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elementary education was made universal and compulsory. Less happy was Frederick William’s attempt to adjust the religious differences of his subjects with the corporal’s cane. In 1817, the tercentenary of the Reformation, a royal decree announced that henceforth Lutherans and Reformed Education and Religion. were to unite in one “Evangelical Church,” the public use of the name “Protestant” being officially forbidden. The so-called Old Lutherans, who refused to conform, were forbidden to found a separate community, and refractory pastors were dragooned and imprisoned. A quarrel also broke out with the Roman Catholic Church on the question of “mixed marriages,” which culminated in 1837 in the imprisonment of Baron Droste zu Vischering (q.v.), archbishop of Cologne, and of the archbishop of Posen.
In foreign politics, too, Prussia played but a secondary role after 1815. The king either attended, or was represented at, the various congresses up to that of Verona in 1822, but his sole idea was to support the views of Metternich, and later, those of the emperor Nicholas I. of Russia. (See Europe: History.)
Frederick William III. died on the 7th of June 1840. In spite of his faults, he had accomplished great things for Prussia, and his kindness of heart, his devotion to duty and the memory of his sufferings maintained his personal popularity to the last (see Frederick William III., King of Prussia). Of his son and successor, Frederick William IV., great things Frederick William IV., 1840–1861. were expected, since his talents were undeniable and he had gained as crown prince a reputation for Liberalism. One of his first acts was to liberate Jahn and the imprisoned archbishops, to reinstate Arndt in office and to issue a general amnesty (Aug. 10, 1840). Five years later he allowed the Old Lutherans liberty to set up a Church of their own. But in spite of these promising beginnings, it was soon clear that the king was wholly out of touch with the ideas of modern Liberalism. In spite of the warnings of the emperor Nicholas I. and of Metternich, he sought to satisfy the cry for a constitution by issuing on the 13th of February 1847 a patent summoning the “united Diet” for Prussia—that is to say, a mere “concentration” of the provincial Diets. The story of the contest that followed between the Crown and the people is outlined elsewhere (see Germany). It is only necessary to give here some account of the constitutional development in Prussia itself.
The most important landmark in this respect was the law promulgated after the dissolution of the lower house of the revolutionary National Assembly on the 27th of April 1849. This law, which was only slightly modified by the electoral reform law of 1910, divided the parliamentary electors into three classes, their voting power Electoral Law of 1849 and Constitution of 1851. being determined by property qualifications or by official and professional position. In the elections that followed, the disgusted democrats took no part, with the result that the chambers that met on the 7th of August 1849 were strongly Conservative and made no difficulty about revising the democratic constitution of 1848 in accordance with the royal wishes. The constitution, thus amended, was proclaimed on the 31st of January 1851, and has remained substantially that of Prussia ever since. Its immediate effect was an extraordinary series of reactionary measures, e.g. the restoration of the old manorial courts and of the provincial estates (1850). The actual constitution of the parliament as consisting of a House of Lords (Herrenhaus) and House of Delegates (Abgeordnetenhaus) was fixed in 1854, and in this assembly the dominant element continued to be that of the Prussian Junkertum or squirearchy, which supported the king and his government in all their reactionary efforts.
So far as the internal history of Prussia is concerned, little
was altered by the substitution of William as regent for his
brother, now hopelessly mad, in 1858. The new
ruler, who became king in 1861, shared to the full
his predecessor’s views as to the divine right of the
Prussian crown. He was prepared to accept the established
William I.,
1861–1888.
constitutional forms, but he was not prepared to sacrifice to
them what he firmly believed to be the divinely appointed
mission of Prussia in Germany. Bismarck, who became prime
minister in 1862, fully shared his master’s views. He realized,
what the lower house did not, that the German question could only
be settled as the result of a trial of strength between Prussia and
Austria and that therefore it was necessary for Prussia to spend
money on armaments; and, since he could not give Bismarck.
his real reasons to the parliament and the parliament
refused to accept the reasons he did give, he raised the necessary
funds in defiance of the votes of the House of Delegates. The
result justified him in the eyes of the Prussian people. Bismarck’s
policy, culminating in the war of 1866, left Prussia the
undisputed mistress of Germany (see Schleswig-Holstein Question;
and Germany: History). By the Treaty of Prague
(Aug. 23, 1866) Prussia acquired Hanover, Hesse-Cassel,
Hesse-Nassau, Frankfort and the duchies of Schleswig-Holstein
and Lauenburg; her territory had been Treaty of Prague, 1866.
increased by one-fifth and became for the first time
satisfactorily rounded off and compacted; by the
acquisition of the Elbe duchies, too, she laid the foundations of
her future sea-power. In 1871 as the result of the German
victory over France the king of Prussia became German
Emperor.
From 1867 onward Prussia has had from the point of view of international politics no existence apart from the North German Federation and the German Empire; and even in internal affairs her preponderance and influence in Germany have been overwhelming. For all practical purposes the German Empire has been Prussia Prussia in the German Empire. and, however much the still surviving particularist feeling of the lesser states has resented the process, the “Prussification,” in greater or less degree, of all Germany was inevitable from the moment that the great imperial departments—army, customs, posts, railways—were placed under Prussian authority or conformed to the Prussian model. With this particular expansion of Prussia, however, we are not concerned, but solely with the internal development of the Prussian kingdom itself. The main tasks that lay before the government after 1870 were the assimilation of the new provinces, the reorganization of the administration, the economic development of the country, the settlement of the questions arising out of the attitude of the Roman Catholics on the one hand and the Social Democrats Prussian Problems after 1870. on the other. On the whole the new German provinces accepted their fate with equanimity, though in Hanover especially the deposed dynasty continued to command a considerable following of which the ablest spokesman was Windthorst (q.v.). Since the dispossessed princes refused to resign their claims, the large sum of money which had been assigned to them by the Prussian parliament was, so early as March 1868, sequestrated, and, under the name of the Guelph Fund (Welfenfonds), formed a secret service supply highly convenient for Bismarck’s purposes. More difficult was the task, rashly undertaken by the government, of germanizing the Danish parts of Schleswig-Holstein and the Polish districts in the eastern provinces, a task which after thirty years of effort shows but very small results (see Schleswig-Holstein Question, ad fin.; and Posen).
Closely connected with the Polish question was the quarrel with
the Roman Catholic Church, known as the Kulturkampf, of which
Prussia was the focus (see Germany: History, xi.
880 seq.). The anti-Vatican policy, associated
especially with the name of the minister Falk, necessitated
an alliance of the government with the Liberals, and this
The Kulturkampf.
led to a policy of at least administrative reform. The present
administrative system (Kreisordnung) of Prussia was introduced
in 1872 for certain provinces, but not extended to the whole
kingdom until 1888, when it was applied to Posen. The
Liberalism of the Prussian parliament was, however, of a very
lukewarm temper; and when in 1878–1879 Bismarck decided
to reverse the fiscal policy of the country and to pass
repressive legislation against the Social Democrats,
Influence of Social Democracy: Reaction.
State Socialism.
the Liberals were not strong enough to offer an effective
resistance. In 1879 the moderate Liberal ministry
resigned, and was succeeded by a Conservative cabinet,
in which the most conspicuous figure was Robert von Puttkammer
(q.v.). Henceforth the government depended for
parliamentary support on a union of the National Liberals
and Conservatives or of the Conservatives and Ultramontanes.
An eventual understanding with the Holy See was inevitable,
though the Kulturkampf was not actually settled until 1888, when
the Prussian government, assisted by the diplomatic
attitude of Pope Leo XIII., came to terms with Rome.
Meanwhile in 1879 the era of Bismarck’s experiments
in state socialism had begun by the purchase by the state of three of
the great railways, thus laying the foundation of the present system
of state railways in Prussia.
On the 9th of March 1888 William I. died. His successor,