Forged Through ‘Blood and Iron’ 31 Forged Through ‘Blood and Iron’: How and Why the Army was so Important in the Creation of a German Nation from the 1860s to 1918 Nadja Siegel Second Year Undergraduate, University of New England* It is not possible to comprehend the nation-building processes of Germany without recognising the importance of the military. The essay seeks to set out how and why the army was so important in the creation of a German nation from the 1860s to the eve of the First World War. It explores the historical context of the rise of the military during the nineteenth century and the particular importance of France as the ‘hereditary foe’, which eventually led to the political establishment of the German nation state after the Franco-German war. The role of the military in the unification in political terms has been extensively covered. Blackbourn for instance acknowledged the army as ‘architect’ of a unification that was won on the battlefield.1 Whilst the military functioned as both a tangible institution of the State and creator of unification, in its role as national symbol it became a feature of German national culture and consciousness. The essay therefore applies the more recent concept of Eric Hobsbawm’s ‘invented traditions’ that are traced through national histories - in particular those created through the Franco-German war - and associated public celebrations; monuments such as the Hermannsdenkmal or Völkerschlachtdenkmal, and national symbols, in which we find a celebration of military culture. Everyday life was permeated by military culture, the army visible and omnipresent.2 Institutions such as the navy were a ‘national metaphor’.3 Yet the military achieved real political power: its privileged position outside the constraints of civilian rule was cemented through its past achievements and prominence in tradition. *Where translations have been made from the German language, these have been made by myself and are marked in quotation marks and italics. 1 David Blackbourn, The Long Nineteenth Century: A History of Germany, 1780-1918, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 375. David Blackbourn, Fontana History of Germany 1780-1918: The Long Nineteenth Century (London: Fontana Press, 1997), 245. 2 David Blackbourn, The Long Nineteenth Century, 11,’. 3 Jan Rüger, The Great Naval Game: Britain and Germany in the Age of Empire,(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 197. 32 history in the making vol. 2 no. 1 Forged Through ‘Blood and Iron’ 33 A few concepts are particularly relevant to this study: Eric Hobsbawm notes that nations use emphasising the duty of the sons to their fatherland of defending the German Rhine.13 Other songs ‘invented traditions’ to establish and legitimise themselves.4 These traditions are marked by their in a similar vein like Becker’s ‘Rheinlied’ and Fallersleben’s ‘Deutschlandlied’ were written at the symbolic or ritual nature and often seek to ‘establish a continuity with a suitable historic past’, time of the Rhine Crisis and would rise again to popularity later during the Franco-Italian war.14 which itself can be invented by ‘creating an ancient past beyond effective continuity’.5 Hobsbawm The rivalry between Prussia and Austria during this war had shown that such strength was only to notes that traditions illuminate how humans relate to the past and are evidence of developments be found in unity.15 Friedrich Engels noted at the beginning of the conflict in 1859 that ‘the Rhine that can be easily identified by historians.6 The past also plays a major role in the understanding needs to be defended at the Po’ and only unity ‘[…] protects us and can make us stronger internally of a nation in Ernest Renan’s view. For Renan, the nation was a solidarity that was built on a and externally’.16 The wars of liberation and a growing demand for defence and strength in unity ‘heroic past’ and ‘effort and sacrifice’.7 In this context the military’s accomplishments were of were a fertile ground from which the military would emerge as a tangible and symbolic force in the prime importance. The remembrance of military victories and sacrifices created what Rudy Koshar unification of Germany and thereafter. called a ‘memory landscape’ (Erinnerungslandschaft). For Koshar, monuments as part of the physical environment represent collective memories and interpret historical meanings.8 This memory Political unification was the culmination of orchestrated military actions of the 1860s and the landscape, which was characterised by a predominantly militaristic influence, shaped Germany’s military finally saw the GermanReich proclaimed in 1871. In 1860 Bismarck expressed his view self-understanding.9 that the German people would support Prussia and vice versa, ‘as long as it [the German Volk] regards the Prussian Army as its protagonist and hope for the future’ (‘solange es in Preußen seinen First, it is important to look at how the military came to occupy such a central role in the Vorkämpfer und die Hoffnung auf seine Zukunft erblickt’).17 Under Bismarck’s leadership in the 1860s, unification of Germany and the formation of its identity. The French Revolution, which inaugurated the military might of Prussia evolved as a potential unifying power for Germany. In 1862, Bismarck the age of people’s self-determination, also initiated a search for la patrie in Germany. The ‘War famously noted that ‘Germany is not looking to Prussia’s liberalism, but to its power; […] it is not of Liberation’ from the French gave intellectuals like Johann Friedrich Jahn or Theodor Körner by speeches and majority resolutions that the great questions of the time are decided - that was an opportunity to infuse the war with patriotic feeling as the longing of the ‘Volk’s soul’.10 The the big mistake of 1848 and 1849 - but by iron and blood.’18 Bismarck sought to extend Prussia’s Napoleonic era was important in creating France as the Erbfeind, the ‘hereditary foe’ and casus borders and establish her dominance in Germany through military strength. In 1864, the victory foederis by which Germany was to come into existence in 1871. Ernst Moritz Arndt, ignoring the of the predominantly Prussian troops over Denmark brought Schleswig closer to Prussia’s sphere fact that some German kingdoms fought for Napoleon, notes as early as 1813: of influence.19 A second military step taken towards unity was the ‘German War’ of 1866, when Prussia defeated Austria at Königgrätz. Whereas in the Schleswig-Holstein question national That is the German’s fatherland, sentiment had been pro-war, the public opinion in 1866 was divided over what was perceived as Where wrath pursues the foreign band,— a ‘brother’s war’. Prussia was opposed not only by Austria but also armies of the ‘third Germany’ Where every Frank is held a foe, such as Saxony, Bavaria or Württemberg.20 However, the surprising and succinct victory swayed 11 And Germans all as brothers glow. the public opinion very quickly towards Prussia.21 Blackbourn calls the German civil war a ‘decisive moment’ in which a ‘Lesser Germany’ (kleindeutsche) solution to the German question Admittedly, Arndt displays an extreme form of anti-French patriotism. However, as later nationalist became more likely because of Austria’s expulsion from Germany.22 Growing tensions between historiographers exploited and embellished the ‘war of national liberation’, nationalist feelings the Northern Confederation and the Southern States that were part of the Zollverein (‘tariff union’) developed and the hostility toward the hereditary foe became part of later nationalism.12 The were eventually set aside in 1870, when the Southern States honoured their military alliances to Rhine Crisis of 1840 highlighted the continued need for military protection against this hereditary the North in the war against France. This time the French declaration of war over the Spanish foe. When France declared the left Rhine areas should again be part of its natural borders (as it succession conflict united all the German ‘tribes’ in a strong national sentiment against the briefly did under Napoleon’s ‘Confederation of the Rhine’), a wave of anti-French feeling erupted in Germany. Schneckenburger wrote his ‘Watch on the Rhine’, full of militaristic character and 13 Max Schneckenburger, ‘The Watch on the Rhine [Die Wacht Am Rhein], 1840,’ inThe World’s Story: A History of the World in Story, Song and Art, Vol. 7, ed. Eva March Tappan, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1914), 249-50. 4 Eric Hobsbawm ‘The Nation as Invented Tradition,’ inThe Invention of Tradition, eds. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Range, 14 Egmont Zechlin, Die Reichsgründung, 2nd ed., (Frankfurt: Ullstein Verlag, 1974), 50. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), ,’264, 274. 15 Ibid., 52. 5 Eric J. Hobsbawm, ‘Introduction: Inventing Traditions,’ in The Invention of Tradition, 1, 7. 16 Friedrich Engels, ‘Po und Rhein’,’in Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels - Werke, Vol. 13 (Berlin: Karl Dietz Verlag, 1971), 225-268. 6 Ibid., 12. Retrieved from ML Werke, first correction 4 August 1998, http://www.mlwerke.de/me/me13/me13_225.htm, accessed 1 April 7 Ernest Renan, ‘What is a Nation? (Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?), a lecture delivered at the Sorbonne, 11 March 1882,’ inOeuvres 2012. Completes, Vol. 1, (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1947-61), 887-907. 17 Zechlin, Die Reichsgründung, 59. 8 Rudy Koshar, From Monuments to Traces : Artifacts of German Memory, 1870-1990, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 18 Otto von Bismarck, ‘Excerpt from Bismarck’s “Blood and Iron” Speech (1862),’ inBismarck: Collected Works, ed. Hermann 2000), 9-10. von Petersdorff. (Berlin: Otto Stolberg, 1924-35), 139-40 in German History Docs, n.d. http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/ 9 Ibid., 50. sub_document.cfm?document_id=250&language=english, accessed 14 May 2012. 10 George L Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 19.