CHAPTER XVI - Germany, Italy and eastern Europe

Summary

In the Europe of the first fourteen years of the twentieth century, the political society of the greatest vitality was that of the German Empire. United within the curious federal framework provided by Bismarck, the Germans displayed different levels of political development, sharp social contrasts and conflicts, and yet a dominant centripetal tendency. The kingdom of Prussia extended from Aachen to Memel, from Flensburg to Kattowitz, right across the map of the new Germany: two-thirds, indeed, of the Germans were technically Prussians, and Prussia embraced the coalfields both of the Rhineland and of Silesia. The Prussian Landtag was elected according to the Three-Class system which gave far more representation, as well as strong administrative influence over the elections (which were indirect), to the rich. In the south-west public opinion was more justly mirrored in the Chambers of Baden, Württemberg and Bavaria, as it was in those of the northern city-states of Hamburg, Bremen and Lübeck: Bavaria, after Prussia the biggest member of the Federal Empire, had special rights of her own, and headed the Catholic minority interest against the Lutheranism of Berlin and the north. The life of the ordinary German depended primarily upon the authority of the state in which he lived rather than on the imperial authority: he paid direct taxes for instance to the state of Prussia or Bavaria and only indirect taxes to the empire.