William of Germany Part 2
Common to all university a.s.sociations in Germany--whether Corps, Landsmannschaft, Burschenschaft, or Turnerschaft--is the practice of the _Mensur_, or student duel. It is not a duel in the sense usually given to the word in England, for it lacks the feature of personal hostility, hate, or injury, but is a particularly sanguinary form of the English "single-stick," in which swords take the place of sticks.
These swords (_Schlager_), called, curiously enough, _rapiere_, are long and thin in the blade, and their weight is such that at every duel students are told off on whose shoulders the combatants can rest their outstretched sword-arm in the pauses of the combat caused by the duellists getting out of breath; consequently, an undersized student is usually chosen for this considerate office. The heads and faces of the duellists are swathed in bandages--no small incentive to perspiration, the vital parts of their bodies are well protected against a fatal p.r.i.c.k or blow, and the p.r.i.c.ks or slashes must be delivered with the hand and wrist raised head-high above the shoulder.
It is considered disgraceful to move the head, to shrink in the smallest degree before the adversary, or even to show feeling when the medical student who acts as surgeon in an adjoining room staunches the flow of blood or sews up the scars caused by the swords. The duel of a more serious kind--that with pistols or the French rapier, or with the bare-pointed sabre and unprotected bodies--is punishable by law, and is growing rarer each year.
Take a sabre duel--"heavy sabre duel" is the German name for it--arising out of a quarrel in a cafe or beer-house, and in which one of the opponents may be a foreigner affiliated to some Corps or Burschenschaft. Cards are exchanged, and the challenger chooses a second whom he sends to the opponent. The latter, if he accepts the challenge, also appoints a second; the seconds then meet and arrange for the holding of a court of honour. The court will probably consist of old Corps students--lawyer, a doctor, and two or three other members of the Corps or Burschenschaft. The court summons the opponents before it and hears their account of the quarrel; the seconds produce evidence, for example the bills at the cafe or beer-hall, showing how much liquor has been consumed; also as to age, marriage or otherwise, and so on. Then the court decides whether there shall be a duel, or not, and if so, in what form it shall be fought.
The duel may be fixed to take place at any time within six months, and meanwhile the opponents industriously practise. The scene of the duel is usually the back room of some beer-hall, with locked doors between the duellists and the police. The latter know very well what is going on, but shut their eyes to it. The opponents take their places at about a yard and a half distance from advanced foot to advanced foot, and a chalk line is drawn between them. Close behind each opponent is his second with outstretched sword, ready to knock up the duellists'
weapons in case of too dangerous an impetuosity in the onset. The umpire _(Unparteiischer)_, unarmed, stands a little distance from the duellists. The latter are naked _to_ the waist, but wear a leather ap.r.o.n like that of a drayman, covering the lower half of the chest, and another piece of leather, like a stock, protecting their necks and jugular veins. The duel may last a couple of hours, and any number of rounds up to as many as two hundred may be fought. The rounds consist of three or four blows, and last about twenty seconds each, when the seconds, who have been watching behind their men in the att.i.tude of a wicket-keeper, with their sword-points on the ground, jump in and knock up the duellists' weapons. When one duellist is disabled by skin wounds--there are rarely any others--or by want of breath, palpitation or the like, the duel is over, and the duellists shake hands. This description, with some slight modifications, applies to the ordinary Corps _Mensuren_, which are simply a b.l.o.o.d.y species of gymnastic exercise.
On one occasion early in the reign the Emperor spoke of the Corps system with great enthusiasm, and especially endorsed the practice of the _Mensur_. "I am quite convinced," he said at Bonn in 1891, three years after his accession,
"that every young man who enters a Corps receives through the spirit which rules in it, and supposing he imbibes the spirit, his true directive in life. For it is the best education for later life a young man can obtain. Whoever pokes fun at the German student Corps is ignorant of its true tendency, and I hope that so long as student Corps exist the spirit which is fostered in them, and which inspires strength and courage, will continue, and that for all time the student will joyfully wield the _Schlager_."
Regarding the _Mensur_, he went on:
"Our _Mensuren_ are frequently misunderstood by the public, but that must not let us be deceived. We who have been Corps students, as I myself was, know better. As in the Middle Ages through our gymnastic exercises (_Turniere_) the courage and strength of the man was steeled, so by means of the Corps spirit and Corps life is that measure of firmness acquired which is necessary in later life, and which will continue to exist as long as there are universities in Germany."
The word for firmness used by the Emperor was _Festigkeit_, which may also be translated determination, steadiness, fort.i.tude, or resoluteness of character. It may be that practice of the _Mensur_, which is held almost weekly, has a lifelong influence on the German student's character. It probably enables him to look the adversary in the eye--look "hard" at him, as the mariners in Mr. A.W. Jacobs's delightful tales look at one another when some particularly ingenious lie is being produced. In a way, moreover, it may be said to correspond to boxing in English universities, schools, and gymnasia.
But, on the whole, the Anglo-Saxon spectator finds it difficult to understand how it can exercise any influence for good on the moral character of a youth, or determine, as the Emperor says it does, a disposition which is cowardly or weak by nature to bravery or strength, save of a momentary and merely physical kind. The Englishman who has been present at a _Mensur_ is rather inclined to think the atmosphere too much that of a shambles, and the chief result of the practice the cultivation of braggadocio.
Besides, the practice is illegal, and though purposely overlooked, save in one German city, that of Leipzig, where it is punished with some rigour, the Emperor, who is supposed to embody the majesty and effectiveness of the law, is hardly the person to recommend it. His inconsistency in the matter on one occasion placed him in an undignified position. Two officers of the army quarrelled, and one, an infantry lieutenant, sent a challenge to the other, an army medical man. The latter refused on conscientious grounds, whereupon he was called on by a military court of honour to send in his resignation.
The case was sent up to the Emperor, who upheld the decision of the court of honour, adding the remark that if the surgeon had conscientious scruples on the point he should not remain in the army.
An irate Social Democratic editor thereupon pointed out that such a decision came with a bad grace from a man with whom, or with any of whose six sons, no one was allowed to fight. The Emperor is still a member of the Borussia Corps, but chiefly shows his interest by keeping its anniversaries in mind, by every few years attending one of its annual drinking festivals (_Commers_), and by paying a substantial yearly subscription.
The German student Corps, historically, go back to the fourteenth century, when the first European universities were established at Bologna, Paris, and Orleans. Universities then were not so called from the universality of their teachings, but rather as meaning a corporation, confraternity, or collegium, and were in reality social centres in the towns where they were inst.i.tuted. The most renowned was that of Paris, and here was founded the first student Corps. It was called the "German Nation of Paris," a corporation of students, with statutes, oaths, special costumes, and other distinctive features. At first, strange to say, it contained more Englishmen than Germans. The "Nation" had a procurator, a treasurer, and a bedell, the last to look after the legal affairs of the a.s.sociation. Drinking was not the supposed purpose of the society, but the Corps mostly a.s.sembled, as German Corps do to-day, for drinking purposes.
The earliest form of German student a.s.sociations Was the Landsmannschaft. To this society, composed of elders and juniors, new-comers, called Pennales, were admitted after painful ceremonies and became something like the "f.a.gs" at an English public school. The object of the original Landsmannschaft was to keep alive the spirit of nationality. The object of the German Corps is different. It is to beget and perpetuate friendship, and this accounts for the steady goodwill the Emperor has always shown towards the comrades of his Bonn and Borussia days.
An ancient form of Corps entertainment is called the Hospiz, now, however, much modified. Upon invitation the members of the Corps meet in a beer-hall or in the rooms of one of the Corps. The president is seated with a house-key on the table before him as a symbol of unfettered authority. As members arrive, the president takes away their sticks and swords and deposits them in a closet. The guests sit down and are handed filled pipes and a lighted _fidibus_, or pipe-lighter. Bread and b.u.t.ter and cheese, followed by coffee, are offered. After this, the real work of the evening begins--the drinking. A large can of beer stands on a stool beside the president.
The latter calls for silence by rapping three times on the table with the house-key, and the Hospiz is declared open. Thenceforward only the president pours out the beer, unless he appoints a deputy during his absence. The president's great aim and honour is to make every one, including himself, intoxicated. He begins by rapping the table with his gla.s.s and saying "Significat ein Glas." In response all drain their gla.s.ses. Then comes a "health to all," and this is followed by a "health to each." "The Ladies" follow, including toasts to the pretty girls of the town, and ladies known to be favourites of those present.
Married ladies or women of bad reputation must not be toasted in the Hospiz.
A story is told of a toast the Emperor, in these his Lohengrin days, once proposed at a Borussia meeting. "On the Kreuzberg" (a hill near Bonn), he said,
"I saw a picture, the ideal of a German woman. She united in herself beauty of face and an imposing form, the roses in her cheeks spoke of the modesty peculiar to our maids, and her voice sounded harmoniously like the lute of the Minnesingers on the Wartburg. She told me her name--may it be blessed."
The toast found its way into the local papers and gave birth to a romantic legend connecting the future Emperor with a pretty and modest girl of the town, but no true basis for it has ever been discovered.
In toasting the Ladies in a Hospiz each of those present may name the lady of his choice, and if two name the same lady they have a drinking bout to determine which is ent.i.tled to claim her. The one who first admits that he can drink no more--usually signified by a hasty and zigzag retreat from the room--is declared the loser. If a guest comes late to the Hospiz he must drink fast so as to catch up with earlier arrivals, unless he has been drinking elsewhere, when he is let off with drinking a "general health."
The close of the Emperor's student days was marked by an event which was to have a great influence on his life and happiness. It was in 1879 that he made the acquaintance of the young lady who was, a couple of years later, to become his wife, and subsequently Empress. When at Bonn Prince William had developed a liking for wild-game shooting, and accepted an invitation from Duke Frederick of Schleswig-Holstein to shoot pheasants at Primkenau Castle, the Duke's seat in Silesia. More than one romantic story is current about the first meeting of the lovers, but that most generally credited, as it was published at or near the time, represents the young sportsman as meeting the lady accidentally in the garden of the castle. He had arrived at night and gone shooting early next morning before being introduced to the family of his host, and on his return surprised the fair-haired and blue-eyed Princess Auguste Victoria as she lay dozing in a hammock in the garden. The student approached, the words "little Rosebud" on his lips, but hastily withdrew as the Princess, all blushes, awoke. The pair met shortly afterwards at breakfast, when the visitor learned who the "little rosebud" was whom he had surprised. The Princess was then twenty-two, but looked much younger, a privilege from nature she still possesses in middle age. The impression made on the student was deep and lasting, and the engagement was announced on Valentine's Day, in February, 1880. The marriage was celebrated on February 27th of the following year at the royal palace in Berlin. Great popular rejoicing marked the happy occasion, Berlin was gaily flagged to celebrate the formal entrance of the bride into the capital, and most other German cities illuminated in her honour. The imperial bridegroom came from Potsdam at the head of a military escort selected from his regiment and preceded the bridal cortege, in which the ancient coronation carriage, with its smiling occupant, and drawn by eight prancing steeds, was the princ.i.p.al feature. On the day following the marriage the young couple went to Primkenau for the honeymoon.
The marriage with a princess of Schleswig-Holstein was not only an event of general interest from the domestic and dynastic point of view. It had also political significance, for it meant the happy close of the troubled period of Prussian dealings with those conquered territories.
A story throwing light on the young bride's character is current in connexion with her wedding. One of the hymns contained a strophe--"Should misfortune come upon us," which her friends wanted her to have omitted as striking too melancholy a note. "No," she said,
"let it be sung. I don't expect my new position to be always a bed of roses. Prince William is of the same mind, and we have both determined to bear everything in common, and thus make what is unpleasant more endurable."
Since the marriage their domestic felicity, as all the world is aware, has never been troubled, and the example thus given to their subjects is one of the surest foundations of their influence and authority in Germany. The secret of this felicity, affection apart, is to be sought for in the strong moral sense of the Emperor regarding what he owes to himself and his people, but no less perhaps in the exemplary character of the Empress. As a girl at Primkenau she was a sort of Lady Bountiful to the aged and sick on the estate, and led there the simple life of the German country maiden of the time. It was not the day of electric light and central heating and the telephone; hardly of lawn tennis, certainly not of golf and hockey; while motor-cars and militant suffragettes were alike unknown. Instead of these delights the Princess, as she then was, was content with the humdrum life of a German country mansion, with rare excursions into the great world beyond the park gates, with her religious observances, her books, her needlework, her plants and flowers, and her share in the management of the castle.
These domestic tastes she has preserved, and the saying, quoted in Germany whenever she is the subject of conversation, that her character and tastes are summed up in the four words _Kaiser, Kinder, Kirche_, and _Kuche_--Emperor, children, church, and kitchen--is as true as it is compendious and alliterative. It is often a.s.sumed, especially by men, that a woman who cultivates these tastes cultivates no other. This is not as true as is often supposed of the Empress, as a journal of her voyage to Jerusalem in 1898, published on her return to Germany, goes to show. Following the traditions and example of the queens and empresses who have preceded her, she has always given liberally of her time and care, as she still does, to the most multifarious forms of charity. She has a great and intelligible pride in her clever and energetic husband, while her interest in her children is proverbial. She appears to have no ambition to exercise any influence on politics or to shine as a leader of society. Like the Emperor, she is not without a sense of humour, and is always amused by the racy Irish stories (in dialect) told her and a little circle of guests by Dr. Mahaffy, of Trinity College, Dublin, who is a welcome guest at the palace.
The offspring of the marriage, it may be here noted, is a family of seven children--six sons and a daughter--as follows:--
Crown Prince Frederick William, born 1882 Prince Eitel Frederick " 1883 Prince Adalbert " 1884 Prince August William " 1887 Prince Oscar " 1888 Prince Joachim " 1890 Princess Victoria Louise " 1892
The Crown Prince was born on June 6th at the Marble Palace in Potsdam.
He was educated at first privately by tutors, and later at the military academy at Plon, not far from Kiel. When eighteen he became of age and began his active career as an officer in the army. He is now commander of the First Regiment of Boay Guards ("Death's Head"
Hussars) at Langfuhr, near Danzig, with the rank of major. He was married in June, 1905, to Cecilie, d.u.c.h.ess of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, and is the father of four children, all boys. The Crown Princess is one of the cleverest, most popular, and most charming characters in Germany, of the brightest intelligence and the most unaffected manners. The leading trait in the Crown Prince's character is his love of sport, from big-game shooting (on which he has written a book) to lawn tennis. In May last he began to learn golf. He is personally amiable, has pleasant manners, and is highly popular with all cla.s.ses of his future subjects. He is credited with ability, but is not believed to have inherited the intellectual manysidedness of his father. The only part he can be said to have taken in public life as yet is having called the imperial attention to the Maximilian Harden allegations regarding Count Eulenburg and a court "camarilla,"
referred to later, and having, while sitting in a gallery of the Reichstag, demonstrated by decidedly marked gestures his disagreement with the Government's Morocco policy.
Since his marriage the Emperor has more than once publicly congratulated himself on his good fortune in having such a consort as the Empress. The most graceful compliment he paid her was in her own Province of Silesia in 1890, when he said:
"The band which unites me with the Province--that of all the provinces of the Empire which is nearest to my heart--is the jewel which sparkles at my side, Her Majesty the Empress. A native of this country, a model of all the virtues of a German princess, it is her I have to thank that I am in a position joyfully to perform the onerous duties of my office."
Only the other day at Altona, after thirty years of married life, he referred to her, again in her home Province and again as she sat smiling beside him, as the
"first lady of the land, who is always ready to help the needy, to strengthen family ties, to discharge the duties of her s.e.x, and suggest to it new aims. The Empress has bestowed a home life on the House of Hohenzollern such as Queen Louise, alone perhaps, conferred."
Queen Louise, the famous wife of Frederick William III, died in 1810 and is buried in the mausoleum at Charlottenburg, the suburb of Berlin. She has remained ever since, for the German nation, the type of womanly perfection.
III.
PRE-ACCESSION DAYS
1881-1887
The seven years between the date of his marriage and that of his accession were chiefly filled in by the future Emperor with the conscientious discharge of his regimental duties and the preparation of himself, by three or four hours' study daily at the various Ministries, among them the Foreign Office, where he sat at the feet of Bismarck, for the imperial tasks he would presumably have to undertake later.
Emperor William I, now a man of eighty-four, was still on the throne.
Born in 1797, he lived with his parents, Frederick William III and Queen Louise, in Koenigsberg and Memel for three years after the battle of Jena, won the Iron Cross at the age of seventeen in the war with Napoleon in 1814, took part in the entry of the Allies into Paris, and devoted himself thenceforward, until he became King of Prussia in 1861, chiefly to the reorganization of the army. For a year during the troubled times of 1848 he was forced to take refuge in England, from whence he returned to live quietly at Coblenz until called to the Regency of Prussia in 1858. He was the Grand Master of Prussian Freemasonry. The attempts on his life in Berlin in 1878 by the anarchists Hodel and n.o.biling are still spoken of by eye-witnesses to them. Both attempts were made within a period of three weeks while the King was driving down Unter den Linden, and on both occasions revolver shots were fired at him. Hodel's attempt failed, but in view of Socialist agitation, the would-be a.s.sa.s.sin was beheaded (the practice still in Prussia) a few weeks later. Pellets from n.o.biling's weapon struck the King in the face and arm, and disabled him from work for several weeks. The political events of the reign, including the Seven Weeks' War with Austria in 1866, which ended at Sadowa, where King William was in chief command, and that with France in 1870, when he was present as Commander-in-Chief at Gravelotte and Sedan, are frequently referred to by Bismarck in his "Gedanke und Erinnerungen,"
and to these the reader may be referred.
The high and amiable character of the old Emperor, as he became after 1870, is common knowledge. He was a thoroughgoing Hohenzollern in his views of monarchy and his relations to his folk, but he was at the same time the type of German chivalry, the essence of good nature, the soul of honour, and the slave of duty. He was extremely fond of his grandson, Prince William, and it is clear from the latter's speeches subsequently that the affection was ardently reciprocated.
Of Emperor William, Bismarck writes in the highest terms, describing his "kingly courtesy," his freedom from vanity, his impartiality towards friend and foe alike; in a word, he says, Emperor William was the idea "gentleman" incorporated. On the other hand, Bismarck tells how the old Emperor all his life long stood in awe of his consort, the Empress Augusta, Bismarck's great enemy and the clearing-house (_Krystallisations.p.u.n.kt_), as he describes her, of all the opposition against him; and how the Emperor used to speak of her as "the hot-head" ("_Feuerkopf_")--"a capital name for her," Bismarck adds, "as she could not bear her authority as Queen to be overborne by that of anyone else." The Iron Chancellor, by the way, mentions a curious fact in connexion with the attempt on Emperor William's life by n.o.biling. The Chancellor says he had noticed that in the seventies the Emperor's powers had begun to fail, and that he often lost the thread of a conversation, both in hearing and speaking. After the n.o.biling attempt this disability, strangely enough, completely disappeared. The fact was noticed by the Emperor himself, for one day he said jestingly to Bismarck: "n.o.biling knew better than the doctors what I really needed--a good blood-letting."
Referring to the Empress Frederick at this period, Bismarck writes:
"With her I could not reckon on the same good-will as I could with her husband (Emperor Frederick). Her natural and inborn sympathy for her native country showed itself from the very beginning in the endeavour to shift the weight of Prussian-German influence on the European grouping of the Powers into the scale of England, which she never ceased to regard as her Fatherland; and, in consciousness of the opposition of interests between the two great Asiatic Powers, England and Russia, to see Germany's power, in case of a breach, used for the benefit of England."
An incident may be mentioned here which took place at what was to turn out to be the Emperor William's death-bed and refers particularly to our young Prince William. Bismarck was talking to the sick Emperor a few days before the latter's death. The Chancellor spoke about the necessity of publishing an Order, already drawn up in November of the preceding year, appointing Prince William regent in case the necessity for such a measure should occur. The sick Emperor expressed the hope that Bismarck would stand by his successor. Bismarck promised to do so and the Emperor pressed his hand in token of satisfaction. Then, suddenly, Bismarck relates, the Emperor became delirious and began to rave. Prince William was the central figure in his ravings. He evidently thought his grandson was at his bedside and exclaimed, using the familiar _Du_; "_Du_ you must always keep on good terms with the Czar (Alexander III) ... there is no need to quarrel in that quarter."