Kaiser Wilhelm and the difficulties of ruling Germany

In 1890 Germany was barely twenty years old as a unified country — and already the strain was showing. On the surface it looked like a modern industrial power with a written constitution and an elected parliament. Underneath, real power sat with one man: Kaiser Wilhelm II. Understanding how power was shared (or, more accurately, how it was not) is the foundation for everything that follows in this period.

The Empire Wilhelm Inherited

Germany only became a single country in 1871, when Otto von Bismarck stitched together twenty-five states under the leadership of Prussia. The constitution he wrote handed enormous power to the Kaiser. The Kaiser commanded the army, controlled foreign policy, appointed the Chancellor, and could dissolve the elected parliament whenever it became inconvenient. Bismarck had used this system skilfully for nineteen years, balancing the competing interests of socialists, Catholics, industrialists and aristocrats.

In 1890, the new Kaiser dismissed Bismarck. Wilhelm II was thirty-one, ambitious and determined to be his own Chancellor. The men who replaced Bismarck — Caprivi, Hohenlohe, then Bernhard von Bülow from 1900 — were weaker, more pliable figures. Power drifted upwards to the throne, and important decisions were increasingly taken by the Kaiser and a small circle of advisers rather than negotiated through parliament.

The Reichstag, the Bundesrat and the Limits of Democracy

Germany did have an elected lower house, the Reichstag, chosen by all men over 25. By European standards in 1890 this was a wide franchise. The catch was that the Reichstag had no power over the executive. It could approve or refuse the budget and pass laws, but it could not choose the Chancellor or remove him. That decision belonged to the Kaiser alone.

Above the Reichstag sat the Bundesrat, an upper house made up of representatives sent by the twenty-five states. Prussia, the largest state by population and territory, held seventeen of its fifty-eight seats — enough to veto any change to the constitution. In effect, Germany was a federation in which Prussia could always say no.

Prussian Dominance and the Junkers

Prussia was not just the largest state — it was the most conservative. Its parliament was elected by a three-class voting system that gave the wealthiest men votes worth seventeen times those of the poorest. This kept Prussian politics dominated by the Junkers, the aristocratic landowners east of the river Elbe. The Junkers ran the army, the senior civil service and most of the diplomatic corps. The Kaiser himself was the King of Prussia. So when southern, more liberal states such as Bavaria or Baden tried to push reform, Prussian votes in the Bundesrat usually blocked them.

Wilhelm II spoke openly of his belief in the divine right of kings. He wore military uniform almost every day and surrounded himself with generals. This atmosphere of Prussian militarism set the tone of the whole government. To advance in the imperial civil service or court life, an officer's commission was almost essential.

An Industrial Giant Outgrowing Its Politics

While the political structure stayed locked in 1871, the economy was transforming. By 1900 Germany produced more steel than Britain. Coal output doubled between 1890 and 1914. Cities such as Berlin, Hamburg and Essen grew rapidly as peasants moved off the land into factories. The population rose from 49 million in 1890 to 68 million by 1914.

Industrial growth produced two new political forces the old constitution struggled to absorb. First, the urban working class, which voted in huge numbers for the Social Democratic Party (SPD). Second, a confident middle class of engineers, lawyers and businessmen who wanted a real say in government. By 1912 the SPD was the largest single party in the Reichstag — yet not one of its members ever sat in Wilhelm II's cabinet.