The Position of the Military in the Society of the German Empire

The military held an outstanding social position in the Empire, and its affairs largely escaped political control. The German Emperor was the supreme commander of the German army, and Wilhelm II (1859–1941) had internalized this role to a particular degree. The socially critical writer Theodor Fontane once (1897) made the following perceptive remark about this monarch: "He has a million soldiers and also wants a hundred armored ships — he dreams (and I shall credit him highly for this dream) of a humiliation of England. Germany shall be on top, in everything and everywhere. All of this — whether it is wise and feasible, I leave undecided — touches me sympathetically and I would willingly follow him on his tightrope, if I saw that he ... had the right balancing pole in his hands. But he does not have that. He wants, if not the impossible, then at least the extremely dangerous, with the wrong equipment, with insufficient means. He believes he can achieve the new with the very old, he wants to erect the modern with junkroom weapons. He provides new must, and because he no longer treads the old hoses, he simply wraps these old hoses with ever-thicker twine and thinks: now it will hold. But it will not hold ... What the Emperor presumably intends cannot be achieved with “weapons” at all; all military efforts seem to me as if in the year 1400 all force had been directed to make knightly armor bulletproof — instead one finally arrived at the only correct solution, to discard the armor entirely"¹.

Kaiser Wilhelm II regarded the army as the monarch’s very own instrument and vehemently rejected any interference by the Reich Chancellor and the Reichstag in his military sphere of power. Only the Reichstag's budgetary right represented an incursion here and regularly led to domestic political turbulence². Regardless of this, the military was extremely popular with the population of the German Empire. At the latest since the victorious wars of unification and the creation of the German Empire in 1871, the German bourgeoisie also identified with the state's armed forces. This was, of course, also rooted in the enormous economic upswing of Wilhelmine Germany.

The nobility still occupied important functions in imperial Germany as the social elite, primarily in the military. The officer corps in Prussia was regarded as "the only reliable bulwark against social upheavals" (Craig). From the point of view of the Prussian king and the Military Cabinet, this required a predominant filling of officer positions with nobles. A liberal disposition was viewed critically and not only hindered admission to the officer corps but also the career advancement of officers already serving in the army. To increase the army's performance and political reliability, the attitude and behavior — including of noble — officers were closely monitored.

The Chief of the Military Cabinet, Generalfeldmarschall Edwin Karl Rochus Freiherr von Manteuffel (* 24.02.1809 in Dresden; † 17.06.1885 in Karlsbad), pursued a particularly rigid stance in this regard and later commented on his work: "That was my greatest political act; without this cleansing the victories of 1864, 1866 and 1870 would not have occurred; the officer corps at the beginning of the fifties was much worse than in 1806."

Gordon A. Craig describes this problem and its background in his work: The Prussian-German Army 1640–1945. State within the State (Düsseldorf 1980, p. 257 ff.) as follows: "Although the composition of the officer corps during the Manteuffel era was already an unpleasant matter for officers with progressive political ideas, it affected officers of bourgeois origin even more. For Manteuffel such officers were not unimpeachable, not only because they might have been infected by liberal intentions, but because he believed their social standing lacked military spirit. As early as March 1860 the military commission of the Prussian House of Representatives opposed the systematic removal of bourgeois officers from the army, and such complaints repeated year after year. The chamber had the understandable concern that an officer corps predominantly hostile to the bourgeoisie in its disposition would be a constant danger to constitutional freedoms. This concern grew even larger when, in 1865, an army representative admitted that of 8,169 officers 4,172 were nobles. Such figures gain even more weight when one realizes that the highest ranks in the army were filled by nobles by more than 80 percent.

Manteuffel’s prejudice against bourgeois officers was so deep that he simply ignored the principle laid down during the reform period that admission to the officer corps should depend on corresponding proof of education. He tried to justify his circumvention of the existing regulation by claiming that it would be unwise to demand scholarship from all officers. For most it was important that they proved themselves at the front, and a high level of schooling would not be required for that. In reality he opposed raised educational requirements because, in his eyes, they represented a danger to social cohesion and consequently to the political reliability of the officer corps. In October 1861 a royal decree appeared, according to which in the future officer candidates would have to present the school-leaving certificate of a Gymnasium or Realschule and would be examined in the subjects of the upper classes. This order provoked an uproar among the older officers. They protested vehemently that it marked the beginning of the bourgeoisification of the army. A group of officers submitted a petition to Manteuffel, without naming names, and asked bluntly: "(Will not) instead of the Dönhoffs, Dohna, etc. ... the sons of newly rich bankers take the places of the Guard cavalry officers? ... Would such a changed officer corps show the same bearing as that of 1848? ... Would it not be dangerous to provoke the nobility too much?"

Manteuffel believed, however, that this would be dangerous. Without first consulting the Minister of War, he waged a determined fight against the October order. He first persuaded the king to suggest to the regimental commanders that in selecting officer candidates character traits should count as much as education. And later he convinced the monarch to suspend the execution of the order for four years. But even after the four years had expired the order was never applied in the spirit in which it had been written."

John Lothrop Motley, who came from the American upper bourgeoisie and was a friend of Bismarck, and from 1841 an embassy secretary in Petersburg, already expressed criticism of the nobility's role on 04.11.1833: "Those who are so fortunate as to have the three magical letters VON before their name belong to the nobility and are therefore highly aristocratic. Without these three, the others may have all the letters of the alphabet in every possible combination, they nevertheless remain plebeians"⁵. A contemporary German observer wrote some years later: "The guard lieutenant is born a true thoroughbred of true thoroughbred stock and feels from the outset as a being of a higher kind toward the peasants, the day laborers, the bourgeois people. The young Von really does not need to become anything, he can leave the learning of a trade ... to the bourgeoisie, because a guard lieutenant, as he ought to be, must be rich .... And when the little beard now downy, when the epaulettes first adorn his shoulders, when the plume waves for the first time on his head, when the soldiers present in every nook and cranny, how should he not then feel that he is called to represent a being of a higher kind in this sublunar world? How should he not then ignore and despise everything that is not noble, that is not also a guard lieutenant or otherwise invested with a rank in the military hierarchy? It is only too natural. A guard lieutenant no longer even believes he may associate with a lieutenant of the line. He thinks that the latter stands beneath him"⁶.

After the end of the Wars of Liberation, of 7,505 officers of the Prussian army a total of 4,138 were nobles (= 55%). In 1847 of 9,434 officers 7,264 were noble (= 77%). But the numerical share of the nobility necessarily fell in view of the growing number of officers as the army expanded. Before the reorganization and expansion of the army before 1860, 65% of the officer corps were still noble; in 1895 it was 44.1%, in 1898 it was 40%, in 1911 it was 33% and in 1913 the proportion of bourgeois officers had already risen to 70%³. In that year, from the ranks of colonel upwards, 52% were noble and 48% bourgeois. The nobility was, however, still strongly represented especially in the cavalry. In this aristocratic arm of service in 1913 87% of staff officers were noble, while among engineers and transport troops at the same time it was only 6%. It is noteworthy that the entire officer corps of the navy had only a 13% noble share⁴.

Under Wilhelm II the nobility isolated itself in some guard and provincial regiments, but there were official attempts to counteract this development. In Saxony in 1908 the ratio between noble and bourgeois officers was 571 to 3,284; in the Bavarian army the ratio in 1893 was 1,122 to 7,390.

Although the nobility still dominated the key functions within the officer corps⁷, the bourgeoisie could overcome its inferiority complexes through entry into the reserve officer corps. The so-called one-year volunteers were the gateway for this.

Herbert Rosinski comments in his comprehensive account: "The German Army. From Triumph to Defeat" Düsseldorf and Vienna 1977, p. 106 ff.) as follows: "Although this originally was a purely military special regulation, the institution of the 'one-yearers' increasingly became a fundamental social dividing line between the 'educated' and the 'uneducated'. There were undoubtedly differences even among the one-yearers. Service as a one-year volunteer opened only the possibility, but not the certainty, of appointment to an officer. As long as the one-yearers were only incorporated into the Landwehr, social differences do not seem to have been very pronounced, and the Landwehr officers were for the most part typical representatives of the lower middle class. However, when as a result of the reorganization of 1860 the one-yearers were assigned to the line regiments as reserve officers, not only did their training but also their selection according to social criteria take place much more seriously. There was an oversupply of applicants. In the years before the war there were about 15,000 one-yearers in Germany annually, while the total number of all reserve officers in 1914 was only slightly more than 29,000. This made strict selection possible. All 'undesirable elements', such as Jews or members of the lower middle class, were excluded from this highly prized distinction and relegated to the rank of non-commissioned officer."

Continuation: "Thus a sharp dividing line and a widening gap between the upper and lower ranks was created by the one-year volunteer. In contrast to the 18th century, military advancement in both groups now proceeded strictly separately. The active officers, initially provisionally accepted as candidates in a regiment, began their careers by passing a suitability test, then served for a short time (five to six months) in the infantry and cavalry, several months in the artillery and engineers from the ground up. Within this period they were promoted to sergeant or ensign and assigned to the various war schools. After that came promotion to officer, provided the officer examination was successfully passed. The one-year volunteer could become a lance corporal after six months of military service and a sergeant after nine months. After the expiration of this year he was offered the opportunity to take a special examination, by which he was eligible for selection as a reserve officer. After two eight-week military exercises within the following two years and a further examination the final appointment to reserve officer followed, while those who for whatever reasons were unable to meet these conditions were at least trained to be non-commissioned officers or sergeants."

Quotation on the freedoms of one-year volunteers from the memoirs of a later pastor. Untertan in Uniform. p. 129 ff.

Selection criteria and difficulties for aspirants as reserve officers (in Bavaria). Quotation from: Untertan in Uniform. p. 133 ff.

Subsequently, the bourgeoisie imitated real and supposed characteristics of the nobility to a special degree⁸. Military behaviors became overall part of everyday life; the colorful tunic was admired in town and countryside. The almost unconditional respect of the bourgeois for the military is particularly evident in the scandal of the "Captain of Köpenick" (1906)⁹.

The above-mentioned development of the decline of the noble share in the officer corps in the expanding imperial army could not be ignored, and Kaiser Wilhelm II reacted in 1890 with the following order: "The increased educational level of our people offers the possibility to widen the circles from which the officer corps may be supplemented. Not the nobility of birth alone can today, as formerly, claim the privilege of furnishing the army with its officers. But the nobility of spirit .... shall and must remain unchanged (for the officer corps) .... (Thus) I view the bearers of the future of my army in the sons of such honorable bourgeois houses in which love of king and fatherland, a warm heart for the soldierly estate and Christian decency are planted and instilled" (quoted after Craig, ibid., p. 260).

Quotation on garrison life in southern Germany around 1886. From the memoirs of Wilhelm Groener. Fundamentals of German Military History Vol. 2. p. 178.

A general background for the development outlined above was, however, an unstoppable and striking structural transformation in the economy and society in the second half of the 19th century. This also affected the foundations of the Prussian and German army. Walter Görlitz describes this change in his "Short History of the German General Staff" (Berlin 1977, p. 105) as follows: "The industrial revolution, which in Germany also led to the dissolution of the agrarian feudal-patriarchal order and the formation of a new industrial society, caused a deep shake-up of the economic as well as the authority basis of the East-Elbian nobility, whose views the officer corps had oriented itself to even in its bourgeois parts. The previously fixed social circles of the landed nobility, the peasantry, the craftsman and petty bourgeoisie dissolved. A completely new way of life, the proletarian attitude, emerged. The industrial working class, which rightly felt exploited, grew in number, and thus became an ever larger part of the recruits of the army based on universal conscription. A considerable part of the nation, whose 'school' was to be the army, which swore the oath of allegiance only to the supreme warlord, turned away from Christianity and sought salvation in international socialism."

Despite internal social and political upheavals, the imperial house and the military embodied the "glory and splendor" of united Germany, which was highly visible in splendid New Year parades, imperial parades and widespread festivities, for example on the Emperor’s birthday, the inauguration of patriotic monuments and other anniversaries.

It was therefore an ambivalent scenario, because during his active service and as a reservist the individual became part of the "shimmering defense".

"Military service offered young men from the lower classes moments of security, recognition and material satisfaction" (Bernd Ulrich/ Jakob Vogel/ Benjamin Ziemann).

The uniform thus raised the self-esteem not only of the upper but also of the lower and middle strata of the population.

The cultivation of tradition was highly valued in the Empire and deliberately held up as a patriotic stimulant against the militarily critical tendencies of the increasingly strong Social Democracy mentioned above.

This function was particularly fulfilled by the German war association movement. Especially under the influence of the victorious wars of unification, more and more associations of former soldiers were founded, which demonstrated presence at imperial parades and other patriotic festivities.

In Prussia alone there were about 13,000 associations with a total of 1,140,000 members in 1903.

Here the patriotic tradition was preserved in general and with regard to the respective units, thereby acting socially stabilizing in the sense of the monarchy.

The authors of the work quote from "Untertan in Uniform. Military and Militarism in the Empire 1871–1914. Sources and Documents (Frankfurt am Main 1901, p. 86) a summary in the 'Soldaten-Freund' from 1875 as follows:

"... The extraordinary upswing, then the consciousness of belonging to such a large and glorious army as the German one, but also the emergence of a real German federal empire with an emperor, contributed, outside of Prussia and Saxony now also in the rest of Germany, Bavaria, Württemberg, Baden, Oldenburg, Mecklenburg, even in the new imperial lands Alsace and Lorraine, to give rise to such war associations, and in a short time the matter gained a general material as well as national and thus political significance that certainly deserved and attracted more attention than it had previously."

These war associations also had an important social function, which supported former soldiers or soldiers’ widows.

The fight against Social Democracy was an important reason against further army expansions, since in the course of raising new units one would increasingly have had to draw on urban workers. There was fear of the allegedly negative influence of Social Democracy on the disposition of the soldiers. This conflict influenced the relationship of the army to society until the outbreak of World War I. Although Wilhelm II did not renew the Anti-Socialist Law, the army was to increasingly observe state-critical political movements. This even escalated to preparatory measures for a civil war. Thus the army additionally acquired a problematic domestic political role, which was not unanimously welcomed by the responsible military leadership personnel¹⁰. Interestingly, even among workers sympathetic to Social Democracy there does not seem to have been a fundamentally negative assessment of their (own) service time in the military; social-democratic politicians knew this and refrained from simple antimilitarist propaganda¹¹. In individual cases the military was deployed in internal unrest, but wise and experienced generals often reacted prudently. Thus the commanding general of the VII Army Corps (Münster), Heinrich Ludwig Wilhelm Emil von Albedyll (1824–1897) wrote to Berlin on 11.05.1889: "In Berlin, views must have prevailed under the clamor of the largely miserable civil authorities and the industrialists that in fact correspond only to the fear of the concerned, and by no means to the real situation. We would indeed be firing with a cannon at a sparrow here, if the order received from the Minister of War were actually to be executed." The occasion were disturbances in the coal district¹².

The dark sides of the military’s special role were an exaggerated self-image of the military, in particular a pronounced arrogance of many — including bourgeois — officers, and a lack of emancipation of other social groups. The ugly "Zabern Affair" (1913) was only the tip of the iceberg here, although it was also rooted in the special situation of the imperial territory "Alsace-Lorraine"¹³. The extremely harsh drill in the — Prussian — army is well known, but documented cases of soldier abuse are not typical of the German army¹⁴. The militarization of the German Empire fits the image of the era before World War I: in all states there were exaggerated national sentiment, a certain war psychosis and consequently enormous armament efforts. The last quarter of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century were characterized by revolutionary economic and scientific developments and a societal mood of upheaval; the end of dominant political Europe and the seemingly fixed class society stood imminently at the door.

Compare more generally on the topic:

Winfried Baumgart, Germany in the Age of Imperialism 1890–1914, Stuttgart 1982,

Volker Ullrich, German Empire, Frankfurt am Main 2006 and Michael Stürmer (ed.), Imperial Germany. Politics and Society 1870–1918, Düsseldorf 1984

and specifically:

Bernd Ulrich, Jakob Vogel and Benjamin Ziemann, Untertan in Uniform. Military and Militarism in the Empire 1871–1914, Frankfurt am Main 2001.