To trace the development of Brandenburg-Prussia, the nucleus
of the Prussian tradition, we have to begin with the Protestant
Reformation. and the Thirty-Years War. There is no need to treat
these events in great detail, since they are a significant part
of Western Civilization. We are all familiar by now with the circumstances
that led to Luther's revolt from Rome:
We all know that the causes for this great religious schism
were social and economic as well as religious, although Luther
was no social revolutionary, as his encouragement of the peasant
suppression revealed.
Yet the break with the universal church was permanent and Protestantism
became established in Germany and several other northern European
countries. But the conflict between the Holy Roman Empire and
the princes, which contributed to the Reformation, continued,
despite the so-called compromise of 1555, which satisfied no one.
There was a revival of Catholicism at the Council of Trent, which
brought about belated reform in the Catholic Church and set Catholicism
off on a counter-offensive. Catholicism remained the predominant
force in Austria, Bavaria and the Rhineland.
There was a constant quarrel over the church lands which had been
secularized in the process of the Reformation. What about churchly
princes who had been converted to Protestantism? What should be
done with their territorial possessions? After the so-called Ecclesiastical
Reservation of 1552 the churchly princes were supposed to give
up their lands. But many princes claimed that this rule was not
binding. A variety of incidents continued to escalate ill feelings
and growing tensions. The emperors tried very hard to paper over
the increasing series of crises. By 1600 Germany was really divided,
and not only between Catholics and Protestants. The Calvinists
and Lutherans were also in a state of disarray, even within the
Protestant Union which was organized in 1600. During the next
decade the opposition organized itself into the Catholic League.
War now seemed to be all but inevitable.
The so-called Thirty-Years-War really began as a civil war
between German Protestants and German Catholics, but it soon turned
into an international conflict. The contestants were not exactly
divided along religious lines, but rather along power-political
lines. The combat actually began in Bohemia, where John Hus had
earlier started a religious revolt against the established church.
Hus was basically a Protestant although he was also a great Czech
national figure. There bad been a genuine cultural revival in
Bohemia in the l4th century and during the l4th and l5th centuries
Bohemia had managed to retain a measure of independence from a
reluctant Habsburg regime.
In 1517 Bohemia received a new king, who happened to be a Catholic
Habsburg-Ferdinand II. This event led to immediate conflict between
the Bohemian nobility and people on the one hand, and the new
Catholic ruler on the other hand. It culminated in the famous
"defenistration of Prague", when an official of the
king was thrown out of the window of a public building by Czech
patriots. The Bohemians then made Frederick, duke of Palatine,
a Protestant, king of their country. The war was on. In the famous
Battle of the White Mountain in 1620 the Czechs were defeated
by the armies of the emperor and Frederick had to flee, receiving
the name of the "winter king."
This war continued for some thirty indecisive years, eventually
involving a number of foreign countries, most notably France (strangely
enough on the Protestant side) and Sweden. In the end Germany
lay in ruins, severely depopulated and spiritually devastated.
The results were predictable. This war sealed the political decentralization
of Germany and established the authority and power of the local
princes. The many princes of Germany claimed, for the first time,
political sovereignty in the French sense, and the final treaties
recognized that sovereignty. They could have their own armies,
money, treaties and make their own economic legislation.
However, they could make no alliances against the emperor himself,
whose authority nevertheless was severely eroded. His only power
base was found in his own lands-Austria, Hungary and Italy. The
Swedes got a hold of Pomerania and the French retained Metz and
Verdun, thus further penetrating to the Rhine frontier. Prussia
was a gainer since it received Hither Pomerania, and the son of
the Count of Palatine acquired new lands plus an electorate but
lost the Bavrian Palatinate (Oberpfalz). Saxony, Bavaria and Prussia
were greatly enlarged and became significant powers in Germany
after 1648, the date of the Treaty of Westphalia.
Religiously the Calvinists received the same rights as the Lutherans.
However, one could hardly speak of religious liberty for the people,
since the princes determined the religion of their subjects. The
religious division of Germany was now permanent, the Northeast
being Protestant, the West half and half, and the South Catholic.
Central Europe was the only place where the Reformation did not
produce clear religious majorities. This had a tremendous effect
on politics in the succeeding centuries.
This general background brings us to the emergence of Prussia
as a great power in German and European affairs. As I have already
said, Prussia was one of the main gainers in the outcome of the
Thirty-Years-War. Two men made Prussia into that power and may
be called not only the creators of the Prussian state but the
founders of the Prussian tradition in German affairs. These men
were Frederick William, the Great Elector, and his grandson, Frederick
II, the Great.
Frederick William, the founder of the Prussian state, ruled
for almost a half century, from 1640 to 1688. He was the first
great Brandenhurg ruler, even overshadowing Albrecht the Bear,
who first established himself in the territory around Berlin.
Frederick William's accession ended five centuries of relative
complacency. He played a far larger role in the Westphalian Congress
than his state deserved, both in terms of size and role played
in the war. The reason was that he had a large army and displayed
certain spiritual qualities which impressed European rulers. Frederick
William was determined to defend his three widely scattered possessions:
His primary policy centered on integration of these territories
and the overall protection of his realm. But territorial consolidation,
no matter how tantalizing, was only a dream, hampered by many
obstacles. Yet the Great Elector set the pace for the future and
crystallized an overriding goal for his successors. In the last
analysis Frederick William not only created the kingdom of Prussia
(really his son did it), but he was the unconscious protector
of a renovated Germany.
The Great Elector was a staunch pillar of the Calvinist faith,
which became identified with the rising commercial class, turning
their faith outward rather than inward. Frederick William saw
the importance of trade and promoted it vigorously. He worked
hard at his god-given task of ruling. His ministers never controlled
him, although foreign ambassadors thought so and tried to bribe
his ministers. He was given to frequent outbursts, which made
others doubt his reliability. He was shifty in the Swedish-Polish
war and his political opportunism also showed up in his shifting
position in the Dutch War of 1672.
He was a realist who contemplated his self-interest like most
of his contemporaries. He only had two important lapses from this
policy. His testament impaired the edifice he had built and his
candidature for the Polish throne in 1661 detracted from his job
at home. The prospect of a royal crown was tempting, but would
not have helped him at home since he would have had to convert
to Catholicism. He was a patron of the fine arts, collected books
and antiquities and loved the chase at the same time. Toward the
end of his life he became pessimistic and tended to isolate himself,
nursing various physical ills.
This was the age of the Baroque, the fading symbols of the Renaissance,
which invigorated the Catholic Church and absolute monarchy. The
pope ruled as an absolute monarch in the church. Louis XIV gave
his rule a gallically flavored papal baroque. Brandenburg-Prussia
was ripe to express itself in Baroque terms as well. Frederick
William was an absolute ruler in every sense. He dominated the
nobility, repressed the bourgeoisie, and wholly submerged the
peasantry. The court was lavish and his Schloss in Berlin was
a showpiece.
But the most important exhibit of the Brandenburg Baroque was
the elector himself. He was a kind of earthly Jove. A kind of
myth developed around the Elector that he was the embodiment of
law, upholding the state, yet very human and characterized by
patriarchal kindliness. The initiative was reserved to tho state.
The law confirmed its empire over consenting subjects and the
subjects asserted their moral freedom by their voluntary subjection
to the law.
The Great Elector was succeeded by Frederick III, who made
himself a king in Prussia in 1701, while the rest of Europe was
involved in war. He was followed by Frederick William I who concentrated
on building a bureaucracy, and most of all an army far disproportionate
to the size of his country. He was so militaristic that one biographer
has called him the "Potsdam Führer."
When the Elector died in 1688 he left an army whose strength has
been estimated at about 30,000 men. It was a force whose organization
had undergone radical change since 1640. The old mercenary system
in which the colonels contracted to supply the ruler with regiments
of a stipulated size but brooked no interference on his part with
the administration and command of their troops, was gradually
modified in the course of the Great Elector's reign.
The first steps were taken toward the modern system of centralized
army administration. In 1655 the Elector gave Freiherr von Sparr
general command over all troops in the Hohenzollern lands, a step
which, theoretically at least, unified the hitherto uncoordinated
provincial forces; and under Sparr's direction a kind of General
Staff came into existence which gave some practical meaning, in
matters of command, to this concept of unification. Simultaneously
the activities of Claus Ernst von Platen, who was appointed as
Generalkriegskommissar during the Swedish war and was charged
with overall supervision of such things as the assembling, remounting,
provisioning, and billeting of the army, its payment, stores,
and magazines, and the imposition of contributions at home and
abroad, also rapidly promoted uniformity within the Elector's
army.
As a result of these measures the authority of the colonels inevitably
declined. Increasingly, the Elector sought to avoid specific contrats
with individual commanders; progressively he curtailed the colonels'
right to commission junior officers and laid the basis for a system
in which all officers owed complete allegiance to the ruler as
commander-in-chief of the army. Finally, he tried to alter the
mental outlook of his officers and to persuade them to think of
themselves less as speculators and business men than as servants
of the state.
Incomplete as they were, these efforts in the direction of centralization
were reflected in increased efficiency in the field. During the
reign of the Great Elector the army of Brandenburg-Prussia not
only demonstrated that it was capable of defending the territories
of its ruling house but, by its victories at Warsaw and Fehrbellin,
won the consideration and respect of the Great Powers of Europe,
a fact adequately demonstrated by the eagerness with which its
aid was solicited in the Elector's last years. More tangible benefits
were denied him, thanks to the bewildering shifts of the diplomatic
alignments of the period; but when his son assumed the title of
''King in Prussia" in January l7Ol, the failure of any of
the Powers to dispute the new title was a belated recognition
of the increased stature of the Hohenzollern state and a vindication
of the Great Elector's belief that military power alone could
make a ruler "considerabell".
The lesson was not lost upon his successors. The Great Elector's
son is generally considered to have been a weak ruler, and certainly
his love for ceremonial and display invited the ridicule of his
subjects and dismayed the administrators of his revenues. But
this first Prussian King nevertheless respected the realities,
as well as the trappings, of power; he recognized the army as
the bulwark of his authority; and he gradually increased its strength
until it stood at a level of 40,000 men.
When his son, the remarkable Frederick William I, came to the
throne in 1713, the growth of the army was made the first objective
of his policy. Like the Great Elector, Frederick William I believed
that the international position of a prince was determined entirely
by the number of troops he could maintain. "I can but laugh
at the scoundrels, he said on one occasion, referring to certain
of his father's ministers, "they say they will obtain land
and people for the King with the pen; but I say it can be done
only with the sword, otherwise he will get nothing.'' Later he
took frequent occasion to impress this truth upon his son. "Fritz,
mark my words", he said in 1724, ''always keep up a large
efficient army; you cannot have a better friend and without that
friend you will not be able to survive. . . .Believe me, you must
not think about imaginary things, fix your mind on real ones.
Have money and a good army; they ensure the glory and safety of
a prince."
Acting upon his own precepts, Frederick William, from the outset
of his reign, bent all his energies to the task of increasing
the size and efficiency of the army and, at the same time, of
freeing it from that dependence upon foreign subsidies which had,
in previous reigns, involved the Hohenzollerns in wars which did
not always advance their own interests. By a policy of the most
rigid economy, in which the Prussian state spent four and five
times as much annually on its army as it did on all other obligations,
Frederick William increased the size of his military establishment
from 40,000 to 83,000 men, a figure which made Prussia's army
the fourth largest in Europe, although the state ranked only tenth
from the standpoint of territory and thirteenth in population.
But it was primarily Frederick II, the Great, ruling from 1740
to 1786, who made the Prussian tradition. His several wars in
the middle of the 18th century are known to all students of history,
since they determined the life of Europe in the 19th century,
to a large degree. We will not deal with those. Instead I want
to concentrate on the personality and general policy of Frederick
the Great.
He wielded absolute power with anxious, almost morbid jealousy.
A prince should plan his system and execute it himself he thought.
His government was personal and mechanical. He expected his subjects
and servants to obey orders even without understanding them. He
rejected all independent initiative, because he appeared to be
afraid of it. He was against hasty reforms since he believed that
the constitution of a country was the product of time. The administration
under Frederick II was collegiate in nature, meaning that there
was collective responsibility in the councils of state.
He inspected each department himself and saw people individually
on his many inspection tours. He made and wrote decisions in the
margins of many, many reports-as many as 60 in a single morning
at his desk. He had little respect for his officials. "I
could hang 99 percent of them with a clear conscience" he
once said. He kept a careful eye on public opinion, yet he despised
it completely, which is not unlike the attitude of some other
German rulers, notably Hitler. He shared the "sensibility"of
his time, but he also revealed a stark realism, which was not
really a token of the period.
Frederick the Great despised abstractions and developed a kind
of fact fetishism, which has become characteristic of many Germans-including
professors of German history. His administrative routine was predictable:
he normally spent two months touring the provinces after reviewing
the troops at Berlin, Potsdam and Spandau. His mania for information,
his unflagging concentration, stemmed from a fear of being duped.
Although his desire of always being right was curbed somewhat,
he did have a tendency to prejudge people. All of these characteristics
are really a part of the Prussian tradition in German life.
Frederick made the Prussian bureaucracy more homogeneous, more
methodical, more hard-working, and a more effective instrument
of unification. The bureaucracy was infused with a sense of duty
and public service-and that too is a part of the Prussian tradition.
The German bureaucracy throughout history has probably been the
most honest and productive and that is saying a lot. But Frederick
also thwarted the spirit of initiative, personal inquiry, the
taste for responsibility-and this too is essentially German. Any
one who displeased him could be thrown into prison, although he
did not like to change officials or ministers too often.
To Frederick men of birth who were not soldiers were scoundrels.
Nobles were the foundation and support of the monarchy, whereas
peasants were mere serfs or tenants for life subject to tithes
and forced labor, suitors to the lords' courts. It was feudalism
in full rigor. The towns were to make a lot of money in order
to pay a lot of taxes. There was a real Prussian mercantilism.
State intervention was matched by control of prices, and the movement
of goods, customs prohibitions, and creation of protected industries.
His two great economic enemies were Hamburg, which handled English
goods, and Leipzig, which conducted an international fair. He
encouraged colonization and 50,000 foreigners came to Prussia
between 1740 and 1755.
Frederick was a tolerant unbeliever and it was by this religious
enlightenment that he was a men of his time, a colleague of the
philosophes. He deprived the monarchy of its character as a divine
institution and this was a sort of intellectual revolution, which
is mostly responsible for calling him great.
His theory of government is also very similar to that of the philosophes:
people found they needed judges and protectors, so they chose
the wisest, most disinterested, most human and valiant-this was
the origin of the monarchy. People and the sovereign were considered
to be one. Republics, according to Frederick, always ended up
with despots. Monarchy owed its origin to the benefits the people
expected of it and was upheld by those which it gave to the people
The prince was considered to be a watchman of the state.
Frederick II was probably the greatest Prussian of history, but
not the political incarnation of free thought, as the philosophes
would have us believe. He simplified the law and jurisdiction
and abolished trial for witchcraft, etc., but he was not so great
as the philosophes believed. Most of the reforms were superficial,
that increased administrative efficiency, but otherwise lacked
any real substance. What Frederick did of course was maintain
and expand the renowned military machine of Prussia. In essence
for forty years Prussia was what Frederick was - with his brilliance
and his faults, with the army as the centrality of his policy.
And that became, very much, the essence of the Prussian tradition
in German history.