon I felt at home in
this environment and with Moritz and his wife, who came to be dear
to me as ever a sister to her brother, I experienced a well-being for-
eign to me heretofore, a family life which included me, almost a
home...As a result, the consciousness of the superficiality and un-
worthiness of my life became more powerful within me than ever
before...and I experienced bitter remorse about my previous exis-
tence. That which stirred within me became real when at the news
of the fatal illness of our deceased friend...the first fervent prayer tore
itself from my heart, without any concern about its reasonableness,
together with a stinging sense of my unworthiness to pray
and with tears as had been unknown to me since childhood. God
did not grant my prayer then, but He also did not reject it for
I did not lose again the capacity to appeal to Him and I feel
if not peace, at least a confidence I never knew before. Penetrated
by the realization that I am not able to transcend sin by my own
efforts, I nevertheless do not feel...depressed by this knowledge as I
previously did without it, because the doubt regarding an eternal life

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has given way and because daily I can entreat God to be merciful to me...and to awaken and to strengthen my faith..."²⁴ What could a pious man, indeed, what could any Christian reply to this appeal? That which Bismarck was demanding of Heinrich von Puttkammer was in it nothing of an apology to mortals, so that even Bismarck's catalogue of sins became a manifestation of his defiant pride.

Having won the moral terrain, Bismarck followed the letter with one of the lightning moves which were always shortly to accompany his careful preparation: "Around Christmas," he reported to his brother, "I wrote to the father who was extraordinarily horrified because the idea that his daughter might marry frightened him in any case, but in particular in connection with my person of whom he had heard a great deal of ill and little good. Upon my return home I received a letter from him which contained in essence nothing but a few quotations from the Bible with which he had consoled himself in his sorrow and a dubiously phrased invitation to Rheinfeld (the Puttkammer estate). There I found ... a disposition for prolonged negotiations, of doubtful issue, had I not moved the whole affair onto a different plane by a decisive embrace of my bride, immediately upon first seeing her, to the greatest astonishment of the parents..."²⁵ To the moral conquest was thus added a *fait accompli* and many a later opponent of Bismarck might have been less astonished by his tactics had he known of his courtship. And the whole episode achieves an additional poignacy through the conclusion of Bismarck's letter to his brother: "I believe I have had a great and no longer expected stroke of fortune because I am marrying, speaking quite cold-bloodedly, a woman of rare spirit and nobility...In matters of faith we differ, somewhat more to her sorrow than to mine, if not as much as you may think ... for events ... have produced in certain transformations ...(in any case) we have concluded a kind of treaty of Passau. Moreover I love Pietism in women..." Ever since these letters became public German historians have debated the degree of Bismarck's sincerity, But apart from the fact that if Bismarck was insincere it did not necessarily have to be in the letter to his father-in-law, the whole dispute is beside the point

²⁴ *Werke*, 14/I, p. 46.

²⁵ *Ibid*. 14/I, p. 50.

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because the question tends to be incorrectly put. Sincerity has
meaning only in reference to a standard of truth of conduct. But
the root fact of Bismarck's personality was his incapacity to com-
prehend any such standard outside of his will. Nor that he did not
appreciate the function of social morality and he wrote many
eloquent passages about it. But in application the only meaning he
could assign to it was that produced by his own convictions, for
this reason he never could accept the good faith of any opponent;
therefore, too, there came about this supreme mastery in adaptation
to the opposite number or to the requirements of the moment. Just
as an artist reveals beauty directly through the impact of his work,
so Bismarck manifested immediately his version of truth—the con-
ditions of success in a given situation. It was not that Bismarck
lied—this is much too self-conscious an act. It is rather that he was
like a finely tuned antenna sensitive to the subtlest currents of any
environment and that he then produced his measures spontaneously
and precisely attuned to the proper wave-length. The key to Bismarck's
success was therefore precisely that he was always sincere. Therein
resides the secret of his impetuous elan.

Bismarck's new-found relationship to God therefore played the
crucial role in the formation of his public personality. Until his
introduction into the Thadden circle, Bismarck's naturalism had only
led to an almost total nihilism. In a world characterized by struggle,
death was the most recurrent phenomenon and the ultimate meaning
of all effort. In a universe conceived as a mechanism perhaps set in
motion by a Superior. Being but thereafter influenced by Him,
energy was essentially wasted. What did it matter that one possess-
ed superior insight into its working? It only served to accentuate
the insignificance of the human scale. This had accounted for Bis-
marck's restless wandering in his early years, for his seeming indeci-
siveness and his virulent scepticism. He who thought he knew, had
to find a way to translate his knowledge into action.

It was God who provided this mechanism. Henceforth the
finiteness of the human scale was no longer oppressive, for eternity
provided a sufficient dimension for the vastness of Bismarck's con-
ception. Bismarck had begun with a will soaring out to embrace
the totality of events. Now the world had expended, it was no

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longer identical with his will, but what remained of it was an auxiliary, a guarantee of success. Henceforth Bismarck's scepticism was transformed into contempt for his opponents who did not understand the real purpose of existence; "I am a soldier of God" he wrote now, "and where he sends me there I must go and I believe He will send me and mould my life as He needs it." "God has put me at the place where I must me serious and pay my debt to the country," he wrote to his wife upon receiving his first diplomatic appointment. "To do His will I am firmly decided and if I lack wisdom I shall ask it of Him; He gives plentifully and never presents accounts."²⁶

Bismarck's faith thus represented a means to achieve a theological justification of the struggle for power; its distinguishing characteristic was not acceptance but activity; Darwinism sanctified by God. He never ceased protesting against what he took to be the dogmatic nature of the Pietist circle. "How little confidence, how carefully you warp it in the cotton of seclusion so that no breath of the world chill it."²⁷ And he refuted her Pietist reluctance to use medicine by the assertion that if God had not wished them to be used, He would not have permitted them to be invented.²⁸ There was the real meaning of Bismarck's religion, a reciprocal pact with God, in which God in return for formal obeisance rewarded singleness of purpose with success and in which the very fact of success indicated divine pleasure. God became an ally by being made subject to the power of Bismarck's dialectic. For could he permit what had not found favour in His eyes? Bismarck's fatalism, erstwhile so hopeless, had now found a sense of direction. "With confidence in God," he wrote to his bride, "put on the spurs and let the wild horse of life fly you over stones and hedges, prepared to break your neck but above all without fear because one day you will in any case have to part from everything dear to you on earth, but not for eternity."²⁹

Ever since his introduction to the Thadden circle there was about Bismarck a new sense of purpose and a calculation of the main chance. In 1845 after his father's death he even left the Kniephof

²⁶Ibid. p. 210. 12 May, 1851.

²⁷Ibid. p. 55, 7 February, 1847.

²⁸Ibid. p. 87.

²⁹Ibid. p. 76, 7 March, 1847.

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and moved to the other ancestral estate, Schonhausen on the lower Elbe. The reason was eminently practical, that there existed in that region good prospect of a vacancy in the position of Deichhauptmann the officer incharge of building and repairing the dikes. And when the incumbent failed to resign as expected Bismarck saw to it that he was relieved by bringing charges of unauthorized absence. Deichhauptmann was a position of great prestige since the welfare of the predominantly agricultural region depended on its efficient performance. It was not surprising therefore that subsequently the Estates nominated Bismarck as an alternate to the Diet in Berlin. Nor could it have but increased his sense of mission that the regular deputy fell ill and that he was elected as his replacement. "I can not refuse, he wrote his bride in an involved explanation of his reasons for accepting, "without spoiling all my chances for the future." For the future, that is, as outlined in the epigrammatic sentence, "Constitution inevitable, for a platform in which ability and energy would promise quicker rewards than the stifling orthodoxy of the bureaucracy."

This then was the man who stepped on the rostrum that May 17, 1847. He had sown his wild oats and found himself. He had spent nine years in the wilderness, in the solitude of the Kniephof and he had emerged, hardened, better-read than most of his contemporaries among the aristocracy and of infinitely greater imagination. He was a revolutionary despite the fact that he appeared as the defender of the traditional Prussia. For institutions can be overthrown as well by a conception beyond the capacity of the material as by a direct attack. Here was a man of powerful convictions and an elemental will to make them effective; a sceptic in the profoundest sense, who did not challenge truths originated outside himself but could not even conceive them; a cynic to whom individuals were natural phenomena to be utilized according to their characteristics—all this buttressed by a religiosity which enabled Bismarck to project himself on a superhuman scale; "The God who moves worlds can protect me too with his wings."