The Moral Prerogatives of the State in German History

Upon the creation of a unified Germany in 1871, an intense debate began that would continue to this very day. What would the exact nature of the state be in the new Germany? What role would it play in the world stage, but more so in the lives of its citizens? Within the course of the past two centuries, two persistent themes have been presented in German history: that of the necessity for a strong state to govern Germany, and the need for such a state to care for the welfare of its citizens.

The intellectual origins of this debate go back a century or so before actual German unification. During the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, a new paradigm emerged as to how governments should proceed to enact policies. The philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804) was a prominent advocate for the Enlightenment, arguing that only rational consideration should determine policies of the state, “’Have courage to use your own reason!’  That is the motto of enlightenment.”[1]

Among the contemporary rulers Kant held out for respect was Frederick the Great of Prussia (r. 1740 – 1786), who openly declared his adherence to the principles of the Enlightenment. Among the main principles that Frederick the Great promoted was the notion that the state would be the major instrument for implanting Enlightenment principles onto the wider society, and in this capacity as the monarch he was “merely the principal servant of the State.” As such, his duties as monarch must include the ability to “improve the morals of the people, be the guardian of the law, and improve their education should not pervert them by his bad example.”[2]

A generation later, the German Idealist philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), would further develop the Enlightenment ideal by arguing that the state itself was the enactment of ethics and rationality as a whole.[3] Throughout the rest of the nineteenth-century,  these intellectual debates would still rage but would also coincide with attempts in actual political practice.

The failure of the Revolutions of 1848 to bring about the unification of Germany through democratic means gave rise to a more power-centric paradigm. Chancellor Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898) was the most famous proponent of this approach, proclaiming: “[I]t is not by speeches and majority resolutions that the great questions of the time are decided – that was the big mistake of 1848 and 1849 – but by iron and blood.”[4] Through a series of wars with Austria (1866) and France (1870-71), the goal of a unified Germany was finally achieved under Bismarck’s leadership.

Bismarck envisioned a strong state to govern the newly unified Germany, and to help protect it from its enemies both foreign and domestic as the moral imperative for his chancellorship. In terms of the perceived domestic threats, chief among them were Catholics and Socialists. The conflict with the Catholic Church was the result of a mix of religious and political issues. Long-term tensions between Catholics and the Protestant majority of Germany stemmed from the time of the Reformation. Although governed by traditional Protestant prejudices, Bismarck was able to find allies among Liberals who were governed by the ideals of the Enlightenment to abandon religious superstitions and supported the greater secularization of German society.[5] The political aspect came with the significant rise of the Catholic Centre Party, which proved to be a serious threat to Bismarck’s vision for Germany. To deal with the perceived Catholic threat, Bismarck sought a tough series of policies known as the Kulturkampf meant to severely restrict their role in German society.

The Socialists were the other major threat to Bismarck’s policies. Representing the interests of the working class, Bismarck was concerned about them leading unrest in the midst of Germany’s rapid industrialization in the late nineteenth-century. Bismarck took a two-prong approach. The first actions, consistent with his “Blood and Iron” approach to politics was to use the state to repress the socialists by banning their parties via the Anti-Socialist Laws and arresting their leaders.[6]

However, in spite of Bismarck’s authoritarian approach, he did also insist upon the critical role of the state to partake in the social welfare of its people. Bismarck openly invoked the legacy of Frederick the Great’s concept of the state’s duty to help the people as inspiration.[7] To this end the first modern social welfare system for workers was established in Germany in the 1880s. This was intended to help take away the support for the socialists (later social democrats) among the working class. There was another rationale for Bismarck, which while in accordance with the reasoning of Frederick the Great but at the same time differed in one significant manner. Whilst Frederick the Great’s concern for the state helping its citizens was based on Enlightenment principles, Bismarck instead invoked Christian piety (more specifically Protestantism) as the basis of the true German state:

“The whole problem is rooted in the question: does the state have the responsibility to care for its helpless fellow citizens, or does it not?  I maintain that it does have this duty, and to be sure, not simply the Christian state, as I once permitted myself to allude to with the words “practical Christianity,” but rather every state by its nature.”[8]

This pillar of moral Christian piety being a major foundation of the German state would remain the hallmark of the Kaiserreich right up through the First World War (1914-1918). Early in his reign, Kaiser Wilhelm II (r. 1888- 1918) sought to further expand the social welfare structures of the Kaiserreich. Kaiser Wilhelm was also seeking to build up Germany’s position on the world stage through military means, and he often justified this as a major moral prerogative of the state as well.

At the outbreak of the First World War, Kaiser Wilhelm II would invoke these pillars of the Kaiserreich in a public speech to the German public:

“A momentous hour has struck for Germany… War will demand enormous sacrifices by the German people, but we shall show the enemy what it means to attack Germany. And so I commend you to God. Go forth into the churches, kneel down before God, and implore his help for our brave army.”[9]

It was not just conservatives and reactionaries who insisted on this element of military might being a foundation of the modern German state. Even Max Weber (1864 – 1920), himself a staunch liberal and later helped found the Weimar Republic, famously defined the state as the institution that “lays claim to the monopoly use of legitimate physical violence within a particular territory….”[10]

With the German defeat in the war, and the collapse of the Kaiserreich as well, the debate began to determine how would Germany properly forge a fledgling liberal democracy. Only the limited existence of such a system under the previous regime provided the foundation. Unfortunately, this experiment proved short lived due to the crisis brought about by the Great Depression.

With the rise of the National Socialist regime in 1933, a whole different twist to the conceptions of the German state would be implemented. The National Socialists were staunch German nationalists, but their concept of the German Volk rested more upon racial characteristics as opposed to the more traditional identification through language (as advocated by Fichte in his “Addresses to the German Nation”[11]). Race was of such utmost importance, Adolf Hitler insisted it was the only true foundation for any state (German or otherwise):

“The basic realization is that the state represents not an end but a means. It is indeed the presumption for the formation of a higher human culture, but not its cause. On the contrary, the latter lies exclusively in the existence of a race capable of culture.”[12]

Building upon this racial foundation was the Nazi concept of the Volksgemeinschaft, which was to be based around “’racially pure’, ‘hereditary healthy’, physically fit, politically reliable and socially responsible Volksgenossen.”[13] This mixture of race, along with physical health, and nationalism was a bit of an innovation for the Nazis. Nationalism and military strength were emphasized in the Kaiserreich, but Bismarck and later Kaiser Wilhelm still maintained the importance of “Christian ethics” to help govern German society. By contrast the Nazis, despite some attempts to mix with Christianity, for the most part sought out the racial purity of the Germans as the highest value.

Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, gave voice to the full implications of the racial basis for morality when he declared:

“Whether the other nations live in prosperity or croak from hunger interests me only insofar as we need them as slaves for our culture; otherwise, it does not interest me.  Whether 10,000 Russian females drop from exhaustion while building an anti-tank ditch interests me only insofar as the anti-tank ditch gets finished for Germany’s sake… it is a crime against our own blood to worry about them and to give them ideals that will make it still harder for our sons and grandsons to cope with them.”[14]

This is quite literally the “might is right” mentality taken to its logical conclusion. Although there are some precedents with Social Darwinist thinking in the early twentieth century[15], the Nazi’s emphasis on genocide as a means of national policy was quite unprecedented in German history.

With the defeat of the Nazi regime in 1945, the challenging task was how best to rebuild Germany both politically and morally. The destruction caused by the conflict meant that Germany had to find another path to follow towards creating a healthy democratic system (at least in the West). The emerging tension of the Cold War between the West and the Soviet Union, with Germany literally at the center of the conflict, also provided other important imperatives for the new West German leadership.

Ludwig Erhard (1897-1977), formulated a new model for German society that would help it avoid the extremes of both the Nazi era but also that of the Communist systems in the Eastern bloc (most notably the East German DDR). This would be the “Social Market” model. It was to be built on the premise of balancing social responsibility with free-markets. Erhard openly admitted that this would not ensure a utopian system, but it was the most moral option available:

“It is asking too much of the Social Market Economy to expect it to break down the visible social manifestations of our present-day life and recreate them on an idealistic basis.  But it does have an obligation to live up to the precepts of a Christian social policy and to implement them in a better society.”[16]

There are distinct echoes of the rhetoric used by Bismarck in justifying his welfare policies of the late nineteenth-century, including especially the invoking of Christian social principles towards achieving that end. However, the critical contrast is between a social welfare system meant to serve the ends of an authoritarian monarchy versus one that serves the ends of a liberal democratic state.

Also, in the case of West Germany, it was important to prove the superiority of its system since it was in direct ideological competition with another German state that followed a different system. This kind of issue never affected Bismarck, even though Prussia was in a sense in competition with Austria over control of the German-speaking states. There was not an ideological component of trying to declare one system being better than the other, more of a matter of which monarchial power would prevail.

In the end, the West German system did prove more successful than its East German Communist counterpart. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and German Reunification was achieved a year later, a series of debates emerged on how best to strengthen the system that was in place. The greater integration of Germany into the international community, and more especially institutions like the European Union, was most commonly argued as the best path forward for Germany.[17]

Angela Merkel (b. 1954) has further stressed the importance of the Social Market model and its dependence on the state for its proper operation:

“The principles of the social market economy are very simple but also very clear.  Freedom is the central tenet, but the individual’s personal responsibility must be inextricably linked to it.  Economic competition is necessary, but only beneficial if it is coupled with social responsibility and if the same rules apply to everyone.  A strong and effective state is needed to act as the caretaker of this economic and social order.”[18]

The echoes of the arguments of Bismarck are unmistakable, even when considering the great contrast between Bismarck’s authoritarian system and Merkel’s insistence upon the democratic model of government. The paradox here is that the social market model can serve different systems, and that has often been a consistent theme in German political thought. Like Bismarck before her, as well as Erhard, Merkel also invokes the importance of moral principles to govern the social policies of the German state but with one significant difference. Although she invokes the values of “freedom, peace and prosperity in the world”[19] she does not in any manner ground those principles in religious terms. This would even mark a significant shift from the arguments presented by Ludwig Erhard concerning the foundations of the social market model.

The consistent themes of the necessity of a strong state (even in terms of military might prior to 1945) and the obligation to care for the welfare of society, and justified by appeals to the basic nature of morality have been consistent through modern German history. There have been of course significant contrasts pertaining to the exact nature of the moral foundation for such a state: for Frederick the Great it was Enlightenment principles; for Bismarck it was Protestant social teachings; for Hitler and the Nazis a sense of racial preservation; for Merkel a preservation of democratic values. This is also why despite the basic similarities; the German state has been used towards varying different ends. No doubt this evolution will continue into the future.

References

Bernhardi, Friederich von. Germany and the Next War. Translated by Allen Powles. New York: 1914.

Bismarck, Otto von. “Excerpt from Bismarck’s “Blood and Iron” Speech (1862)”. http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=250&language=english  Accessed 4/19/2020

Bismarck, Otto von. “Bismarck’s Reichstag Speech on the Law for Workers’ Compensation (March 15, 1884)”. http://ghdi.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=1809 Accessed 8/20/2020.

Erhard, Ludwig. “, “West Germany’s Social Market Economy” in Sources of European History: Since 1900, edited by Marvin Perry, Matthew Berg, and James Krukones. Cengage Learning: 2010. Pp. 364-367.

Fichte, Johann Gottlieb. Addresses to the German Nation. Trans. R.F. Jones and G.H. Turnbull: Ashland, Ohio: Open Court Press, 1922.

Frederick the Great, “Essay on the Forms of Government”. https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/hre-prussia.asp Accessed 4/17/2020

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. “The Philosophy of Right” in Great Books of the Western World: 46. Hegel. Edited by Robert Maynard Hutchins. 1952. Pg.80

Himmler, Heinrich. “Himmler’s Summation (October 4, 1943)” in A Holocaust Reader. Edited by Lucy Dawidowicz. West Orange, N.J., 1976, pp. 130-40.

Hitler, Adolf. “From Culture as the Faith in an Ideal Reich to its Diffusion Among the Masses”, in Nazi Culture: Intellectual, Cultural, and Social Life in the Third Reich. Edited by George L. Mosse. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1966. Pp. 5-10.

Kant, Immanuel. “What is Enlightenment?” https://resources.saylor.org/wwwresources/archived/site/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/What-is-Enlightenment.pdf Accessed 8/20/2020.

Kitchen, Martin. A History of Modern Germany: 1800 to the Present. Wiley-Blackwell: 2012.

Merkel, Angela. “’We Need a Strong And Effective State’ Sixty years after the foundation of the Federal Republic: A call for a global economic order.” The Atlantic Times, Vol. 6, No. 5 (May 2009)

Pine, Lisa. Hitler’s ‘National Community’: Society and Culture in Nazi Germany. Bloomsbury: 2017.

Weber, Max. “Politics as a Vocation” in The Vocation Lectures (Hackett Classics). Edited by David Owen and Tracy B. Strong. Translated by Rodney Livingstone. Hackett Publishing Company, 2004.

Wilhelm II, “Speech from the Balcony of the Royal Palace, Berlin, July 31, 1914”, https://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Wilhelm_II%27s_War_Speeches Accessed 4/20/2020

Notes

[1] Immanuel Kant, “What is Enlightenment?” https://resources.saylor.org/wwwresources/archived/site/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/What-is-Enlightenment.pdf Accessed 8/20/2020.

[2] Frederick the Great, “Essay on the Forms of Government”. https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/hre-prussia.asp Accessed 4/17/2020

[3] Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, “The Philosophy of Right” in Great Books of the Western World: 46. Hegel. Edited by Robert Maynard Hutchins. 1952. Pg.80

[4] Otto von Bismarck, “Excerpt from Bismarck’s “Blood and Iron” Speech (1862)”. http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=250&language=english Accessed 4/19/2020

[5] Martin Kitchen, A History of Modern Germany: 1800 to the Present. Wiley-Blackwell: 2012. Pg. 126

[6] Ibid., pp.129-130; 132.

[7] Otto von Bismarck. “Bismarck’s Reichstag Speech on the Law for Workers’ Compensation (March 15, 1884)”. http://ghdi.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=1809 Accessed 8/20/2020.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Kaiser Wilhelm II, “Speech from the Balcony of the Royal Palace, Berlin, July 31, 1914”, https://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Wilhelm_II%27s_War_Speeches Accessed 4/20/2020

[10] Max Weber, “Politics as a Vocation” in The Vocation Lectures (Hackett Classics). Edited by David Owen and Tracy B. Strong. Translated by Rodney Livingstone. Hackett Publishing Company, 2004. Pg.33.

[11] Johann Gottlieb Fichte, “Addresses to the German Nation (1806).” trans. R.F. Jones and G.H. Turnbull: Ashland, Ohio: Open Court Press, 1922.

[12] Adolf Hitler, “From Culture as the Faith in an Ideal Reich to its Diffusion Among the Masses”, in Nazi Culture: Intellectual, Cultural, and Social Life in the Third Reich. Edited by George L. Mosse. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1966. Pg.6. Emphasis in original.

[13]Lisa Pine, Hitler’s ‘National Community’: Society and Culture in Nazi Germany. Bloomsbury: 2017. Pg.2

[14] Heinrich Himmler, “Himmler’s Summation (October 4, 1943)” in A Holocaust Reader. Edited by Lucy Dawidowicz. West Orange, N.J., 1976, pp. 130-40.

[15] Most notable example being Friedrich von Bernhardi’s “Germany and the Next War (1912)”. trans. by Allen Powles. New York: 1914.

[16] Ludwig Erhard, “West Germany’s Social Market Economy” in Sources of European History: Since 1900, edited by Marvin Perry, Matthew Berg, and James Krukones. Cengage Learning, Jan 1, 2010. Pg. 366.

[17] Angela Merkel, “’We Need a Strong And Effective State’ Sixty years after the foundation of the Federal Republic:

A call for a global economic order.” The Atlantic Times, Vol. 6, No. 5 (May 2009)

[18] Ibid.

[19] Ibid.

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