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Authors: Peter Padfield
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Oriental carpets, and under von Loewenfeld’s critical eye developed skill in assessing these exquisite works of art. ‘I possessed, for instance, an old “Ghiordes” of such beauty of colour in gold and blue, thus saffron and indigo, that often I could not satiate myself with these colours.’ 52
The officers enjoyed strenuous social activity as the representatives of the German empire in the Middle East, particularly in Constantinople, where Embassy officials dubbed the ship the
Ball-Kahn
(Ball-boat). This did not prevent very thorough training in all warlike exercises; indeed as later events were to prove, both German warships were worked up to hairlines of efficiency.
The
Breslau
spent the first three months of 1914 refitting in Trieste, emerging to escort the Kaiser’s yacht,
Hohenzollern
, to Corfu, where Wilhelm spent his annual holiday. For the officers who took part in numerous more or less informal social events graced by a variety of Royals, these were the last days of peace, although none could have foreseen it, the last high days of a social order about to vanish for ever. For after escorting the
Hohenzollern
back to Trieste, the
Breslau
was ordered to join another international squadron off the Balkans, and she was there, lying off Durazzo next to the British heavy cruiser,
Defence
, when news came of the murder of the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary at Sarajevo just 200 miles to the north.
It is important to clarify the events following the murder at Sarajevo. They were deliberately muddied by official Germany at the time and after the war was lost. The truth is that the murder was seen in Berlin as the opportunity that was sought to unleash a sharp, controlled—Bismarckian—war.
There were many reasons why the German leaders needed war. Internally they were threatened by the steady advance of the Socialists,the largest party in the
Reichstag
, now attacking the three-tier voting system by which the land-owning Junker class retained power in Prussia, thus in the
Reich
. These believed they were in a pre-revolutionary situation but, as August Bebel put it, were not prepared to reform their
Junkerstaat
—on the contrary they were determined to hold on to what a modern German scholar, Volker Berghahn, has called their ‘untenable position in a rapidly changing industrial society’. 53 Moreover, they were not prepared to make any more financial sacrifices to meet the huge burden of interest Tirpitz’s fleet-building had laid on the exchequer.
The financial-industrial interest which had set the pace for the new course of 1897 had also become disenchanted. Far from fulfilling its internal goal of binding the divisions within the
Reich, Weltpolitik
had seriously deepened them and with the withdrawal of the Junkers split even the ‘patriotic’ consensus; in external affairs
Weltpolitik
had forced Great Britain to join the opposing continental alliance, ‘encircling’ them and blocking all movement. The Foreign Ministry felt this particularly. In 1911, and again in the 1912 Balkan crisis, Great Britain had given Germany deliberate warnings which had shocked and angered them. They laid the British antagonism at Tirpitz’s door. Even Wilhelm II could on occasions be forced into the realization that the fleet policy had miscarried.
By the end of 1912, therefore, when the fateful meeting took place at Wilhelm’s palace, Tirpitz and the Navy were very much on their own. The Army, the Chancellor, the Foreign Ministry, the Junkers, the bankers, the shipowners and industrialists—and sometimes the Kaiser—the entire Prussian power nexus was against further naval expansion.
Weltpolitik
was not abandoned altogether, simply discarded as an immediate goal. Thinking had reverted naturally to the traditional Prussian cast of continental
Politik
. In fact it was more than that because the new Germany was more than a
Junkerstaat
; it was a world industrial power, and the new policy envisaged a two-stage
The officers enjoyed strenuous social activity as the representatives of the German empire in the Middle East, particularly in Constantinople, where Embassy officials dubbed the ship the
Ball-Kahn
(Ball-boat). This did not prevent very thorough training in all warlike exercises; indeed as later events were to prove, both German warships were worked up to hairlines of efficiency.
The
Breslau
spent the first three months of 1914 refitting in Trieste, emerging to escort the Kaiser’s yacht,
Hohenzollern
, to Corfu, where Wilhelm spent his annual holiday. For the officers who took part in numerous more or less informal social events graced by a variety of Royals, these were the last days of peace, although none could have foreseen it, the last high days of a social order about to vanish for ever. For after escorting the
Hohenzollern
back to Trieste, the
Breslau
was ordered to join another international squadron off the Balkans, and she was there, lying off Durazzo next to the British heavy cruiser,
Defence
, when news came of the murder of the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary at Sarajevo just 200 miles to the north.
It is important to clarify the events following the murder at Sarajevo. They were deliberately muddied by official Germany at the time and after the war was lost. The truth is that the murder was seen in Berlin as the opportunity that was sought to unleash a sharp, controlled—Bismarckian—war.
There were many reasons why the German leaders needed war. Internally they were threatened by the steady advance of the Socialists,the largest party in the
Reichstag
, now attacking the three-tier voting system by which the land-owning Junker class retained power in Prussia, thus in the
Reich
. These believed they were in a pre-revolutionary situation but, as August Bebel put it, were not prepared to reform their
Junkerstaat
—on the contrary they were determined to hold on to what a modern German scholar, Volker Berghahn, has called their ‘untenable position in a rapidly changing industrial society’. 53 Moreover, they were not prepared to make any more financial sacrifices to meet the huge burden of interest Tirpitz’s fleet-building had laid on the exchequer.
The financial-industrial interest which had set the pace for the new course of 1897 had also become disenchanted. Far from fulfilling its internal goal of binding the divisions within the
Reich, Weltpolitik
had seriously deepened them and with the withdrawal of the Junkers split even the ‘patriotic’ consensus; in external affairs
Weltpolitik
had forced Great Britain to join the opposing continental alliance, ‘encircling’ them and blocking all movement. The Foreign Ministry felt this particularly. In 1911, and again in the 1912 Balkan crisis, Great Britain had given Germany deliberate warnings which had shocked and angered them. They laid the British antagonism at Tirpitz’s door. Even Wilhelm II could on occasions be forced into the realization that the fleet policy had miscarried.
By the end of 1912, therefore, when the fateful meeting took place at Wilhelm’s palace, Tirpitz and the Navy were very much on their own. The Army, the Chancellor, the Foreign Ministry, the Junkers, the bankers, the shipowners and industrialists—and sometimes the Kaiser—the entire Prussian power nexus was against further naval expansion.
Weltpolitik
was not abandoned altogether, simply discarded as an immediate goal. Thinking had reverted naturally to the traditional Prussian cast of continental
Politik
. In fact it was more than that because the new Germany was more than a
Junkerstaat
; it was a world industrial power, and the new policy envisaged a two-stage
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