2. von Treitschke, Heinrich, Historische und Politische Aufsätze, III (4th ed., Leipzig, 1871), p. 612.Google Scholar

3. Spielhagen, Friedrich, Sturmflut, in Sämmtliche Werke, XIII, Part I (6th ed., Leipzig, 1886), 47.Google Scholar

4. Bismarck, , Die gesammelten Werke, XIV, Part I (2nd printing, Berlin, 1933), 179.Google Scholar

5. Quoted in Eichholtz, Dietrich, Junker und Bourgeoisie vor 1848 in der preussischen Eisenbahngeschichte ([East] Berlin, 1962), p. 37.Google Scholar

6. von Radowitz, Joseph Maria to Bismarck, Mar. 10, 1871, in Acta betreffend Verhandlungen mit Rumänien, A.A. II, Rep. 6, No. 4205, Deutsches Zentralarchiv, Merseburg.Google Scholar See also Strousberg's, self-justification, Dr. Strousberg und sein Wirken von ihm selbst geschildert (Berlin, 1876), pp. 337–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7. In 1879, Bismarck gave the French ambassador, the Comte de St. Vallier, a marvelously colorful account of the Strousberg affair. The European powers at the time were trying to force the Rumanian government to grant civic equality to its Jews, as it had promised at the Congress of Berlin. The Rumanians stalled, and Bismarck expressed his anger “at the crooks and savages…with the liveliness and brutal energy one often encounters in his assessments.” The ambassador reported the conversation verbatim: “My other motive [for being anti-Rumanian] has to do with a more private matter which for us however has an urgent and distressing character; you are familiar with the Strousberg affair; you know what bloodletting it has inflicted on German capital; close to 200 million francs have been swallowed up in these Rumanian railways which yield nothing and the value of which is hardly one-tenth of the cost; our greatest lords and our bootblacks believed that Strousberg would present them with a gold mine and a great many risked the best part of what they possessed, believing the promises of this adventurer. All that is buried now in the Rumanian mud, and, one fine day, two dukes, one general who is an aide-de-camp, a half-dozen ladies-in-waiting, twice that many chamberlains, a hundred coffeehouse owners and all the cabmen of Berlin found themselves totally ruined. The Emperor took pity on the dukes, the aide-de-camp, the ladies-in-waiting, and the chamberlains, and charged me with pulling them out of the trouble. I appealed to Bleichröder who, on condition of getting a title of nobility which as a Jew he valued, agreed to rescue the Duke of Ratibor, the Duke of Ujest, and General Count Lehndorf [sic]; two dukes and an aide-de-camp saved—frankly, that is worth the ‘von’ bestowed on the good Bleichröder. But the ladies-in-waiting, the cabmen and the others were left drowning, and even Bleichröder's three Moses [whom he had dredged out of the water] were not so entirely saved but that they have to face each year some nice trial in which they are sued for two or three million marks which they cannot pay since their domains of Ratibor, Ujest, etc. are totally mortgaged in exchange for the Bleichröder guarantee. There is but one way for everybody to get out of this trouble and that is to try to sell the Rumanian railways.… [At present] the Rumanian government exploits the owners' misery with usurious barbarism; by annoyances, injustices, extortions, it wants to force them to abandon the railways to the government for a crust of bread…every day our German engineers and workers are being beaten, maltreated, imprisoned, cheated, robbed of everything, and we can do nothing to help them attain justice. That is why I just told you that I wished I could use naval ships as in Nicaragua to obtain satisfactions; but that is impossible, and neither do I have balloons [aerostats] to send in German troops.” He urged the dukes to sell the railways, perhaps to Austria or Russia—for cash because to lend money to these great defaulters would be a mistake. The dukes thought that Bismarck might object to the Rumanian railways being sold to Russia, but he had reassured them “that it was a matter of indifference to me if the Rumanian railways and indeed all of Rumania should fall into Russian hands.” The French ambassador added to the Quaid'Orsay that this was perhaps not quite so pleasant a prospect for France. Archives du Ministère des affaires étrangères, Correspondance Politique, Allemagne, XXVII, Feb. 26, 1879.

8. Ludwig Bamberger summed up the Strousberg fiasco with his usual anti-aristocratic bias: “Because charlatanry in all realms has no more credulous adherent than the aristocracy, financial wizards [like Strousberg] always manage to entrap many aristocrats who for their part are ready to contribute the radiance of their name to the sham gilding of an enterprise. In turn, they are rewarded from the first easily acquired profit of that enterprise. Strousberg understood perfectly how to fashion for himself such an aura out of the Prussian aristocracy; the aristocracy's still prevalent view that all financial business really encompasses fraud derives perhaps in part from its recollections [of Strousberg].” Bamberger, Ludwig, Erinnerungen, ed. Nathan, Paul (Berlin 1899), 527.Google Scholar

9. Bismarck, , Die gesammelten Werke, VI c, 156.Google Scholar German diplomats of the time were also underpaid and consistently received lower salaries than the representatives of other great powers. When Count Solms-Sonnenwalde, than Prussian minister in Dresden, wrote Bleichröder concerning the desirability of changing his investment portfolio, he added: “Forgive me, dear Baron, if I trouble you with so small a matter; but since the state cares so little about the improvement of the salaries of Prussian diplomats, while the Russian post here has been raised to 20,000 talers, I have to look out for other ways of augmenting my income”. Count Solms to Bleichröder, Mar. 9, 1875, Bleichröder, Archive in possession of F. H. Brunner, a partner of Arnhold and S. Bleichroeder, New York. I would like to express my gratitude to Mr. Brunner for placing that archive at the disposal of Professor David S. Landes and myself. See also Morsey, Rudolf, Die oberste Reichsverwaltung unter Bismarck 1867–1890 (Münster, 1957), 113.Google Scholar

10. See my “Gold and Iron: The Collaboration and Friendship of Gerson Bleichröder and Otto von Bismarck,” American Historical Review, LXXV, No. I (10 1969), 37–46.Google Scholar

11. Count Pückler to Bleichröder, Sept. 2, 1876, Bleichröder Archive.

12. Henckel-Donnersmarck to Bleichröder, Oct. 9 and 28, 1878, Bleichröder Archive.

13. The Hatzfeldt Letters. Letters of Count Paul Hatzfeldt to his Wife, Written from the Head-Quarters of the King of Prussia 1870–1871, transl. from the French by Bashford, J. L. (London, 1905), p. 282.Google Scholar

14. Hatzfeldt to Bleichröder, Feb. 9, 1872, Bleichröder Archive.

15. And fellow diplomats. Count Harry von Arnim was deeply involved in stock market speculations at the very time when he was fighting for his political survival in the early 1870's. Bismarck suspected Arnim of delaying important negotiations with the French government in order to complete some market operations. Arnim's secretary at the Embassy, Friedrich von Holstein, also showed a lively interest in financial operations. Details will appear in a forthcoming work on Gerson Bleichröder.

16. Fontane, Theodor, Der Stechlin (Berlin, 1905), pp. 232 and 208.Google Scholar In Spielhagen's Sturmflut, some crafty promoters try to lure a count, heavily in debt, into the shadowy world of promotion. At different stages of submission, the count exclaims: “No, if I am to join the promoters, then it cannot be for a bagatelle. Then I want the coup to be a capital coup which will compensate me for the pangs of conscience that I will feel for having squarely violated the traditions of my family—a coup that will secure my future for all time.” When he utters a last gasp of moral hesitation about people, especially ordinary people, getting rich fast, his tempter replies: “On the contrary, this should prove encouraging. If people without names, without connections, without inherited wealth can bring it so far in such a short time…what remains unattainable for you gentlemen who, unlike them, have the immeasurable advantages of birth, connections, patronage, an inherited estate—provided that you liberate yourselves from certain prejudices, of course, very honorable prejudices, and seize your chance with energy and relish, as they do”. Sturmflut, op. cit., 202 and 219.

17. Quoted in Jöhlinger, Otto, Bismarck und die Juden (Berlin, 1921), p. 27.Google Scholar

18. On the earlier realism, see one of the few studies on attitudes toward money that has appeared: Altenhein, Hans-Richard, “Geld und Geldeswert. Über die Selbstdarstellung des Bürgertums in der Literatur des 18. Jahrhunderts,” in das werck der bucher. Von der Wirksamkeit des Buches in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, Festschrift for Horst Kliemann, ed. Hodeige, Fritz (Freiburg, 1956), pp.201–13.Google Scholar

19. Fontane, Theodor, Frau Jenny Treibel (Berlin, 1905), pp. 32, 96.Google Scholar

20. We now have three important studies that deal with the place of the depression in German development: Böhme, Helmut, Deutschlands Weg zur Grossmacht. Studien zum Verhältnis von Wirtschaft und Staat während der Reichsgründungszeit 1848–1881 (Cologne, 1966);Google ScholarRosenberg, Hans, Grosse Depression und Bismarckzeit. Wirtschaftsablauf, Gesellschaft und Politik in Mitteleuropa (Berlin, 1967);CrossRefGoogle ScholarWehler, Hans-Ulrich, Bismarck und der Imperialismus (Cologne, 1969).Google Scholar

21. von Kardorff, Siegfried, Wilhelm von Kardorff. Ein nationaler Parlamentarier im Zeitalter Bismarcks und Wilhelms II., 1828–1907 (Berlin, 1936), p. 100;Google ScholarDrvon Poschinger, H. Ritter, Fürst Bismarck und die Parlamentarier, II, 1847–1879 (Breslau, 1895), 202.Google Scholar

22. DrMeyer, Rudolph, Politische Gründer und die Corruption in Deutschland (Leipzig, 1877), p. 204.Google Scholar

23. Hamann, Richard and Hermand, Jost, Gründerzeit (“Deutsche Kunst und Kultur von der Gründerzeit bis zum Expressionismus,” I, Berlin, 1965), p. 46.Google Scholar

24. Kreuzzeitung, June 29, 1875; DrMeyer, Rudolph, Politische Gründer, p. 111.Google Scholar

25. Poschinger, , Fürst Bismarck und die Parlamentarier, I (2nd ed., Breslau, 1894), 87.Google Scholar

26. Letters from the Berlin Embassy 1871–1874, 1880–1885, ed. Knaplund, Paul (“Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1942,” II, Washington, 1944), p. 58.Google Scholar

27. Bismarck-Erinnerungen des Staatsministers Freiherrn Lucius von Ballhausen (Stuttgart, 1921), p. 110.Google Scholar

28. Staatssekretär Graf Herbert von Bismarck. Aus seiner politischen Privatkorrespondenz, ed. Bussmann, Walter (“Deutsche Geschichtsquellen des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts,” XLIV, Göttingen, 1964), p. 15.Google Scholar

29. Hatzfeldt to Bleichröder, Apr. 15, 1878, Bleichröder Archive.

30. Im Ring der Gegner Bismarcks. Denkschriften und Politischer Briefwechsel Franz von Roggenbachs mit Kaiserin Augusta und Albrecht von Stosch 1865–1896, ed. Heyderhoff, Julius (“Deutsche Geschichtsquellen des 19. Jahrhunderts,” xxxv, 2nd printing, Leipzig, 1943), p. 184.Google Scholar

31. Ibid., p. 213.

32. In November 1873, Lord Russell reported from Berlin: “While shooting in Silesia I met many great and small landed proprietors. They spoke freely of their hatred of Bismarck whose radical German policy and persecution of the Clergy was alienating the Prussian Aristocracy from the Throne. The Prussian Aristocracy had ever shed their best blood in the hour of danger for the House of Hohenzollern, but in the day of prosperity Bismarck used his ambitious influence to mislead their old King into treating them as enemies etc. etc. Most of them said they would not go to Berlin this Winter so as not to mark their disatisfaction [sic] with the Court and Government,—but I suspect also, to save money, for Berlin has become simply ruinous.” Letters from the Berlin Embassy, p. 117.

33. von Bismarck, Otto Fürst, Gedanken und Erinnerungen, II (Stuttgart, 1898), 156.Google Scholar

34. DrMeyer, Rudolph, Politische Gründer, p. 27.Google Scholar

35. Letters from the Berlin Embassy, p. 71.

36. Nipperdey, Thomas, “Nationalidee und Nationaldenkmal in Deutschland im 19. Jahrhundert,” Historische Zeitschrift, CCVI, No. 3 (06 1968), 582.Google Scholar

37. Dahrendorf, Ralf, Society and Democracy in Germany (New York, 1967), p. 275.Google Scholar