Battle-born, Bismarck’s genius springs from the very fire and sword of human nature—resembling definitely his iron-headed barbarian1 ancestry2, whose freedom remained unconquered through the centuries.
We cannot hope to trace Bismarck to any complete legal basis—any more than we can defend the complete legitimacy3 of France, Belgium, or the United States, countries avowedly4 harking back to revolutionary origin. Bismarck’s life, likewise, presents unquestioned elements of anarchistic5 root. Inherited from battle-born Bismarcks are forces peculiar6 to himself, free, and individualistic, profoundly expressive7 wherein Mother Nature summoning her ultimate powers endows a colossal8 courage in a colossal mind and body.
As far as the Thirteenth Century, the name Bismarck, then styled Bishofsmarck or Biscopesmarck, is associated with the little river Biese; but whence the original stock is for antiquarians to debate.
Believe the Bismarcks to be of Bohemian, of Frankish or of Jewish origin, or of Slavic if you will, you find bespectacled, scholastic9 authorities who will open the musty pages and display to you the truth.
Herbort of Biese became in due course Herbort von Bismarck. The “von” was unquestionably a mark of geographical10 origin, rather than a sign of nobility. The name is borne by other families from Biese; but the important part is not the name but the men behind that name, what that name stood for.
Herbort von Bismarck’s name is enrolled11 in the guild12 papers as master of the merchant tailors of Stendal, in the old Mark of Brandenburg; a “Mark” being somewhat equivalent to an English “shire.”
But this fact about the tailor-ancestor must not be pressed[25] too far. Some antiquarian of the year 2700 A. D., let us say, might argue that President Taft was a steam-shoveler, because the name is found recorded among the laborers13 who helped dig the Panama Canal; whereas, the fact is that the President was enrolled as an honorary member of one of the labor14 unions.
Also, after Waterloo, when the British nation was running wild trying to imagine some distinction that as yet had not been bestowed15 on Wellington, the London tailors in a moment of inspiration added the Iron Duke’s name to the great roll of scissor-snippers!
Beginning with Herbort’s son, four Bismarcks, in three generations, were social lepers.
Klaus von Bismarck died about the year 1385, outside the holy favor of the church—as his father had died before him, and as did two sons, in their turn. But Klaus, ever shrewd in a worldly way, recommended himself as a king’s fighting man; led the robber gang off with the loot in the name of his merry monarch16, the Margrave of Bavaria.
For this most excellent service as a professional man-killer, Klaus was rewarded with a knight’s fee of forest land, at Burgstal, an estate that remained in the family for two hundred years. There were deer, wild boar, wolves and bear in the Bismarck forest, and one day Conrad of Hohenzollern came that way on a royal hunting expedition.
Conrad could have stolen the Bismarck petty title outright17, but while he confiscated18 Burgstal forest, he offered Schoenhausen, on the Elbe, in exchange. However, Schoenhausen did not compare with the estate that the envious19 monarch took by force. The Burgstal forest is to this day one of the great game preserves of the German Emperor.
The Bismarcks also received in the exchange farming land known as Crevisse, lately confiscated by the Hohenzollerns from the nuns20; and one of the conditions of the transfer to the Bismarcks was that these nuns should be supported.
6[26]
Strong animal basis of Bismarck’s rise to Power—The story is always the same, “Fight, or die like a dog!”
Thus, from time immemorial, the fighting Bismarcks wrote their title to a share of this earth with the sword, which in spite of all Hague Conferences remains21 the best sort of title man has been able to devise.
As time sped and what is called Civilization grew somewhat, men took on chicken-hearted ways; and in every pinch appealed to courts for decisions formerly22 decided23 by individual brawn24; till finally, as in these latter degenerate25 days, if a fight becomes necessary, society hires policemen to stop the row.
Klaus von Bismarck preferred to do his own murdering, and consequently, Klaus stood first in the eyes of honest men of his own generation; but in this Twentieth Century, instead of putting incompetents26 to the test of the sword, society, committed to the soft doctrine27 that all life is sacred, burdens itself with lengthening28 the days of the daft. A far cry that from the ideals of the early Bismarcks! It is well to keep these facts in mind, in contemplating29 the extraordinary career of the great Otto von Bismarck, king-maker30 and unifier31 of Germany.
Modern timid-hearted folk, reading of the desperate makeshifts of the old Bismarcks to get on in the world, would say off-hand, “There must be a strain of madness in the Bismarck brain?”
Unquestionably! This fighting family in each generation had its born revolutionists, its enormous egotists, its men who lived what orthodox opinion calls “godless lives”—although in their own philosophy the Bismarcks are always preaching that God is on their side. When the Elector decided to steal Burgstal forest, the Bismarcks set up this pious32 plea: “We wish to remain in the pleasant place assigned to us by the Almighty33.” Four hundred years later we find Otto von Bismarck using again and again this peculiar reasoning,[27] to justify34, at least to explain, his own career: “If I were not a Christian35, I would not continue to serve the King another moment. Did I not obey my God and count on Him, I should certainly take no account of earthly masters.”
In three great wars of ambition in which 80,000 perished, he repeated this solemn formula about God; he repeated it on the blood-drenched field of Koeniggraetz; he repeated it in the Holstein war, and he repeated it again at Sedan and at Gravelotte.
Bismarck persisted in this peculiar conception of life, down to the last. While in retirement36, after his downfall, one day the bloody37 past rose before him like a dream, and he exclaimed to Dr. Busch: “Politics has brought me vexation, anxiety and trouble; made no one happy, me, my family nor anyone else, but many unhappy. Had it not been for me, there would have been three great wars less; the lives of 80,000 would not have been sacrificed; and many parents, brothers, sisters and wives would not now be mourners. That, however, I have settled with my Maker!” Now, once and for all, what we understand this to mean is merely this: a super-abundance of faith. Many great leaders have had it—David, Cromwell, Bismarck.
In seeking biographic clues, through hereditary38 influences, we are impressed with the astounding39 animal-basis of strength behind the Bismarcks, from earliest recorded history. They were a deep-drinking, prolific40 gormandizing race, and every mother’s son had to do battle by brawn backed by the sword, or die like a dog! This bred high tempers, turbulent manners and contempt for the weak.
Soldiers, diplomatists, brow-beaters, characterized the Bismarck clan41 down through centuries. Stormy and adventurous42 Bismarcks fought for the sheer delight of doing battle;—it mattered not, whether against the Turks or against some near-by king whose lands the German robber-knights lusted43 for and wished to annex45 by appeal to the sword.
There is a story of a garrison46 brawl47 in which a Bismarck slew48 his companion in drink, then fled to Russia, then on to[28] Siberia; soldier of fortune, he fights under any flag that promises a gay life and plenty of loot. Three hundred years later—how the wheel turns round!—Otto von Bismarck, as Russian Ambassador to the King of Prussia, engaged in intrigues49 for the same old lust44 of land, the same old nefarious50 business, but this time sprayed over by the high-sounding name, diplomacy51.
Dr. Busch, the Saxon press-agent for Prince Bismarck, repeats the old tale of the winning of Alsace by the French king, through the aid of Otto von Bismarck’s great-great-grandfather, a mercenary soldier; adding that while one Bismarck helped take Alsace away, another of that redoubtable52 family brought it back many years later, with the added joy of the prodigious53 money-fine of five billions of francs!
7
Boisterous54 Col. Bismarck, of the Dragoons; “The Wooden Donkey dies today!” French Cavalier Bismarck and his mushy prose-poems.
Burly strength and horse-play, rather than diplomacy, were always distinctive55 traits of that part of the Bismarck family immediately surrounding Otto von Bismarck; and in Otto’s case, although the years gradually taught him that there are more ways of stopping a man’s mouth than by cutting off his head, on the whole we seek in vain, among ancestral Bismarcks, for any striking characteristics in which the point does not turn either on gluttony or on deep-drinking.
They were enormous eaters. Bread and meat were not enough. They must have game, fish, cake, wines, and plenty of each. Hunger put them in a rage. They were iron men, with stomachs of pigs.
They were unbrooked master spirits, followed the hounds, fought duels56, had noisy tongues, and gloried in personal independence.
When they loved they loved madly; when they hated it was the same. They drank all night and were out again at dawn.
Yet in their way, they were high-minded gentlemen, devoted[29] themselves industriously57 to their duties; and it may be that the turbulence58 of their lives borrowed something from the rude clash of opinion that often divided the best friends, during the stormy periods of history in which they fought as soldiers of fortune.
Otto von Bismarck’s great-grandfather, Augustus, calling his cronies of the barracks around him, was wont59 to add zest60 to the carousal61 by introducing the trumpet62 call after each toast; to heighten the infernal racket, the boisterous colonel of dragoons ordered a volley fired in the drink-hall.
This terrible dragoon, master of the hounds, guzzler63, companion and leader in all revels64, was generally voted one of the amiable65 men in army circles. He was a noted66 shot. In one year of record his score was 154 red deer and 100 stag.
At the Ihna bridge was a ducking stool, for army punishments; it took the amusing style of a wooden donkey, and was so called by the dragoons as a rude joke.
After one of his hard drinking bouts67, it was often the colonel’s amusing habit to order his men to march to the bridge; on arriving the band struck up and the wooden donkey was thrown into the stream. “All offenders68 of my regiment69 are forgiven,” Bismarck would bawl70, “the donkey dies today!”
Then with all manner of opera bouffe the offending donkey would be put overboard—only to be brought out next morning, ready for official business.
But our fun-loving colonel’s good times were now over. As commander of the gallant71 Anspach-Bayreuth dragoons, Augustus fought for Frederick the Great and was severely72 wounded at Czaslau. Austrian hussars surprised the transport wagons73 carrying the wounded to the rear, and with brutality74 common to the soldier-business of that rude day killed the defenseless Prussians, among whom was our Colonel von Bismarck.
Bismarck’s grandfather, Karl Alexander, leaned toward the namby-pamby intellectual rather than to the social and convivial75.[30] He is remembered for his affected76 poetical77 style. Karl, brave soldier, attracted the eye of no less a judge of valor78 than the Great Frederick, who appointed this Karl Alexander von Bismarck an attache of the Prussian embassy at Vienna.
Karl, like other Germans of the sentimental79 period, aped the French poets; but when a German is sentimental, the mush-pots boil over. Karl’s writings show that peculiar over-inflated quality, “sentimentality,” so much admired in the rococo80 period.
Karl William Ferd., Otto’s father, and Louise Wilhelmina, Otto’s mother, born Mencken, lived at Schoenhausen in troublous French times. Oct. 14th, 1806, the terrible defeat at Jena put Prussia in the hands of the enemy.
Fortresses81 surrendered without firing a shot, and the panic-stricken king fled to the far eastern side of his domains82, near Russia.
All this took place within three months after the marriage of Karl and Louise, who had now set up housekeeping at Schoenhausen.
The Bismarcks tried to escape in a coach, but the French unexpectedly appeared and ordered Karl back to the house. The French ransacked83 every room; Louise fled to the library and locked the massive oak door; to this day it bears the marks of French bayonets; the Bismarcks then hid in the forest where they remained all night with panic-stricken neighbors; at dawn Karl and Louise ventured out, to find Schoenhausen a scene of destruction.
The one galling84 fact that Karl could not overlook, in Marshal Soult’s raid, was the desecration85 of the genealogical tree. This huge painting with its shields of the Bismarck descent was slashed86 from end to end, with bayonets!
Oh, Otto von Bismarck remembered this many, many years later, in making terms with the French after Sedan—do not for a moment forget that! Such is the amazing power of hereditary loves and hates;—and certainly the Bismarcks had no reason to admire the French.
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1
barbarian
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| n.野蛮人；adj.野蛮(人)的；未开化的 | |
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ancestry
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| n.祖先，家世 | |
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legitimacy
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| n.合法，正当 | |
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avowedly
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| adv.公然地 | |
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anarchistic
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| 无政府主义的 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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7
expressive
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| adj.表现的，表达…的，富于表情的 | |
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8
colossal
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| adj.异常的，庞大的 | |
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9
scholastic
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| adj.学校的，学院的，学术上的 | |
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geographical
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| adj.地理的；地区(性)的 | |
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enrolled
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| adj.入学登记了的v.[亦作enrol]( enroll的过去式和过去分词 )；登记，招收，使入伍（或入会、入学等），参加，成为成员；记入名册；卷起，包起 | |
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guild
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| n.行会，同业公会，协会 | |
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laborers
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| n.体力劳动者，工人( laborer的名词复数 )；（熟练工人的）辅助工 | |
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labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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bestowed
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| 赠给，授予( bestow的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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monarch
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| n.帝王，君主，最高统治者 | |
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outright
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| adv.坦率地；彻底地；立即；adj.无疑的；彻底的 | |
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confiscated
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| 没收，充公( confiscate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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envious
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| adj.嫉妒的，羡慕的 | |
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nuns
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| n.（通常指基督教的）修女， （佛教的）尼姑( nun的名词复数 ) | |
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remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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formerly
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| adv.从前，以前 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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brawn
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| n.体力 | |
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degenerate
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| v.退步，堕落；adj.退步的，堕落的；n.堕落者 | |
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incompetents
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| n.无能力的，不称职的，不胜任的( incompetent的名词复数 ) | |
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doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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lengthening
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| （时间或空间）延长，伸长( lengthen的现在分词 )； 加长 | |
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contemplating
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| 深思，细想，仔细考虑( contemplate的现在分词 )； 注视，凝视； 考虑接受（发生某事的可能性）； 深思熟虑，沉思，苦思冥想 | |
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maker
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| n.制造者，制造商 | |
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unifier
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| 联合者，统一者，使一致的人（或物）； 通代 | |
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pious
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| adj.虔诚的；道貌岸然的 | |
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almighty
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| adj.全能的，万能的；很大的，很强的 | |
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justify
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| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
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Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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retirement
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| n.退休，退职 | |
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bloody
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| adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染 | |
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hereditary
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| adj.遗传的，遗传性的，可继承的，世袭的 | |
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astounding
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| adj.使人震惊的vt.使震惊，使大吃一惊astound的现在分词) | |
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prolific
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| adj.丰富的，大量的；多产的，富有创造力的 | |
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clan
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| n.氏族，部落，宗族，家族，宗派 | |
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adventurous
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| adj.爱冒险的；惊心动魄的，惊险的，刺激的 | |
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lusted
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| 贪求（lust的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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lust
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| n.性(淫)欲；渴(欲)望；vi.对…有强烈的欲望 | |
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45
annex
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| vt.兼并，吞并；n.附属建筑物 | |
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garrison
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| n.卫戍部队；驻地，卫戍区；vt.派(兵)驻防 | |
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47
brawl
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| n.大声争吵，喧嚷；v.吵架，对骂 | |
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48
slew
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| v.（使）旋转；n.大量，许多 | |
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49
intrigues
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| n.密谋策划( intrigue的名词复数 )；神秘气氛；引人入胜的复杂情节v.搞阴谋诡计( intrigue的第三人称单数 )；激起…的好奇心 | |
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50
nefarious
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| adj.恶毒的，极坏的 | |
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51
diplomacy
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| n.外交；外交手腕，交际手腕 | |
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52
redoubtable
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| adj.可敬的；可怕的 | |
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53
prodigious
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| adj.惊人的，奇妙的；异常的；巨大的；庞大的 | |
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54
boisterous
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| adj.喧闹的，欢闹的 | |
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distinctive
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| adj.特别的，有特色的，与众不同的 | |
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56
duels
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| n.两男子的决斗( duel的名词复数 )；竞争，斗争 | |
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industriously
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58
turbulence
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| n.喧嚣，狂暴，骚乱，湍流 | |
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59
wont
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| adj.习惯于；v.习惯；n.习惯 | |
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60
zest
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| n.乐趣；滋味，风味；兴趣 | |
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carousal
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| n.喧闹的酒会 | |
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trumpet
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| n.喇叭，喇叭声；v.吹喇叭，吹嘘 | |
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guzzler
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| n.酒鬼，酒量大的人 | |
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64
revels
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| n.作乐( revel的名词复数 )；狂欢；着迷；陶醉v.作乐( revel的第三人称单数 )；狂欢；着迷；陶醉 | |
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65
amiable
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| adj.和蔼可亲的，友善的，亲切的 | |
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noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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67
bouts
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| n.拳击（或摔跤）比赛( bout的名词复数 )；一段（工作）；（尤指坏事的）一通；（疾病的）发作 | |
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68
offenders
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| n.冒犯者( offender的名词复数 )；犯规者；罪犯；妨害…的人（或事物） | |
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69
regiment
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| n.团，多数，管理；v.组织，编成团，统制 | |
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70
bawl
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| v.大喊大叫，大声地喊，咆哮 | |
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71
gallant
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| adj.英勇的，豪侠的；(向女人)献殷勤的 | |
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72
severely
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| adv.严格地；严厉地；非常恶劣地 | |
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73
wagons
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| n.四轮的运货马车( wagon的名词复数 )；铁路货车；小手推车 | |
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74
brutality
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| n.野蛮的行为，残忍，野蛮 | |
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convivial
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| adj.狂欢的，欢乐的 | |
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affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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poetical
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| adj.似诗人的；诗一般的；韵文的；富有诗意的 | |
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78
valor
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| n.勇气，英勇 | |
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sentimental
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| adj.多愁善感的，感伤的 | |
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rococo
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| n.洛可可；adj.过分修饰的 | |
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81
fortresses
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| 堡垒，要塞( fortress的名词复数 ) | |
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domains
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| n.范围( domain的名词复数 )；领域；版图；地产 | |
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83
ransacked
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| v.彻底搜查( ransack的过去式和过去分词 )；抢劫，掠夺 | |
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84
galling
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| adj.难堪的,使烦恼的,使焦躁的 | |
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desecration
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| n. 亵渎神圣, 污辱 | |
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slashed
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| v.挥砍( slash的过去式和过去分词 )；鞭打；割破；削减 | |
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