We have looked
hundreds
of times with silent
sorrow at the summits of the Vosges.
sorrow at the summits of the Vosges.
Treitschke - 1915 - Germany, France, Russia, and Islam
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? What We Demand from France 169
remorseless sweeping away of the French officials in
Alsace, which is indispensable, and replace the
foreign powers by vigorous home ones. Prussia
alone can steadfastly maintain the state of siege
which, we may easily imagine, may be necessary
for a time in some of the districts of the forlorn
land. The worst fault of the Prussian adminis-
tration, its perpetual scribbling, will seem innocent
to the people of Alsace after the corruption and
the statistical mania of the prefectures. A power-
ful State, which has impressed its spirit on the
inhabitants of the Rhine country and the people
of Posen, will know how to reconcile the separate
life of the half -French Germans; and just as
Prussian parties have spread themselves immedi-
ately, in three or four years, over every part of
the new provinces, the people of Alsace will one
day be ready to ally themselves with the various
parties of Prussia, and cease to form a separate
faction in the Parliament at Berlin.
The peace must break many a bond which was
dear to those borderers. Can Germany venture
to add the useless cruelty of separating them
from each other, and giving Metz to Prussia,
and Strassburg to Bavaria? The peace will cut
the people of Alsace off from a powerful nation, in
their connection with which they found their
honour and their pride. Can Germany humiHate
them in the hour of their violent liberation, and
raise the modest white and blue or the red and
yellow flag where waved the tricolor e of the Rev-
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? I70 What We Demand from France
olution, which once conquered the world? No!
These Germans have been accustomed to the larger
views of a great State ; they will not endure being
anything but Prussians, if they must cease to
be Frenchmen. Let us give them something in
exchange for what they have lost -- a great and
glorious State, a powerful capital, a free competi-
tion for all the offices and honours of a great
Empire. In the uniformity of a great State they
have lost all taste for those bewildering conditions
of South German political life which we ourselves
often hardly understand. The}^ might learn to be
Prussian citizens, but they would think it as ridicu-
lous if they were handed over to a king in Munich,
and to a supreme king in Berlin. Here, in fact,
there is no place for those half measures and
artificial relations. Nothing but the simple and
intelligible reality of the German State will serve.
Everything like "federal fortresses," or "territory
acknowledging no authority between itself and the
Empire " -- or by whatever name the too-clever-by-
half devices of gambling dilettantes are known -- is
utterly out of the question.
We, who are old champions of German unity,
have for six years been demanding the incorpora-
tion of the Elbe Duchies into the Prussian State,
although the hereditary claim of a German princely
house stood in the way. Is this review to plead to-
day that a little State should insinuate itself into
the far more dangerously threatened Duchies
of the Rhine, where no claim of right bars the claim
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? What We Demand from France 171
of Prussia? Once give up the standpoint of Ger-
man unity, and cease to ask only what is for the
benefit of the great Fatherland; once begin to
reckon, like a shopkeeper, what part of the prizes
of victory should be assigned to each of the con-
federate allies, and one must be driven to the mani-
fest absurdity that the border territories should be
split up into I know not how many fragments. It
would be a worthy repetition of that ludicrous
sub-division of the Department of the Saar which
brought the sarcasms of Europe on us in 181 5. At
that time, when the consciousness of the strength
of Prussia was yet in its infancy, Gneisenau could
still propose that Prussia should hand over Alsace
to Bavaria, and receive the territory of Anspach-
B aireuth in exchange . All such barters of territory
are out of the question to-day. The nation knows
how casually its internal boundary lines have
been drawn. It tolerates those barriers of sepa-
ration ; but it is with a quiet dislike, and without
any serious confidence ; and it looks unfavourably
on any attempt to draw s ' milar lines anew . Prussia
is not in a condition to hand over its own share
of the rewards of victory to each separate country
and people. If it were really so -- if the friendh-
ness of the Court of Munich to the Confederation
were to be bought only by the cession to them of
at least Northern Alsace, including Hagenau
and Weissenburg -- what an ugly escape it would
be out of our difficulties! how repulsive to the
people of Alsace! But what is essential -- the
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? 172 What We Demand from France
uninterrupted boundary-line stretching from Died-
enhofen to Mulhausen -- can never be given up by
Prussia without serious injury to Germany.
We are told in warning tones of the objections
of Europe. If you go to the foreigner for counsel
he will most likely suggest to you that the Grand
Duke of Hesse, with his Herr von Dalwigk, should
be created King of Alsace. It is so, and we are
surrounded by secret enemies. Even the un-
worthy attitude of England has a deeper root than
her mere indolent love of peace -- it springs from
her unspoken mistrust of the incalculable power
of New Germany. In company with the Great
Powers, Switzerland and the Netherlands see
our growing strength with suspicion. Watched
as we are by angry neighbours, we must trust
gallantly in our own right and in our sword. If
Germany is powerful enough to tear the border
country away from France, she can venture,
without troubling herself about the reluctance of
foreign countries, to hand them over to the pro-
tectorate of Prussia.
But the solution of the question of the people of
Alsace involves the nearest future of the German
State. For Bavaria, strengthened by Alsace, and
hemming in all her South German neighbours,
would be the Great Power of the German South.
No man who comprehends this great time would
dream of replacing the unlucky dualism of Austria
and Prussia by a new dualism of Prussia and
Bavaria, between which a powerless Baden and a
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? What We Demand from France 173
weak Wurttemberg would be kept feebly oscillating.
The day for the secondary States of Germany to rise
into fresh importance is past for ever. The first
Napoleon created the kingdom of the South with
the express intent that that seeming sovereignty
might bar the way against a real and powerful
German kingdom, and that its apparent authority
might undermine the real strength of Germany.
By their German loyalty these sovereigns have
deserved the thanks of the whole nation to-day.
They have obtained our forgiveness for the fault
of their original existence. The blood which had
to flow before North and South could be united
has flowed, thank God, in battle against the
hereditary enemy and not in civil war. Even we
radical partisans of unity are delighted, and have
no intention now of ever diminishing the authority
of the Bavarian Crown in opposition to the wishes
of the Bavarian people themselves. Why should
we be asked to increase the power of the second-
ary States, which is unquestionably too great at
present for any permanent national existence?
Why should we celebrate our victory over the third
Napoleon by strengthening the creation of the
first? We are determined to secure the unity of
Germany, and to leave no treacherous German
balance of power.
Deep-thinking persons advise us to reflect
whether the augmentation of its territory might
not predispose Bavaria to enter the German
Confederation. Those who talk so have little
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? 174 What We Demand from France
notion of the power of the national idea. The
entry of Bavaria is merely a question of time,
and it must come as surely as the blossom passes
into fruit. If Alsace be first made Prussian, and
then admitted, along with Baden, into the Ger-
man Confederation, we may rest secure against the
blindness of the sovereigns of Munich, and wait
in patience till the sense of what will be to her
an advantage constrains Bavaria to come in. If
Alsace fell to Bavaria, our European policy could
not rise out of its everlasting uncertainty, or our
German policy surmount the feeble vacillation
of its past. There is only one way in which the
jealousy of foreign Powers can prevent a just
peace for Germany -- they may try to separate
Bavaria from Prussia. If this be prevented,
pubHc opinion. North and South, will declare
itself unanimously, "It is our will that Alsace
and Lorraine should become Prussian, because
it is only so that they will become German. "
The spirit of the nation has already acquired a
wonderful force in these blessed weeks; and it is
able, when it declares itself unanimously in favour
of this clear and straightforward course, to cure
the Court of Munich of sickly and ambitious
dreams, which an intelligent Bavarian policy
can never encourage.
The people of Alsace have learned to despise
this Germany, broken into fragments. They will
learn to love us when the strong hand of Prussia
has educated them. We are no longer dreaming,
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? What We Demand from France 175
as Amdt did many years ago, of a new German
Order, whose task it was to be to guard the border-
land. The sober and upright principles which we
have applied in all newly taken provinces are
completely applicable here in the West. After a
short period of transition, under a strict dictator-
ship, the new districts may enter without danger
into the full enjoyment of the rights of the Prusso-
German constitution. When the official world has
once been cleared by the moderate use of pensions,
every attempt at treachery will be repressed with
relentless severity; but native officials who know
the country will be employed here, as they have
been everywhere, in the new provinces. Even
the good old Prussian fashion, according to which
the troops that garrisoned the fortresses usually
came from the provinces in which they were
situated, may be applied here cautiously after a
time. We Germans despise the babyish war
against stone and bronze, in which the French
are adepts. We left the monuments of Hoche
and Marceau standing, in honour, in the Depart-
ment of the Lower Rhine, and we have no intention
of transgressing against any of the glorious memo-
ries of the people of Alsace and Lorraine. Still
less shall we meddle with their language. The
German State must, of course, speak German only;
but it will always practise the mild regulations it
has adopted in the mixed districts of Posen and
Schleswig-Holstein. It would contradict all our
Prussian ways of thinking were we to assail with
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? 176 What We Demand from France
violence the customs of domestic life. All our
hope rests on the re-awakening of the free German
spirit. When once the mother- tongue is taught,
purely and honestly -- when the Evangelical
Church can again move about in undisturbed
liberty -- when an intelligent German provincial
Press brings back the country to the knowledge
of German life -- the cure of its sickness will have
begun. Is it idle folly to give expression to the
hope which rises unbidden in a scholar's mind?
Why should the great University of Strassburg,
restored again after its disgraceful mutilation, not
bring as many blessings to the Upper Rhine pro-
vinces as Bonn has done to the Lower? Another
Rhenana in Upper Germany would certainly be
a worthy issue of the German war, which has
been a struggle between ideas and sensuous
self-seeking.
The work of liberation will be hard and toil-
some; and the first German teachers and officials in
the estranged districts are not men to be envied.
The monarchical feeling of the German people
there has been thoroughly broken up by hateful
party fights. The Ultramontanes on the right
bank will soon conclude a close alliance with
those on the left; and there will be found, even
among the German Liberals, many good souls
ready trustfully to re-echo the cry of pain which
the people of Alsace will raise against the fury of
Borussic officialism. But the province cannot,
after all, long continue to be a German Venice.
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? What We Demand from France 177
Single families of the upper classes may migrate
indignantly into foreign countries, as the patricians
of Danzig once fled before the Prussian Eagle.
The rest will soon adapt themselves to the German
life, just as the Polonized German nobility of West
Prussia have resumed their old German names
since they became Prussian subjects. Even the
material advantages which the Prussian State
brings with it are considerable: lighter taxes
better distributed, and finances better arranged;
the opening of the natural channels of commerce
for the country of the Saar and the Moselle; the
razing of those useless fortifications of Vauban,
which, maintained in the interest of the traditional
war policy of the French, have hitherto limited the
progress of so man}^ towns of Alsace. Even the
manufacturing industry of the country will dis-
cover new and broad openings, naturally after
a trying period of transition, in East Germany.
But all this is of secondary importance as compared
with the ideal advantages which they will derive
from their German political life. And are these
German lads to grumble because they are no longer
compelled to learn Gaulish? Will the citizens be
angry with us for ever when they find that they are
permitted freely to elect their own burgomaster?
When they have to deal with well-educated,
honourable German-speaking officials ? When we
offer them, in place of their worthless Conseils
Generaux, a Provincial Diet, with an independent
activity; and in place of their Corps Legislatif a.
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? 178 What We Demand from France
powerful Parliament? When their sons will all
be entitled to pass a brief period of service in the
neighbourhood of their own homes, instead of
wasting long years as homeless soldiers of fortune
in migratory regiments? When they mingle un-
molested in the numerous unions and gatherings
of our free and joyous social life? The deadly
hatred which the Ultramontane clergy show
toward the Prussian State is the happiest omen
for the future. Such an enmity must draw all
the Protestants, and all the Catholics who can
think freely, in this province to the side of
Prussia.
Humbled and torn by contending parties,
France will find it very difficult to think of a war of
vengeance for the next few years. Give us time,
and it is to be hoped that Strassburg may then
have risen out of her ruins, and that the people of
Alsace may already have become reconciled to
their fate. Their grandchildren will look back one
day as coldly and strangely on the two-century-long
French episode in the history of their German
district as the Pomeranians now do on the century
and a half of Swedish government. No German
soil anywhere has ever repented placing itself
under the protection of Prussia when it passed out
of the subjection to the foreigner, which is, taken
at the best of it, but a splendid misery.
Who knows not Uhland's Minster sage, the
beautiful poem which expresses so finely and so
truly the love which the Germans bear to the land
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? What We Demand from France 179
of Goethe's youth? The old dome begins to
shake as the young poet ascends the tower.
A movement through the mighty work,
As though, in wondrous wise,
Its body travailed to give birth
To what unfinished lies.
Oh, Ludwig Uhland, and all of you who dreamt
of a great and free Germany in the desolate days
bygone, how far stronger than your dreams are the
days in which we are living now ! How much else
that was unfinished then has yet to be bom anew
in the restored German land! It is all but three
hundred years since a Hohenzollern, the Margrave
Johann Georg, chosen as coadjutor of Strassburg,
bore the title of Landgrave in Alsace; but his
young State did not dare to defend the claim.
The great stream of German popular power which
burst forth and rolled its mighty waters over the
Slav country of the north-east is flowing back
westward to-day, to fertilize anew its former bed,
now choked up -- the fair native lands of German
civilization. In the same Western Marches, where
our ancient Empire endured its deepest disgrace,
the new Empire is completed by German victories ;
and the Prussia which has so often and so shame-
fully been evil-spoken of by German lips is building
up the State, which is destined to march on, proud,
thoughtful, warlike, from centiiry to century.
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? THE INCORPORATION OF
ALSACE-LORRAINE AS AN IMPERIAL
PROVINCE IN THE GERMAN EMPIRE
{A Speech in the Reichstag)
Gentlemen,
A man from the Upper Rhine province might
be pardoned if the weighty words of the first
paragraph of the motion stimulated him to make a
pompous speech. Everywhere in our beautiful
land we see the bloody traces of the French, from
that hill in Freiburg where Louis XIV built his
three castles, his Defiance of Germany, dow^n
to the ruined towers of the Castle of Heidelberg.
We have looked hundreds of times with silent
sorrow at the summits of the Vosges. It would
be quite pardonable if now a man from the Upper
Rhine proudly expressed his joy at feeling how
everything has quite altered, how confidently we
look into the future, glad at the thought that the
German sword has reconquered the old frontier
territory. But, gentlemen, I regard it as more
worthy of us, even to-day, not to abandon that
simple and modest tone which, thank God, is
customary in this House. Our countrymen the
1 80
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? Alsace an Imperial Province i8i
Alsatians, who now return into our kingdom, have
under their old masters been satiated to disgust
with great pompous phrases. We would like to
accustom them already now to the fact that the
German way of dealing with things is simpler
and more modest.
Allow me, gentlemen, to commence with a
confession, which I make not in my name only,
but in the name of many here in the House. I
could have wished as early as some months ago
that the first paragraph of the motion contained
an additional clause, i. e. , the words, "The two
provinces will be incorporated with the Prussian
State. " I wished that for a very practical reason.
I said to myself. The task of re-incorporating these
alienated races of German stock into our country
is so great and difficult that it can be trusted only
to experienced hands, and where is there a political
power in the German Empire which has so well
proved its talent for Germanization as glorious old
Prussia? I, who am not a born Prussian, can well
say so, without incurring the reproach of boasting.
This State has rescued the Prussians themselves
from Poland, the Pomeranians from Sweden, the
East Frisians from Holland, the inhabitants of the
Rhine provinces from France, and still daily ad-
vances some inches further eastward the toll-gates
of German civiHzation. It was my opinion that to
this well-tested Power we should entrust the task
of being also in the West the champion and aug-
menter of the German Empire. I thought, more-
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? i82 Alsace an Imperial Province
over, the Alsatians have become only too alienated
from us as members of a centralized foreign State ;
with all the greater energy therefore should one
compel them to come into a German unitary State,
into the firmly-compacted strength of Prussian
political life. Finally, it would be a good thing
both for Prussia and for Germany if Germany's
leading State were to comprise numerous South
German elements. Prussia, if it is to understand
and guide Germany, must learn to value within
itself and do justice to the South German character.
These were the reasons which some months ago
made me hope that the incorporation of the two
provinces in Prussia might be proclaimed. This
hope, gentlemen, is completely shattered; it was
shattered already on that day in September when
the Prussian royal power declared in Munich that
it wished for no increase of territory. All this
happened at a time when the German Reichstag
did not yet exist. We have no more to pronounce
judgment on matters which are settled, but accept
circumstances as they are, and now ask: How are
we to set to work to fill this Imperial Province,
this common possession of all Germany, with
German civilization, in order to make it actually a
member of the German Empire ? The task appears
to me, gentlemen, not merely theoretically, but
also practically, very difficult. The only two for-
mer political phenomena which show some simi-
larity to the life of our Empire awaken little
confidence in my mind. The general provinces of
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? Alsace an Imperial Province 183
the United Netherlands succeeded as little as the
common administered districts of the Swiss Con-
federates in maintaining their vigour for any
length of time. The former have become in our
century provinces of a homogeneous State, enjoy-
ing equal rights, and the latter have become
equally privileged cantons of an alliance of States.
But we do not approach this new province with
the covetousness of the old Swiss Confederates,
nor with the lazy pride of the Dutch, but with the
honest wish to bring to our newly-won brothers our
German character, the best of our possessions, our
mother-tongue and its literature, and all the noble
elements of German civilization. The task is
unspeakably difficult, and I wish to ask you not to
make it more difficult by academic disputes regard-
ing the question, What is unitary and what is fed-
eral? These are theoretical questions which in
my opinion have already occupied too much room
in the discussions of the Commission.
We have heard in the Commission the distinct
assertion that the imperial province is the first step
to the unitary State. On the other hand, I have
heard from many of my friends that the imperial
province represents the true triumph of federalism.
I ask. Whither will these academic disputes con-
duct us? We wish here honestly to acknow-
ledge the constitution of the Confederation, as
it has been formed, with all its faults, and we
wish to say without more ado that what has been
done in the West affords no precedent for what
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? i84 Alsace an Imperial Province
might happen in Central Germany. There in the
West we have to regulate provinces hitherto
belonging to a foreign empire, in which at present
there is no legally constituted State authority.
In Germany there are States with constitutional
dynasties, and no less constitutional diets, and
what we do and consider necessary in Alsace does
not impose limits on what we may some day
be able to settle for the separate German States
with their actually existing constitutional order.
Let us then approach the question without fur-
ther ado, and allow me to ask. What should we do
for the Alsatians in order to win them for Ger-
many? I find myself in complete agreement with
what the Commission says; we wish to treat our
new fellow-countrymen from the first moment as
Germans, and therefore we wish to instil into them
from the beginning some of the fundamental
ideas of German political law which form, so to
speak, the political atmosphere which we breathe.
Among these fundamental ideas of German
political law I reckon the monarchy. The Alsa-
tians, like all Frenchmen, have too much grown
out of the habit of relying on the blessing of
monarchy. Bourbons, Princes of Orleans, Napo-
leons, and Republican experiments have pressed
on each others' heels in swift alternation, and
after all the changes nothing remains but the
unalterable despotism of the prefects. Here it is
our part to show that we Germans imderstand
monarchy in a much higher, nobler sense.
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? Alsace an Imperial Province 185
We wish to honour our new fellow-countrymen
by giving them the most powerful and leading
dynasty that we possess; and when hereafter the
time comes when some of the old imperial castles
in Alsace are built up again, then we need not be
ashamed to set up the eagle of the Hohenzollerns
by the Hon of the Hohenstaufens, which still keeps
watch on the King's Tower by Schlettstadt.
But the monarchy, the imperial power which
the Reichstag will set up there in Alsace, shall
possess all the inalienable rights of monarchy, and
among these I count as the least this one : that in a
monarchic State nothing can happen against the
expressed will of the monarch. In the further
course of the debate I should like to draw your
serious attention to this point. Sacred among
these fundamental ideas of German political life I
reckon the universal duty of bearing arms, our
national military power. As you know, there
has been lately an Assembly of Notables from
Alsace in Strassburg, and among many more pro-
per and easily satisfied requests it has also ex-
pressed the wish that the introduction of our law
of military service might be postponed as long as
possible. To this I beg to reply: This wish pro-
ceeds from the scanty knowledge of German
life which still prevails in Alsace ; it proceeds in the
first place from the vague idea that there may some
day be a war with France, and the hearts of the
Alsatians revolt against the thought of fighting
against their old fellow-countrymen. But we
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? i86 Alsace an Imperial Province
cannot come to an understanding with the Alsa-
tians until they give up such vague expectations,
and learn to regard their present condition as one
which will last for ever. Further, that wish
proceeds from a confusion of the French and Ger-
man military establishments. Our Army is not
an aggressive power intended within a measured
interval to return home with a certain amount
of military glory ; it is the nation in arms, it is the
great school of courage, of manly discipline, of
moral self-sacrifice on the part of the whole flower
of the nation, and from this great school we do not
wish to exclude the Alsatians at the outset. On
the contrary, I say that the German law of mih-
tary service should be introduced as soon as the
economic conditions of the frontier territory admit
of it.
Further, I count, gentlemen, among the essential
fundamental ideas of German political life the
noble freedom of our intellectual, and especially of
our religious, culture. In these last few days a
step has been taken towards this goal -- one of
those steps of sound statecraft whose value is only
recognized by later generations. A new epoch
of civihzation has begun in Alsace on the happy
day when the good old Prussian rule of compul-
sory school-attendance was introduced. On this
foundation of the national school I wish to see the
structure of German grammar-school education
rise, which is not bound by the monotonous rules
of the French lycees, but allows free scope to the
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? Alsace an Imperial Province 187
teacher's personality. Above all, we wish to see a
university rise in the frontier territory. It should
not be a district university -- of such we possess
plenty; it should be equipped with a truly royal
munificence; it should be a German university.
If nowadays a new university is to enter among the
considerable number of her sisters, and maintain
her place in this severe rivalry, she must possess a
character of her own, she must be a personality
distinct from all others. But the special character
of the University of Strassburg -- if indeed the
Federal Council has a regard for what is truly
German -- should consist in the freedom of the
humanist sciences, not in professional studies.
Alsace, the old country of the German humanist,
should once more witness a revival of free science
in its capital.
Closely connected with this is the duty of
introducing into Alsace that peace between
religious creeds which is Germany's glory, the
complete hitherto too much disturbed equality
of rights between the Evangelical and Catholic
Churches, whose traditional privileges we do not
in the least think of encroaching upon.
Furthermore, we should grant the Alsatians at
once the rights of German citizenship as a com-
pensation for what they have lost, the possibility
of giving practical proof of their abilities in the
whole of France which they have hitherto enjoyed.
Then I wish that in the shortest possible time,
in a time which indeed the Government only can
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? i88 Alsace an Imperial Province
securely fix, the German market should be open to
Alsace. This country, thanks to its perverted Bona-
partist education, is only too much accustomed
to attach very great weight to material gains.
It is only natural that we should first attach them
to ourselves by material advantages, for it is on
this basis that a spiritual approximation will be
completed.
Then there is another fundamental idea of
German political life. We wish and demand for
Alsace self-government in the German sense, the
self-government which was recently outlined for
us by the Imperial Chancellor. It is undeniable,
gentlemen, that it is a bold idea to make the
experiment of free self-government there in Alsace ;
for every form of self-government depends in the
first place upon the higher classes, and it is pre-
cisely these classes which are the least friendly
towards us. There will be many a disappoint-
ment, for German self-government consists less in
extended electoral rights than in the fulfilment
of difficult duties of honorary service in com-
munities and districts. But I think we should
pluck up courage and do quickly what is necessary.
I wish to see an early election of the mayors, and
an early election of the enlarged general councils.
When a danger is present, we wish to learn to know
it, to look it in the face, and to adopt our measures
accordingly.
But now allow me to say just as openly what we
cannot offer the Alsatians, if the safety of the
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? Alsace an Imperial Province 189
German Empire is not to be impaired. I believe
we have the pleasure to see to-day upon the plat-
form deputies from Alsace among the audience;
at any rate, every word which is spoken to-day
in the House will be read in Alsace. It will seem
to our new fellow-countrymen somewhat strange
if, as soon as they join us, we tell them which of
their wishes we consider cannot be fulfilled, but
that I think is the German custom. The Alsatians
have been for years past fed with promises and
promises; they have thereby acquired a habit of
mistrust towards every government which rules
them -- a mistrust which has become a character-
istic feature of the French people. But our habits
are German; we do not promise the Alsatians too
much -- but then, gentlemen, we keep our word.
The Imperial Chancellor has indeed recently
exhorted us not to look too far ahead ; but I regret
that I cannot altogether obey this warning. Why
should I keep back, gentlemen, what everyone
thinks in secret? Years ago, when the name of
Bismarck was the most hated in all Germany,
I defended the great poHcy of our leading
statesman with all my heart; I shall therefore
be allowed to point out a danger which lies in the
fact that such an extraordinary man stands at the
head of German affairs. It is the habit of extra-
ordinary statesmen to count on themselves and
their superior strength, and, so to speak, to make
institutions to fit themselves. They can create
institutions which are obscure, confused, and
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? I90 Alsace an Imperial Province
difficult to control, though they believe, and
rightly, that they can manage them. But we,
gentlemen, should remember the smaller men who
will hereafter follow Prince Bismarck. I cannot
reconcile it to my conscience, as a representative of
the people, to stand on a ship as it were with my
eyes bandaged and to sail out into a sea full of
reefs, simply trusting that a weather-proof pilot is
at the helm. We should all know the sea which
our keel ploughs, and the rocks which we wish to
avoid. Among these "rocks," the impossible
wishes which are cherished in Alsace, I regard as
the first the desire expressed by the Notables that
the province Alsace-Lorraine should be changed
into a State. I consider this idea as altogether
objectionable ; it is another instance of one spring-
ing from lack of knowledge of German hfe. We
have been contending vigorously, gentlemen, dur-
ing many years for the unity of Germany ; we have
seen in the course of this century hundreds of
small German States collapse; we are now pre-
pared as men of good feeling to respect and to spare
the few States which remain, because they are no
longer in a condition to be exactly injurious to
the might of the German Empire. But to create
a new State in addition to the already too great
existing number, now when we are hard at work
counteracting the German tendency to division,
to form afresh a State out of three departments
which never in the course of their history were a
State, to cultivate a new half-German provincial-
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? Alsace an Imperial Province 191
ism on the severely endangered frontier: that,
gentlemen, I call striking our own face.
Let us draw some deductions from the foregoing
considerations. I find in the clauses of the pro-
posed law, which for the rest I do not regard
exactly as a masterpiece, an excellent passage on
the sixth page, in which it is stated that according
to the spirit of the constitution of the German
Empire every federal State should possess a repre-
sentative assembly to administer the government
and to take part in legislation. I am glad to hear
this declaration from the Federal Council. My
political friends and I intend to make use of this,
this autumn, in the case of the fortunate land of
Mecklenburg, and to ask the representatives of
Mecklenburg whether such a representative
assembly really exists there. This old German
principle should now be applied, but only as it
is possible in a province which neither is nor will be
a State. I should not like to have a diet in Strass-
burg possessing the same powers as that of
Stuttgart or Munich, but I should like one or two
or three provincial assemblies, according to cir-
cumstances. That is a question of administrative
efficiency. The real centre of legislature shall
remain here in this House. The Alsatians will
hereafter be represented among us, only by sixteen
representatives, it is true, but their importance will
be proportionately much greater than their num-
ber, because the}^ will possess the immense supe-
riority of special knowledge, and the Alsatians can
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? 192 Alsace an Imperial Province
rely upon it that their demands will be considered
by us. The great danger, the most serious matter
for consideration regarding the Imperial Province,
is that we might easily artificially cherish there
a new provincialism of the most unwholesome
kind, which would be constantly fomented afresh
by French agents. There are certainly many
easy-going people who say that Alsatian provincial-
ism is the bridge between the French and German
nationalities. But I ask, gentlemen, is it absolutely
necessary to carry coals to Newcastle? Must we
cherish a provincialism which is already flourish-
ing vigorously ? There lives in Alsace a provincial-
ism similar to that which made the Pomeranians
patriotic Swedes, and made the Hanoverians proud
of the three Crowns of England, a provincialism
more firmly and deeply rooted than anywhere else
in Germany.
? What We Demand from France 169
remorseless sweeping away of the French officials in
Alsace, which is indispensable, and replace the
foreign powers by vigorous home ones. Prussia
alone can steadfastly maintain the state of siege
which, we may easily imagine, may be necessary
for a time in some of the districts of the forlorn
land. The worst fault of the Prussian adminis-
tration, its perpetual scribbling, will seem innocent
to the people of Alsace after the corruption and
the statistical mania of the prefectures. A power-
ful State, which has impressed its spirit on the
inhabitants of the Rhine country and the people
of Posen, will know how to reconcile the separate
life of the half -French Germans; and just as
Prussian parties have spread themselves immedi-
ately, in three or four years, over every part of
the new provinces, the people of Alsace will one
day be ready to ally themselves with the various
parties of Prussia, and cease to form a separate
faction in the Parliament at Berlin.
The peace must break many a bond which was
dear to those borderers. Can Germany venture
to add the useless cruelty of separating them
from each other, and giving Metz to Prussia,
and Strassburg to Bavaria? The peace will cut
the people of Alsace off from a powerful nation, in
their connection with which they found their
honour and their pride. Can Germany humiHate
them in the hour of their violent liberation, and
raise the modest white and blue or the red and
yellow flag where waved the tricolor e of the Rev-
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? I70 What We Demand from France
olution, which once conquered the world? No!
These Germans have been accustomed to the larger
views of a great State ; they will not endure being
anything but Prussians, if they must cease to
be Frenchmen. Let us give them something in
exchange for what they have lost -- a great and
glorious State, a powerful capital, a free competi-
tion for all the offices and honours of a great
Empire. In the uniformity of a great State they
have lost all taste for those bewildering conditions
of South German political life which we ourselves
often hardly understand. The}^ might learn to be
Prussian citizens, but they would think it as ridicu-
lous if they were handed over to a king in Munich,
and to a supreme king in Berlin. Here, in fact,
there is no place for those half measures and
artificial relations. Nothing but the simple and
intelligible reality of the German State will serve.
Everything like "federal fortresses," or "territory
acknowledging no authority between itself and the
Empire " -- or by whatever name the too-clever-by-
half devices of gambling dilettantes are known -- is
utterly out of the question.
We, who are old champions of German unity,
have for six years been demanding the incorpora-
tion of the Elbe Duchies into the Prussian State,
although the hereditary claim of a German princely
house stood in the way. Is this review to plead to-
day that a little State should insinuate itself into
the far more dangerously threatened Duchies
of the Rhine, where no claim of right bars the claim
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? What We Demand from France 171
of Prussia? Once give up the standpoint of Ger-
man unity, and cease to ask only what is for the
benefit of the great Fatherland; once begin to
reckon, like a shopkeeper, what part of the prizes
of victory should be assigned to each of the con-
federate allies, and one must be driven to the mani-
fest absurdity that the border territories should be
split up into I know not how many fragments. It
would be a worthy repetition of that ludicrous
sub-division of the Department of the Saar which
brought the sarcasms of Europe on us in 181 5. At
that time, when the consciousness of the strength
of Prussia was yet in its infancy, Gneisenau could
still propose that Prussia should hand over Alsace
to Bavaria, and receive the territory of Anspach-
B aireuth in exchange . All such barters of territory
are out of the question to-day. The nation knows
how casually its internal boundary lines have
been drawn. It tolerates those barriers of sepa-
ration ; but it is with a quiet dislike, and without
any serious confidence ; and it looks unfavourably
on any attempt to draw s ' milar lines anew . Prussia
is not in a condition to hand over its own share
of the rewards of victory to each separate country
and people. If it were really so -- if the friendh-
ness of the Court of Munich to the Confederation
were to be bought only by the cession to them of
at least Northern Alsace, including Hagenau
and Weissenburg -- what an ugly escape it would
be out of our difficulties! how repulsive to the
people of Alsace! But what is essential -- the
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? 172 What We Demand from France
uninterrupted boundary-line stretching from Died-
enhofen to Mulhausen -- can never be given up by
Prussia without serious injury to Germany.
We are told in warning tones of the objections
of Europe. If you go to the foreigner for counsel
he will most likely suggest to you that the Grand
Duke of Hesse, with his Herr von Dalwigk, should
be created King of Alsace. It is so, and we are
surrounded by secret enemies. Even the un-
worthy attitude of England has a deeper root than
her mere indolent love of peace -- it springs from
her unspoken mistrust of the incalculable power
of New Germany. In company with the Great
Powers, Switzerland and the Netherlands see
our growing strength with suspicion. Watched
as we are by angry neighbours, we must trust
gallantly in our own right and in our sword. If
Germany is powerful enough to tear the border
country away from France, she can venture,
without troubling herself about the reluctance of
foreign countries, to hand them over to the pro-
tectorate of Prussia.
But the solution of the question of the people of
Alsace involves the nearest future of the German
State. For Bavaria, strengthened by Alsace, and
hemming in all her South German neighbours,
would be the Great Power of the German South.
No man who comprehends this great time would
dream of replacing the unlucky dualism of Austria
and Prussia by a new dualism of Prussia and
Bavaria, between which a powerless Baden and a
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? What We Demand from France 173
weak Wurttemberg would be kept feebly oscillating.
The day for the secondary States of Germany to rise
into fresh importance is past for ever. The first
Napoleon created the kingdom of the South with
the express intent that that seeming sovereignty
might bar the way against a real and powerful
German kingdom, and that its apparent authority
might undermine the real strength of Germany.
By their German loyalty these sovereigns have
deserved the thanks of the whole nation to-day.
They have obtained our forgiveness for the fault
of their original existence. The blood which had
to flow before North and South could be united
has flowed, thank God, in battle against the
hereditary enemy and not in civil war. Even we
radical partisans of unity are delighted, and have
no intention now of ever diminishing the authority
of the Bavarian Crown in opposition to the wishes
of the Bavarian people themselves. Why should
we be asked to increase the power of the second-
ary States, which is unquestionably too great at
present for any permanent national existence?
Why should we celebrate our victory over the third
Napoleon by strengthening the creation of the
first? We are determined to secure the unity of
Germany, and to leave no treacherous German
balance of power.
Deep-thinking persons advise us to reflect
whether the augmentation of its territory might
not predispose Bavaria to enter the German
Confederation. Those who talk so have little
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? 174 What We Demand from France
notion of the power of the national idea. The
entry of Bavaria is merely a question of time,
and it must come as surely as the blossom passes
into fruit. If Alsace be first made Prussian, and
then admitted, along with Baden, into the Ger-
man Confederation, we may rest secure against the
blindness of the sovereigns of Munich, and wait
in patience till the sense of what will be to her
an advantage constrains Bavaria to come in. If
Alsace fell to Bavaria, our European policy could
not rise out of its everlasting uncertainty, or our
German policy surmount the feeble vacillation
of its past. There is only one way in which the
jealousy of foreign Powers can prevent a just
peace for Germany -- they may try to separate
Bavaria from Prussia. If this be prevented,
pubHc opinion. North and South, will declare
itself unanimously, "It is our will that Alsace
and Lorraine should become Prussian, because
it is only so that they will become German. "
The spirit of the nation has already acquired a
wonderful force in these blessed weeks; and it is
able, when it declares itself unanimously in favour
of this clear and straightforward course, to cure
the Court of Munich of sickly and ambitious
dreams, which an intelligent Bavarian policy
can never encourage.
The people of Alsace have learned to despise
this Germany, broken into fragments. They will
learn to love us when the strong hand of Prussia
has educated them. We are no longer dreaming,
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? What We Demand from France 175
as Amdt did many years ago, of a new German
Order, whose task it was to be to guard the border-
land. The sober and upright principles which we
have applied in all newly taken provinces are
completely applicable here in the West. After a
short period of transition, under a strict dictator-
ship, the new districts may enter without danger
into the full enjoyment of the rights of the Prusso-
German constitution. When the official world has
once been cleared by the moderate use of pensions,
every attempt at treachery will be repressed with
relentless severity; but native officials who know
the country will be employed here, as they have
been everywhere, in the new provinces. Even
the good old Prussian fashion, according to which
the troops that garrisoned the fortresses usually
came from the provinces in which they were
situated, may be applied here cautiously after a
time. We Germans despise the babyish war
against stone and bronze, in which the French
are adepts. We left the monuments of Hoche
and Marceau standing, in honour, in the Depart-
ment of the Lower Rhine, and we have no intention
of transgressing against any of the glorious memo-
ries of the people of Alsace and Lorraine. Still
less shall we meddle with their language. The
German State must, of course, speak German only;
but it will always practise the mild regulations it
has adopted in the mixed districts of Posen and
Schleswig-Holstein. It would contradict all our
Prussian ways of thinking were we to assail with
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? 176 What We Demand from France
violence the customs of domestic life. All our
hope rests on the re-awakening of the free German
spirit. When once the mother- tongue is taught,
purely and honestly -- when the Evangelical
Church can again move about in undisturbed
liberty -- when an intelligent German provincial
Press brings back the country to the knowledge
of German life -- the cure of its sickness will have
begun. Is it idle folly to give expression to the
hope which rises unbidden in a scholar's mind?
Why should the great University of Strassburg,
restored again after its disgraceful mutilation, not
bring as many blessings to the Upper Rhine pro-
vinces as Bonn has done to the Lower? Another
Rhenana in Upper Germany would certainly be
a worthy issue of the German war, which has
been a struggle between ideas and sensuous
self-seeking.
The work of liberation will be hard and toil-
some; and the first German teachers and officials in
the estranged districts are not men to be envied.
The monarchical feeling of the German people
there has been thoroughly broken up by hateful
party fights. The Ultramontanes on the right
bank will soon conclude a close alliance with
those on the left; and there will be found, even
among the German Liberals, many good souls
ready trustfully to re-echo the cry of pain which
the people of Alsace will raise against the fury of
Borussic officialism. But the province cannot,
after all, long continue to be a German Venice.
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? What We Demand from France 177
Single families of the upper classes may migrate
indignantly into foreign countries, as the patricians
of Danzig once fled before the Prussian Eagle.
The rest will soon adapt themselves to the German
life, just as the Polonized German nobility of West
Prussia have resumed their old German names
since they became Prussian subjects. Even the
material advantages which the Prussian State
brings with it are considerable: lighter taxes
better distributed, and finances better arranged;
the opening of the natural channels of commerce
for the country of the Saar and the Moselle; the
razing of those useless fortifications of Vauban,
which, maintained in the interest of the traditional
war policy of the French, have hitherto limited the
progress of so man}^ towns of Alsace. Even the
manufacturing industry of the country will dis-
cover new and broad openings, naturally after
a trying period of transition, in East Germany.
But all this is of secondary importance as compared
with the ideal advantages which they will derive
from their German political life. And are these
German lads to grumble because they are no longer
compelled to learn Gaulish? Will the citizens be
angry with us for ever when they find that they are
permitted freely to elect their own burgomaster?
When they have to deal with well-educated,
honourable German-speaking officials ? When we
offer them, in place of their worthless Conseils
Generaux, a Provincial Diet, with an independent
activity; and in place of their Corps Legislatif a.
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? 178 What We Demand from France
powerful Parliament? When their sons will all
be entitled to pass a brief period of service in the
neighbourhood of their own homes, instead of
wasting long years as homeless soldiers of fortune
in migratory regiments? When they mingle un-
molested in the numerous unions and gatherings
of our free and joyous social life? The deadly
hatred which the Ultramontane clergy show
toward the Prussian State is the happiest omen
for the future. Such an enmity must draw all
the Protestants, and all the Catholics who can
think freely, in this province to the side of
Prussia.
Humbled and torn by contending parties,
France will find it very difficult to think of a war of
vengeance for the next few years. Give us time,
and it is to be hoped that Strassburg may then
have risen out of her ruins, and that the people of
Alsace may already have become reconciled to
their fate. Their grandchildren will look back one
day as coldly and strangely on the two-century-long
French episode in the history of their German
district as the Pomeranians now do on the century
and a half of Swedish government. No German
soil anywhere has ever repented placing itself
under the protection of Prussia when it passed out
of the subjection to the foreigner, which is, taken
at the best of it, but a splendid misery.
Who knows not Uhland's Minster sage, the
beautiful poem which expresses so finely and so
truly the love which the Germans bear to the land
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? What We Demand from France 179
of Goethe's youth? The old dome begins to
shake as the young poet ascends the tower.
A movement through the mighty work,
As though, in wondrous wise,
Its body travailed to give birth
To what unfinished lies.
Oh, Ludwig Uhland, and all of you who dreamt
of a great and free Germany in the desolate days
bygone, how far stronger than your dreams are the
days in which we are living now ! How much else
that was unfinished then has yet to be bom anew
in the restored German land! It is all but three
hundred years since a Hohenzollern, the Margrave
Johann Georg, chosen as coadjutor of Strassburg,
bore the title of Landgrave in Alsace; but his
young State did not dare to defend the claim.
The great stream of German popular power which
burst forth and rolled its mighty waters over the
Slav country of the north-east is flowing back
westward to-day, to fertilize anew its former bed,
now choked up -- the fair native lands of German
civilization. In the same Western Marches, where
our ancient Empire endured its deepest disgrace,
the new Empire is completed by German victories ;
and the Prussia which has so often and so shame-
fully been evil-spoken of by German lips is building
up the State, which is destined to march on, proud,
thoughtful, warlike, from centiiry to century.
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? THE INCORPORATION OF
ALSACE-LORRAINE AS AN IMPERIAL
PROVINCE IN THE GERMAN EMPIRE
{A Speech in the Reichstag)
Gentlemen,
A man from the Upper Rhine province might
be pardoned if the weighty words of the first
paragraph of the motion stimulated him to make a
pompous speech. Everywhere in our beautiful
land we see the bloody traces of the French, from
that hill in Freiburg where Louis XIV built his
three castles, his Defiance of Germany, dow^n
to the ruined towers of the Castle of Heidelberg.
We have looked hundreds of times with silent
sorrow at the summits of the Vosges. It would
be quite pardonable if now a man from the Upper
Rhine proudly expressed his joy at feeling how
everything has quite altered, how confidently we
look into the future, glad at the thought that the
German sword has reconquered the old frontier
territory. But, gentlemen, I regard it as more
worthy of us, even to-day, not to abandon that
simple and modest tone which, thank God, is
customary in this House. Our countrymen the
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? Alsace an Imperial Province i8i
Alsatians, who now return into our kingdom, have
under their old masters been satiated to disgust
with great pompous phrases. We would like to
accustom them already now to the fact that the
German way of dealing with things is simpler
and more modest.
Allow me, gentlemen, to commence with a
confession, which I make not in my name only,
but in the name of many here in the House. I
could have wished as early as some months ago
that the first paragraph of the motion contained
an additional clause, i. e. , the words, "The two
provinces will be incorporated with the Prussian
State. " I wished that for a very practical reason.
I said to myself. The task of re-incorporating these
alienated races of German stock into our country
is so great and difficult that it can be trusted only
to experienced hands, and where is there a political
power in the German Empire which has so well
proved its talent for Germanization as glorious old
Prussia? I, who am not a born Prussian, can well
say so, without incurring the reproach of boasting.
This State has rescued the Prussians themselves
from Poland, the Pomeranians from Sweden, the
East Frisians from Holland, the inhabitants of the
Rhine provinces from France, and still daily ad-
vances some inches further eastward the toll-gates
of German civiHzation. It was my opinion that to
this well-tested Power we should entrust the task
of being also in the West the champion and aug-
menter of the German Empire. I thought, more-
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? i82 Alsace an Imperial Province
over, the Alsatians have become only too alienated
from us as members of a centralized foreign State ;
with all the greater energy therefore should one
compel them to come into a German unitary State,
into the firmly-compacted strength of Prussian
political life. Finally, it would be a good thing
both for Prussia and for Germany if Germany's
leading State were to comprise numerous South
German elements. Prussia, if it is to understand
and guide Germany, must learn to value within
itself and do justice to the South German character.
These were the reasons which some months ago
made me hope that the incorporation of the two
provinces in Prussia might be proclaimed. This
hope, gentlemen, is completely shattered; it was
shattered already on that day in September when
the Prussian royal power declared in Munich that
it wished for no increase of territory. All this
happened at a time when the German Reichstag
did not yet exist. We have no more to pronounce
judgment on matters which are settled, but accept
circumstances as they are, and now ask: How are
we to set to work to fill this Imperial Province,
this common possession of all Germany, with
German civilization, in order to make it actually a
member of the German Empire ? The task appears
to me, gentlemen, not merely theoretically, but
also practically, very difficult. The only two for-
mer political phenomena which show some simi-
larity to the life of our Empire awaken little
confidence in my mind. The general provinces of
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? Alsace an Imperial Province 183
the United Netherlands succeeded as little as the
common administered districts of the Swiss Con-
federates in maintaining their vigour for any
length of time. The former have become in our
century provinces of a homogeneous State, enjoy-
ing equal rights, and the latter have become
equally privileged cantons of an alliance of States.
But we do not approach this new province with
the covetousness of the old Swiss Confederates,
nor with the lazy pride of the Dutch, but with the
honest wish to bring to our newly-won brothers our
German character, the best of our possessions, our
mother-tongue and its literature, and all the noble
elements of German civilization. The task is
unspeakably difficult, and I wish to ask you not to
make it more difficult by academic disputes regard-
ing the question, What is unitary and what is fed-
eral? These are theoretical questions which in
my opinion have already occupied too much room
in the discussions of the Commission.
We have heard in the Commission the distinct
assertion that the imperial province is the first step
to the unitary State. On the other hand, I have
heard from many of my friends that the imperial
province represents the true triumph of federalism.
I ask. Whither will these academic disputes con-
duct us? We wish here honestly to acknow-
ledge the constitution of the Confederation, as
it has been formed, with all its faults, and we
wish to say without more ado that what has been
done in the West affords no precedent for what
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? i84 Alsace an Imperial Province
might happen in Central Germany. There in the
West we have to regulate provinces hitherto
belonging to a foreign empire, in which at present
there is no legally constituted State authority.
In Germany there are States with constitutional
dynasties, and no less constitutional diets, and
what we do and consider necessary in Alsace does
not impose limits on what we may some day
be able to settle for the separate German States
with their actually existing constitutional order.
Let us then approach the question without fur-
ther ado, and allow me to ask. What should we do
for the Alsatians in order to win them for Ger-
many? I find myself in complete agreement with
what the Commission says; we wish to treat our
new fellow-countrymen from the first moment as
Germans, and therefore we wish to instil into them
from the beginning some of the fundamental
ideas of German political law which form, so to
speak, the political atmosphere which we breathe.
Among these fundamental ideas of German
political law I reckon the monarchy. The Alsa-
tians, like all Frenchmen, have too much grown
out of the habit of relying on the blessing of
monarchy. Bourbons, Princes of Orleans, Napo-
leons, and Republican experiments have pressed
on each others' heels in swift alternation, and
after all the changes nothing remains but the
unalterable despotism of the prefects. Here it is
our part to show that we Germans imderstand
monarchy in a much higher, nobler sense.
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? Alsace an Imperial Province 185
We wish to honour our new fellow-countrymen
by giving them the most powerful and leading
dynasty that we possess; and when hereafter the
time comes when some of the old imperial castles
in Alsace are built up again, then we need not be
ashamed to set up the eagle of the Hohenzollerns
by the Hon of the Hohenstaufens, which still keeps
watch on the King's Tower by Schlettstadt.
But the monarchy, the imperial power which
the Reichstag will set up there in Alsace, shall
possess all the inalienable rights of monarchy, and
among these I count as the least this one : that in a
monarchic State nothing can happen against the
expressed will of the monarch. In the further
course of the debate I should like to draw your
serious attention to this point. Sacred among
these fundamental ideas of German political life I
reckon the universal duty of bearing arms, our
national military power. As you know, there
has been lately an Assembly of Notables from
Alsace in Strassburg, and among many more pro-
per and easily satisfied requests it has also ex-
pressed the wish that the introduction of our law
of military service might be postponed as long as
possible. To this I beg to reply: This wish pro-
ceeds from the scanty knowledge of German
life which still prevails in Alsace ; it proceeds in the
first place from the vague idea that there may some
day be a war with France, and the hearts of the
Alsatians revolt against the thought of fighting
against their old fellow-countrymen. But we
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? i86 Alsace an Imperial Province
cannot come to an understanding with the Alsa-
tians until they give up such vague expectations,
and learn to regard their present condition as one
which will last for ever. Further, that wish
proceeds from a confusion of the French and Ger-
man military establishments. Our Army is not
an aggressive power intended within a measured
interval to return home with a certain amount
of military glory ; it is the nation in arms, it is the
great school of courage, of manly discipline, of
moral self-sacrifice on the part of the whole flower
of the nation, and from this great school we do not
wish to exclude the Alsatians at the outset. On
the contrary, I say that the German law of mih-
tary service should be introduced as soon as the
economic conditions of the frontier territory admit
of it.
Further, I count, gentlemen, among the essential
fundamental ideas of German political life the
noble freedom of our intellectual, and especially of
our religious, culture. In these last few days a
step has been taken towards this goal -- one of
those steps of sound statecraft whose value is only
recognized by later generations. A new epoch
of civihzation has begun in Alsace on the happy
day when the good old Prussian rule of compul-
sory school-attendance was introduced. On this
foundation of the national school I wish to see the
structure of German grammar-school education
rise, which is not bound by the monotonous rules
of the French lycees, but allows free scope to the
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? Alsace an Imperial Province 187
teacher's personality. Above all, we wish to see a
university rise in the frontier territory. It should
not be a district university -- of such we possess
plenty; it should be equipped with a truly royal
munificence; it should be a German university.
If nowadays a new university is to enter among the
considerable number of her sisters, and maintain
her place in this severe rivalry, she must possess a
character of her own, she must be a personality
distinct from all others. But the special character
of the University of Strassburg -- if indeed the
Federal Council has a regard for what is truly
German -- should consist in the freedom of the
humanist sciences, not in professional studies.
Alsace, the old country of the German humanist,
should once more witness a revival of free science
in its capital.
Closely connected with this is the duty of
introducing into Alsace that peace between
religious creeds which is Germany's glory, the
complete hitherto too much disturbed equality
of rights between the Evangelical and Catholic
Churches, whose traditional privileges we do not
in the least think of encroaching upon.
Furthermore, we should grant the Alsatians at
once the rights of German citizenship as a com-
pensation for what they have lost, the possibility
of giving practical proof of their abilities in the
whole of France which they have hitherto enjoyed.
Then I wish that in the shortest possible time,
in a time which indeed the Government only can
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? i88 Alsace an Imperial Province
securely fix, the German market should be open to
Alsace. This country, thanks to its perverted Bona-
partist education, is only too much accustomed
to attach very great weight to material gains.
It is only natural that we should first attach them
to ourselves by material advantages, for it is on
this basis that a spiritual approximation will be
completed.
Then there is another fundamental idea of
German political life. We wish and demand for
Alsace self-government in the German sense, the
self-government which was recently outlined for
us by the Imperial Chancellor. It is undeniable,
gentlemen, that it is a bold idea to make the
experiment of free self-government there in Alsace ;
for every form of self-government depends in the
first place upon the higher classes, and it is pre-
cisely these classes which are the least friendly
towards us. There will be many a disappoint-
ment, for German self-government consists less in
extended electoral rights than in the fulfilment
of difficult duties of honorary service in com-
munities and districts. But I think we should
pluck up courage and do quickly what is necessary.
I wish to see an early election of the mayors, and
an early election of the enlarged general councils.
When a danger is present, we wish to learn to know
it, to look it in the face, and to adopt our measures
accordingly.
But now allow me to say just as openly what we
cannot offer the Alsatians, if the safety of the
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? Alsace an Imperial Province 189
German Empire is not to be impaired. I believe
we have the pleasure to see to-day upon the plat-
form deputies from Alsace among the audience;
at any rate, every word which is spoken to-day
in the House will be read in Alsace. It will seem
to our new fellow-countrymen somewhat strange
if, as soon as they join us, we tell them which of
their wishes we consider cannot be fulfilled, but
that I think is the German custom. The Alsatians
have been for years past fed with promises and
promises; they have thereby acquired a habit of
mistrust towards every government which rules
them -- a mistrust which has become a character-
istic feature of the French people. But our habits
are German; we do not promise the Alsatians too
much -- but then, gentlemen, we keep our word.
The Imperial Chancellor has indeed recently
exhorted us not to look too far ahead ; but I regret
that I cannot altogether obey this warning. Why
should I keep back, gentlemen, what everyone
thinks in secret? Years ago, when the name of
Bismarck was the most hated in all Germany,
I defended the great poHcy of our leading
statesman with all my heart; I shall therefore
be allowed to point out a danger which lies in the
fact that such an extraordinary man stands at the
head of German affairs. It is the habit of extra-
ordinary statesmen to count on themselves and
their superior strength, and, so to speak, to make
institutions to fit themselves. They can create
institutions which are obscure, confused, and
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? I90 Alsace an Imperial Province
difficult to control, though they believe, and
rightly, that they can manage them. But we,
gentlemen, should remember the smaller men who
will hereafter follow Prince Bismarck. I cannot
reconcile it to my conscience, as a representative of
the people, to stand on a ship as it were with my
eyes bandaged and to sail out into a sea full of
reefs, simply trusting that a weather-proof pilot is
at the helm. We should all know the sea which
our keel ploughs, and the rocks which we wish to
avoid. Among these "rocks," the impossible
wishes which are cherished in Alsace, I regard as
the first the desire expressed by the Notables that
the province Alsace-Lorraine should be changed
into a State. I consider this idea as altogether
objectionable ; it is another instance of one spring-
ing from lack of knowledge of German hfe. We
have been contending vigorously, gentlemen, dur-
ing many years for the unity of Germany ; we have
seen in the course of this century hundreds of
small German States collapse; we are now pre-
pared as men of good feeling to respect and to spare
the few States which remain, because they are no
longer in a condition to be exactly injurious to
the might of the German Empire. But to create
a new State in addition to the already too great
existing number, now when we are hard at work
counteracting the German tendency to division,
to form afresh a State out of three departments
which never in the course of their history were a
State, to cultivate a new half-German provincial-
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? Alsace an Imperial Province 191
ism on the severely endangered frontier: that,
gentlemen, I call striking our own face.
Let us draw some deductions from the foregoing
considerations. I find in the clauses of the pro-
posed law, which for the rest I do not regard
exactly as a masterpiece, an excellent passage on
the sixth page, in which it is stated that according
to the spirit of the constitution of the German
Empire every federal State should possess a repre-
sentative assembly to administer the government
and to take part in legislation. I am glad to hear
this declaration from the Federal Council. My
political friends and I intend to make use of this,
this autumn, in the case of the fortunate land of
Mecklenburg, and to ask the representatives of
Mecklenburg whether such a representative
assembly really exists there. This old German
principle should now be applied, but only as it
is possible in a province which neither is nor will be
a State. I should not like to have a diet in Strass-
burg possessing the same powers as that of
Stuttgart or Munich, but I should like one or two
or three provincial assemblies, according to cir-
cumstances. That is a question of administrative
efficiency. The real centre of legislature shall
remain here in this House. The Alsatians will
hereafter be represented among us, only by sixteen
representatives, it is true, but their importance will
be proportionately much greater than their num-
ber, because the}^ will possess the immense supe-
riority of special knowledge, and the Alsatians can
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? 192 Alsace an Imperial Province
rely upon it that their demands will be considered
by us. The great danger, the most serious matter
for consideration regarding the Imperial Province,
is that we might easily artificially cherish there
a new provincialism of the most unwholesome
kind, which would be constantly fomented afresh
by French agents. There are certainly many
easy-going people who say that Alsatian provincial-
ism is the bridge between the French and German
nationalities. But I ask, gentlemen, is it absolutely
necessary to carry coals to Newcastle? Must we
cherish a provincialism which is already flourish-
ing vigorously ? There lives in Alsace a provincial-
ism similar to that which made the Pomeranians
patriotic Swedes, and made the Hanoverians proud
of the three Crowns of England, a provincialism
more firmly and deeply rooted than anywhere else
in Germany.
