But alike in nobiHty
of soul and in human greatness Gustavus Adolphus
excels both the others.
of soul and in human greatness Gustavus Adolphus
excels both the others.
Treitschke - 1915 - Germany, France, Russia, and Islam
But the unity that
would thus have been imposed by the Spanish
priests of the Society of Jesus, by condottieri
and mercenary soldiers owning allegiance to no
fatherland of their own, would have destroyed
all freedom of spirit, would have annihilated our
German ego. A cry of horror arose from the entire
Protestant world. But whence could any help
come? The lands of the only two Protestant
Princes who still wore the electoral ermine, those of
Brandenburg and Saxony, were overrun by the
imperial armies. Moreover, both these Electors
were paralyzed, their wills were divided, they were
influenced by the traditional spirit of allegiance to
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? Germany's Protestant Freedom 273
the Emperor, a spirit admirable even if mistaken ;
they were paral^^zed by the undisciplined state
of their principalities, rendering impossible the
eflPective levying of troops. There was no hope
here. Such was the dissension among the German
Protestants, so absolute was their ineffectiveness,
that help could come from a foreign Power alone.
The King of Sweden was left no other choice.
He was well acquainted with the general state of
European affairs ; he had long vainly endeavoured
to induce the Protestant Powers of Northern
Europe that still remained free -- England, Hol-
land, and Denmark -- to form a league against
the Hapsburgs; once already, during his Polish
campaign, he had fought unsuccessfully with
the imperial troops on the heath of Stuhm. If
the power of the licentious imperial soldiery
were to be extended yet farther along the Baltic,
not only would his dream of a great Northern
monarchy be shattered, but even his existing
small kingdom would be endangered, for unques-
tionably in that case the Polish Vasas who were
allied with Austria would endeavour to reconquer
the vSwedish Crown. "It is by the safety of our
neighbours," said Gustavus to his faithful sup-
porters, " that we must secure our own. " In fiery
words he added -- he who had never learned to
play the hypocrite^ -- "I will liberate my oppressed
fellow-believers from the Papal yoke. " Political
duty and religious duty called to him with one
voice. In the outcome, as always when decisions
18
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? 274 Germany*s Protestant Freedom
of world-historical importance are in question, we
note the half -hidden working of genius, the secret
conviction of fateful consequences and of divine
inspiration.
In July, 1630, he landed on Riigen, just one
hundred years after the Protestants of Germany
had made their Confession of Faith. That forlorn
widow, the Augsburg Confession, had at length
found her consoler. Yet almost a whole year
elapsed before the Princes of North Germany could
overcome their fear of the Emperor and their mis-
trust of the foreign helper. A shining figure,
inspired by heroic confidence, did Gustavus appear
among these timorous hesitants. "I tell you that
no middle course is possible," he repeats again
and again in his speeches; **the Rubicon is crossed,
the die is cast; the fight is between God and the
devil, and there is no third side. What sort of
a thing is neutrality? I know not the word! "
Slowly pushing his way forward in a laborious
campaign, which long afterwards aroused the pro-
found admiration of Napoleon, he penetrated with
his little army into Pomerania and the Mark, receiv-
ing secret financial aid from France, but being all
the while extremely careful to keep this dangerous
neighbour from more active intervention in the
German war. A diplomatic turn of events at the
Imperial Court at length brought some clearness
into the confusion. Wallenstein, the worldly
warrior, who wished all priests at the devil, desired
to come to terms with Sweden, to get the German
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? Germany's Protestant Freedom 275
Protestants on his side, by restricting the appli-
cation of the Restitution Edict, and then to use
the combined forces of Austria, Spain, and united
Germany against CathoHc France and the Pro-
testant Netherlands, in order to extend the
Hapsburg dominion over the whole of Latin
Europe. The Catholic League, on the other
hand, and the clerical party at the Viennese Court,
demanded the uprooting of the North German
heresy, and unrelenting warfare against North
Germany's Swedish allies. The Emperor Ferdin-
and was pulled one way by his Commander-in-
Chief and the other by his spiritual director.
The priests naturally won the game. Wallen-
stein was overthrown, and during the three and
a half years which Gustavus Adolphus spent
upon German soil, the confused struggle, though
continually changing its complexion, never ceased
to present the characteristics of a religious war.
It was now indeed a fight for the very existence
of Protestantism. The imperial armies were led
by the Walloon, Tilly, who, though less remorse-
less than the savage Wallenstein, was even more
cordially hated by our Protestant people, who
saw in him the actual embodiment of the churchly
hatred of the Catholic party. To the battle-cry
of the imperial troops, ''Mary, Mother of God,'*
the army of Gustavus Adolphus made answer,
*'God is on our side! "
When Magdeburg had been burned by the
imperial forces, and when the lamentable fall of
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? 276 Germany*s Protestant Freedom
this martyr-town of Protestantism (which had
once defied the armies of Charles V) had been
greeted by the Catholic world with a howl of
derision, Gustavus Adolphus determined to con-
strain his still hesitating brother-in-law of Branden-
burg to join the Protestant alliance. The timorous
Elector of Saxony now also made up his mind.
The King of Sweden crossed the Elbe, and the
Protestants drew breath once more to see how in the
camp at Werben he gave pause to the never yet
defeated Tilly. Thence he was drawn southward
by an appeal for help from the Elector of Saxony,
and in the great battle-ground of Central Ger-
many (twice again to be devastated in the present
war), on the Leipzig plain near Breitenfeld, matters
came to a decisive issue. The imperial knights,
heedlessly pursuing the Saxon troops, the defeated
left wing of the Protestant army, were suddenly
attacked on their own left flank by a rapid
wheeling movement of the Swedish centre; Tilly's
disorganized and closely-packed forces were over-
run by the readily mobile and rapidly firing
lines of the Swedes. The unconquerable Walloon
chief was utterly defeated, and, in a moment,
despair was lifted from the hearts of the Protest-
ants. The faithful town of Stralsund, which had
been victorious over Wallenstein, sent the hero-
King the following greeting :
Der Leu aus Mitternacht, den Gottes Geist ver-
heissen,
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? Germany's Protestant Freedom 277
Der Babels Stolz und Pracht soil brechen und zer-
reissen !
Wo's Fahnen in der Luft, wo's Sturm und Schlachten
gibt,
Das ist ein Freudenspiel, das unser Leu beliebt. '
Now for the first time since the days of Martin
Luther there was displayed before the eyes of our
people the figure of a man towards whom all must
look either in love or in hate. It was the day of
liberation. German Protestantism was rescued;
equality of beliefs was assured. No longer was it
possible to speak of any such uprooting of Protest-
antism as had been planned by the Restitution
Edict; and in view of the character of this war,
carried on in a land without a capital city, con-
ducted by small armies in many different places
at once and under the walls of innumerable fort-
resses it was hardly possible to expect that there
should occur another complete reversal of the
fortunes of war.
Gustavus Adolphus found his truest friends
among the warm-hearted Protestants of South
Germany, who had almost forgotten how to hope.
A shout of exultation, a cry of irrepressible grati-
tude, arose from them, as he turned towards Fran-
conia, in order here also to lift from the people
* "The Lion of the North-land, Saviour by God foretold,
To dust shall bring and ashes the pride of Babel old!
Where wave the flags, where screams the storm, where
rages fierce the fight,
'Tis there, in midmost battle, our Lion finds delight. "
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? 278 Germany's Protestant Freedom
the burden of Catholic oppression. In Nurem-
berg the people crowded round the King, while
celebrating his heroic personality in song, in pic-
ture, and in speech : " If you wish to see him all in
all, you must look the world over! " A retinue of
German Protestant Princes, among whom was
Frederick, the dethroned King of Bohemia, now
surrounded him; the Swedes and Livonians he
had brought with him to Riigen were joined by
auxiliary regiments raised in Germany, and the
two nations made common cause in an unremitting
quest for fighting men. Amid the popular jubi-
lation which rose tumultuously on all sides,
Gustavus Adolphus never forgot that he was amid
foreigners; and on one occasion, when a quarrel
arose among his German associates, he said: "I
would rather herd swine in my own country than
have to do with such a nation of imbeciles. "
After a sojourn in the Rhineland, he turned his
steps towards Bavaria, the Acropolis of the
Catholic League. In a bloody contest on the
Lech, Tilly lost the battle and his life. The
Elector Maximilian took to flight, abandoning
Munich to the conqueror. In the residential
Schloss, the ever-burning lamp, which for so long
had been kept alight before the image of the Virgin,
the Patroness of Bavaria, was now extinguished;
but the service of God became free to all, and
the Jesuits cried angrily to the King: "Yours is
the sin; you were sent to bring peace, and you have
sown war. " Never before had the power of his
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? Germany's Protestant Freedom 279
personality shone forth so radiantly. Even the
Bavarian people, at first profoundly hostile, began
to yield him their affection, as he rode alone
among them through the narrow streets in simple
cloak and slouched hat, throwing gold to the crowd,
and talking confidentially with the common folk.
He stood now at the summit of his fame, and
also at the tragical turning-point of his career.
He could not escape the curse which ever falls
upon the foreign conqueror. But the daily work
of his life, in so far as it could bring salvation to us
Germans, was completed. Undoubtedly he cher-
ished dreams of Cassarism, dreams that must be-
come more persistent as his victories became
more extensive. Not with a small reward could
the hot blood of the Vasas be appeased, nor was it
by chance that upon the trappings of his war-
charger there gleamed the gilded imperial eagles.
Yet in truth the Roman Imperial throne, insepa-
rably associated with the Catholic Church,
and dependent upon the Catholic majority of the
Electors of the Empire, could never seem an object
of desire to one who with all his venturesomeness
never lost the sense of what was possible. He
remained King of Sweden. How then, in this age
of harsh political rationaHsm, when everyone
regarded his neighbour as a possible enemy, could
Gustavus desire the union of Germany? "All
my successes here," he was accustomed to say,
''rest upon my homeland"; always he held fast
to the thought of his Greater Scandinavian Em-
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? 28o Germany's Protestant Freedom
pire. He wished to add to the domains of his own
Crown Pomerania, and whatever else he could of
the German coast lands ; he hoped with the aid of
the granaries of this region to ensure the food
supply of his impoverished native country. It
was thus his aim to cut off the German Empire
from the sea, and to hem in Denmark in such a way
that sooner or later all the confines of the Baltic
should pass under the rule of the Vasas. If, until
further notice, he exacted homage from the con-
quered Franconian bishoprics, this was for two rea-
sons only, in part to give these ecclesiastical lands
in fief to Bernard of Weimar, and his faithful allies
among the Protestant Princes, and in part to retain
them in pledge with a view, when peace should
come, to exchange them for German coast lands.
When he had acquired these extensive possessions
on the Baltic he would be able, he believed, to
enter the German Reichstag as a stateholder, as
director of a Corpus Evangelicorum which should
form a State within the State, an ordered opposi-
tion, to maintain the equality of the creeds. A
portion of these aims was subsequently accom-
plished by the hands of his weaker successors in
the terms of the Treaty of Westphalia -- and who
can now deny that the religious peace of the
Empire was thus ensured, though at a grave, a
destructive cost to the integrity of our political
power? We need not hesitate to proclaim that it
was by the kindness of fate that the saviour of
German Protestantism was called to his account at
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? Germany's Protestant Freedom 281
the very moment when he must otherwise have
become the enemy of our national state.
Terrified by the victories of this Gothic hero, the
Emperor resolved to recall Wallenstein to power,
and to restore him to uncontrolled command
of the imperial forces; and as soon as the
recruiting trumpets of the fortunate Friedlander
began to sound, the fighting men, greedy of fame
and plunder, flocked to his standard in crowds.
Gustavus Adolphus was soon to learn that he
had at length met his equal. He was unable to
prevent a junction between the imperial and the
Bavarian armies. When subsequently Wallen-
stein, besieged in the Old Fortifications of Nurem-
berg, remained firmly entrenched, the Swedish
army again and again vainly attempted to take
the position by storm. The King had to abandon
the siege, and the Friedlander wrote in his boastful
style, ''Here the Swede was compelled timorously
to draw in his horns. " Now Wallenstein turned
northward against Central Germany. His Croats
in Thuringia and Hoik's riders in the Erzgebirge
wrought fire and slaughter. Gustavus Adolphus
followed Wallenstein towards the North, for his
homeward line of retreat was threatened. The
ravaged Thuringians greeted him joyfully and
embraced his knees. The view of the naked and
suffering was a great shock to him. "God will
punish me, " he said, ''for these people honour me
as a God! " On the field of Liitzen, quite close
to the site of the most magnificent of his earlier
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? 282 Germany*s Protestant Freedom
victories, he joined battle. The soldiers of both
nations, Germans and Swedes, greeted their com-
mander as he rode by with loud clashing of their
arms, and he uttered the prayer, " Jesu, Jesu, Jesu,
let us fight to-day in Thy name! " It was thus
with a prayer upon his lips that he plunged into
the thick autumnal fog, to find a hero's death.
His influence was the last flash of the ideal in
this monstrous war. The Swedish armies, speedily
lapsing into savagery when the strict disciplinarian
was removed, now fought only about the miserable
question, how many fragments of German land
should be allotted to them in compensation. They
were joined in alliance by France, for with the
death of Gustavus Adolphus, a free hand was
given to French designs in Germany. Neverthe-
less, the inexhaustible energy of our nation soon
produced a new political structure. The great
Elector of Brandenburg, the nephew of Gustavus
Adolphus, became at once his heir and his enemy.
At the Westphalian Peace Congress, Brandenburg
succeeded in bringing about a complete victory for
the ecclesiastical ideas of Gustavus Adolphus,
effecting an honourable religious peace, and se-
curing equality for all creeds. Within the interior,
too, of the young Prussian State, the Swedish
traditions long remained operative. By studying
the example of his uncle, the Elector Frederick
William learned how to control the power of the
estates of the realm, and to maintain a powerful
and warlike monarchical rule. Through the
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? Germany's Protestant Freedom 283
influence of the Swedish veterans who took ser-
vice under the Red Eagle, many Swedish mihtary
practices were introduced into the young army,
such as a ready mobiHty of the troops, increased
rapidity of fire for the infantry, and the use of
Gustavus Adolphus* war-cry, "Gott mit uns! "
Yet so ambiguous are all historical tendencies, that
it was Frederick William who first began the de-
struction of the political work of his uncle. The
Swedes exacted the payment of a terrible price
for their help. They established themselves as
masters along all our coasts, and, as Frederick
WilHam complained, the Weser, the Elbe, and the
Oder were all in foreign hands. For nearly two
hundred years Prussia had to struggle, now with
the sword and now with the pen, against the
Swedish dominion, from the time of the first
Northern War and the victory of Fehrbellin,
in 1675, until at length, in the year 1815, the last
traces of Swedish control passed away and North
Germany once more became master in its own
household.
Of the three colossi whose names then filled the
world with alarm, the figure of Wallenstein appears
the gloomiest. He was, unquestionably, a great
warrior, yet a homeless man, always willing to
sacrifice his nationality and his faith on the shrine
of his ambition. He was an adventurer of genius,
hoping now for an Italian and now for a German
princely coronet ; now dreaming of a world dominion
for the House of Hapsburg, now of a Holy War
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? 284 Germany's Protestant Freedom
against the Turks, and now of a new sack of
Rome ; and yet amid all these gigantic plans think-
ing always and only of his own great ego. "God
in heaven; I, myself, on earth, " such was his blas-
phemous motto, and he died the dreadful death of
the betrayer. A more auspicious figure is that of
Richelieu, for this French Bismarck was firmly
planted upon that soil of nationality wherein is
rooted all political greatness. He brought to
completion all that which the policy of the French
kings had been carefully preparing for centuries,
the unity of his Fatherland.
But alike in nobiHty
of soul and in human greatness Gustavus Adolphus
excels both the others. His fate resembled that of
Alexander of Macedon, for the two men were
alike in the rapidity of their victory and in their
sudden and premature deaths. Alexander's world-
dominion broke up upon the death of its founder,
but for hundreds of years what he had done for
the civilization of humanity remained. He com-
pelled the Greeks to replace Greek nationalism by
the citizenship of the world; he transformed the
material rule of Greece into the dominion of the
Greek spirit; he disseminated Greek culture
throughout Asia Minor, and thus it became possi-
ble for the message of the Christian gospels to be
conveyed in the Greek tongue to all the Mediter-
ranean peoples. In like manner vanished the
greater Scandinavian Empire of Gustavus Adol-
phus. Neither of the two artificially constructed
Great Powers of the seventeenth century, the sea-
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? Germany's Protestant Freedom 285
power of Holland and the land-power of Sweden,
could persist, for their foundations were too slender;
the one was overthrown by England, and the other
by Prussian Germany, which were better in a
position to maintain themselves as Great Powers,
being endowed with stronger natural forces. But
that which has persisted, that which, God willing,
shall persist for all time, is the free Protestant
Word, which Gustavus Adolphus preserved for the
heart of Europe; that which has persisted is the
living mutual tolerance of the German creeds.
Upon these things has been established our new
united Empire, unified politically though composite
ecclesiastically; upon these things has been estab-
lished our entire modern civilization; upon these
rests that fine humanity which enables the Ger-
mans, Protestants and Catholics alike, to enjoy a
thought which is at once free and pious.
It is for these reasons that to-day with full heart
we express our thankfulness to our Swedish kins-
men and neighbours, to those who first received at
our hands the blessings of the Reformation, and sub-
sequently sent us as saviour the Lion of the North-
land. Nowhere is this gratitude more manifest
than in this youthful colony of Old Germany,
which a wonderful destiny has raised to the premier
position in the new Empire. For three hundred
years only did these countries of the March belong
to the Romish Church, and for more than three and
a half centuries now have they enjoyed Protestant
freedom. Here we live and work in the free air of
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? 286 Germany's Protestant Freedom
Protestantism. Not with a view to the re-opening
of old wounds, but simply in order to give honour
where honour is due, has Protestant Germany-
grounded upon the name of the Swedish King that
noble institution which brings help and consolation
to our oppressed Protestant brethren throughout
the world. Gustavus Adolphus does not belong
to a single nation, but to the whole of Protestant
Christendom.
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? OUR EMPIRE
{Berlin, 1886. )
[Prefatory Note by Translator. -- In the essay which follows,
Treitschke employs the terms monarchy and monarchical, some-
times in the sense usual in England, sometimes rather to signify
autocracy and autocratic. I have thought it preferable to retain the
former terms throughout, as the context will always make the
meaning evident, once the reader's attention has been drawn to
the possible ambiguity. ]
TWENTY-TWO years ago, when I wrote my es-
say upon ' * The Federal State and the Central-
ized State" (Bundesstaat und Einheitsstaat) , I had
an obscure premonition that a great hour was
approaching for our Fatherland, and that the
good sword of Prussia would cut the Gordian knot
of the old federal policy. Since then, by a wonder-
ful dispensation of Providence, the boldest dreams
that I ventured in the above-mentioned essay have
been realized to a degree exceeding my utmost
expectations, and the rich history of our re-estab-
lished Empire has rendered necessary a critical
revision of the theory of confederations and other
unions of states. As long ago as 1874 I myself
attempted a scientific appreciation of our recently
acquired political experiences, and in the present
essay I give no more than a summary of what
287
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? 288 Our Empire
I then expounded in detail in my treatise on
"Federation and Empire" {Bund und Reich).
The theory of G. Waitz, which assumes in the
federal state a division of sovereignty between the
central administration and the separate states of
the federation, is not merely inapplicable to Ger-
man conditions, but is in open contradiction with
the very nature of the vState, and also with the
constitution of the Swiss Confederation and with
that of the American Union. For the very reason
that the chief administration is the chief, a division
of its sovereignty is inconceivable, and the sole
scientifically possible distinction between the con-
federation of states and the federal state is to be
found in this, that in the confederation of states
sovereignty attaches to the members of the
confederation, to the individual states, whereas
in the federal state it attaches to the centralized
unity. The confederation of states is a union
of sovereign states based upon international law;
the individual elements of the confederation are
not the citizens of the respective states of the
confederation, but the national governments of
these, and the said governments are competent,
in accordance with international law, to declare
the confederation dissolved in the event of any
breach in its constitution. The federal state is an
image of state-right, and is for this reason, like any
other state, legally eternal and indissoluble. Its ad-
ministration has the unrestricted power possessed
by that of any sovereign state. It passes laws
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? Our Empire 289
which override the individual-state laws, and which
must be obeyed by the individual states and by the
citizens of these ; in the carrying of its decisions into
effect it employs, as the circumstances may dictate,
now its own immediate officials, now the individual
states, and sometimes both together, but always
retains the powers of supervision and control;
finally, in it is vested the determination of the
prerogatives of the individual states, for the central
government of the federal state always possesses
the faculty of enlarging its own powers by a
revision of the constitution. Directly a confedera-
tion of states becomes transformed into a federal
state, the sovereignty of the individual states
disappears, for the individual states become subject
to the authority of the newly formed federal state,
and are liable to be punished by this last for dis-
obedience or high treason -- as was proved alike
theoretically and practically by the Civil War in
the United States of America. The federal state
is more closely akin than is the confederation of
states to the fully unified state, the sole difference
being that in the case of the federal state the deci-
sions of the central government come into effect
only through the co-operation of the individual
states, and that the prerogatives still retained by
these have not been formally handed over to the
central power. For this reason the transition from
a confederation of states to a federal state is a
process which always involves severe struggles and
often actual war, for the individual states of a
19
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? 290 Our Empire
confederation will not readily abandon their
sovereign powers.
This federal state constitution such as is pos-
sessed by Switzerland and the United States has
certain characteristics which belong also to the
constitution of the German Empire. Our Empire,
too, possesses a supreme centralized administra-
tion, whose decisions are effected in co-operation
with the individual states, decisions, obedience to
which is exacted alike from these states and from
their citizens. With us, also, the principle holds
good that national law overrides state law. Like
the states of the American Union and like the Swiss
Cantons, the individual German states have lost
their sovereignty, and from the strictly scientific
standpoint can no longer be regarded as states, for
they lack the two rights upon which, so long as
there has been any theory of government, the idea
of sovereignty has been grounded -- the right to
take up arms, and the power to determine the ex-
tent of their own prerogatives. They do not pos-
sess personal or individual freedom of action under
international law ; in the society of states they can-
not exhibit the powers of an independent will,
and they are subordinated to the Empire which
protects them with the might of its arms ; they are
incompetent to enlarge the sphere of their own
prerogatives in accordance with their own desires,
for they must rest content with the prerogatives
allotted to them by the central government, which
always retains the power of further restriction.
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? Our Empire 291
It is true that the language of the Constitution as
well as the language of common life speaks of the
States of the German Confederation; but the
Constitution, more especially in respect of these
complicated federal relationships, is always guided
by historical considerations, or by considerations of
political expediency, and is thereby often involved
in error from the strictly scientific outlook. The
states of the Republic of the United Netherlands
were for two hundred years officially styled
"Provinces," although they were unquestionably
sovereign states. In Switzerland, the sovereign
members of the Confederation were from 18 14
onw^ards given the modest name of Canton, and
this name was preserved after the radical alteration
of the constitution in the year 1848; whereas the
individual members of the North American Union
retain in the federal state the title of State under
which they entered the original confederation.
It might seem desirable, for the sake of peace,
to avoid the open proclamation of this truth,
which is disagreeab e to the advocates of sepa-
ratism; but science must not lie, must not out
of respect to the vanity of the German princes
abandon those fundamentals of political theory
which have been acquired by the difficult labour
of hundreds of years -- must pay no attention to the
foolish dicta of not a few professors, to the effect
that to-day there exist "non-sovereign" as well as
"sovereign states. " Since it is certain that any
community becomes a state from the moment that
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? 292 Our Empire
it attains to sovereignty, and since it is certain that
a state becomes transformed into a province
directly it is forced to recognize the sovereignty of a
conqueror, it necessarily follows that in sovereignty
is to be found the essential characteristic of the
state, the characteristic by which the state is dis-
tinguished from all other human communities. A
*' state of states, " a state that rules over states, is
theoretically an absurdity, and in practice it is
unending anarchy. Such a state of states was
the monstrum politicum of Pufendorf, the Holy
Roman Empire in its closing centuries. When we
find Ludolf Hugo, Putter, and other imperial
publicists, endeavouring to find consolation for
the miseries of Germany in the insane notions
of the Over-State and the Under-State, we may
ascribe this to the urgency of patriotic need; but
we must not apply to the active and vigorous
national structures of our own day these oppor-
tunist phrases born out of the processes of decom-
position of a community on the way to destruction.
The communities subordinated to the authority
of a modern federal state are themselves no longer
states, and this statement applies to the individual
communities which make up the German Empire.
Such superficial comparisons, however, hardly
touch the kernel of the matter. No reflective
statesman can deny that our Empire is a quite
pecuHar structure, sharply distinguished in its
history, in its position in the world, and in its
aims, from the federal states of America and
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? Our Empire 293
Switzerland. The high-sounding phrase, ' ' Empire
is a concept utterly foreign to the domain of
Public Law," does not render non-existent this
incontrovertible fact. The Empire exists and will
continue to flourish long after the present doctrines
of imperial law have been forgotten. It does not
become theory to endeavour to fit the great new
formations of history to the Procrustean bed of
ready-made concepts. Theory remains true only
when it continues to learn from life, and when its
concepts are subject to continuous transformation
in accordance with the teachings of experience.
Law is ever subject to the danger of becoming
enmeshed in its own formalisms; the doctrine of
public law becomes utterly futile if it attempts
to throw a dam athwart the main stream of history,
if it shirks the labour of studying, in addition to the
frame-work of existing laws, those laws also which
are decaying and those which are springing to life,
if it refuses to pay due attention to those political
relationships which are undergoing incorporation in
constitutional forms.
Anyone properly equipped with the historical
sense, who approaches the study of German im-
perial law, cannot fail to recognize two important
distinctions which forbid any comparison with
the federal states of America and Switzerland.
The constitution of these two federal states rests
upon the equality of all the members of the federal
union, but our imperial constitution rests upon
inequality, upon the preponderant power of
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? 294 Our Empire
Prussia. To the crown of this leading State is
attached a hereditary right to the imperial throne;
and there is attached also a monarchical dominion
which, though still incomplete in form, grows
stronger daily under our very eyes, and which
represents the ideas of national unity far more
effectively than the central authority of a federal
state can ever represent them. In the great days
of its history, Germany was a national monarchy.
As this monarchical feudal dominion fell to pieces
and the power of its kingship passed into the hands
of the estates of the Empire, a new monarchical
Power, that of the Crown of Prussia, gradually
became established upon the site of these territorial
states. It was Prussia which created our new Em-
pire, which liberated us from Austria, and which,
by the annexations of the year 1866, enlarged
the area of its own direct rule, and thus became
empowered to direct the fate of the whole of Ger-
many. By right of sword, by the might of estab-
lished fact, Prussia was enabled to impose upon
the sovereign states of the North the compacts
which led to the formation of the North German
Federation; and this new national state was sub-
sequently joined by the states of South Germany,
for these recognized that the maintenance of their
independent sovereignty had become impossible,
and they were no longer able to resist the national
impulse towards unity, which had now at length
found full expression. The Prussian army and
navy, the Prussian postal and telegraphic services,
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? Our Empire '295
the Prussian customs, and the Prussian banking
system, underwent expansion to become general
German institutions. Without any sacrifice,
Prussia was able to make to the Empire a free gift
of her navy and her postal service, and to arrange
for much of the imperial business to be conducted
by her own officials; for in truth the Prussian
State had conducted three victorious campaigns,
not in order immediately thereafter to subject
herself to a newly created imperial authority, but
in order to maintain and enlarge her own dominion,
to take into her own hands the imperial hegemony,
with the co-operation of the smaller allied states.
The result is that Prussia, however carefully
the wording of the Constitution may conceal the
fact, occupies in reality and in law a position alto-
gether different from that occupied by the other
countries of the Empire. The Prussian State
alone has remained a true state. Prussia alone
cannot be constrained by executive decree to the
fulfilment of her imperial duties, for in the hands
of the Emperor rests the enforcement of such a
decree -- and the Emperor is King of Prussia. The
entire imperial policy reposes upon the tacit
assumption that there cannot possibly exist a
permanent conflict between the will of the Empire
and the will of the Prussian State. In matters of
subordinate importance, the dominant state may
display a yielding disposition; it does, indeed,
exhibit such a disposition to a high degree, and this
even in cases where the Prussian view is unques-
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? 296 Our Empire
tionably the right one -- witness, for example, the
absurd imperial law in accordance with which
the seat of the imperial court of law is placed else-
where than in the capital city of the Empire. But
in all matters of decisive importance Prussia has
the determining voice, and the good sense of the
nation has long recognized that this new order of
things corresponds to the distribution of power
and is in accordance with the dictates of simple
justice. Of all the countries of the Empire, Prussia
alone retains the right of taking up arms, for the
King of Prussia is also, as Emperor, the War-Lord
of the Empire. The Prussian State alone cannot
be deprived against its will of the prerogatives with
which it is endowed by the Imperial Constitution,
for Prussia possesses seventeen votes in the Federal
Council, and these suffice to safeguard it in this
respect. Thus from the historical point of view
the German Empire is the Prussian-German
Unified State, with the accessory countries as-
sociated with Prussia as federal companions.
The necessary and valuable hegemony of the
Prussian State is, however, exercised under forms
which carefully safeguard the legitimate self-
respect of our princes and peoples. It is by the
nature of things, even more than in virtue of
the deliberate intentions of statesmen, that the
German State has been re-conducted into the
channels of the old imperial law. All that was
just and wise in the institutions of the Holy
Empire is revived under our own eyes in new forms.
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? Our Empire 297
Our Imperial Constitution is at once old and young ;
it has revivified the ancient and unforgotten politi-
cal traditions of our race in so far as these were
adapted to the tendencies and needs of our day.
It is for this reason that within so short a time the
people has given its full confidence to the new order.
Those only who have grasped the interconnection
between the old elements and the new will under-
stand the political character of the new Empire,
which presents as united an aspect among the
community of modern states as was ever presented
by the Empire of old.
Now, as of old, the great names, Emperor and
Empire, exercise their charm upon the German
spirit, and this above all in those Franconian and
Suabian regions which were so long altogether
hostile to the Prussian State, and which only
through their firmly established sense of imperial
loyalty have been enabled to regain an understand-
ing of the creative energies of this new epoch
in our history. The honour thus paid to the
imperial name is no empty sport of the popular
imagination. On the ever-memorable day of
Versailles, King William expressly stated that it
was his determination to re-establish the imperial
dignity which had been in abeyance for sixty years,
to resume the crown of Charlemagne and the
old single-headed eagle. The imperial dignity of
the Hohenzollern is the most ancient and most
venerable in all the world. In the course of
centuries many changes have occurred in the
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? 298 Our Empire
boundaries of Germany ; within quite recent times
considerable losses were suffered in the South-East,
whilst compensatory expansion occurred in Alsace-
Lorraine, Schleswig-Holstein, Old Prussia, and
Posen. Nevertheless, in the political sense, though
not in the strictly legal sense, this New Empire is
the successor of the Old; herein has the National
State of the Germans found its new expression.
Anything is possible to the German doctrinaire.
In the days when the imperial authority had be-
come a mere shadow, and when Frederick the Great,
with clear insight, described the fallen Empire as
the Illustrious Republic of the German Princes,
many of the expounders of German imperial
law were continuing to speak of the monarchical
authority of the successor of Charlemagne. Simi-
larly, to-day, we are assured from many professorial
chairs that the German Empire is a Republic of
States, although every sober student of political
reahty must recognize at the first glance that the
imperial dominion inseparably associated with the
Prussian crown is by far the most powerful mon-
archical authority of Western Europe. Can any
one assert that the crown of England, Sweden,
Italy, or Belgium is more powerful than our im-
perial rule ? No one is better acquainted with the
facts than the members of that rude Party which
considers only the realities of power, for in the
inflammatory writings of the Anarchists there
is a perpetual recurrence of the complaint that
the German crown is the most strongly estab-
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would thus have been imposed by the Spanish
priests of the Society of Jesus, by condottieri
and mercenary soldiers owning allegiance to no
fatherland of their own, would have destroyed
all freedom of spirit, would have annihilated our
German ego. A cry of horror arose from the entire
Protestant world. But whence could any help
come? The lands of the only two Protestant
Princes who still wore the electoral ermine, those of
Brandenburg and Saxony, were overrun by the
imperial armies. Moreover, both these Electors
were paralyzed, their wills were divided, they were
influenced by the traditional spirit of allegiance to
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? Germany's Protestant Freedom 273
the Emperor, a spirit admirable even if mistaken ;
they were paral^^zed by the undisciplined state
of their principalities, rendering impossible the
eflPective levying of troops. There was no hope
here. Such was the dissension among the German
Protestants, so absolute was their ineffectiveness,
that help could come from a foreign Power alone.
The King of Sweden was left no other choice.
He was well acquainted with the general state of
European affairs ; he had long vainly endeavoured
to induce the Protestant Powers of Northern
Europe that still remained free -- England, Hol-
land, and Denmark -- to form a league against
the Hapsburgs; once already, during his Polish
campaign, he had fought unsuccessfully with
the imperial troops on the heath of Stuhm. If
the power of the licentious imperial soldiery
were to be extended yet farther along the Baltic,
not only would his dream of a great Northern
monarchy be shattered, but even his existing
small kingdom would be endangered, for unques-
tionably in that case the Polish Vasas who were
allied with Austria would endeavour to reconquer
the vSwedish Crown. "It is by the safety of our
neighbours," said Gustavus to his faithful sup-
porters, " that we must secure our own. " In fiery
words he added -- he who had never learned to
play the hypocrite^ -- "I will liberate my oppressed
fellow-believers from the Papal yoke. " Political
duty and religious duty called to him with one
voice. In the outcome, as always when decisions
18
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? 274 Germany*s Protestant Freedom
of world-historical importance are in question, we
note the half -hidden working of genius, the secret
conviction of fateful consequences and of divine
inspiration.
In July, 1630, he landed on Riigen, just one
hundred years after the Protestants of Germany
had made their Confession of Faith. That forlorn
widow, the Augsburg Confession, had at length
found her consoler. Yet almost a whole year
elapsed before the Princes of North Germany could
overcome their fear of the Emperor and their mis-
trust of the foreign helper. A shining figure,
inspired by heroic confidence, did Gustavus appear
among these timorous hesitants. "I tell you that
no middle course is possible," he repeats again
and again in his speeches; **the Rubicon is crossed,
the die is cast; the fight is between God and the
devil, and there is no third side. What sort of
a thing is neutrality? I know not the word! "
Slowly pushing his way forward in a laborious
campaign, which long afterwards aroused the pro-
found admiration of Napoleon, he penetrated with
his little army into Pomerania and the Mark, receiv-
ing secret financial aid from France, but being all
the while extremely careful to keep this dangerous
neighbour from more active intervention in the
German war. A diplomatic turn of events at the
Imperial Court at length brought some clearness
into the confusion. Wallenstein, the worldly
warrior, who wished all priests at the devil, desired
to come to terms with Sweden, to get the German
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? Germany's Protestant Freedom 275
Protestants on his side, by restricting the appli-
cation of the Restitution Edict, and then to use
the combined forces of Austria, Spain, and united
Germany against CathoHc France and the Pro-
testant Netherlands, in order to extend the
Hapsburg dominion over the whole of Latin
Europe. The Catholic League, on the other
hand, and the clerical party at the Viennese Court,
demanded the uprooting of the North German
heresy, and unrelenting warfare against North
Germany's Swedish allies. The Emperor Ferdin-
and was pulled one way by his Commander-in-
Chief and the other by his spiritual director.
The priests naturally won the game. Wallen-
stein was overthrown, and during the three and
a half years which Gustavus Adolphus spent
upon German soil, the confused struggle, though
continually changing its complexion, never ceased
to present the characteristics of a religious war.
It was now indeed a fight for the very existence
of Protestantism. The imperial armies were led
by the Walloon, Tilly, who, though less remorse-
less than the savage Wallenstein, was even more
cordially hated by our Protestant people, who
saw in him the actual embodiment of the churchly
hatred of the Catholic party. To the battle-cry
of the imperial troops, ''Mary, Mother of God,'*
the army of Gustavus Adolphus made answer,
*'God is on our side! "
When Magdeburg had been burned by the
imperial forces, and when the lamentable fall of
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? 276 Germany*s Protestant Freedom
this martyr-town of Protestantism (which had
once defied the armies of Charles V) had been
greeted by the Catholic world with a howl of
derision, Gustavus Adolphus determined to con-
strain his still hesitating brother-in-law of Branden-
burg to join the Protestant alliance. The timorous
Elector of Saxony now also made up his mind.
The King of Sweden crossed the Elbe, and the
Protestants drew breath once more to see how in the
camp at Werben he gave pause to the never yet
defeated Tilly. Thence he was drawn southward
by an appeal for help from the Elector of Saxony,
and in the great battle-ground of Central Ger-
many (twice again to be devastated in the present
war), on the Leipzig plain near Breitenfeld, matters
came to a decisive issue. The imperial knights,
heedlessly pursuing the Saxon troops, the defeated
left wing of the Protestant army, were suddenly
attacked on their own left flank by a rapid
wheeling movement of the Swedish centre; Tilly's
disorganized and closely-packed forces were over-
run by the readily mobile and rapidly firing
lines of the Swedes. The unconquerable Walloon
chief was utterly defeated, and, in a moment,
despair was lifted from the hearts of the Protest-
ants. The faithful town of Stralsund, which had
been victorious over Wallenstein, sent the hero-
King the following greeting :
Der Leu aus Mitternacht, den Gottes Geist ver-
heissen,
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? Germany's Protestant Freedom 277
Der Babels Stolz und Pracht soil brechen und zer-
reissen !
Wo's Fahnen in der Luft, wo's Sturm und Schlachten
gibt,
Das ist ein Freudenspiel, das unser Leu beliebt. '
Now for the first time since the days of Martin
Luther there was displayed before the eyes of our
people the figure of a man towards whom all must
look either in love or in hate. It was the day of
liberation. German Protestantism was rescued;
equality of beliefs was assured. No longer was it
possible to speak of any such uprooting of Protest-
antism as had been planned by the Restitution
Edict; and in view of the character of this war,
carried on in a land without a capital city, con-
ducted by small armies in many different places
at once and under the walls of innumerable fort-
resses it was hardly possible to expect that there
should occur another complete reversal of the
fortunes of war.
Gustavus Adolphus found his truest friends
among the warm-hearted Protestants of South
Germany, who had almost forgotten how to hope.
A shout of exultation, a cry of irrepressible grati-
tude, arose from them, as he turned towards Fran-
conia, in order here also to lift from the people
* "The Lion of the North-land, Saviour by God foretold,
To dust shall bring and ashes the pride of Babel old!
Where wave the flags, where screams the storm, where
rages fierce the fight,
'Tis there, in midmost battle, our Lion finds delight. "
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? 278 Germany's Protestant Freedom
the burden of Catholic oppression. In Nurem-
berg the people crowded round the King, while
celebrating his heroic personality in song, in pic-
ture, and in speech : " If you wish to see him all in
all, you must look the world over! " A retinue of
German Protestant Princes, among whom was
Frederick, the dethroned King of Bohemia, now
surrounded him; the Swedes and Livonians he
had brought with him to Riigen were joined by
auxiliary regiments raised in Germany, and the
two nations made common cause in an unremitting
quest for fighting men. Amid the popular jubi-
lation which rose tumultuously on all sides,
Gustavus Adolphus never forgot that he was amid
foreigners; and on one occasion, when a quarrel
arose among his German associates, he said: "I
would rather herd swine in my own country than
have to do with such a nation of imbeciles. "
After a sojourn in the Rhineland, he turned his
steps towards Bavaria, the Acropolis of the
Catholic League. In a bloody contest on the
Lech, Tilly lost the battle and his life. The
Elector Maximilian took to flight, abandoning
Munich to the conqueror. In the residential
Schloss, the ever-burning lamp, which for so long
had been kept alight before the image of the Virgin,
the Patroness of Bavaria, was now extinguished;
but the service of God became free to all, and
the Jesuits cried angrily to the King: "Yours is
the sin; you were sent to bring peace, and you have
sown war. " Never before had the power of his
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? Germany's Protestant Freedom 279
personality shone forth so radiantly. Even the
Bavarian people, at first profoundly hostile, began
to yield him their affection, as he rode alone
among them through the narrow streets in simple
cloak and slouched hat, throwing gold to the crowd,
and talking confidentially with the common folk.
He stood now at the summit of his fame, and
also at the tragical turning-point of his career.
He could not escape the curse which ever falls
upon the foreign conqueror. But the daily work
of his life, in so far as it could bring salvation to us
Germans, was completed. Undoubtedly he cher-
ished dreams of Cassarism, dreams that must be-
come more persistent as his victories became
more extensive. Not with a small reward could
the hot blood of the Vasas be appeased, nor was it
by chance that upon the trappings of his war-
charger there gleamed the gilded imperial eagles.
Yet in truth the Roman Imperial throne, insepa-
rably associated with the Catholic Church,
and dependent upon the Catholic majority of the
Electors of the Empire, could never seem an object
of desire to one who with all his venturesomeness
never lost the sense of what was possible. He
remained King of Sweden. How then, in this age
of harsh political rationaHsm, when everyone
regarded his neighbour as a possible enemy, could
Gustavus desire the union of Germany? "All
my successes here," he was accustomed to say,
''rest upon my homeland"; always he held fast
to the thought of his Greater Scandinavian Em-
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? 28o Germany's Protestant Freedom
pire. He wished to add to the domains of his own
Crown Pomerania, and whatever else he could of
the German coast lands ; he hoped with the aid of
the granaries of this region to ensure the food
supply of his impoverished native country. It
was thus his aim to cut off the German Empire
from the sea, and to hem in Denmark in such a way
that sooner or later all the confines of the Baltic
should pass under the rule of the Vasas. If, until
further notice, he exacted homage from the con-
quered Franconian bishoprics, this was for two rea-
sons only, in part to give these ecclesiastical lands
in fief to Bernard of Weimar, and his faithful allies
among the Protestant Princes, and in part to retain
them in pledge with a view, when peace should
come, to exchange them for German coast lands.
When he had acquired these extensive possessions
on the Baltic he would be able, he believed, to
enter the German Reichstag as a stateholder, as
director of a Corpus Evangelicorum which should
form a State within the State, an ordered opposi-
tion, to maintain the equality of the creeds. A
portion of these aims was subsequently accom-
plished by the hands of his weaker successors in
the terms of the Treaty of Westphalia -- and who
can now deny that the religious peace of the
Empire was thus ensured, though at a grave, a
destructive cost to the integrity of our political
power? We need not hesitate to proclaim that it
was by the kindness of fate that the saviour of
German Protestantism was called to his account at
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? Germany's Protestant Freedom 281
the very moment when he must otherwise have
become the enemy of our national state.
Terrified by the victories of this Gothic hero, the
Emperor resolved to recall Wallenstein to power,
and to restore him to uncontrolled command
of the imperial forces; and as soon as the
recruiting trumpets of the fortunate Friedlander
began to sound, the fighting men, greedy of fame
and plunder, flocked to his standard in crowds.
Gustavus Adolphus was soon to learn that he
had at length met his equal. He was unable to
prevent a junction between the imperial and the
Bavarian armies. When subsequently Wallen-
stein, besieged in the Old Fortifications of Nurem-
berg, remained firmly entrenched, the Swedish
army again and again vainly attempted to take
the position by storm. The King had to abandon
the siege, and the Friedlander wrote in his boastful
style, ''Here the Swede was compelled timorously
to draw in his horns. " Now Wallenstein turned
northward against Central Germany. His Croats
in Thuringia and Hoik's riders in the Erzgebirge
wrought fire and slaughter. Gustavus Adolphus
followed Wallenstein towards the North, for his
homeward line of retreat was threatened. The
ravaged Thuringians greeted him joyfully and
embraced his knees. The view of the naked and
suffering was a great shock to him. "God will
punish me, " he said, ''for these people honour me
as a God! " On the field of Liitzen, quite close
to the site of the most magnificent of his earlier
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? 282 Germany*s Protestant Freedom
victories, he joined battle. The soldiers of both
nations, Germans and Swedes, greeted their com-
mander as he rode by with loud clashing of their
arms, and he uttered the prayer, " Jesu, Jesu, Jesu,
let us fight to-day in Thy name! " It was thus
with a prayer upon his lips that he plunged into
the thick autumnal fog, to find a hero's death.
His influence was the last flash of the ideal in
this monstrous war. The Swedish armies, speedily
lapsing into savagery when the strict disciplinarian
was removed, now fought only about the miserable
question, how many fragments of German land
should be allotted to them in compensation. They
were joined in alliance by France, for with the
death of Gustavus Adolphus, a free hand was
given to French designs in Germany. Neverthe-
less, the inexhaustible energy of our nation soon
produced a new political structure. The great
Elector of Brandenburg, the nephew of Gustavus
Adolphus, became at once his heir and his enemy.
At the Westphalian Peace Congress, Brandenburg
succeeded in bringing about a complete victory for
the ecclesiastical ideas of Gustavus Adolphus,
effecting an honourable religious peace, and se-
curing equality for all creeds. Within the interior,
too, of the young Prussian State, the Swedish
traditions long remained operative. By studying
the example of his uncle, the Elector Frederick
William learned how to control the power of the
estates of the realm, and to maintain a powerful
and warlike monarchical rule. Through the
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? Germany's Protestant Freedom 283
influence of the Swedish veterans who took ser-
vice under the Red Eagle, many Swedish mihtary
practices were introduced into the young army,
such as a ready mobiHty of the troops, increased
rapidity of fire for the infantry, and the use of
Gustavus Adolphus* war-cry, "Gott mit uns! "
Yet so ambiguous are all historical tendencies, that
it was Frederick William who first began the de-
struction of the political work of his uncle. The
Swedes exacted the payment of a terrible price
for their help. They established themselves as
masters along all our coasts, and, as Frederick
WilHam complained, the Weser, the Elbe, and the
Oder were all in foreign hands. For nearly two
hundred years Prussia had to struggle, now with
the sword and now with the pen, against the
Swedish dominion, from the time of the first
Northern War and the victory of Fehrbellin,
in 1675, until at length, in the year 1815, the last
traces of Swedish control passed away and North
Germany once more became master in its own
household.
Of the three colossi whose names then filled the
world with alarm, the figure of Wallenstein appears
the gloomiest. He was, unquestionably, a great
warrior, yet a homeless man, always willing to
sacrifice his nationality and his faith on the shrine
of his ambition. He was an adventurer of genius,
hoping now for an Italian and now for a German
princely coronet ; now dreaming of a world dominion
for the House of Hapsburg, now of a Holy War
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? 284 Germany's Protestant Freedom
against the Turks, and now of a new sack of
Rome ; and yet amid all these gigantic plans think-
ing always and only of his own great ego. "God
in heaven; I, myself, on earth, " such was his blas-
phemous motto, and he died the dreadful death of
the betrayer. A more auspicious figure is that of
Richelieu, for this French Bismarck was firmly
planted upon that soil of nationality wherein is
rooted all political greatness. He brought to
completion all that which the policy of the French
kings had been carefully preparing for centuries,
the unity of his Fatherland.
But alike in nobiHty
of soul and in human greatness Gustavus Adolphus
excels both the others. His fate resembled that of
Alexander of Macedon, for the two men were
alike in the rapidity of their victory and in their
sudden and premature deaths. Alexander's world-
dominion broke up upon the death of its founder,
but for hundreds of years what he had done for
the civilization of humanity remained. He com-
pelled the Greeks to replace Greek nationalism by
the citizenship of the world; he transformed the
material rule of Greece into the dominion of the
Greek spirit; he disseminated Greek culture
throughout Asia Minor, and thus it became possi-
ble for the message of the Christian gospels to be
conveyed in the Greek tongue to all the Mediter-
ranean peoples. In like manner vanished the
greater Scandinavian Empire of Gustavus Adol-
phus. Neither of the two artificially constructed
Great Powers of the seventeenth century, the sea-
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? Germany's Protestant Freedom 285
power of Holland and the land-power of Sweden,
could persist, for their foundations were too slender;
the one was overthrown by England, and the other
by Prussian Germany, which were better in a
position to maintain themselves as Great Powers,
being endowed with stronger natural forces. But
that which has persisted, that which, God willing,
shall persist for all time, is the free Protestant
Word, which Gustavus Adolphus preserved for the
heart of Europe; that which has persisted is the
living mutual tolerance of the German creeds.
Upon these things has been established our new
united Empire, unified politically though composite
ecclesiastically; upon these things has been estab-
lished our entire modern civilization; upon these
rests that fine humanity which enables the Ger-
mans, Protestants and Catholics alike, to enjoy a
thought which is at once free and pious.
It is for these reasons that to-day with full heart
we express our thankfulness to our Swedish kins-
men and neighbours, to those who first received at
our hands the blessings of the Reformation, and sub-
sequently sent us as saviour the Lion of the North-
land. Nowhere is this gratitude more manifest
than in this youthful colony of Old Germany,
which a wonderful destiny has raised to the premier
position in the new Empire. For three hundred
years only did these countries of the March belong
to the Romish Church, and for more than three and
a half centuries now have they enjoyed Protestant
freedom. Here we live and work in the free air of
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? 286 Germany's Protestant Freedom
Protestantism. Not with a view to the re-opening
of old wounds, but simply in order to give honour
where honour is due, has Protestant Germany-
grounded upon the name of the Swedish King that
noble institution which brings help and consolation
to our oppressed Protestant brethren throughout
the world. Gustavus Adolphus does not belong
to a single nation, but to the whole of Protestant
Christendom.
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? OUR EMPIRE
{Berlin, 1886. )
[Prefatory Note by Translator. -- In the essay which follows,
Treitschke employs the terms monarchy and monarchical, some-
times in the sense usual in England, sometimes rather to signify
autocracy and autocratic. I have thought it preferable to retain the
former terms throughout, as the context will always make the
meaning evident, once the reader's attention has been drawn to
the possible ambiguity. ]
TWENTY-TWO years ago, when I wrote my es-
say upon ' * The Federal State and the Central-
ized State" (Bundesstaat und Einheitsstaat) , I had
an obscure premonition that a great hour was
approaching for our Fatherland, and that the
good sword of Prussia would cut the Gordian knot
of the old federal policy. Since then, by a wonder-
ful dispensation of Providence, the boldest dreams
that I ventured in the above-mentioned essay have
been realized to a degree exceeding my utmost
expectations, and the rich history of our re-estab-
lished Empire has rendered necessary a critical
revision of the theory of confederations and other
unions of states. As long ago as 1874 I myself
attempted a scientific appreciation of our recently
acquired political experiences, and in the present
essay I give no more than a summary of what
287
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? 288 Our Empire
I then expounded in detail in my treatise on
"Federation and Empire" {Bund und Reich).
The theory of G. Waitz, which assumes in the
federal state a division of sovereignty between the
central administration and the separate states of
the federation, is not merely inapplicable to Ger-
man conditions, but is in open contradiction with
the very nature of the vState, and also with the
constitution of the Swiss Confederation and with
that of the American Union. For the very reason
that the chief administration is the chief, a division
of its sovereignty is inconceivable, and the sole
scientifically possible distinction between the con-
federation of states and the federal state is to be
found in this, that in the confederation of states
sovereignty attaches to the members of the
confederation, to the individual states, whereas
in the federal state it attaches to the centralized
unity. The confederation of states is a union
of sovereign states based upon international law;
the individual elements of the confederation are
not the citizens of the respective states of the
confederation, but the national governments of
these, and the said governments are competent,
in accordance with international law, to declare
the confederation dissolved in the event of any
breach in its constitution. The federal state is an
image of state-right, and is for this reason, like any
other state, legally eternal and indissoluble. Its ad-
ministration has the unrestricted power possessed
by that of any sovereign state. It passes laws
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? Our Empire 289
which override the individual-state laws, and which
must be obeyed by the individual states and by the
citizens of these ; in the carrying of its decisions into
effect it employs, as the circumstances may dictate,
now its own immediate officials, now the individual
states, and sometimes both together, but always
retains the powers of supervision and control;
finally, in it is vested the determination of the
prerogatives of the individual states, for the central
government of the federal state always possesses
the faculty of enlarging its own powers by a
revision of the constitution. Directly a confedera-
tion of states becomes transformed into a federal
state, the sovereignty of the individual states
disappears, for the individual states become subject
to the authority of the newly formed federal state,
and are liable to be punished by this last for dis-
obedience or high treason -- as was proved alike
theoretically and practically by the Civil War in
the United States of America. The federal state
is more closely akin than is the confederation of
states to the fully unified state, the sole difference
being that in the case of the federal state the deci-
sions of the central government come into effect
only through the co-operation of the individual
states, and that the prerogatives still retained by
these have not been formally handed over to the
central power. For this reason the transition from
a confederation of states to a federal state is a
process which always involves severe struggles and
often actual war, for the individual states of a
19
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? 290 Our Empire
confederation will not readily abandon their
sovereign powers.
This federal state constitution such as is pos-
sessed by Switzerland and the United States has
certain characteristics which belong also to the
constitution of the German Empire. Our Empire,
too, possesses a supreme centralized administra-
tion, whose decisions are effected in co-operation
with the individual states, decisions, obedience to
which is exacted alike from these states and from
their citizens. With us, also, the principle holds
good that national law overrides state law. Like
the states of the American Union and like the Swiss
Cantons, the individual German states have lost
their sovereignty, and from the strictly scientific
standpoint can no longer be regarded as states, for
they lack the two rights upon which, so long as
there has been any theory of government, the idea
of sovereignty has been grounded -- the right to
take up arms, and the power to determine the ex-
tent of their own prerogatives. They do not pos-
sess personal or individual freedom of action under
international law ; in the society of states they can-
not exhibit the powers of an independent will,
and they are subordinated to the Empire which
protects them with the might of its arms ; they are
incompetent to enlarge the sphere of their own
prerogatives in accordance with their own desires,
for they must rest content with the prerogatives
allotted to them by the central government, which
always retains the power of further restriction.
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? Our Empire 291
It is true that the language of the Constitution as
well as the language of common life speaks of the
States of the German Confederation; but the
Constitution, more especially in respect of these
complicated federal relationships, is always guided
by historical considerations, or by considerations of
political expediency, and is thereby often involved
in error from the strictly scientific outlook. The
states of the Republic of the United Netherlands
were for two hundred years officially styled
"Provinces," although they were unquestionably
sovereign states. In Switzerland, the sovereign
members of the Confederation were from 18 14
onw^ards given the modest name of Canton, and
this name was preserved after the radical alteration
of the constitution in the year 1848; whereas the
individual members of the North American Union
retain in the federal state the title of State under
which they entered the original confederation.
It might seem desirable, for the sake of peace,
to avoid the open proclamation of this truth,
which is disagreeab e to the advocates of sepa-
ratism; but science must not lie, must not out
of respect to the vanity of the German princes
abandon those fundamentals of political theory
which have been acquired by the difficult labour
of hundreds of years -- must pay no attention to the
foolish dicta of not a few professors, to the effect
that to-day there exist "non-sovereign" as well as
"sovereign states. " Since it is certain that any
community becomes a state from the moment that
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? 292 Our Empire
it attains to sovereignty, and since it is certain that
a state becomes transformed into a province
directly it is forced to recognize the sovereignty of a
conqueror, it necessarily follows that in sovereignty
is to be found the essential characteristic of the
state, the characteristic by which the state is dis-
tinguished from all other human communities. A
*' state of states, " a state that rules over states, is
theoretically an absurdity, and in practice it is
unending anarchy. Such a state of states was
the monstrum politicum of Pufendorf, the Holy
Roman Empire in its closing centuries. When we
find Ludolf Hugo, Putter, and other imperial
publicists, endeavouring to find consolation for
the miseries of Germany in the insane notions
of the Over-State and the Under-State, we may
ascribe this to the urgency of patriotic need; but
we must not apply to the active and vigorous
national structures of our own day these oppor-
tunist phrases born out of the processes of decom-
position of a community on the way to destruction.
The communities subordinated to the authority
of a modern federal state are themselves no longer
states, and this statement applies to the individual
communities which make up the German Empire.
Such superficial comparisons, however, hardly
touch the kernel of the matter. No reflective
statesman can deny that our Empire is a quite
pecuHar structure, sharply distinguished in its
history, in its position in the world, and in its
aims, from the federal states of America and
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? Our Empire 293
Switzerland. The high-sounding phrase, ' ' Empire
is a concept utterly foreign to the domain of
Public Law," does not render non-existent this
incontrovertible fact. The Empire exists and will
continue to flourish long after the present doctrines
of imperial law have been forgotten. It does not
become theory to endeavour to fit the great new
formations of history to the Procrustean bed of
ready-made concepts. Theory remains true only
when it continues to learn from life, and when its
concepts are subject to continuous transformation
in accordance with the teachings of experience.
Law is ever subject to the danger of becoming
enmeshed in its own formalisms; the doctrine of
public law becomes utterly futile if it attempts
to throw a dam athwart the main stream of history,
if it shirks the labour of studying, in addition to the
frame-work of existing laws, those laws also which
are decaying and those which are springing to life,
if it refuses to pay due attention to those political
relationships which are undergoing incorporation in
constitutional forms.
Anyone properly equipped with the historical
sense, who approaches the study of German im-
perial law, cannot fail to recognize two important
distinctions which forbid any comparison with
the federal states of America and Switzerland.
The constitution of these two federal states rests
upon the equality of all the members of the federal
union, but our imperial constitution rests upon
inequality, upon the preponderant power of
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? 294 Our Empire
Prussia. To the crown of this leading State is
attached a hereditary right to the imperial throne;
and there is attached also a monarchical dominion
which, though still incomplete in form, grows
stronger daily under our very eyes, and which
represents the ideas of national unity far more
effectively than the central authority of a federal
state can ever represent them. In the great days
of its history, Germany was a national monarchy.
As this monarchical feudal dominion fell to pieces
and the power of its kingship passed into the hands
of the estates of the Empire, a new monarchical
Power, that of the Crown of Prussia, gradually
became established upon the site of these territorial
states. It was Prussia which created our new Em-
pire, which liberated us from Austria, and which,
by the annexations of the year 1866, enlarged
the area of its own direct rule, and thus became
empowered to direct the fate of the whole of Ger-
many. By right of sword, by the might of estab-
lished fact, Prussia was enabled to impose upon
the sovereign states of the North the compacts
which led to the formation of the North German
Federation; and this new national state was sub-
sequently joined by the states of South Germany,
for these recognized that the maintenance of their
independent sovereignty had become impossible,
and they were no longer able to resist the national
impulse towards unity, which had now at length
found full expression. The Prussian army and
navy, the Prussian postal and telegraphic services,
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? Our Empire '295
the Prussian customs, and the Prussian banking
system, underwent expansion to become general
German institutions. Without any sacrifice,
Prussia was able to make to the Empire a free gift
of her navy and her postal service, and to arrange
for much of the imperial business to be conducted
by her own officials; for in truth the Prussian
State had conducted three victorious campaigns,
not in order immediately thereafter to subject
herself to a newly created imperial authority, but
in order to maintain and enlarge her own dominion,
to take into her own hands the imperial hegemony,
with the co-operation of the smaller allied states.
The result is that Prussia, however carefully
the wording of the Constitution may conceal the
fact, occupies in reality and in law a position alto-
gether different from that occupied by the other
countries of the Empire. The Prussian State
alone has remained a true state. Prussia alone
cannot be constrained by executive decree to the
fulfilment of her imperial duties, for in the hands
of the Emperor rests the enforcement of such a
decree -- and the Emperor is King of Prussia. The
entire imperial policy reposes upon the tacit
assumption that there cannot possibly exist a
permanent conflict between the will of the Empire
and the will of the Prussian State. In matters of
subordinate importance, the dominant state may
display a yielding disposition; it does, indeed,
exhibit such a disposition to a high degree, and this
even in cases where the Prussian view is unques-
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? 296 Our Empire
tionably the right one -- witness, for example, the
absurd imperial law in accordance with which
the seat of the imperial court of law is placed else-
where than in the capital city of the Empire. But
in all matters of decisive importance Prussia has
the determining voice, and the good sense of the
nation has long recognized that this new order of
things corresponds to the distribution of power
and is in accordance with the dictates of simple
justice. Of all the countries of the Empire, Prussia
alone retains the right of taking up arms, for the
King of Prussia is also, as Emperor, the War-Lord
of the Empire. The Prussian State alone cannot
be deprived against its will of the prerogatives with
which it is endowed by the Imperial Constitution,
for Prussia possesses seventeen votes in the Federal
Council, and these suffice to safeguard it in this
respect. Thus from the historical point of view
the German Empire is the Prussian-German
Unified State, with the accessory countries as-
sociated with Prussia as federal companions.
The necessary and valuable hegemony of the
Prussian State is, however, exercised under forms
which carefully safeguard the legitimate self-
respect of our princes and peoples. It is by the
nature of things, even more than in virtue of
the deliberate intentions of statesmen, that the
German State has been re-conducted into the
channels of the old imperial law. All that was
just and wise in the institutions of the Holy
Empire is revived under our own eyes in new forms.
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? Our Empire 297
Our Imperial Constitution is at once old and young ;
it has revivified the ancient and unforgotten politi-
cal traditions of our race in so far as these were
adapted to the tendencies and needs of our day.
It is for this reason that within so short a time the
people has given its full confidence to the new order.
Those only who have grasped the interconnection
between the old elements and the new will under-
stand the political character of the new Empire,
which presents as united an aspect among the
community of modern states as was ever presented
by the Empire of old.
Now, as of old, the great names, Emperor and
Empire, exercise their charm upon the German
spirit, and this above all in those Franconian and
Suabian regions which were so long altogether
hostile to the Prussian State, and which only
through their firmly established sense of imperial
loyalty have been enabled to regain an understand-
ing of the creative energies of this new epoch
in our history. The honour thus paid to the
imperial name is no empty sport of the popular
imagination. On the ever-memorable day of
Versailles, King William expressly stated that it
was his determination to re-establish the imperial
dignity which had been in abeyance for sixty years,
to resume the crown of Charlemagne and the
old single-headed eagle. The imperial dignity of
the Hohenzollern is the most ancient and most
venerable in all the world. In the course of
centuries many changes have occurred in the
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? 298 Our Empire
boundaries of Germany ; within quite recent times
considerable losses were suffered in the South-East,
whilst compensatory expansion occurred in Alsace-
Lorraine, Schleswig-Holstein, Old Prussia, and
Posen. Nevertheless, in the political sense, though
not in the strictly legal sense, this New Empire is
the successor of the Old; herein has the National
State of the Germans found its new expression.
Anything is possible to the German doctrinaire.
In the days when the imperial authority had be-
come a mere shadow, and when Frederick the Great,
with clear insight, described the fallen Empire as
the Illustrious Republic of the German Princes,
many of the expounders of German imperial
law were continuing to speak of the monarchical
authority of the successor of Charlemagne. Simi-
larly, to-day, we are assured from many professorial
chairs that the German Empire is a Republic of
States, although every sober student of political
reahty must recognize at the first glance that the
imperial dominion inseparably associated with the
Prussian crown is by far the most powerful mon-
archical authority of Western Europe. Can any
one assert that the crown of England, Sweden,
Italy, or Belgium is more powerful than our im-
perial rule ? No one is better acquainted with the
facts than the members of that rude Party which
considers only the realities of power, for in the
inflammatory writings of the Anarchists there
is a perpetual recurrence of the complaint that
the German crown is the most strongly estab-
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