Read Online Iron Kingdom : The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947 by Christopher Clark - Free Book Online
Authors: Christopher Clark
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speaking, but state secretaries of subordinate rank who answered directly to the imperial chancellor. The Prussian bureaucracy was larger than the Reich’s and remained so until the outbreak of the First World War. Most of the officials employed in the imperial administration were Prussians, but this was not a one-way process in which Prussians swarmed on to the commanding heights of the new German state. It would be truer to say Prussian and German national institutions grew together, intertwining their branches. It became increasingly common, for example, for non-Prussians to serve as imperial officials and even as Prussian ministers. The personnel of the Prussian ministries and the imperial secretariats grew ever more enmeshed. 4 By 1914, some 25 per cent of ‘Prussian’ army officers did not possess Prussian citizenship. 5
Yet even as the membranes between Prussia and the other German states became more permeable, the residual federalism of the German system ensured that Prussia retained its distinctive political institutions. Of these, the most important in constitutional terms was Prussia’s bicameral legislature. The German Reichstag was elected on the basis ofuniversal manhood suffrage. By contrast, the lower house of the Prussian Landtag, as we have seen, was saddled with a three-class franchise whose powerful inbuilt bias in favour of property-owners ensured the predominance of conservative and right-liberal forces. Whereas elections to the national parliament were based on direct and secret ballots, the Prussian Landtag was constituted using a system of public ballots and an indirect franchise (voters elected a college of representatives, who in turn chose deputies).
This system had seemed a reasonable enough answer to the problems facing the administration in the aftermath of the revolutions of 1848, and it did not prevent the liberals from mounting a formidable campaign against Bismarck during the constitutional crisis of the early 1860s, but in the decades following unification it began to look increasingly problematic. The three-class system was, above all, notoriously open to manipulation, because the colleges of representatives with their public ballots were much more transparent and manageable than the general public. 6 In the 1870s, liberal grandees in the provinces exploited this system to great effect, using their control over local patronage to ensure that rural constituencies returned liberal deputies. But things changed from the late 1870s, when the Bismarck administration began systematically manipulating the electoral process in favour of conservative candidates: local bureaucracies were purged of politically unreliable elements and opened to conservative aspirants who were encouraged to play an active role in pro-government agitation; electoral boundaries were gerrymandered to safeguard conservative majorities; polling places were moved to conservative areas within swinging rural constituencies, so that voters from opposition strongholds had to trudge across kilometres of open country to place their votes.
The conservatives also benefited from a sea-change in political attitudes, as country voters, unnerved by the economic slump of the mid-seventies, abandoned liberalism to embrace protectionist, pro-agrarian sectoral politics. In rural areas the result was an almost seamless continuity between conservative landed elites, Prussian officialdom and the conservative contingent in the Landtag. The cohesion of this network was further reinforced by the Prussian upper house, an even more conservative body than the Landtag, in which hereditary peers and representatives of the landed interest sat beside ex officio delegates from the cities, the clergy and universities. Established in 1854 by FrederickWilliam IV (on the model of the British House of Lords) with a view to strengthening the corporate element in the new constitution, the upper house had helped to block liberal bills during the ‘New
Yet even as the membranes between Prussia and the other German states became more permeable, the residual federalism of the German system ensured that Prussia retained its distinctive political institutions. Of these, the most important in constitutional terms was Prussia’s bicameral legislature. The German Reichstag was elected on the basis ofuniversal manhood suffrage. By contrast, the lower house of the Prussian Landtag, as we have seen, was saddled with a three-class franchise whose powerful inbuilt bias in favour of property-owners ensured the predominance of conservative and right-liberal forces. Whereas elections to the national parliament were based on direct and secret ballots, the Prussian Landtag was constituted using a system of public ballots and an indirect franchise (voters elected a college of representatives, who in turn chose deputies).
This system had seemed a reasonable enough answer to the problems facing the administration in the aftermath of the revolutions of 1848, and it did not prevent the liberals from mounting a formidable campaign against Bismarck during the constitutional crisis of the early 1860s, but in the decades following unification it began to look increasingly problematic. The three-class system was, above all, notoriously open to manipulation, because the colleges of representatives with their public ballots were much more transparent and manageable than the general public. 6 In the 1870s, liberal grandees in the provinces exploited this system to great effect, using their control over local patronage to ensure that rural constituencies returned liberal deputies. But things changed from the late 1870s, when the Bismarck administration began systematically manipulating the electoral process in favour of conservative candidates: local bureaucracies were purged of politically unreliable elements and opened to conservative aspirants who were encouraged to play an active role in pro-government agitation; electoral boundaries were gerrymandered to safeguard conservative majorities; polling places were moved to conservative areas within swinging rural constituencies, so that voters from opposition strongholds had to trudge across kilometres of open country to place their votes.
The conservatives also benefited from a sea-change in political attitudes, as country voters, unnerved by the economic slump of the mid-seventies, abandoned liberalism to embrace protectionist, pro-agrarian sectoral politics. In rural areas the result was an almost seamless continuity between conservative landed elites, Prussian officialdom and the conservative contingent in the Landtag. The cohesion of this network was further reinforced by the Prussian upper house, an even more conservative body than the Landtag, in which hereditary peers and representatives of the landed interest sat beside ex officio delegates from the cities, the clergy and universities. Established in 1854 by FrederickWilliam IV (on the model of the British House of Lords) with a view to strengthening the corporate element in the new constitution, the upper house had helped to block liberal bills during the ‘New
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