(originally published by H-German on 23 January 1996)
Since the controversies of the 1970s and 1980s over the Sonderweg thesis and the nature of the Kaiserreich, work on this period lacks the passion and intensity of the past. In returning to a familiar episode in the Bismarckian period, the so-called Battenberg affair, Kollander is unlikely to light any fires, but she does seek to illumine the links between foreign and domestic policy and to assert the continuing strength of liberalism after its supposed demise in 1878-9. More specifically, Kollander argues that Bismarck consciously constructed the right-center coalition know as the Cartel in 1887 to destroy the liberal challenge.
Kollander deftly examines the essentials of the Battenberg affair. Alexander of Battenberg, German prince and relative of Tsar Alexander II, had been installed by the Russians as ruler of Bulgaria in 1878. Far from proving the compliant puppet, Alexander earned the distrust of the Russians and the visceral dislike of Tsar Alexander III. Tensions came to a head in September 1885, when rebels in Eastern Rumelia ousted the Turks and sought unification with Bulgaria in violation of the 1878 Treaty of Berlin. To preserve his position in Bulgaria, Alexander had to support the aims of the rebels, but opened himself to possible retaliatory action by the Turks and Russians. The latter, in fact, hoped to use the crisis to oust him. His personal relationships complicated the affair. Handsome and charming, Alexander had won the support of the three Victorias: Queen Victoria of Britain; her daughter, the Crown Princess Victoria of Germany and wife of Frederick William; and their daughter, Victoria, who had lost her heart to the dashing Alexander in June 1883. Seeking her daughter's happiness but also the strengthening of ties with Britain and of the liberal cause in Germany, the Crown Princess became a tenacious advocate of the marriage of Victoria to Prince Alexander.
The issue posed two problems for Bismarck. First, regarding his foreign policy, the Bulgarian crisis threatened his efforts to preserve stability in the Balkans and thus maintain the resurrected, but fragile Three Emperors' League of Germany, Russia, and Austria-Hungary. Early on Bismarck had bluntly told Prince Alexander that Germany would give no support to his anti-Russian policies. A marriage between Prince Alexander and Victoria would generate Russian suspicions of Germany and hence jeopardize Bismarck's delicate balancing act between Russia and Austria-Hungary. He, therefore, adamantly opposed the marriage, and used his formidable political muscle to prevent it. He also used his diplomatic skill to repair the damage caused by the collapse of the Three Emperors' League as evidenced by the Reinsurance Treaty and the Mediterranean Agreements of 1887.
Second, the proposed marriage had domestic implications. As the supporters of liberal ideals embodied in the left-liberal Deutsche Freisinnige Partei and as the bearers of hopes for the liberal cause when they came to the throne, Victoria and Frederick were a threat to Bismarck's position and policies. After Alexander had abdicated the Bulgarian throne in September 1886 and returned to Germany, rumors circulated that the Crown Prince, on gaining the throne, would appoint him governor of Alsace-Lorraine or even chancellor. Bismarck could abide neither possibility. Through his influence over Emperor William I, Bismarck could handle the Battenberg challenge, but he feared for his position once Frederick assumed the throne. Hence, according to Kollander, "he had to construct a parliamentary majority for himself if he wished to have any hope of remaining in office" (44). In building the Cartel, Bismarck exploited the international situation to advance a new armaments bill which if passed would weaken the opposition and if rejected would provide the basis for dissolution of the Reichstag and an electoral campaign based on coalition of right-wing National Liberals and Conservatives. The latter strategy worked, though Kollander concludes that Frederick's fatal illness and not the Cartel ultimately thwarted Victoria's effort to dismantle Bismarck's system.
Author of a recent dissertation, "The Liberalism of Frederick III," Kollander tells a story well know in its essentials. In his classic, European Alliances and Alignments, 1871-1890 (New York, 1931) William Langer explored the international aspects of the crisis. More recently J. Alden Nichols, The Year of the Three Kaisers: Bismarck and the German Succession, 1887-88 (Urbana, 1987) and Otto Pflanze in Bismarck and the Development of Germany, Vol. III: The Period of Fortification (Princeton, 1990) provide substantive treatment of various dimensions of the issue. One might well ask why Kollander chooses to explore the subject again. To be sure she presents complex material in clear, accessible manner and enriches the discussion by extensive use of the unpublished correspondence of the Crown Prince and Crown Princess as well as the Norman Rich biography of Friedrich von Holstein and the latter's published papers. But the justification for returning to this issue would seem to lie in the argument she advances, not in the freshness of the material.
Here a number of questions should be raised. First, Kollander argues that historians of Imperial Germany have prematurely sounded the death-knell of German liberalism. In particular, she accuses Hans-Ulrich Wehler of this error, yet in The German Empire, 1871-1918 (New York, 1985) Wehler writes "Bismarck took political liberalism seriously as an opposition force, along with the imponderables that could work in its favour, for example, the Anglophile sympathies of the Crown Prince and his English wife...."(188) Second, the author fails to substantiate her second argument that "the royal couple's position in the Battenberg affair in fact constituted a threat that Bismarck was compelled to destroy by putting together...the Cartel" (29). While Kollander provides ample evidence to indicate that Bismarck strongly opposed the Battenberg marriage for foreign policy reasons and was concerned about Alexander's acquiring a position in Germany thus strengthening the liberal faction in domestic politics, she provides no direct evidence to support her claim about Bismarck's motives for putting together the Cartel. The evidence remains circumstantial and the argument is underdeveloped in the article. Further, Kollander does not address the stimulating interpretation advanced by Nichols that "it seems quite clear that in constructing the cartel and launching it victoriously on a wave of national enthusiasm, Bismarck was fighting for the next kaiser; he had actually provided Frederick William and Victoria with a Liberal-Conservative majority with which they could practically and successfully govern" (17). In some crucial respects, then, Kollander's article does not do enough to justify its existence.