The transient nature of this artistry soon became apparent. A crisis in Bulgaria inflamed Russo-Austrian relations, leading to the breakup of the revived league. Once again a war was avoided with Bismarck’s intervention, but Austria-Hungary and Russia could no longer patch up their differences. Bismarck negotiated a separate Reinsurance Treaty with the Russian tsar in 1887. Nevertheless, France and Russia began courting each other before Bismarck left office.
Between 1870 and 1890 Bismarck earned the respect of European leaders for his pacific policies. Apart from a few colonial additions in the mid-1880s, Germany under his guidance acted as a satiated power. The question remained whether this burgeoning industrial power led by the Junker and industrial elites would continue this policy while the other Western powers carved out world empires. Politics, 1890–1914
The political structure established by Bismarck in 1867 remained with scant change until the empire’s demise in 1918. Leo, Graf (count) von Caprivi, Bismarck’s successor, was a political neophyte, having spent his entire career in the military. Given the disjuncture between the Prussian and German political systems (see above Domestic concerns), Caprivi, surprisingly, sought to work with the parties of the centre and left, Bismarck’s Reichsfeinde. With their support, he reduced the grain tariffs and negotiated long-term trade treaties with Russia, the Dual Monarchy, and Romania. Food prices fell as a result, and industry flourished. National wealth rose rapidly, as did the standard of living of the industrial labour force. The Junker elite were outraged at Caprivi’s willingness to sacrifice their interests on behalf of industry and labour. Utilizing their political power in Prussia and their access to the emperor, they were able to force his resignation in 1894, making his chancellorship the shortest before the war. After his resignation, the former general wrote to a friend:
In regard to the “Junker agrarians” I see only evil, and it appears to me that a revolution by the agrarians is not impossible and for the moment more dangerous than a Social Democratic revolution.
Succeeding chancellors learned from Caprivi’s fall that opposition to the landed elite was fraught with peril. Bernhard, Fürst (prince) von Bülow, chancellor from 1900 to 1909, abandoned Caprivi’s trade policy and resurrected the alliance of the agrarian and industrial elites.
As Germany entered the 20th century, its economy was the most dynamic in Europe, but its authoritarian political system was marked by paralysis. With each election, the increasingly urban electorate returned Social Democrats in growing numbers. By 1890 the Social Democrats (who had adopted a Marxist program of revolution at their Erfurt congress in 1891) received more votes than any other party, although four other parties won more seats. By 1912 they had more voters supporting them than the next two largest parties combined. Both the Centre and Social Democrats were able to create parties with a mass base in German society. The Conservatives, National Liberals, and Progressives were more traditional parties, led by notables who were ill at ease in the world of populist politics. All three declined relatively, especially the Conservatives, who, despite flirting with anti-Semitism after 1893 by becoming a Christian party, fell to less than 15 percent of the vote by 1912. Many contemporary observers thought that a major crisis was impending between the recalcitrant elites and the increasing number of Germans who desired political emancipation similar to that of Britain and France.
While the Liberals and Conservatives declined in the Reichstag, new single-issue extraparliamentary interest groups gained adherents. For the most part organizations such as the Pan-German League, the Navy League, the Farmers League, and the Colonial League were authoritarian in their politics and aggressively expansionist in foreign policy. Their constituencies were overwhelmingly middle-class and educated (except for the Farmers League), and they sought to influence the decision-making process both directly, by impressing the ministers with their strength, and indirectly, by supporting parties that adhered to their goals. Given the wealth and high status of their membership (professors were highly visible as leaders), they were unusually effective in publicizing their goals. One of the striking characteristics of the empire was the support it received from the educated strata of the population, despite (or perhaps because of) its elitist constitution.
In the last election during the empire (1912), the Social Democrats scored a great victory, capturing 34.8 percent of the vote and 110 seats. On the local level they had begun to cooperate with the Progressives and occasionally with the Centre Party. Southern states such as Württemberg were moving toward full parliamentary government, and Alsace-Lorraine was given a surprising degree of self-government. Thus, there were some indications that the empire was evolving into a representative democracy. On the other hand, the states of Saxony and Hamburg adopted even more restrictive franchises than Prussia in the years before World War I. Above all, Prussia and its Junker, military, and bureaucratic elites, supported by much of the professoriat, stood firm in opposition to any substantial democratization of the Prussian electoral system, which was a key to political reform in the Reich. It is not at all clear, therefore, how German politics might have evolved if war had not come in 1914. Some historians have viewed the outbreak of war in that year as an attempt by these elites to shore up their sagging position with a successful war and annexations, as Bismarck had done in the 1860s when the authoritarian Prussian state was besieged by a liberal opposition. The economy, 1890–1914
The speed of Germany’s advance to industrial maturity after 1890 was breathtaking. The years from 1895 to 1907 witnessed a doubling of the number of workers engaged in machine building, from slightly more than one-half million to well over a million. An immediate consequence of expanding industrial employment was a sharp drop in emigration; from an average of 130,000 people per year in the 1880s, the outflow dropped to 20,000 per year in the mid-1890s. The surplus population continued to leave Prussia’s eastern provinces, but the destination was the growing and multiplying factories of Berlin and the Ruhr rather than the Americas. Earlier British fears of German competition were now fully justified. While Britain produced about twice as much steel as Germany during the early 1870s, Germany’s steel production exceeded Britain’s in 1893, and by 1914 Germany was producing more than twice as much steel as Britain. Moreover, only one-third of German exports in 1873 were finished goods; the portion rose to 63 percent by 1913. Germany came to dominate all the major Continental markets except France.
The focus of national wealth as well as population shifted to the urban industrial sector by 1900. Only 40 percent of Germans lived in rural areas by 1910, a drop from 67 percent at the birth of the empire. Cities of more than 100,000 inhabitants accounted for one-fifth of the population in 1914, compared to one-twentieth at the time of unification. The application of intensive agricultural techniques led to a doubling in the value of all farm products despite a sharp decline in the rural population. Industry accounted for 60 percent of the gross national product in 1913.
The German working class grew rapidly in the late 19th and the early 20th century. Total union membership reached 3.7 million in 1912, of which 2.5 million were affiliated with the socialist unions. Bismarck’s social welfare legislation covered some 13.2 million workers by 1911. Although German employers were extremely authoritarian and hostile to collective bargaining, the labour force did make significant economic gains. Between 1867 and 1913 the average number of hours worked per year declined by 14 percent. Nearly every study of real income shows a rapid rise until 1902 and then a modest increase yearly thereafter. National income per capita rose from 352 marks to 728 during the life of the empire. Despite these advances, industrial workers lacked full political rights, which led a large number of them, including many Roman Catholic workers, to vote for the revolutionary socialist party.