But if involuntarily we also
include Heinrich von Treitschke, the reason for it
lies not in the age attained by him but in his
unfading freshness.
include Heinrich von Treitschke, the reason for it
lies not in the age attained by him but in his
unfading freshness.
Treitschke - 1914 - His Doctrine of German Destiny
?
?
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? V-<HU JO' AlKVlAMfl
m ID
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? Treitschke
His Doctrine of German Destiny
and of
International Relations
Together with
A Study of His Life and Work by
Adolf Hausrath
For the First Time Translated into English
G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York and London
Cbe Knickerbocker pre00
1914
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? COPYRIGHT. 1914
BY
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
Ube ftnfcfcerbocfeer press, Hew 19orfc
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? \ v\
REMOTE STORAGE
20 19^
FOREWORD
national movements and national
passions or enthusiasms since the Middle
Ages have always been connected with the names
of leaders (preachers, writers, or statesmen) , and not
infrequently, with that of one particular leader
whose words have acted upon the people as an
inspiration, and who has given the keynote and
character to the movement. It is probable
(Carlyle to the contrary notwithstanding) that
each of these national movements would have
taken place, even although the particular individ-
ual and leader had not existed. When, however,
a revolution or an outbreak of any kind shapes
itself on the lines of some given teaching, it is
proper to study the character and the doctrines of
the teacher. The history of the French Revolu-
tion could not be considered without analysis of
Rousseau and his writings, and, in like manner,
the present action of Germany, which amounts to
a revolution, in initiating the European War of
1914, will always be connected in history with the
teachings of Treitschke. Americans are called
upon at this time to arrive at an opinion in regard
to the causation of the war, the nature of the
issues that are being fought over, and the factors
iii
3872
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? iv Foreword
which are influencing the combatants. It is
important, on more grounds than one, to arrive
at an understanding of the influences which are
directing the present policy of Germany, and which
have imbued, not only the Imperial Government,
but the mass of Germans back of the Emperor
and his counsellors, with the craze for world
domination and with the conviction that it is
their duty to enforce German Kultur (a very
different thing from what we understand by
culture) upon all civilized communities.
TVpjtfip. Tilrp. has hp. eji called "the Machiavelli of
the^ Nineteenth Century," but his words were
directed not only to monarchs and to other leaders
of the State, but to the people as a whole. The
greed for domination dates from the time when
Treitschke began to write and to lecture on na-
tional politics and on German ideals. \ The cry
of Deutschland uber alles was to him more than an
ideal, it was a religion, and through his forcible
teaching it has become the burning faith of the
nation as a whole. Throughout the whole of
Treitschke's writings his conviction of the neces-
sity for the supremacy of Germans over all other
peoples is enforced with all the vigour and skill at
his command. To England he directs his most
venomous outpouring. "English policy," says
Treitschke, "which aims at the unreasonable goal
of world supremacy, has always, as its foundation
principle, reckoned on the misfortunes of other
nations. "
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? Foreword v
It seems evident that the instigation to the
curious hate of England and to the conviction that
for the development of Germany the destruction
of the British Empire was essential, is due to
Treitschke. He died, in Berlin, in 1896, and it is
his pupils, the middle-aged men of to-day, Bern-
hardi and others, who have planned the present
fight of Germany for the domination of Europe.
Bismarck was Treitschke's valued friend, and
William II has been nurtured on his teachings.
These teachings give the philosophy for the present
political and military action. The essays con-
tained in this volume present the opinions of
Treitschke on the policy and the destiny of Ger-
many, while the critical biography, written with
the full sympathy of a close friend, gives an insight
into the character of the man himself.
Professor J. H. Morgan says:
"If Treitschke was a casuist at all (and as a
rule he is refreshingly, if brutally, frank), his was
the supreme casuistry of the doctrine that the
end justifies the means. That the means may
corrupt the end or become an end in themselves
he never fairly realized. He honestly believed
that war was the nurse of manly sentiment and
heroic enterprise. He feared the commercialism
of modern times, and despised England because
he judged her wars to have been always under-
taken with a view to the conquest of markets.
He sneers at the Englishman who 'scatters the
blessings of civilization with a Bible in one hand
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? vi Foreword
and an opium pipe in the other. ' He honestly
believed that Germany exhibited a purity of
domestic life, a pastoral simplicity, and a deep
religious faith to which no European country
could approach. He has written passages of
noble and tender sentiment, in which he celebrates
the piety of the peasant, whose religious exercises
were hallowed wherever the German tongue was
spoken, by the massive faith in Luther's great
hymn. Those who would understand the strength
of Treitschke's influence on his generation must not
lose sight of these purer elements in his teachings.
He was the first preacher of the doctrine that
Germany must become a power across the sea.
He became indeed the champion of the Junkers,
and his history is a kind of hagiography of the
Hohenzollerns. He rested his hopes for Germany
on the bureaucracy and the army. By a quite
natural transition he was led on from his champion-
ship of the unity of Germany to a conception of
her role as a world-power. He is the true father of
Like Mommsen, Treitschke insisted that the
people of the conquered provinces must be "forced
to be free, " that Morality and History (which for
him are much the same thing) proclaim they are
German without knowing it. He says:
" We Germans, who know Germany and France,
know better what is good for Alsace than the
unhappy people themselves who through their
French associations have lived in ignorance of the
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? Foreword vii
V
new Germany. We have in the enormous changes
of these times too often seen in glad astonishment
the immortal working of the moral forces of
History ('das unsterbliche Fortwirken der sittlichen
Machte der Geschichte 1 ) to be able to believe in the
unconditional value on this matter of a Referen-
dum. We invoke the men of the past against the
present. "
The ruthless pedantry of this is characteristically
Prussian. It is easy to appeal to the past against
the present, to the dead against the living. Dead
men tell no tales. Treitschke admitted that the
Alsatians did not love the Germans; there was,
he ruefully confessed, something rather unlovely
about the civilizing methods of Prussia.
Lord Acton, writing in 1886, pronounced
Treitschke to be "the one writer of history who
was more brilliant and more powerful than Droy-
sen. " "He writes," says Acton, "with the force
and fire of Mommsen, and he accounts for the
motives that stir a nation as well as for the councils
that govern it. "
One of Treitschke's pupils writes of him: "His
style is full of colour and of movement; it is
brilliant and thought-abounding; nervous, ener-
getic feeling swings the reader along, while vast
learning is digested and bent to the purposes of the
author. " Germans quote Treitschke as no histo-
rian has ever been quoted by English or by French ;
one may say that, in the interpretation of history,
Treitschke is to the present generation of Germans
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? viii Foreword
an inspired scripture, a bible. The political
leaders refer to him as final authority. Treitschke,
at his death, looked forward with confidence to
the day when the world would find healing at the
touch of the German character. "God will see
to it that war always recurs as a drastic medicine
for the human race. " Says Treitschke's pupil
Bernhardi : "War is essential not merely as a means
to political ambition and territorial aggrandize-
ment, but as a moral discipline, almost in fact as
a spiritual inspiration. '*
Treitschke had a keen dislike and distrust for
America. He says, "Germany can learn nothing
from the United States. " This is a natural
utterance for a man who was the fiercest opponent
in his generation of democracy and of democratic
institutions.
Treitschke's pupil Clause witz quotes his master
as saying in substance: "Self-imposed restrictions,
almost imperceptible and hardly worth mention-
ing, termed Usages of International Law, accompany
violence without essentially impairing its value. "
In the introduction to the Politik, Treitschke
says in regard to the sanctity of war: "It is to be
conceived as an ordinance set by God. It is the
most powerful maker of nations; it is politics
par excellence. 1 ' ' ' What a perversion of morality/ '
says Treitschke, "it would be if one struck out of
humanity heroism" (Heldentum). But Treitsch-
ke's Heldentum is a different thing from what
the civilized world has understood as heroism,
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? Foreword ix
He forgets the caution of his contemporary Momm-
sen, who says: "Have a care, lest in this State,
which has been at once a power in arms and a
power in intelligence, the intelligence should
vanish, and there should remain nothing but the
pure military condition. " The fruits of Helden-
tum are Louvain smoking in ashes to the sky.
The philosophy of Treitschke is to-day the
philosophy of the Prussian Government and of
Germany behind Prussia; it is the philosophy
under which the attempt is being made to crush
France and to break up the British Empire. It
is the teaching that has desolated Belgium and that
has brought war upon the world.
GEO. HAVEN PUTNAM.
November 15, 1914.
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? CONTENTS
PAGE
THE LIFE OF TREITSCHKE . i
THE ARMY 137
INTERNATIONAL LAW 158
FIRST ATTEMPTS AT GERMAN COLONIZATION . 195
Two EMPERORS 217
GERMANY AND NEUTRAL STATES . . . 236
AUSTRIA AND THE GERMAN EMPIRE . . 249
THE ALLIANCE BETWEEN RUSSIA AND PRUSSIA 276
FREEDOM 3 2
XI
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? Treitschke: A Study of His
Life and Work.
THERE are some names which we instinctive-
ly connect with eternal youth. Those of
Achilles and Young Siegfried we cannot conceive
otherwise than as belonging to youth itself. If
amongst the more recent ones we count Hoelty,
Theodore Koerner, and Novalis the divine youth,
this is due to death having overtaken them while
yet young in years.
But if involuntarily we also
include Heinrich von Treitschke, the reason for it
lies not in the age attained by him but in his
unfading freshness. Treitschke died at the age
of sixty-two, older or nearly of the same age as
his teachers Hausser, Mathy, and Gervinus, all
of whom we invariably regard as venerable old
men. And yet he seemed to us like Young Sieg-
fried with his never ageing, gay temperament,
his apparently inexhaustible virility. To his
students he seemed new at every half term, and
living amongst young people he remained young
with them. Hopeful of the future and possessed
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? 2 Treitschke
of a fighting spirit, he retained within him the
joy and sunshine of eternal youth. Thus Death,
when, he came, appeared not as an inexorable
gleaner gathering the withered blades in the barn
of his Lord, but rather as a negligent servant de-
stroying in senseless fashion a rare plant which
might yet have yielded much delicious fruit.
We cannot, therefore, call it a happy inspiration
which prompted the representation of Treitschke
as a robed figure in the statue about to be erected
in the University in Berlin.
It is, of course, not the figure of a Privy Coun-
cillor, who has assumed some resemblance with
Gambetta, but that of a tall, distinguished-looking
strong youth, with elastic muscles, whose every
movement attests health and virility, a figure such
as students and citizens were wont to see in Leip-
zig and Heidelberg, and which would have served
an artist as the happiest design for monumental
glorification. But to represent the opponent of
all academic red-tapeism in robe is analogous
with Hermann Grimm's proposal to portray the
first Chancellor of the German Empire as Napoleon
in the Court of the Brera that is to say, in the
full nude. Nevertheless, we greet with joy the
high-spirited decision to honour Treitschke by a
statue. In the same way as the name of Hutten
will be connected with the revolt against the Pope,
and the name of Koerner with that against Na-
poleon, so the name of Treitschke will always be
connected with the redemption of our people
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? His Life and Work 3
from the disgrace of the times of Confederation
to the magnificence of 1870.
It was in August, 1863, that I heard the name of
Treitschke for the first time, when, before an
innumerable audience, he spoke at the Gymnastic
Tournament in Leipzig, in commemoration of the
Battle of Leipzig. A youth of twenty-nine, a
private University lecturer, and the son of a
highly-placed officer related to Saxon nobility,
he proclaimed with resounding force what in his
family circle was considered demagogical machina-
tion and enmity against illustrious personages,
and as such was generally tabooed. But the
principal idea underlying his argument that
what a people aspires to it will infallibly attain
found a respondent chord in many a breast; and
I, like many another who read the verbatim report
of the speech in the South German Journal
Braters, resolved to read in future everything put
into print by this man.
We were overjoyed when, in the autumn of
1 863, the Government of Baden appointed Treitsch-
ke as University Deputy Professor for Political
Science. It was so certain that at the same time
he would give historic lectures that, on hearing
of Treitschke 's appointment, Wegele of Wiirzburg
who had already accepted the position of Pro-
fessor of History at Freiburg immediately asked
to be released from his engagement, as henceforth
he could no longer rely on securing pupils. The
new arrival was pleased with his first impressions
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? 4 Treitschke
of Baden. From his room he overlooked green
gardens stretching towards the River Miinster.
In the University he gave lectures on politics and
on the Encyclopaedia of Political Science ; but before
a much larger audience he spoke in the Auditory
of Anatomy, and later on in the Aula, on German
History, the History of Reformation, and similar
subjects, creating a sensation not only at the
University but also in Society. It was his phe-
nomenal eloquence not North-German verbosity,
but fertility of thought surging with genius and
flowing like an inexhaustible fountain which
drew his audience at public lectures and festivities.
His success with students gave him less cause for
gratification. Possibly Science, on which he
lectured for practically the first time, offered in-
adequate facilities for the development of his
best faculties, but the principal fault seems to
have rested with his audience. "The students,"
he wrote to Freytag, "are very childish, and, as
usual in Universities, suffer from drowsy drunk-
enness. " It can be imagined how this failure
affected and depressed the eager young professor,
for whose subsistence the Leipzig students had
sent a deputation to Dresden, and whom they had
honoured on his departure with a torchlight pro-
cession. To me he said: "The Freiburg students
are lazy abominably lazy. " More than once
he had been compelled to write to truant-playing
pupils asking whether they intended hearing
lectures at all iri future, since he could well employ
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? His Life and Work 5
his time to better advantage. It was only natural
that these experiences biassed his opinion of the
whole population, and he judged the fathers'
qualities by those of their dissolute sons. Society
also left him discontented, and to his father he
wrote: "I do not find it easy to adjust myself to
the social conditions of this small hole; anybody
with as little talent for gossiping as I possess
suffers from an ignorance of individual peculiari-
ties, and stumbles at every moment. " The
Freiburg nobility being not only strictly Catholic,
but also thoroughly Austrian, he, with his out-
spoken Prussian tendencies and attacks against the
priests, stirred up a good deal of unrest. Among
his colleagues, he associated principally with
Mangold, the private lecturer von Weech, the
lawyer Schmidt, and the University steward Frey,
all of whom were of Prussian descent. The letter
in which he informs his godfather, Gutschmid,
that he had again been asked to act as godfather
is, from the point of view of phraseology, truly
" Treitschkean " : "A few weeks ago I again acted
as godfather, to a daughter of M. , and on this
occasion silently implored the immortals that the
child might turn out better than her uncommonly
good-for-nothing brothers. For my godchild in
Kiel this prayer was superfluous; in my presence
at least, your Crown Prince always behaved as an
educated child of educated parents. " Through
his Bonn relatives, the two Nokk, he became
acquainted with Freiherr von Bodman, the father-
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? 6 Treitschke
in-law of Wilhelm Nokk. Especially welcome
was he at the house of von Woringen, the Doctor
of Law, where he saw a good deal of Emma von
Bodman, who subsequently became his wife, and
at that of von Hillern, the Superior Court Judge,
whose wife, the daughter of Charlotte Birchpfeiffer,
consulted him in regard to her poetical creations.
Already, after the first half term, the deaf young
professor was the most discussed person in local
Society, and he himself boasted to my wife that
for his benefit several Freiburg ladies learned the
deaf-and-dumb language. They waxed enthusi-
astic over the young and handsome scholar, and
in their admiration for him sent for his poems,
only to be subsequently shocked, like Psyche
before Cupid. Yet it is characteristic that he
started his literary career with historic ballads
which he called Patriotic Poems (1856), and
Studies (1857).
The political life of the Badenese, which at that
time principally turned upon r the educational
question, was not to his taste. \_The Ultramon-
tanes he simply found coarse and stupid, and he
writes: "It is empty talk to speak of doctrinal
freedom and freedom to learn in a University
with a Catholic faculty. All Professors of Theo-
logy are clerks in holy orders, and so utterly de-
pendent upon their superiors that only recently
the archbishop asked the brave ol4~Senator Maier
to produce the books of his pupils. J Furthermore,
the students of Theology are locked in a convent,
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? His Life and Work 7
and true to old Jesuitic tradition are watched
step by step by mutual secret control. That is
what is called academic liberty. " But here, also,
is his opinion regarding others: "The grand-ducal
Badenese liberalism is nothing but cheap charla-
tanism without real vigour"; nay, he callfe^par-
ticularist liberalism" the most contemptible of all
parties which, however, unfortunateljTrwould play
an important part in the near future^J "Look for
instance at this National Coalition. Has ever a
great nation seen such a monster? " In his opin-
ion it sides with the Imperial Constitution of
1849, although the leaders themselves are con-
vinced of their inability to carry through the
programme, and at the same time the future
political configuration of Germany is declared to
be an open question, consequently it has on the
whole no programme at all.
Soon I was destined to make the personal ac-
quaintance of the much-admired and much-
criticized one. It was at an "At Home" at
Mathy's. Scarcely had I entered the vestibule
when I heard a very loud voice in the drawing-
room slowly emphasizing every syllable in the
style of a State Councillor. "This is Treitschke,
of Freiburg," I said immediately, and it was really
he. The Freiburg ladies had by no means exag-
gerated his handsome appearance. A tall, broad-
shouldered figure, dark hair and dark complexion,
dark, pensive eyes, now dreamy, now vividly
glistening unmistakably Slav. With his black
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? 8 Treitschke
hair, the heavy moustache, which he still wore at
that time, and his vivid gesticulations, he could
not conceal his Slav origin. He looked like a
Polish nobleman, and his knightly frame reminded
one of a Hussite, a Ziska for instance. Later,
he told me of his exiled ancestors Czech Pro-
testants of the name of Trschky, referred to by
Schiller in Wallenstein, although the editions
mostly spoke of Terzky's Regiments. At about
midnight, when wending our way through the
silent town, a policeman approached us, intending
to warn the loud, strange gentleman to moderate
his voice. The arm of the law, however, quickly
retired when, in company of the disturber of the
peace, he recognized Herr von Roggenbach and
several Ministerial Secretaries. As Treitschke
at that time made use of the Karlsruhe Archives,
he from time to time came to Karlsruhe, where
he sought the society of Mathy, Nokk, von Weech,
and Baumgarten. Under Mathy's influence a
gradual change took place in him, which trans-
mitted itself to all of us. At first he was an eager
adherent of August enburg, and the first money
received for his lectures in Freiburg he invested in
the Ducal Loan. Through Freytag he had like-
wise recommended his friend, von Weech, to the
Duke of Augustenburg with a view to his securing
an appointment in Kiel for publicistic purposes.
After that his attitude totally changed. When
he realized that Bismarck earnestly aspired gain-
ing for Prussia the dominating power in the East
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? His Life and Work 9
and North Sea, he frankly declared the strengthen-
ing of Prussia to be the supreme national duty.
Hausser intended to pin him down with his former
views by citing Treitschke's first Augustenburg
dissertations in the Review of the Prussian Annuals
of 1864. Treitschke, however, by way of reply,
in an essay on the solution of the Schleswig-Hol-
stein question, proved that the compliance with
the Augustenburg demands was detrimental to
Germany's welfare. Again he had spoken the
decisive word, and all writers of our circle now
advocated annexation. We were nicknamed
"Mamelukes and Renegades" by our Heidelberg
colleague Pickford, then editor of the Konstanzer
Zeitung. Treitschke was now as violently against,
as formerly for, the Duke. Now he sees the latter
as "the miserable pretender, whom he despises
from the bottom of his heart. Not only has he
not come to the noble decision which Germany is
entitled to expect from him, but by his unscrupu-
lous demagogical agitations he h'as utterly un-
settled his country. ' ' In Karlsruhe, the quiet town
of officials, such a political point of view was perhaps
admissible; not so, however, in the high country
filled with animosity against Prussia. Every child
was convinced that Prussia now, as formerly, in-
tended handing over the dukedoms to the King of
the Danes. Junker Voland, who had persuaded the
King to break with the Constitution, was, of course,
bribed long ago by England and Russia to again
restore the dukedoms to Danish supremacy.
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? io Treitschke
Everything that had happened after the short,
hopeful glimpse of Prussia's new era was an object
of sarcasm for the South German population.
When a boy talked very stupidly, his comrades
would call out : " Go to Konigsberg and have your-
self crowned"; and at Mass the beggar-women,
pointing with their sticks to the Prince's image,
shrieked out mocking insults.
This coarseness of the street and the tone of the
Freiburg democratic journals against Prussia
filled the politician, so inconsiderate against his
own Saxony, with immense indignation. In a
letter to Freytag he finds the Badenese "quite
steeped in the quagmire of phrases and foul
language. Examining these parties, the moral
value of both sides seems identical; the meaning-
less mendacity of our average liberalism fills me
with deep disgust. How long shall we labour
ere we again are able to speak of German faith?
If I am now to choose between the two parties,
I select that of Bismarck, since he struggles for
Prussian power for our legitimate position on the
North and East Sea. " He considered as impos-
sible the peaceful conversion of the Badenese to
Prussia. "Amid this abominable South German
particularism it has become perfectly evident to
me that our fate will clearly be decided by con-
quest. Six years of my life I have spent in the
South, and here I have gained the sad conviction
that even with a Cabinet composed of men of the
type of Stein and Humboldt, the hatred and jeal-
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? His Life and Work n
ousy of the South Germans against Prussia would
not diminish. I am longing for the North, to
which I belong with all my heart, and where also
our fate will be decided. " His public lectures
were very largely frequented. "But," he says,
"the Philistines are prejudiced when entering
the Aula, and are firmly determined to consider
as untrue every word I say about Prussia. The
opinion is prevalent that the South Germans are
the most modest of our people. I say they are
the most arrogant; to a man they consider them-
selves the real Germans, and the North a country
half of which is still steeped in barbarity, this
quite apart from a dissolute braggadocio the mere
thought of which fills me with disgust. Believe
me, only the trusty sword of the conqueror can
weld together these countries with the North. "
Later on, when I conversed with him every even-
ing at a round table in the Heidelberg Museum, I
realized the reasons for his lack of understanding
of our people. We seemed to him lukewarm,
because we did not strike the national chord with
the power which he expected of a good German.
But why should we do that? In the Saxony of
Herr von Beust, and in Prussia's time of reaction,
national ideas were tabooed, and . that is why the
patriots felt compelled to bear witness in season
and out of season. But we lived in a free country,
under a Prince harbouring German sentiments,
and where it would have been an easy matter to
feign patriotism quite apart from the fact that we
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? 12 Treitschke
South Germans do not care discussing our senti-
ments. I told him that in the same way as I,
despite my warmest feelings for my family, could
not bring myself to proclaim pompously the ex-
cellence of my wife and child, so was I reluctant
to publicly praise my Fatherland; and subse-
quently I reminded him of the Yankee who de-
clared that immediately a man spoke to him of
patriotism he knew him to be a rascal. In regard
to our sympathy for France, which he reviled as
the Rhine Confederation sentimentality, it would
be difficult for him to place himself in our position.
During the last century we had received nothing
but kindness from France, namely, deliverance
from the Palatine Bavarian regime, from Jesuits
and Lazarists, from episcopal and Junker rule,
from guild restrictions and compulsory service:
all this and the very existence of the country which
we enjoyed we owed directly or indirectly to
Napoleon and the Code Napoleon, from which
the hatred of the French arose. This, it is true,
I found quite natural, considering Napoleon
weakened Prussia and abused Saxony. He was
indignant when he noticed in corridors of inns and
even in parlours the small lithographs which,
under the First Empire, were poured out in thou-
sands from Paris even across the States of the Rhine
Convention, representing the Victor of Marengo,
the Sun of Austerlitz, Napoleon's Battle at the
Pyramids, etc. , and which, owing to the conserva-
tive spirit of the peasantry, decorated the walls,
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? His Life and Work 13
until moths, rust, and wood-worms gradually
brought about their destruction. He even took
offence at the attitude displayed by Frenchmen
in the Black Forest watering places, and in Baden-
Baden. When, finally, a Heidelberg lawyer de-
clared in the Reichstag that for him the cultured
Frenchman is still the most amiable of all Euro-
pean beings, Treitschke stigmatized us as in-
corrigible partisans of the Rhine Confederation.
But a glance at the letters of Frau Rat Goethe,
in Frankfort, who prayed God that French and
not Prussian soldiers should be quartered in her
house, might have taught him that the expressions
of a long historical epoch find expression in these
remarks, which could not be effaced by proud
words. Furthermore, when the Prussian Ministry
trampled on the Budget rights of Parliament, and
by a sophistical theory about a defect in the Con-
stitution exasperated the sense of justice of every
honest-thinking German, when the most extra-
ordinary verdicts of the Supreme Court, accom-
panied by the removal from office of the most
capable officials, provoked the population, it was
really not the time to stimulate among South
Germans the desire to become incorporated with
Prussia.
? V-<HU JO' AlKVlAMfl
m ID
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? Treitschke
His Doctrine of German Destiny
and of
International Relations
Together with
A Study of His Life and Work by
Adolf Hausrath
For the First Time Translated into English
G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York and London
Cbe Knickerbocker pre00
1914
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? COPYRIGHT. 1914
BY
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
Ube ftnfcfcerbocfeer press, Hew 19orfc
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? \ v\
REMOTE STORAGE
20 19^
FOREWORD
national movements and national
passions or enthusiasms since the Middle
Ages have always been connected with the names
of leaders (preachers, writers, or statesmen) , and not
infrequently, with that of one particular leader
whose words have acted upon the people as an
inspiration, and who has given the keynote and
character to the movement. It is probable
(Carlyle to the contrary notwithstanding) that
each of these national movements would have
taken place, even although the particular individ-
ual and leader had not existed. When, however,
a revolution or an outbreak of any kind shapes
itself on the lines of some given teaching, it is
proper to study the character and the doctrines of
the teacher. The history of the French Revolu-
tion could not be considered without analysis of
Rousseau and his writings, and, in like manner,
the present action of Germany, which amounts to
a revolution, in initiating the European War of
1914, will always be connected in history with the
teachings of Treitschke. Americans are called
upon at this time to arrive at an opinion in regard
to the causation of the war, the nature of the
issues that are being fought over, and the factors
iii
3872
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? iv Foreword
which are influencing the combatants. It is
important, on more grounds than one, to arrive
at an understanding of the influences which are
directing the present policy of Germany, and which
have imbued, not only the Imperial Government,
but the mass of Germans back of the Emperor
and his counsellors, with the craze for world
domination and with the conviction that it is
their duty to enforce German Kultur (a very
different thing from what we understand by
culture) upon all civilized communities.
TVpjtfip. Tilrp. has hp. eji called "the Machiavelli of
the^ Nineteenth Century," but his words were
directed not only to monarchs and to other leaders
of the State, but to the people as a whole. The
greed for domination dates from the time when
Treitschke began to write and to lecture on na-
tional politics and on German ideals. \ The cry
of Deutschland uber alles was to him more than an
ideal, it was a religion, and through his forcible
teaching it has become the burning faith of the
nation as a whole. Throughout the whole of
Treitschke's writings his conviction of the neces-
sity for the supremacy of Germans over all other
peoples is enforced with all the vigour and skill at
his command. To England he directs his most
venomous outpouring. "English policy," says
Treitschke, "which aims at the unreasonable goal
of world supremacy, has always, as its foundation
principle, reckoned on the misfortunes of other
nations. "
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? Foreword v
It seems evident that the instigation to the
curious hate of England and to the conviction that
for the development of Germany the destruction
of the British Empire was essential, is due to
Treitschke. He died, in Berlin, in 1896, and it is
his pupils, the middle-aged men of to-day, Bern-
hardi and others, who have planned the present
fight of Germany for the domination of Europe.
Bismarck was Treitschke's valued friend, and
William II has been nurtured on his teachings.
These teachings give the philosophy for the present
political and military action. The essays con-
tained in this volume present the opinions of
Treitschke on the policy and the destiny of Ger-
many, while the critical biography, written with
the full sympathy of a close friend, gives an insight
into the character of the man himself.
Professor J. H. Morgan says:
"If Treitschke was a casuist at all (and as a
rule he is refreshingly, if brutally, frank), his was
the supreme casuistry of the doctrine that the
end justifies the means. That the means may
corrupt the end or become an end in themselves
he never fairly realized. He honestly believed
that war was the nurse of manly sentiment and
heroic enterprise. He feared the commercialism
of modern times, and despised England because
he judged her wars to have been always under-
taken with a view to the conquest of markets.
He sneers at the Englishman who 'scatters the
blessings of civilization with a Bible in one hand
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? vi Foreword
and an opium pipe in the other. ' He honestly
believed that Germany exhibited a purity of
domestic life, a pastoral simplicity, and a deep
religious faith to which no European country
could approach. He has written passages of
noble and tender sentiment, in which he celebrates
the piety of the peasant, whose religious exercises
were hallowed wherever the German tongue was
spoken, by the massive faith in Luther's great
hymn. Those who would understand the strength
of Treitschke's influence on his generation must not
lose sight of these purer elements in his teachings.
He was the first preacher of the doctrine that
Germany must become a power across the sea.
He became indeed the champion of the Junkers,
and his history is a kind of hagiography of the
Hohenzollerns. He rested his hopes for Germany
on the bureaucracy and the army. By a quite
natural transition he was led on from his champion-
ship of the unity of Germany to a conception of
her role as a world-power. He is the true father of
Like Mommsen, Treitschke insisted that the
people of the conquered provinces must be "forced
to be free, " that Morality and History (which for
him are much the same thing) proclaim they are
German without knowing it. He says:
" We Germans, who know Germany and France,
know better what is good for Alsace than the
unhappy people themselves who through their
French associations have lived in ignorance of the
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? Foreword vii
V
new Germany. We have in the enormous changes
of these times too often seen in glad astonishment
the immortal working of the moral forces of
History ('das unsterbliche Fortwirken der sittlichen
Machte der Geschichte 1 ) to be able to believe in the
unconditional value on this matter of a Referen-
dum. We invoke the men of the past against the
present. "
The ruthless pedantry of this is characteristically
Prussian. It is easy to appeal to the past against
the present, to the dead against the living. Dead
men tell no tales. Treitschke admitted that the
Alsatians did not love the Germans; there was,
he ruefully confessed, something rather unlovely
about the civilizing methods of Prussia.
Lord Acton, writing in 1886, pronounced
Treitschke to be "the one writer of history who
was more brilliant and more powerful than Droy-
sen. " "He writes," says Acton, "with the force
and fire of Mommsen, and he accounts for the
motives that stir a nation as well as for the councils
that govern it. "
One of Treitschke's pupils writes of him: "His
style is full of colour and of movement; it is
brilliant and thought-abounding; nervous, ener-
getic feeling swings the reader along, while vast
learning is digested and bent to the purposes of the
author. " Germans quote Treitschke as no histo-
rian has ever been quoted by English or by French ;
one may say that, in the interpretation of history,
Treitschke is to the present generation of Germans
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? viii Foreword
an inspired scripture, a bible. The political
leaders refer to him as final authority. Treitschke,
at his death, looked forward with confidence to
the day when the world would find healing at the
touch of the German character. "God will see
to it that war always recurs as a drastic medicine
for the human race. " Says Treitschke's pupil
Bernhardi : "War is essential not merely as a means
to political ambition and territorial aggrandize-
ment, but as a moral discipline, almost in fact as
a spiritual inspiration. '*
Treitschke had a keen dislike and distrust for
America. He says, "Germany can learn nothing
from the United States. " This is a natural
utterance for a man who was the fiercest opponent
in his generation of democracy and of democratic
institutions.
Treitschke's pupil Clause witz quotes his master
as saying in substance: "Self-imposed restrictions,
almost imperceptible and hardly worth mention-
ing, termed Usages of International Law, accompany
violence without essentially impairing its value. "
In the introduction to the Politik, Treitschke
says in regard to the sanctity of war: "It is to be
conceived as an ordinance set by God. It is the
most powerful maker of nations; it is politics
par excellence. 1 ' ' ' What a perversion of morality/ '
says Treitschke, "it would be if one struck out of
humanity heroism" (Heldentum). But Treitsch-
ke's Heldentum is a different thing from what
the civilized world has understood as heroism,
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? Foreword ix
He forgets the caution of his contemporary Momm-
sen, who says: "Have a care, lest in this State,
which has been at once a power in arms and a
power in intelligence, the intelligence should
vanish, and there should remain nothing but the
pure military condition. " The fruits of Helden-
tum are Louvain smoking in ashes to the sky.
The philosophy of Treitschke is to-day the
philosophy of the Prussian Government and of
Germany behind Prussia; it is the philosophy
under which the attempt is being made to crush
France and to break up the British Empire. It
is the teaching that has desolated Belgium and that
has brought war upon the world.
GEO. HAVEN PUTNAM.
November 15, 1914.
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? CONTENTS
PAGE
THE LIFE OF TREITSCHKE . i
THE ARMY 137
INTERNATIONAL LAW 158
FIRST ATTEMPTS AT GERMAN COLONIZATION . 195
Two EMPERORS 217
GERMANY AND NEUTRAL STATES . . . 236
AUSTRIA AND THE GERMAN EMPIRE . . 249
THE ALLIANCE BETWEEN RUSSIA AND PRUSSIA 276
FREEDOM 3 2
XI
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? Treitschke: A Study of His
Life and Work.
THERE are some names which we instinctive-
ly connect with eternal youth. Those of
Achilles and Young Siegfried we cannot conceive
otherwise than as belonging to youth itself. If
amongst the more recent ones we count Hoelty,
Theodore Koerner, and Novalis the divine youth,
this is due to death having overtaken them while
yet young in years.
But if involuntarily we also
include Heinrich von Treitschke, the reason for it
lies not in the age attained by him but in his
unfading freshness. Treitschke died at the age
of sixty-two, older or nearly of the same age as
his teachers Hausser, Mathy, and Gervinus, all
of whom we invariably regard as venerable old
men. And yet he seemed to us like Young Sieg-
fried with his never ageing, gay temperament,
his apparently inexhaustible virility. To his
students he seemed new at every half term, and
living amongst young people he remained young
with them. Hopeful of the future and possessed
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? 2 Treitschke
of a fighting spirit, he retained within him the
joy and sunshine of eternal youth. Thus Death,
when, he came, appeared not as an inexorable
gleaner gathering the withered blades in the barn
of his Lord, but rather as a negligent servant de-
stroying in senseless fashion a rare plant which
might yet have yielded much delicious fruit.
We cannot, therefore, call it a happy inspiration
which prompted the representation of Treitschke
as a robed figure in the statue about to be erected
in the University in Berlin.
It is, of course, not the figure of a Privy Coun-
cillor, who has assumed some resemblance with
Gambetta, but that of a tall, distinguished-looking
strong youth, with elastic muscles, whose every
movement attests health and virility, a figure such
as students and citizens were wont to see in Leip-
zig and Heidelberg, and which would have served
an artist as the happiest design for monumental
glorification. But to represent the opponent of
all academic red-tapeism in robe is analogous
with Hermann Grimm's proposal to portray the
first Chancellor of the German Empire as Napoleon
in the Court of the Brera that is to say, in the
full nude. Nevertheless, we greet with joy the
high-spirited decision to honour Treitschke by a
statue. In the same way as the name of Hutten
will be connected with the revolt against the Pope,
and the name of Koerner with that against Na-
poleon, so the name of Treitschke will always be
connected with the redemption of our people
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? His Life and Work 3
from the disgrace of the times of Confederation
to the magnificence of 1870.
It was in August, 1863, that I heard the name of
Treitschke for the first time, when, before an
innumerable audience, he spoke at the Gymnastic
Tournament in Leipzig, in commemoration of the
Battle of Leipzig. A youth of twenty-nine, a
private University lecturer, and the son of a
highly-placed officer related to Saxon nobility,
he proclaimed with resounding force what in his
family circle was considered demagogical machina-
tion and enmity against illustrious personages,
and as such was generally tabooed. But the
principal idea underlying his argument that
what a people aspires to it will infallibly attain
found a respondent chord in many a breast; and
I, like many another who read the verbatim report
of the speech in the South German Journal
Braters, resolved to read in future everything put
into print by this man.
We were overjoyed when, in the autumn of
1 863, the Government of Baden appointed Treitsch-
ke as University Deputy Professor for Political
Science. It was so certain that at the same time
he would give historic lectures that, on hearing
of Treitschke 's appointment, Wegele of Wiirzburg
who had already accepted the position of Pro-
fessor of History at Freiburg immediately asked
to be released from his engagement, as henceforth
he could no longer rely on securing pupils. The
new arrival was pleased with his first impressions
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? 4 Treitschke
of Baden. From his room he overlooked green
gardens stretching towards the River Miinster.
In the University he gave lectures on politics and
on the Encyclopaedia of Political Science ; but before
a much larger audience he spoke in the Auditory
of Anatomy, and later on in the Aula, on German
History, the History of Reformation, and similar
subjects, creating a sensation not only at the
University but also in Society. It was his phe-
nomenal eloquence not North-German verbosity,
but fertility of thought surging with genius and
flowing like an inexhaustible fountain which
drew his audience at public lectures and festivities.
His success with students gave him less cause for
gratification. Possibly Science, on which he
lectured for practically the first time, offered in-
adequate facilities for the development of his
best faculties, but the principal fault seems to
have rested with his audience. "The students,"
he wrote to Freytag, "are very childish, and, as
usual in Universities, suffer from drowsy drunk-
enness. " It can be imagined how this failure
affected and depressed the eager young professor,
for whose subsistence the Leipzig students had
sent a deputation to Dresden, and whom they had
honoured on his departure with a torchlight pro-
cession. To me he said: "The Freiburg students
are lazy abominably lazy. " More than once
he had been compelled to write to truant-playing
pupils asking whether they intended hearing
lectures at all iri future, since he could well employ
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? His Life and Work 5
his time to better advantage. It was only natural
that these experiences biassed his opinion of the
whole population, and he judged the fathers'
qualities by those of their dissolute sons. Society
also left him discontented, and to his father he
wrote: "I do not find it easy to adjust myself to
the social conditions of this small hole; anybody
with as little talent for gossiping as I possess
suffers from an ignorance of individual peculiari-
ties, and stumbles at every moment. " The
Freiburg nobility being not only strictly Catholic,
but also thoroughly Austrian, he, with his out-
spoken Prussian tendencies and attacks against the
priests, stirred up a good deal of unrest. Among
his colleagues, he associated principally with
Mangold, the private lecturer von Weech, the
lawyer Schmidt, and the University steward Frey,
all of whom were of Prussian descent. The letter
in which he informs his godfather, Gutschmid,
that he had again been asked to act as godfather
is, from the point of view of phraseology, truly
" Treitschkean " : "A few weeks ago I again acted
as godfather, to a daughter of M. , and on this
occasion silently implored the immortals that the
child might turn out better than her uncommonly
good-for-nothing brothers. For my godchild in
Kiel this prayer was superfluous; in my presence
at least, your Crown Prince always behaved as an
educated child of educated parents. " Through
his Bonn relatives, the two Nokk, he became
acquainted with Freiherr von Bodman, the father-
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? 6 Treitschke
in-law of Wilhelm Nokk. Especially welcome
was he at the house of von Woringen, the Doctor
of Law, where he saw a good deal of Emma von
Bodman, who subsequently became his wife, and
at that of von Hillern, the Superior Court Judge,
whose wife, the daughter of Charlotte Birchpfeiffer,
consulted him in regard to her poetical creations.
Already, after the first half term, the deaf young
professor was the most discussed person in local
Society, and he himself boasted to my wife that
for his benefit several Freiburg ladies learned the
deaf-and-dumb language. They waxed enthusi-
astic over the young and handsome scholar, and
in their admiration for him sent for his poems,
only to be subsequently shocked, like Psyche
before Cupid. Yet it is characteristic that he
started his literary career with historic ballads
which he called Patriotic Poems (1856), and
Studies (1857).
The political life of the Badenese, which at that
time principally turned upon r the educational
question, was not to his taste. \_The Ultramon-
tanes he simply found coarse and stupid, and he
writes: "It is empty talk to speak of doctrinal
freedom and freedom to learn in a University
with a Catholic faculty. All Professors of Theo-
logy are clerks in holy orders, and so utterly de-
pendent upon their superiors that only recently
the archbishop asked the brave ol4~Senator Maier
to produce the books of his pupils. J Furthermore,
the students of Theology are locked in a convent,
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? His Life and Work 7
and true to old Jesuitic tradition are watched
step by step by mutual secret control. That is
what is called academic liberty. " But here, also,
is his opinion regarding others: "The grand-ducal
Badenese liberalism is nothing but cheap charla-
tanism without real vigour"; nay, he callfe^par-
ticularist liberalism" the most contemptible of all
parties which, however, unfortunateljTrwould play
an important part in the near future^J "Look for
instance at this National Coalition. Has ever a
great nation seen such a monster? " In his opin-
ion it sides with the Imperial Constitution of
1849, although the leaders themselves are con-
vinced of their inability to carry through the
programme, and at the same time the future
political configuration of Germany is declared to
be an open question, consequently it has on the
whole no programme at all.
Soon I was destined to make the personal ac-
quaintance of the much-admired and much-
criticized one. It was at an "At Home" at
Mathy's. Scarcely had I entered the vestibule
when I heard a very loud voice in the drawing-
room slowly emphasizing every syllable in the
style of a State Councillor. "This is Treitschke,
of Freiburg," I said immediately, and it was really
he. The Freiburg ladies had by no means exag-
gerated his handsome appearance. A tall, broad-
shouldered figure, dark hair and dark complexion,
dark, pensive eyes, now dreamy, now vividly
glistening unmistakably Slav. With his black
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? 8 Treitschke
hair, the heavy moustache, which he still wore at
that time, and his vivid gesticulations, he could
not conceal his Slav origin. He looked like a
Polish nobleman, and his knightly frame reminded
one of a Hussite, a Ziska for instance. Later,
he told me of his exiled ancestors Czech Pro-
testants of the name of Trschky, referred to by
Schiller in Wallenstein, although the editions
mostly spoke of Terzky's Regiments. At about
midnight, when wending our way through the
silent town, a policeman approached us, intending
to warn the loud, strange gentleman to moderate
his voice. The arm of the law, however, quickly
retired when, in company of the disturber of the
peace, he recognized Herr von Roggenbach and
several Ministerial Secretaries. As Treitschke
at that time made use of the Karlsruhe Archives,
he from time to time came to Karlsruhe, where
he sought the society of Mathy, Nokk, von Weech,
and Baumgarten. Under Mathy's influence a
gradual change took place in him, which trans-
mitted itself to all of us. At first he was an eager
adherent of August enburg, and the first money
received for his lectures in Freiburg he invested in
the Ducal Loan. Through Freytag he had like-
wise recommended his friend, von Weech, to the
Duke of Augustenburg with a view to his securing
an appointment in Kiel for publicistic purposes.
After that his attitude totally changed. When
he realized that Bismarck earnestly aspired gain-
ing for Prussia the dominating power in the East
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? His Life and Work 9
and North Sea, he frankly declared the strengthen-
ing of Prussia to be the supreme national duty.
Hausser intended to pin him down with his former
views by citing Treitschke's first Augustenburg
dissertations in the Review of the Prussian Annuals
of 1864. Treitschke, however, by way of reply,
in an essay on the solution of the Schleswig-Hol-
stein question, proved that the compliance with
the Augustenburg demands was detrimental to
Germany's welfare. Again he had spoken the
decisive word, and all writers of our circle now
advocated annexation. We were nicknamed
"Mamelukes and Renegades" by our Heidelberg
colleague Pickford, then editor of the Konstanzer
Zeitung. Treitschke was now as violently against,
as formerly for, the Duke. Now he sees the latter
as "the miserable pretender, whom he despises
from the bottom of his heart. Not only has he
not come to the noble decision which Germany is
entitled to expect from him, but by his unscrupu-
lous demagogical agitations he h'as utterly un-
settled his country. ' ' In Karlsruhe, the quiet town
of officials, such a political point of view was perhaps
admissible; not so, however, in the high country
filled with animosity against Prussia. Every child
was convinced that Prussia now, as formerly, in-
tended handing over the dukedoms to the King of
the Danes. Junker Voland, who had persuaded the
King to break with the Constitution, was, of course,
bribed long ago by England and Russia to again
restore the dukedoms to Danish supremacy.
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? io Treitschke
Everything that had happened after the short,
hopeful glimpse of Prussia's new era was an object
of sarcasm for the South German population.
When a boy talked very stupidly, his comrades
would call out : " Go to Konigsberg and have your-
self crowned"; and at Mass the beggar-women,
pointing with their sticks to the Prince's image,
shrieked out mocking insults.
This coarseness of the street and the tone of the
Freiburg democratic journals against Prussia
filled the politician, so inconsiderate against his
own Saxony, with immense indignation. In a
letter to Freytag he finds the Badenese "quite
steeped in the quagmire of phrases and foul
language. Examining these parties, the moral
value of both sides seems identical; the meaning-
less mendacity of our average liberalism fills me
with deep disgust. How long shall we labour
ere we again are able to speak of German faith?
If I am now to choose between the two parties,
I select that of Bismarck, since he struggles for
Prussian power for our legitimate position on the
North and East Sea. " He considered as impos-
sible the peaceful conversion of the Badenese to
Prussia. "Amid this abominable South German
particularism it has become perfectly evident to
me that our fate will clearly be decided by con-
quest. Six years of my life I have spent in the
South, and here I have gained the sad conviction
that even with a Cabinet composed of men of the
type of Stein and Humboldt, the hatred and jeal-
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? His Life and Work n
ousy of the South Germans against Prussia would
not diminish. I am longing for the North, to
which I belong with all my heart, and where also
our fate will be decided. " His public lectures
were very largely frequented. "But," he says,
"the Philistines are prejudiced when entering
the Aula, and are firmly determined to consider
as untrue every word I say about Prussia. The
opinion is prevalent that the South Germans are
the most modest of our people. I say they are
the most arrogant; to a man they consider them-
selves the real Germans, and the North a country
half of which is still steeped in barbarity, this
quite apart from a dissolute braggadocio the mere
thought of which fills me with disgust. Believe
me, only the trusty sword of the conqueror can
weld together these countries with the North. "
Later on, when I conversed with him every even-
ing at a round table in the Heidelberg Museum, I
realized the reasons for his lack of understanding
of our people. We seemed to him lukewarm,
because we did not strike the national chord with
the power which he expected of a good German.
But why should we do that? In the Saxony of
Herr von Beust, and in Prussia's time of reaction,
national ideas were tabooed, and . that is why the
patriots felt compelled to bear witness in season
and out of season. But we lived in a free country,
under a Prince harbouring German sentiments,
and where it would have been an easy matter to
feign patriotism quite apart from the fact that we
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? 12 Treitschke
South Germans do not care discussing our senti-
ments. I told him that in the same way as I,
despite my warmest feelings for my family, could
not bring myself to proclaim pompously the ex-
cellence of my wife and child, so was I reluctant
to publicly praise my Fatherland; and subse-
quently I reminded him of the Yankee who de-
clared that immediately a man spoke to him of
patriotism he knew him to be a rascal. In regard
to our sympathy for France, which he reviled as
the Rhine Confederation sentimentality, it would
be difficult for him to place himself in our position.
During the last century we had received nothing
but kindness from France, namely, deliverance
from the Palatine Bavarian regime, from Jesuits
and Lazarists, from episcopal and Junker rule,
from guild restrictions and compulsory service:
all this and the very existence of the country which
we enjoyed we owed directly or indirectly to
Napoleon and the Code Napoleon, from which
the hatred of the French arose. This, it is true,
I found quite natural, considering Napoleon
weakened Prussia and abused Saxony. He was
indignant when he noticed in corridors of inns and
even in parlours the small lithographs which,
under the First Empire, were poured out in thou-
sands from Paris even across the States of the Rhine
Convention, representing the Victor of Marengo,
the Sun of Austerlitz, Napoleon's Battle at the
Pyramids, etc. , and which, owing to the conserva-
tive spirit of the peasantry, decorated the walls,
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? His Life and Work 13
until moths, rust, and wood-worms gradually
brought about their destruction. He even took
offence at the attitude displayed by Frenchmen
in the Black Forest watering places, and in Baden-
Baden. When, finally, a Heidelberg lawyer de-
clared in the Reichstag that for him the cultured
Frenchman is still the most amiable of all Euro-
pean beings, Treitschke stigmatized us as in-
corrigible partisans of the Rhine Confederation.
But a glance at the letters of Frau Rat Goethe,
in Frankfort, who prayed God that French and
not Prussian soldiers should be quartered in her
house, might have taught him that the expressions
of a long historical epoch find expression in these
remarks, which could not be effaced by proud
words. Furthermore, when the Prussian Ministry
trampled on the Budget rights of Parliament, and
by a sophistical theory about a defect in the Con-
stitution exasperated the sense of justice of every
honest-thinking German, when the most extra-
ordinary verdicts of the Supreme Court, accom-
panied by the removal from office of the most
capable officials, provoked the population, it was
really not the time to stimulate among South
Germans the desire to become incorporated with
Prussia.
