The real virtue is winning
Philip Mansel
PRUSSIA: THE PERVERSION OF AN IDEA by Giles MacDonogh Sinclair-Stevenson, £20, pp.
he impending return of the German capital to Berlin is a tribute to the power of Prussia. Berlin first became capital of Germany in 1871 because it was the capital of Prussia. Prussia: The Perversion of an Idea is an attempt to rescue Prussia from the reputation for 'militarism and reaction' which led to the Allies' abolition of the last Prussian institutions in 1947. Giles MacDonogh is driven by a passion for Prussia; he is lively, well read and read- able (despite colloquialisms such as Baron von Stein 'levelling at' the army, or the Prussian war machine moving 'back on the rails'). However, the subtitle of his book could be the idealisation of a perversity, not the perversion of an idea.
Prussia, which concentrates on the peri- od after 1870, is divided into chapters on the Kaiser, the army, the Junkers and the court, education, the civil service, homo- sexuality, 'subject peoples' and, finally, 'the Prussian soul under National Socialism'. Perhaps for reasons of space, literature, the arts (even the masterpieces of the great 19th-century architect Schinkel) and Bismarck's social legislation are barely discussed. Nor is the responsibility of the Kaiser and some of his generals for the first world war, about which so much new evidence has recently emerged.
Giles MacDonogh has travelled widely through the physical and historical land- scape of Prussia. He has achieved the miracle, for a writer of Catholic-Irish origin, of thinking himself into the mental universe of a pre-war Prussian Junker. He seethes about the Polish corridor, claims that Prussia was once 'the envy of Europe', talks of `Germanity' and calls Junkers who joined the SS 'buccaneering' — which is unfair to buccaneers.
This book provides a very Prussian view of Prussia. There is little about other Ger- man states experience under Prussia: although MacDonogh admits that in Frankfurt, after its conquest by Prussia in 1866, the Prussians were 'tactless'. He claims that Prussia and Poland were in- compatible, when they had lived as peace- ful neighbours for 100 years before Frederick initiated the partition of Poland in 1772: it was Prussia's expansion, not its existence, which was incompatible with Poland. MacDonogh does not discuss the reputation for physical brutality won by the Prussian army: in 1815, an observer of its invasion of France said that Prussian sol- diers killed infants like ducks.
MacDonogh's strength is his massive reading and liberal use of quotation. There is much new material on the Hohen- zollerns' attempts to use the Nazis, and on the tension between Prussia and other Ger- man states which re-emerged after 1918. However, MacDonogh is intoxicated by the words of such Prussian heroes as generals von Moltke, von Schlieffen, von Seeckt. They defined Prussia, or 'inward Prussian- ness', as 'a feeling for life,' or 'the perfect example of spiritual and intellectual thinking'. There is much praise, usually by Prussians themselves, of 'the Prussian virtues', 'Prussian simplicity', 'Prussian tolerance'. 'The concept of freedom can never be removed from true Prussianism,' claimed Henning von Tresckow. 'Voluntary participation is at the heart of the Prussian concept of the state,' wrote von Seeckt. In reality, what did these fine phrases mean? Conscription, conquest and a rigged electoral system were closer to the heart of the Prussian state than 'the concept of free- dom' or 'voluntary participation'. Much of the Prussian nobility was relatively poor; but poverty and simplicity are not the same. There was nothing simple about Prussian obsession with noble birth which, by a clause of the Prussian civil code, made mesalliances illegal. Prussian emancipation of the serfs, Norman Stone has written, was 'just a device for transferring land to the large estates and squeezing the small peasants off the land'. There was nothing simple about the Prussian cult of the army. It was a Prussian cavalry general who wrote: `War is the father of all things.'
Giles MacDonogh praises 'the humble traditions associated with the crown of Prussia'. In reality, however much they called themselves 'servants of the state', Kings of Prussia were no humbler than other monarchs. The King of Prussia had more palaces in and around Berlin than the Habsburg Emperor in and around Vienna. As for other forms of humility, the Mar- 'She should return to the community.' gravine of Bayreuth, sister of Frederick II, wrote that their father, King Frederick William I, was considered in Berlin the most powerful monarch in the world, capable of exterminating (her word) other German princes as he wished. The King's first regiment of foot guards called itself the first regiment of Christendom. This dynastic and military pride underlies Prus- sian history.
Most 'Prussian virtues' were illusions. The cult of duty was a mask for the realisa- tion of ambitions. Hindenburg accepted the office of President of the Weimar Republic because he believed in 'carrying out a duty no matter how personally dis- agreeable it may be'. Reactionary civil ser- vants continued after 1918, wrote Otto Braun, out of 'a good Prussian sense of duty and not a little out of concern for the social lives they led'. Prussia was not a truly tolerant country. Anti-Semitism excluded Jews from the officer corps, except in war time. In 1911 there were 1,990 Jewish officers and reserve officers in the Austro- Hungarian army: none in the Prussian (nor did Jews or Catholics rise high in the civil service). Giles MacDonogh is too honest not to show that after 1883 Prussia practised systematic expulsion and expropriation of Poles: Bismarck feared 'the cancer-like spread of polonisation'.
There had been moments of sanity, par- ticularly before the rise of Bismarck. Defending his relatively mild policy towards Poles, King Frederick William IV (1840-61) said;
The French government has only succeeded in making good Frenchmen out of the Alsatians by permitting them to remain German.
The Prussian police were more tolerant of homosexuality than most others — perhaps because, given the tales Giles MacDonogh recounts in his sixth chapter, it had no alternative.
Nevertheless, in 1866 Prussia was so unpopular that almost all Germany united against it. The real Prussian virtue was win- ning battles, such as its great victory that year, over Austria and its allies, at Konnig- gratz. Attitudes to Prussia changed overnight. Power and effectiveness, as many Prussian liberals admitted, were the Prussian ideals. MacDonogh shows that few Nazi leaders, except Goering, were Prussian. However, it is Prussia's tragedy, and Europe's, that Prussian officers were more effective in the service of, than in resistance to, the Nazi state. As early as 4 October 1939 a member of a famous Prussian family, Ludolf von Alvensleben, reported that his 'liquidation squad' in West Prussia had taken 'the sharpest measures' against 4,247 'former Polish citizens'.
Prussia is a fascinating but melancholy tale. It helps us understand why a large proportion of Germans when consulted by pollsters preferred Bonn, rather than Berlin, to be their capital.
Previous page
