The proclamation of the German Empire (Versailles 1871)
Table of Anton von Werner, 1877
The policy bismarckienneBismarck equips the Germany news with an authoritative political structure.
IIe Reich preserves the Constitution worked out for the Confederation of Germany of the North, which envisages the democratic election of a Parliament, the Reichstag, but whose powers are limited to the only budgetary matters.
The Empire is organized on a federal basis, certain competences concerned with the States. However, the real power within the central government is between the hands of king de Prusse - invested title of emperor (Kaiser) - and of his advisers. As a long time as reign Guillaume I er, i.e. until in 1888, it is Bismarck, the chancellor of the Empire, which decides on the policy to follow in practically all the fields.
To have taken on the Reichstag, Bismarck encourages the formation of various coalitions, generally stripped of coherent political objectives. He starts by being combined to the liberals, his enemies of at one time, in order to stimulate commercial and industrial capitalism. In parallel, it fights the important catholic minority and its political organization, the party of the Center, which it shows to be enemy of Reich. This very rough, known campaign under the name of Kulturkampf (“combat for civilization”), is conducted of 1871 to 1878; it meets the savage resistance of the German catholics. Disapproved by the Prussian emperor and conservatives, Bismarck must finally compromise and restore the Church in his rights (as regards teaching in particular).
From 1878, the chancellor seeks to make alliance with the conservatives. It appears to him indeed that the best means of fighting against the economic depression is to apply high customs tariffs, political protectionist acceptable for preserving spirits but not for liberals. The enemy, for Bismarck, changed: it is from now on the social democrat party (SPD), moderate Marxist organization which then represents the German working class in full growth. In 1878, Bismarck promulgates laws of exception against the SPD and in parallel tries to join the workmen by the institution of a general system of social security, the first in the world. But it fails to eliminate the Socialists.
The chancellor follows a foreign politics more skilful than his interior policy. Not having more territorial aimings since the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, joint ownership of the German States, it undertakes to ensure stability in Europe. Working with the insulation of France, from which he seeks to divert the desire of revenge by guaranteeing his colonial policy, he concludes the Triple Alliance with Austria and Italy, in 1882, and signs a pact of reinsurance with Russia in 1887. He engages only tardily, and without much conviction, a colonial expansion policy, to gain the support of the nationalists and mediums of business of the Empire. In 1890, having lost control on the Reichstag, it plans to resort to the force to modify the Constitution, when the new emperor, Guillaume II, the constrained one to dislocate itself.
The reign of Guillaume II
Guillaume I er had as a transitory successor (less than four months) his son Frederic III; its grandson Guillaume II reigns on the other hand during thirty years, of 1888 to 1918. The Guillaume young person appreciates neither the exclusive seizure of Bismarck on the government of Germany, nor his attempts to subject the minorities by the force. After having drawn aside the chancellor of the power, it is tried to only control. The new emperor seeks to reconcile the German working class by abrogeant the laws antisocialists and by developing the system of the social laws. Little however laid out to sacrifice to the political democracy, it is opposed resolutely to the SPD and to the liberals representing the middle-class, who claim the reform of the old Prussian Constitution and the attribution of real powers to the Reichstag. The rise of the ideas reformists and the indignation caused by the repeated blunders of Guillaume II prepare the constitutional conflict which bursts the day before the First World War.
One of the most important complaints of the reformists relates to the hesitant foreign politics than carries out Guillaume II, advised by the diplomat Friedrich von Holstein and Bernhard von Bülow, who becomes secretary of foreign affairs in 1897 then chancellor of Empire in 1900. The emperor dissatisfied Great Britain by his arms race naval, without alleviating the hostility of France, from which it thwarts the colonial ambitions. Moreover, dubious to be able to maintain of face alliances with the two powers which dispute Balkans, Austria and Russia, he chooses Austria and does not renew, in 1890, the pact of reinsurance with Russia. This one turns then to France, with which it is combined in 1894. When von Bülow is replaced, in 1909, by a chancellor more moderated, Bethmann-Hollweg, Germany cannot count any more but on one ally, Austria-Hungary.
These political errors however are counterbalanced by brilliant economic and scientific achievements. Stimulated by the governmental subsidies and the close cooperation between bankers and industrialists, the country knows a true economic boom between 1870 and 1910. The German production of steel represents in 1910 the double of the British production. The German science and technology, supported by a system of research and very elaborate university education, are then regarded as the best in the world.