Part 3 (1/2)
At a great festival at the Wartburg, in 1817, the students got out of hand, burned the works of those conservatives, Haller and Kotzebue, and the Code Napoleon. This youthful folly was purposely exaggerated throughout Germany, and was used by the party of autocracy to frighten the people, and also as a reason for pa.s.sing even severer laws against the ebullitions of liberty. At a conference at Carlsbad in 1819 the representatives of the states there a.s.sembled pa.s.sed severe laws against the student societies, the press, the universities, and the liberal professors.
From 1815-1830 the opinions of the more enlightened changed. The fear of Napoleon was gradually forgotten, and the hatred of the absolutism of Prussia and Austria grew.
In 1830 const.i.tutions were demanded and were guardedly granted in Brunswick, Saxony, Hanover, and Hesse-Ca.s.sel. In 1832 things had gone so far that at a great student festival the black, red, and gold flag of the Burschenschaft was hoisted, toasts were drunk to the sovereignty of the people, to the United States of Germany, and to Europe Republican! This was followed by further prosecutions. Prussia condemned thirty-nine students to death, but confined them in a fortress. The prison-cell of the famous Fritz Reuter may be seen in Berlin to-day. In Hesse, the chief of the liberal party, Jordan, was condemned to six years in prison; in Bavaria a journalist was imprisoned for four years, and other like punishments followed elsewhere. It was in 1857, when Queen Victoria came to the throne, that Hanover was cut off from the succession, as Hanover could not descend to a woman. The Duke of c.u.mberland became the ruler of Hanover, and England ceased to hold any territory in Europe.
From 1839-1847 there was comparative quiet in the political world. The rulers of the various states succeeded in keeping the liberal professorial rhetoric too damp to be valuable as an explosive.
Interwoven with this party in Germany, demanding for the people something more of representation in the government, was a movement for the binding together of the various states in a closer union. In 1842 when the first stone was laid for the completion of the Cologne Cathedral, at a banquet of the German princes presided over by the King of Prussia, the King of Wurtemberg proposed a toast to ”Our common country!” That toast probably marks the first tangible proof of the existence of any important feeling upon the subject of German unity.
At a congress of Germanists at Frankfort, in 1846, professors and students, jurists and historians, talked and discussed the questions of a German parliament and of national unity more perhaps than matters of scholars.h.i.+p.
In 1847 Professor Gervinus founded at Heidelberg the Deutsche Zeitung, which was to be liberal, national, and for all Germany.
I should be sorry to give the impression that I have not given proper value to the work of the German professor and student in bringing about a more liberal const.i.tution for the states of Germany. Liebig of Munich, Ranke of Berlin, Sybel of Bonn, Ewald of Gottingen, Mommsen in Berlin, Dollinger in Munich, and such men as Schiemann in Berlin to-day, were and are, not only scholars, but they have been and are political teachers; some of them violently reactionary, if you please, but all of them stirring men to think.
No such feeling existed then, or exists now, in Germany, as animated Oxford some fifty years ago when the greatest Sanscrit scholar then living was rejected by a vote of that body, one voter declaring: ”I have always voted against d.a.m.ned intellect, and I trust I always may!”
A state of mind that has not altogether disappeared in England even now. Indeed I am not sure, that the most notable feature of political life in England to-day, is not a growing revolt against legislation by tired lawyers, and an increasing demand for common-sense governing again, even if the governing be done by those with small respect for ”d.a.m.ned intellect.”
The third French revolution of 1848 set fire to all this, not only in Germany but in Austria, Hungary, Roumania, and elsewhere. We must go rapidly through this period of seething and of political teething. The parliament at Frankfort with nothing but moral authority discussed and declaimed, and finally elected Archduke John of Austria as ”administrator” of the empire. There followed discussions as to whether Austria should even become a member of the new confederation.
Two parties, the ”Little Germanists” and the ”Pan Germanists,” those in favor of including, and those opposed to the inclusion of Austria, fought one another, with Prussia leading the one and Austria, with the prestige of having been head of the former Holy Roman Empire, the other.
In 1849 Austria withdrew altogether and the King of Prussia was elected Emperor of Germany, but refused the honor on the ground that he could not accept the t.i.tle from the people, but only from his equals. There followed riots and uprisings of the people in Prussia, Saxony, Baden, and elsewhere throughout Germany. The Prussian guards were sent to Dresden to quell the rioting there and took the city after two days' fighting. The parliament itself was dispersed and moved to Stuttgart, but there again they were dispersed, and the end was a flight of the liberals to Switzerland, France, and the United States. We in America profited by the coming of such valuable citizens as Carl Schurz and many others. There were driven from Germany, they and their descendants, many among our most valuable citizens. The descendant of one of the worthiest of them, Admiral Osterhaus, is one of the most respected officers in our navy, and will one day command it, and we could not be in safer hands. In 1849 the German Federal fleet was sold at auction as useless; Austria was again in the ascendant and German subjects in Schleswig were handed over to the Danes.
In 1850 both the King of Prussia and the Emperor of Austria called congresses, but Prussia finally gave up hers, and the ancient confederation as of before 1848 met as a diet at Frankfort and from 1851-1858 Bismarck was the Prussian delegate and Austria presided over the deliberations.
A factor that made for unity among the German states was the Zollverein. From 1818-1853 under the leaders.h.i.+p of Prussia the various states were persuaded to join in equalizing their tariffs. Between 1834-5 Prussia, Bavaria, Wurtemberg, Saxony, Baden, Hesse-Na.s.sau, Thuringia, and Frankfort agreed upon a common standard for customs duties, and a few years later they were joined by Brunswick, Hanover, and the Mecklenburgs. German industry and commerce had their beginnings in these agreements. The hundreds of different customs duties became so exasperating that even jealous little governments agreed to conform to simpler laws, and probably this commercial necessity did more to bring about the unity of Germany than the King, or politics, or the army.
With the struggles of the various states to obtain const.i.tutions we cannot deal, nor would it add to the understanding of the present political condition of the German Empire.
Prussia, after riots in Berlin, after promises and delays from the vacillating King, who one day orders his own troops out of the capital and his brother, later William I, to England to appease the anger of the mob, and parades the streets with the colors of the citizens in revolt wrapped about him; and the next day, surly, obstinate, but ever orating, holds back from his pledges, finally accepts a const.i.tution which is probably as little democratic as any in the world.
Of the sixty-five million inhabitants of the German Empire, Prussia has over forty millions. The Landtag of Prussia is composed of two chambers, the first called the Herrenhaus, or House of Lords, and the second the Abgeordnetenhaus, or Chamber of Deputies. This upper house is made up of the princes of the royal family who are of age; the descendants of the formerly sovereign families of Hohenzollern- Hechingen and Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen; chiefs of the princely houses recognized by the Congress of Vienna; heads of the territorial n.o.bility formed by the King; representatives of the universities; burgomasters of towns with more than fifty thousand inhabitants, and an unlimited number of persons nominated by the King for life or for a limited period. This upper chamber is a mere drawing-room of the sovereign's courtiers, though there may be, and as a matter of fact there are at the present time, representatives even of labor in this chamber, but in a minority so complete that their actual influence upon legislation, except in a feeble advisory capacity, amounts to nothing. In this Herrenhaus, or upper chamber, of Prussia there are at this writing among the 327 members 3 bankers, 8 representatives of the industrial and merchant cla.s.s, and 1 mechanic; 12 in all, or not even four per cent., to represent the industrial, financial, commercial, and working cla.s.ses. Even in the lower chamber, or Abgeordnetenhaus, there are only 10 merchants, 19 manufacturers, 7 labor representatives, and 1 bank director, or 37 members who represent the commercial, manufacturing, and industrial interests in a total members.h.i.+p of 443.
In the other states of Germany much the same conditions exist. In Bavaria, in the upper house, or Kammer der Reichsrate, there is no representative, and in the lower house of 163 members only 29 representatives of the industrial world.
In Saxony, the most socialistic state in Germany, the upper chamber with 49 members has 5 industrials; the lower chamber with 82 members has 40 representatives of commercial, industrial, and financial affairs.
In Wurtemberg, in the upper chamber with 51 members there are 3 industrials; and in the second chamber with 63 members there are 17 industrials.
In Baden, of the 37 members of the upper house there are 6 industrials; of the 73 members of the lower house there are 23 representatives of commerce and industry.
This condition of political inequality is the result of the maintenance of the old political divisions, despite the fact that in the last thirty years the whole complexion of the country has changed radically, due to the rapid increase of the city populations representing the industrial and commercial progress of a nation that is now the rival of both the United States and Great Britain. In more than one instance a town with over 300,000 inhabitants will be represented in the legislature in the same proportion as a country population of 30,000. Stettin, for example, with a population of 245,000, which is a seventh of the total population of Pomerania, has only 6 of the 89 provincial representatives. Further, the three-cla.s.s system of voting in Prussia and in the German cities, is a unique arrangement for giving men the suffrage without either power or privilege. According to this system every male inhabitant of Prussia aged twenty-five is ent.i.tled to vote in the election of members of the lower house. The voters, however, are divided into three cla.s.ses. This division is made by taking the total amount of the state taxes paid in each electoral district and dividing it into three equal amounts. The first third is paid by the highest tax-payers; the second third by the next highest tax-payers, and the last third by the rest. The first cla.s.s consists of a comparatively few wealthy people; it may even happen that a single individual pays a third of the taxes in a given district. These three cla.s.ses then elect the members of an electoral college, who then elect the member of the house. In Prussia it may be said roughly that 260,000 wealthy tax-payers elect one-third; 870,000 tax-payers elect one-third, and the other 6,500,000 voters elect one-third of the members of the electoral college, with the consequence that the 6,500,000 are not represented at all in the lower house of Prussia. In order to make this three-cla.s.s system of voting quite clear, let us take the case of a city where the same principle may be seen at work on a smaller scale. In 1910, in the city of Berlin, there were:
931 voters of the first cla.s.s paying 27,914,593 marks of the total tax.
32,131 voters of the second cla.s.s paying 27,908,776 marks of the total tax.
357,345 voters of the third cla.s.s paying 16,165,501 marks of the total tax.
Roughly the voters in the first cla.s.s each paid $7,500; those in the second cla.s.s $218; those in the third cla.s.s $11. The 931 voters elected one-third, 32,131 voters elected one-third, and 357,345 elected one-third of the town councillors. In this same year in Berlin there were: