Tags
19th Century Europe, 19th Century Germany, BBC, Curt Jürgens, Fall of Eagles, Frederick III, Gemma Jones, Liberalism, Nationalism, Otto von Bismarck, Unification of Germany, William I of Prussia
As I discussed in my previous post, Fall of Eagles deals with major political events from the perspective of the royal families of Austria, Prussia/Germany, and Russia, but doesn’t both to explain the wider political movements that were driving many of the major events. Liberalism is frequently referenced, but never explained, and nationalism isn’t even mentioned as an ideology. The first episode deals with the Revolutions of 1848 on Austria and Hungary while focusing mostly on the limited viewpoint of Empress Elisabeth. The second episode, “The English Princess”, takes the same approach to the unification of Germany in the 1860s.
The main viewpoint character in this episode is Crown Princess Victoria (Gemma Jones), daughter of Queen Victoria and wife of the Prussian Crown Prince Frederick (Denis Lill), son of King William I (Maurice Denham), who is depicted as hesitant, unsure of himself, and prone to fits of tears. Historically. Victoria and Frederick were Liberals, which as I explained in my previous post means they favored a strong Parliament and other representative elements of government, whereas William I and his Chancellor Otto von Bismarck (Curt Jürgens) were Conservatives, so that they favored a strong monarch with few limits on his authority. But the viewer is left to figure this out mostly through William and Bismarck’s preference for an unrestrained military and a willingness to ignore the Prussian Parliament.
The episode focuses on the tensions between William and his son and daughter-in-law. William demands that Frederick express support for press censorship, and when Frederick gives a speech that dodges the issue, William feels betrayed and accuses Frederick of wanting to usurp the throne, and Bismarck counsels William to cut Frederick out of government duties and isolate them. The series frames this as William being unable to conceive of the idea of ‘loyal opposition’, an idea deeply embedded in British politics. Both Victoria and Frederick resent this isolation and their viewpoint is championed in the series with the way the individual scenes frame the situation.
The Unification of Germany
The Revolutions of 1848 demonstrated that there were many Germans who wished to see the unification of the fragmented German nation into a single nation-state. Bismarck, however, wanted to strengthen Prussia and turn it into the greatest European power. While a unified Germany was a way to make Prussia more powerful, there was a serious problem. Austria was a rival of Prussia, and unifying the Germans meant bringing both Austria and Prussia into a new German nation-state, which meant that Prussia would not be able to dominate the new Germany. So Bismarck’s Conservatism was at odds with the goals of German Nationalists.
Otto von Bismarck
Bismarck’s solution to this problem was to use Nationalism as a way to disguise his ambitions for Prussia. Over the 1860s, he waged three wars: the Second Schleswig War in 1864, the Austro-Prussian War in 1866, and the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. He used the Second Schleswig War as an opportunity to promote himself as the defender of the German Nation from Danish oppression, this winning favor with the German Nationalists. When Austria tried to revise the settlement by appealing to a German Diet, Bismarck accused them of violating the terms of the peace treaty and declared war. In fact, Bismarck’s goal was to force Austria into withdrawing from German politics, and the Prussian military trounced Austria brutally at the Battle of Königgrätz, forcing Austria to sue for peace.
Bismarck watching the battle of Königgrätz
Then Bismarch orchestrated the Franco-Prussian War, editing a telegram from William I to the French ambassador in a way that suggested that William had insulted the French. This tricked Napoleon III into declaring war on Prussia. In the brief war that followed, Prussia again triumphed handily. This gave Bismarck the political capital to press for a German unification that excluded Austria and which allowed Prussia to dictate the terms of the unification. The Nationalists rejoiced to see their goal of German unification advanced so far, while the Liberals looked away from Bismarch’s violent methods and toward the constitution that he offered.
On the surface, the constitution appeared to be a Liberal document, establishing universal manhood suffrage and vesting substantial power in what was essentially a two-house Parliament. The Reichstag (functionally the Lower House) was elected by all male citizens over 25, while the Bundesrat (functionally the Upper House) was appointed by the heads of the individual German states, with Prussia getting as many votes as the next four largest house combined and slightly more than 25% of the total votes. The Bundespräsidium or presidency of the German Confederacy was held by the Prussian king, who received the title of Emperor. But when looks closely at the details of the constitution, it actually grants the king of Prussia enormous power, because the Bundesrat held much more power than the Reichstag, and it was dominated by Prussian appointees, which allowed the king of Prussia to issue orders that the Bundesrat carried out. In practice, this was a Conservative constitution dressed up as a Liberal one, and it vastly increased the power of Prussia by making in the dominant state in Germany.
In the series, William I feels so unable to govern that he attempts to abdicate in favor of his son, but Frederick refuses on the grounds that Hohenzollerns do not abdicate. (Whether this detail is true I am unsure of. I haven’t been able to find any confirmation of it.) Instead, William turns to Bismarck, who takes advantage of the fact that the old man just wants to be told what to do, and sets about engineering the unification of Germany to make himself more powerful. The series makes no mention of the Second Schleswig War, and then focuses on the Austro-Prussian War, which is simply blames on Bismarck’s aggression. There is an extended scene in which Bismarck, having defeated Austria in three battles in as many days now wants to negotiate for peace. William and General von Moltke want to press onward and occupy Vienna, hoping to take Austrian land. Bismarck (backed by Frederick, who dislikes war) says that Austrian land has no value to Prussia. It’s understandable why William and von Moltke can’t understand what Bismarck wants because Bismarck never clearly explains what his purpose for the war is. He gets his way by threatening to quit and then orchestrates the Franco-Prussian War, again failing to explain what his motives are. Somehow, victory over France leads the other German states to press William to become emperor, which he resists but which Frederick presses for.
If one does not know what Bismarck was actually up to, this episode would certainly not enlighten one much about the process of German unification. Bismarck comes off as a steely but emotional man who cares little for human lives other than his soldiers and has little respect for the ruler he serves.
This review was made possible by a reader who made a generous donation to my Paypal account and requested I review this series. If you have something you’d like me to review, make a donation and tell me what you’d like me to watch.
Want to Know More?
Fall of Eagles is available on Youtube. The series is available through Amazon, but if you decide to buy it, make sure you’re getting a format that will play on your DVD player; some versions only play British and European formats. For those interested in Bismarck himself, try Jonathan Steinberg’s Bismarck: A Life. If you want to know more about Bismarck’s unification of Germany, take a look at DG Williamson’s Bismarck and German Unification, 1862-1890.
An Historian Goes to the Movies 
Just a brief comment right now on the German Empire that wasn’t.
After the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the German states, including Austria, had come together in this loose entity called the German Confederation. The Holy Roman Empire had been destroyed during the Napoleonic Wars, and a lot of the smaller German states (there were over 300) had been destroyed in the Napoleonic Wars or were suffering unrest. So the Treaty of Vienna basically consolidated the German states from over 300 down to 42, of which 38 were monarchies of one sort or another, and 4 were free cities. It also set up the aforementioned German Confederation, with a congress called the Federal Convention, which met in Frankfurt, made up of members appointed by each of the states.
It’s important to keep in mind that the German Confederation wasn’t a unified government the way we’d think of it. The Federal Convention could pass laws, but didn’t have any enforcement power, and each of the German states were completely independent. It primarily served as a way for the German states to coordinate on issues that affected all of them, and as a way for the larger German states (mostly Prussia and Austria, Bavaria to a lesser extent) to manipulate the rest.
So then the revolutions of 1848 happen, Liberal nationalists put pressure on the various German states. through rioting and protests, and a parliament meets in Frankfurt to write a constitution and unify Germany.
The Parliament that forms there is primarily made up of liberal nationalists. It’s almost entirely upper middle class, and the largest bloc of delegates were professors and civil servants, with a smaller group being lawyers, clergymen, and doctors. (The parliament was called by its detractors ‘The Professor’s Parliament”) Now, as anybody who was ever involved in academic politics might suspect, the Parliament went completely smoothly with no issues at all.
So, in spite of factionalism, an entire group of Parliamentarians walking out and establishing their own Parliament, and one of the delegates getting executed by Austria when the Parliament sent him there to try to mediate between the Emperor and the rioters in Vienna, they actually did create a constitution, which set up a bicameral elected legislature, and a constitutional monarch, who commanded the army, and could delay legislation but not stop it. It also guaranteed certain rights, including freedom of speech, religion, academics and the press, abolished capital punishment, and forbade tariffs and internal trade barriers.
One of the big debates was the question of who would be in this German state, which broke down to the question of “Greater Germany” (A Germany including Austria) and “Lesser Germany” (A Germany not including Austria). The Parliament came to a compromise, and said that the German state would include Austria, but only the German parts of Austria. So they sent a representative to the Emperor of Austria, offering him the crown of Germany, but only if he surrendered the non-German parts of Austria. He refused, saying that Austria was indivisible, he was Emperor of all of it, and they could please go away.
They then went to Prussia, and offered it to King Frederick William IV (The father of William I), figuring he would accept it. Frederick William IV had sent signals saying that a Germany unified under Prussia would be a great idea, But he refused, telling them that it was God that made him King of Prussia, only the German Princes could make him Emperor of Germany, and that he wouldn’t stoop down into the gutter to pick up a crown soiled by the stink of revolution. Frederick William wanted to be Emperor, but only on his terms.
He then proceeded to try to become Emperor on his own terms. In 1849, in response to the Revolutions, Frederick William issued a constitution for Prussia, one of those constitutions that promised a lot, but if you read it carefully, said “The King’s in charge, so shut up.” He also reached out to Saxony and Hannover, which were two fairly big and powerful North German states, and established what became known as the Alliance of the Three Kings, where they promised they’d defend each other from foreign attack and internal revolution. In 1850, building on that, Prussia then invited the other German states to a parliament, to be held in Erfurt, to establish a unified Germany, headed jointly by Prussia and Austria.
It was a disaster. Bavaria and Wurtemburg, who were, after Austria, the two biggest and most powerful South German states, didn’t show up at all, and the Austrians, who considered the Prussians upstarts, and figured that they alone should be the dominant German state, put pressure on the various German states to withdraw their support, and managed to get the Prussian prime minister, Joseph Maria von Radowitz, who had been pro-unification, replaced by the pro-Austrian Otto von Manteuffel, and made Prussia sign a treaty, the Punctation of Olmütz, where Prussia agreed that Germany shouldn’t be unified and that Austria was in charge and the dominant German state.
That was what led the Prussians to decide that there couldn’t be any unified Germany under Prussian control as long as the Austrians had a free hand, and that was what led to Bismarck’s decision to go to war against Austria.
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Frederick’s response to the Kaiser’s threatened abdication is discussed briefly in Hanna Pakula’s biography of Crown Princess Victoria, “An Uncommon Woman”.
The Liberals had taken over the Prussian Chamber of Deputies. One of the things the Prussian Liberals had pushed for was the abolition of conscription and the establishment of a volunteer army, but they were willing to compromise, so when an army reform bill came to them, they granted the money, but also reduced the conscription period from 3 to 2 years (which was something the Prussian generals supported. They believed that a three year conscription had created too large an army, and that was interfering with the General Staff’s attempt to update and modernize the army.)
When the bill passed, though, William threw a tantrum. He screamed to his ministers that he’d rather abdicate than pass the bill, and called Frederick back to Berlin from Gotha, where he had been spending time with the visiting Queen Victoria. When Frederick got back, William told him he was planning on abdicating….that he had supported three year conscription his entire life, that he would be a hypocrite if he gave up on that now, that it was a matter of conscience, and that the papers were all drawn up and that he had to sign them.
Frederick spent the next two days trying to mediate between his father and the Liberals. He told him that abdicating would be a “threat to the dynasty, country and Crown”, and that it would weaken Frederick, because it would set up a precedent that a parliamentary decision could lead to abdication.
After two days, Bismarck showed up in Berlin, and after Frederick got William to promise that he wouldn’t abdicate and that he wouldn’t see Bismarck, Frederick went back to Gotha and his mother-in-law, and William met with Bismarck and offered him the Chancellorship.
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As a historical note, the early Hohenzollern Elector Frederick II of Brandenburg (lived 1413-71, reigned 1440-70) abdicated. Of course, Crown Prince Frederick might not have known that.
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