Читать книгу Blood and Iron - John Hubert Greusel - Страница 22

Deficient in discipline, young Otto makes a fizzle of his first office-holding; his shocking conduct against his superior officer; back to the old estates, he looks after the cattle, dogs and horses.

¶ Harum-scarum days are over—and now for the serious business of life. Years later, in the days of his great renown, Bismarck, thinking of his early preparation, always regretted, he said, that he did not join the army. As a matter of fact, he had no serious plans for years to come—and it would appear that, on the whole, his career was decided by accident. Of this more, at the right time, later.

¶ When Bismarck was 20, he served several months at Aix-la-Chapelle, in court work, then was transferred to Potsdam, to the administrative side.

He soon showed himself deficient in discipline. An over-officer kept him waiting, and Bismarck took personal offense. At last Bismarck was admitted. The over-officer was sitting there, calmly killing time smoking a cigar. Bismarck leaned over and in his gruff way asked, “Give me a match!” This in itself was highly insolent, a violation of Prussian ideas of discipline. But the astonished over-officer complied. The young clerk thereupon sprawled in a chair and lighted his cigar.

It was, you see, merely to show his independence. Also, it meant that he had to get out of the service.

¶ Bismarck was glad to go; he hated intensely the clock-like regularity of the Prussian bureaucracy.

¶ His mother died in 1839, at which time Otto was 24; and on the young chap now fell the management of the Pomeranian estates.

¶ In 1844, Otto went to live with his father at Schoenhausen; here, Otto and his brother looked after the farms. Otto was later appointed Dyke-captain of the Elbe.

¶ Along about this time, a religious revival swept through Prussia and Otto was carried away on the flood; also, he began showing himself a strong monarchical man.

Always religious and always a King’s man, at heart, Otto now seriously studied religion and state affairs. When the call came, he was not found wanting!

¶ We hasten along. In 1847, Otto’s naturally deep religious convictions were strengthened by his wife’s uncompromising orthodoxy.

¶ It was in this year, also, that he made his entry into Prussian politics—to the study of which he was to devote his long life and his surprising genius. However, to present a clear idea of the work Bismarck was to do, it is necessary to return, briefly, to an earlier day, and to trace a complex historical movement through the past. We shall summarize, on broad lines, the problem presented by the question of German national unity. The German problem comprised a political, sociological and racial situation toward whose solution hundreds, if not thousands, of notable men and women, for several generations past, had sought in vain.

¶ “Nothing,” says Wilhelm Gorlach, “can more clearly prove Bismarck’s historical importance than the fact that we are obliged to go back several centuries to understand the connection of his actions.”