BISMARCK-SCH6ENHAUSEN 



752 



BISMARCK-SCHONHAUSEN 



occupied by a combined force of Australian 

 and New Zealand troops and annexed to Great 

 Britain. They are situated about sixty miles 

 east of New Guinea and cover a total area 

 of 18,200 square miles. The principal products 

 are copra, coffee, cotton, rubber and copper. 

 Population, consisting chiefly of Papuans, about 

 189,000. 



BISMARCK - SCHONHADSEN , bis ' mark 

 .s/iocn' how zcn, KARL OTTO EDUARD LEOPOLD 

 vox, Prince (1815-1898), the greatest German 

 statesman of the nineteenth century and one of 

 the most commanding figures in all history. 

 Through his 

 genius the Ger- 

 man people, after 

 centuries of dis- 

 union and op- 

 pression, were 

 brought together 

 to begin their his- 

 tory anew under 

 the government 

 of a united 

 Empire. He was 

 born of a noble 

 Prussian family 

 of Schonhausen, 

 in the district of 

 Magdeburg. At the age of seventeen he began 

 the study of law and political science at the 

 University of Gottingen, completed his studies 

 at Berlin and was admitted to the bar in 1835. 

 After serving his term in the army as lieutenant 

 of the Life Guards, he began to take an interest 

 in local affairs and in 1846 became a member of 

 the provincial diet, or legislative assembly, of 

 Saxony; in 1847 he was elected to the Prussian 

 diet. 



The following year was the time of a great 

 revolutionary outbreak that swept over all 

 Europe. In Prussia peace was secured only 

 when King Frederick William IV granted the 

 people a constitution and promised to rule 

 according to its provisions. During this critical 

 period Bismarck had been coming to the front 

 as a strong advocate of increased power for 

 the king, and his speeches in the new Prussian 

 Parliament elected in 1849 brought him favor- 

 ably to the attention of Frederick William. 

 Accordingly, in 1851 his sovereign appointed 

 him representative of Prussia in the Germanic 

 diet at Frankfort, the most important event 

 thus far in his career. 



During eight 'years of service at Frankfort, 

 Bismarck established in his mind the policy 



PRINCE BISMARCK 



which was later to bring about such tremen- 

 dous changes. He clearly saw that Prussia and 

 Austria, rival leading states in the Germanic 

 Confederation, could never remain in that 

 league on equal terms, and the only hope for 

 German unity and freedom was to form a new 

 confederation, with Prussia at the head and 

 Austria excluded from it. How he accom- 

 plished this belongs to the story of the birth 

 of the German Empire. 



The Making of an Empire. Between 1858 

 and 1861 Bismarck represented Prussia at the 

 court of Alexander II, czar of Russia. In the 

 latter year he was transferred to Paris by 

 William I, who had just succeeded to the 

 throne of Prussia, and in 1862 he was sum- 

 moned to Berlin by that monarch to become 

 his Prime Minister and Secretary of Foreign 

 Affairs. "With that day," wrote one historian, 

 "a new era did in truth begin for Prussia and 

 Germany, and so for Europe." From that time 

 Bismarck worked with one end in view the 

 unification of the German fatherland. When 

 the Prussian diet refused to work with him in 

 the reorganization of the army he dissolved 

 that body and carried out his policy without 

 parliamentary authority. In a speech made in 

 1862 he said, "Not by speeches and resolutions 

 of majorities are the mighty problems of the 

 age to be solved, but by blood and iron." This 

 often-quoted expression was his way of saying 

 that only by war could the jealous German 

 states be brought together, and, in truth, three 

 wars were fought within the next ten years 

 before his great purpose was realized. 

 In 1864 Prussia and Austria united against 

 Christian IX of Denmark, forcing him to resign 

 all claim to the duchies of Schleswig and Hoi- 

 stein. No sooner was this war ended than 

 Prussia and Austria began to quarrel over the 

 provinces wrested from Denmark, a dispute 

 that gave Bismarck just the opportunity he 

 craved. Having secured the neutrality of 

 France and made an ally of Italy, he sent the 

 army of Prussia, disciplined to the highest 

 point of efficiency, against the Austrians, and 

 in a brief war of seven weeks Austria was com- \ 

 pletely defeated. 



The next step in Bismarck's program was the 

 establishment, in 1867, of the North German 

 Confederation, a league of the German states 

 north of the Main River, under the presidency 

 of Prussia. In this union Austria had no place. 

 Bismarck realized, however, that the states 

 south of the Main must come into the Confed- 

 eration before German unity could be accom- 



