No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
Edward Lasker, German parliamentarian, was born on August 14, 1829, in Jaroczin, a small village in the province of Posen, the Polish area of Prussia. The offspring of an orthodox Jewish family, the young man studied the Talmud and translated Schiller into Hebrew verse. At first he showed a preference for philosophy and mathematics but turned later to history, political science, and law. Influenced by contemporary pre-Marxian socialism, he, together with his fellow students, fought on the barricades during the revolution of 1848. It became clear to him after passing his law examinations that he could not expect an adequate appointment in the civil service of reactionary Prussia.
1 For Lasker's early years see Paul Wentzcke, “Glaubensbekenntnisse einer politischer Jugend,” in Paul Wentzcke, ed., Deutscher Stoat und deutsche Parteien, Festschrift für Meinecke (Munich and Berlin, 1922), pp. 87–96.Google Scholar
2 Ibid., p. 194.
3 Valentin, Veit, “Bismarck and Lasker,” in Journal of Central European Affairs, III, No. 4 (Jan. 1944), 4–5. Valentin intended his article to be a chapter of a biography, which would be published after the war under the title, Edward Lasker or the Tragedy of German Liberalism, but he died before he could complete the task.Google Scholar
4 Wentzcke, op. cit., p. 96.Google Scholar
5 Among Lasker's major works were: Zur Verfassungsgeschichte Preussens (Leipzig, 1874);Google ScholarDie Zukunft des deutschen Reiches (Vortrag, 1877) (Leipzig, 1884);Google ScholarWege und Ziele der Kulturentwicklung (Leipzig, 1881);Google ScholarBiographie und letzte öfientliche Reden, mit Nekrolog von Karl Baumbach (Stuttgart, 1884).Google Scholar
6 von Mohl, Robert, Lebenserinnerungen (2 vols., Stuttgart, 1902), II, 175.Google Scholar
7 Dill, Robert W., Der Parlamentarier Eduard Lasker und die parlamentarische Stilentwicklung der Jahre 1867–1884 (Erlangen, 1956), p. 189.Google Scholar
8 Ziekursch, Johannes, Politische Geschichte des neuert deutschen Kaiserreiches (3 vols., Frankfurt-am-Main, 1925–1930), II, 287.Google Scholar
9 Dawson, William Harbutt, The German Empire, 1867–1914, and the Unity Movement (2 vols., New York, 1919), II, 33.Google Scholar
10 Valentin, Veit, The German People, tr. Olga Marx (New York, 1946), p. 489.Google Scholar
11 Becker, Otto, Bismarcks Ringen um Deutschland (Heidelberg, 1958), p. 375.Google Scholar
12 Lowe, Charles, Prince Bismarck, An Historical Biography (2 vols., London, 1885), p. 375.Google Scholar
13 Stearms, Frank Preston, The Life of Prince Otto von Bismarck (Philadelphia, 1899), p. 294.Google Scholar
14 Ziekursch, op. cit., II, 229.Google Scholar
15 On 01 25, 1875, in conversation in Berlin with Reichstag delegate Christoph von Tiedemann and the historian Heinrich von Sybel, Bismarck said: “Lasker is really a state sickness; he is more of a plant louse than Windhorst” (von Bismarck, Otto, Die gesammelten Werke [Berlin, 1923 ff.], VII, 139).Google Scholar
16 Ziekursch, op. cit., II, 360.Google Scholar
17 On 05 15, 1894, in conversation at Friedrichsruh with Regierungsrat Heinrich von Poschinger and the historian Heinrich von Sybel, Bismarck said: “In the long run there could be no lasting alliance with the National Liberals. The main cause of our break was the enfant terrible Lasker (Bismarck, Die gesammelten Werke, IX, 387).Google Scholar
18 Heinrich von Poschinger, Conversations with Bismarck, ed. Whitman, Sidney (New York, 1900), p. 113.Google Scholar
19 Eyck, Erich, Bismarck (3 vols., Zurich, 1941–1944), III, 46.Google Scholar
20 von Bismarck, Otto, Gedanken und Erinnerungen (3 vols. in 1, Stuttgart and Berlin, 1928), p. 326.Google Scholar
21 Busch, Moritz, Tagebuchblätter (3 vols., Leipzig, 1899 ff.), II, 565 ff.Google Scholar
22 Ibid., III, 9 ff.
23 Ibid.
24 Braun, Carl, Randglossen zu den politischen Wandlungen der letzten Jahre (Bromberg, 1878), p. 161.Google Scholar
25 Poschinger, op. cit., pp. 262–63.Google Scholar
26 Busch, op. cit., II, 587 ff.Google Scholar
27 Bismarck, Die gesammelten Werke, VIII, 497.Google Scholar
28 Valentin, , “Bismarck and Lasker,” op. cit., pp. 401–02.Google Scholar
29 On the party split see Otto Pflanze, Bismarck and the Development of Germany: The Period of Unification, 18151871 (Princeton, N.J., 1963), pp. 330–31;Google ScholarLöwenthal, Fritz, Der preussische Verfassungsstreit 1862–1866, (Munich, 1914), pp. 302 ff.;Google ScholarSpahn, Martin, “Zur Entstehung der nationalliberalen Partei,” Zeitschrift fur Politik, I (1907–1908), 302 ff.;Google Scholar and Craig, Gordon A., The Politics of the Prussian Army, 1640–1945 (Oxford, 1955), p. 177.Google Scholar
30 Eyck, Erich, Bismarck and the German Empire (London, 1950), p. 148.Google Scholar
31 Bismarck, , Die gesammelten Werke, II, 115. The debate took place at a session of the Reichstag of the North German Confederation on 04 1, 1870.Google Scholar
32 Busch, , op. cit., I, 25.Google Scholar
33 Stenographische Berichte über die Verhandlungen des Hauses der Abgeordneten (Berlin, 1871), pp. 150–51.Google Scholar
34 Cf. Lowe, , op. cit., II, 392–93. Lowe added: “Of these malpractices Herr Lasker, a Jew, undertook the exposure all the more readily, as the delinquents were not members of his own speculating and gambling race, but blood-proud Junkers and titled Christians” (p. 392). Thus the historian Lowe, like many Germans of the day, tended to make Lasker responsible for the financial crash of 1873. See also Valentin, The German People, p. 488.Google Scholar
35 Lasker's speeches on the railway scandals made an enormous impression throughout Germany and raised his popularity to a pinnacle. See Eyck, Bismarck, III, 63–64.Google Scholar
36 Stenographische Berichte über die Verhandlungen des Reichstages (Berlin, 1873), June 16, 1873, p. 1178.Google Scholar
37 Lowe, , op. cit., II, 406. In 1878, following an attack on the life of the emperor, Bismarck obtained legislation directed against workers' associations, publications, and rights of meeting. Lasker called these anti-Socialist laws “a political and juridical monstrosity.” See Ralph Flenley, Modern German History (London, 1959), p. 278.Google Scholar
38 Bamberger, Ludwig, Bismarcks grosses Spiel, Die geheimen Tagenbiicher Ludwig Bambergers, ed. Ernst Feder (Frankfurt-am-Main, 1932), p. 321.Google Scholar
39 Valentin, , “Bismarck and Lasker,” op. cit., p. 408.Google Scholar
40 Ibid., pp. 409–10. See also Dill, op. cit., pp. 172–175; and Eyck, , Bismarck, III, 286–87.Google Scholar
41 Valentin, , “Bismarck and Lasker,” op. cit., 410;Google ScholarEyck, , Bismarck, III, 357–58. In the elections of 1879 Herbert Bismarck, with the blessings of his father, had deliberately stood for a Reichstag seat from Meiningen in order to silence Lasker inside “Lasker voting territory” with the ring of the Bismarck name. Herbert was soundly trounced.Google ScholarHerbert Bismarck had used these tactics once before. He was a Conservative candidate for Lauenberg in the Reichstag elections of 07 17, 1878. His campaign was singularly inept, characterized by overconfidence and a somewhat tactless treatment of the voting public. Herbert identified his candidacy with his father's views. “As to my other views, you know all about them, my position relative to my father, the Reich Chancellor, and you will understand that I identify my political position with his. This is well-known to you. I won't bore you with clarifying my program and I won't ruin your lovely afternoon.” The overconfident Herbert was defeated in a close contest, polling 3,894 votes against the National Liberal candidate, Dr. Hammacher, who received 4,276 votes. See Johannes Penzler, ed., Fürst Herbert von Bismarcks politische Reden (Berlin und Stuttgart, 1905), p. 8.Google Scholar
42 For example, Bismarck never broke off his personal relations, not even during the most emotional stages of the Kulturkampf, with his fierce political enemy, leader of the Catholic Center Party, Ludwig Windhorst (1812–1891). And yet Bismarck had said: “My life is preserved and made pleasant by two things — my wife and Windhorst. One exists for love, the other for hate.” (Ziekursch, op. cit., II, 229.)Google Scholar
43 Dill, op. cit., p. 200.Google Scholar
44 There were extensive reports of the death in The New York Times, 01 6, 1884; the New York Tribune, 01 6, 1884; and the New Yorker Staats-Zeitung, 01 6, 1884. Lucius von Ballhausen believed the death to have been caused by typhus (Freiherr Lucius von Ballhausen, Bismarck- Erinnerungen [Stuttgart, 1921], p. 278), while Dr. Zinn, a psychiatrist and early political friend of Lasker, attributed the collapse to nerve fever (Bamberger, op. cit., pp. 272–73). However, after an autopsy performed by four physicians in New York, it was revealed that Lasker's death was due to a combination of four diseases: (1) degeneration of the blood vessels; (2) two spots of softening of the brain; (3) dilation and fatty degeneration of the heart; and (4) edema of the lungs. (The New York Times, 01 7, 1884.)Google Scholar
45 von Ballhausen, Lucius, op. cit., 278.Google Scholar
46 01 7, 1884.Google Scholar
47 01 7, 1884.Google Scholar
48 01 8, 1884.Google Scholar
49 01 8, 1884.Google Scholar
50 01 6, 1884.Google Scholar
51 The Nation, XXXVIII, No. 967 (01 10, 1884), 28–29.Google ScholarThe editorial was unsigned but Poole's Index to Periodical Literature, Jan. 1, 1882 Jan. 1, 1887 (New York, 1938), p. 250, attributed it to Carl Schurz.Google Scholar
52 Eyck, Bismarck, III, 378. Correspondent F. Rapp reported to The Nation from Berlin on “Official Indignities to Lasker” and noted that the American government was not officially represented. A leader of the Prussian Landtag, a Mr. von Koeller, gave as a reason for his absence the “arrogant and anonymous German-American Turners and radicals of Cincinnati, Louisville, and other cities who had, in rather unbecoming terms, entreated him to have sufficient courage to take part in the proceedings.” Lasker had been a member of the Prussian Landtag for fifteen years. The Nation, XXXVIII, No. 974 (02 28, 1884), 184–85.Google Scholar
53 Congressional Record, 48 Cong., 1st sess. (01 9, 1884), 329.Google Scholar
54 Bismarck's action became known almost at once, although the formal return of the resolution to the House of Representatives was not made until 03 7, 1884 by the German ambassador in Washington. (The New York Times, 03 8, 1884.)Google Scholar
55 New York Tribune, 02 17, 1884.Google Scholar
56 New York Tribune, 03 3, 1884.Google Scholar
57 The New York Times, 02 29, 1884.Google Scholar
58 Congressional Record, 48 Gong., 1st sess. (02 28, 1884), 1464.Google Scholar
59 Deutscher Reichstag, Stenographische Berichte, 03 7, 1884, 9–12. See also Eyck, Bismarck, III, 378–79;MGoogle ScholarDill, op. cit., p. 202;Google Scholar and The New York Times, 03 8, 1884.Google Scholar
60 The New York Times, 03 11, 1884.Google Scholar
61 Congressional Record, 48 Cong., 1st sess. (03 10, 1884), 1766.Google Scholar
62 Condensed from Bismarck, Parlamentarischen Reden, ed. Wilhelm Bohm and A. Dove (Stuttgart, Berlin, Leipzig, n.d.), XIII, 143–65. Bismarck's speech ran for 22 pages in text form. See also Heinrich von Poschinger, Fiirst Bismarck und die Parlamentarler (3 vols., Breslau, 1894ff.), III, 127, and Adolf Wermuth, Ein Beamtenleben (Berlin, 1922), p. 54,Google Scholar
63 Bismarck, Parlamentarischen Reden, XIII, 145.Google Scholar
64 Ibid., 147.
65 Ibid., 149 ff.
66 Ibid., 154–55.
67 Ibid., 157.
68 Ibid., p. 160.
69 Ibid., p. 161.
70 New York Herald, 03 14, 1884.Google Scholar
71 The New York Times, 03 14, 1884.Google Scholar
72 Congressional Record, 48 Cong., 1st sess. (03 19, 1884), 2073.Google Scholar
73 The New York Times, March 20, 1884. In reporting the news story The New York Times editorialized in its news columns by accusing the Foreign Affairs Committee of attempting to “rectify the blunder” committed by the House with its original resolution. The newspaper reported a “general interest in getting out of this scrape.”
74 Congressional Record, 48 Cong., 1st sess. (03 19, 1884), 2073.Google Scholar
75 ibid., 2074.
76 ibid., 2075.
77 Allgemeine Zeitung, Munich, 01 26, 1884.Google Scholar
78 Congressional Record, 48 Cong., 1st sess. (03 19, 1884), 2079.Google Scholar
79 ibid., 2080
77 The New York Times, 03 20, 1884.Google Scholar
77 Valentin, “Bismarck and Lasker,” op. cit., p. 415.Google Scholar
82 From Frau von Spitzemberg's unpublished diary, in Bismarck, Die gesammelten Werke, VIII, 501.Google Scholar
83 The New York Times, 03 22, 1884.Google Scholar
84 This was the view of Moritz Lasker, the brother who accompanied the remains of Eduard Lasker to Berlin for the funeral. In an interview he said: “Bismarck, having discovered the grave mistake in excluding all official recognition at the funeral services of Dr. Lasker, seized upon this resolution which, in contrast with his own action, had met with the warm sentiment of the German people, to give it the importance of a political document, and by returning it to weaken the influence of the friendly sympathy which existed between the two nations, in behalf of the ideas which Dr. Lasker lived to advocate and support.” (New York Tribune, 02 26, 1884.)Google Scholar
86 F. Rapp, correspondent for The Nation, reported that for some weeks the Lasker affair was a sensation throughout Germany. “All the hounds of the Reptile Fund have been let loose to manifest their meanness coupled with ignorance.” (The press bureau of the Prussian Ministry of the Interior and a similar organization of the Imperial Home Office furnished numerous journals with complete articles gratis. Such communications appeared simultaneously throughout the country. Radical and Socialist opponents labeled this the “Reptile Press,” which, they said, was inspired in wholesale manner by Bismarck.)
Rapp went on to report that the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung denounced the Lasker resolution as interference in German home matters and described the incident as an American electioneering trick, a means by which the House of Representatives was seeking “to maintain its power at the next presidential elections.” Further, the paper stated flatly that the resolution was composed by members of the Reichstag “who write and speak English” and that it was sent to Washington with directions to have it adopted at once and sent back to the Chancellor. The Nation, XXXVIII, No. 977 (03. 20, 1884), 251.Google Scholar
85 Stimulated by the agrarian crisis of the 1870's, Bismarck switched from laissez-faire protagonist to advocate for protection to assure a new source of revenue for the Reich and to use tariffs as a weapon of foreign policy. The first tariff law was passed by the Reichstag on March 12, 1879 by a vote of 217 to 117. On the changes in Bismarck's economic policies see Oswald Schneider, Bismarck's Finanz- und Wirtschaftspolitik (Munich, 1912)Google Scholar; Joseph, B. EsslenDie Politik des auswärtigen Handels (Stuttgart, 1925)Google Scholar; and Ropke, Wilhelm, German Commercial Policy (New York, 1934).Google ScholarIn Alfred Vagts's view the agrarian encounter between the United States and Germany “received its diplomatic-ideological clarification or darkening through Bismarck's (agrarian-unchivalrous) bearing at the death of Lasker in 1884.” Alfred Vagts, Deutschland und die Vereinigten Staaten in der Weltpolitik (2vols.,New York, 1935), I, 1.Google Scholar
87 Eyck, Bismarck, III, 379.Google Scholar
88 Valentin “Bismarck and Lasker,” op. cit., p. 409. Baumbach sued his local adversaries for slander, and von Swain, chairman of the Bismarck election committee, was found guilty and sentenced.
89 Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 03 10, 1884.Google Scholar
90 See Snyder, Louis L.“The American-German Pork Dispute, 1879–1891,” The Journal of Modern History, XVII, No. 1 (03, 1945), 16–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
91 See Keim, JeanetteForty Years of German-American Political Relations (Philadelphia, 1919), p. 68Google Scholar
92 In July, 1894, Bismarck told an American journalist: “It is absolutely necessary for us people of Europe to protect ourselves in time against your competition, for whenever the point arrives that the United States is not checked in its inroads on our agriculture, complete ruin will overtake our land-holding classes. It was the knowledge of American competition, with which, without protective lines, we are unable to cope in our smaller and older and poorer lands, which dictated my agricultural policy.” Wolf von Schierbrand, Germany: The Welding of a World Power (New York, 1902), p. 354.Google Scholar
93 Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, 03 1, 1884.Google Scholar
94 From 1862, when Bismarck became Minister-President and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Prussia, to 1890, when he resigned as German Chancellor, there were ten American ambassadors in Berlin: Judd, Norman B. (Illinois, appointed in 1861), Wright, Joseph A. (Indiana, 1865), Bancroft, George (New York, 1867), Bancroft, J. G. (New York, 1874), Taylor, Bayard (Pennsylvania, 1878), White, Andrew D. (New York, 1879), Sargent, Aaron A. (California, 1882), Kesson, John A. (Iowa, 1884), Pendleton, George H.(Ohio, 1885), and Phelps, William Walter (New Jersey, 1889).Google Scholar
95 This view was supported by Otto Graf zu Stolberg-Wemigerode in his Germany and the United States in the Era of Bismarck (Reading, Pa., 1937), pp. 152–165. Stolberg-Wemigerode accused the American ambassador of receiving his political information from Bismarck's political opponents, and deprecated Sargent's earlier experience as journalist and as politician in the House of Representatives.Google Scholar
96 On 03 10, 1883, the New Yorker Handels-Zeitung published an article, supposedly by Sargent, dated January 1, 1883, in which it was intimated that the prohibition of American pork had been dictated by German agrarians. Sargent explained to Washington that his views had been distorted {Foreign Relations, 1883, Part I (Washington, 1884), 377–78 and 381–82), and in an interview with the Boersen-Kurier denied that he had written any such article for the New Yorker Handels-Zeitung (New York Herald, 05 2, 1883).Google Scholar
97 Stolberg-Wemigerode stated that “on such occasions the Chancellor's self-control seems particularly admirable.” Stolberg-Wemigerode, op. cit., p. 158Google Scholar
98 Deutsche Tageblatt, 02 20, 1884.Google Scholar
99 The Nation, XXXVIII, No. 977 (03 20, 1884), 251.Google Scholar
100 Ibid., p. 252.
101 Erich Eyck, Bismarck, I, 424.Google Scholar
102 The New York Times, 03 14, 1884.Google Scholar
103 New York Tribune, 02 21, 1884.Google Scholar
104 Ibid., March 9, 1884.
105 The New York Times, 03 14, 1884. Bismarck seized the occasion to make it clear that Sargent's appointment and continued service were inconsistent with Germany's “national dignity” and that his “journalistic agitation” and his relations with German opposition parties made it imperative that he be recalled.Google Scholar