The German Constitution

[p. 559]

[9. The Policy of the Two German Great Powers]

²³⁾Germany shares with the former Italy the fate of having been for many centuries the scene of internal wars, but also the scene of the wars of foreign powers, of being plundered, robbed, insulted, despised by friends, and usually diminished in peace. In this fate it is much later than Italy. Sweden is the first truly foreign power that rummaged significantly in its entrails and helped to shatter the preceding wavering system of union. From then on foreign powers decided Germany’s lot. It had already earlier ceased to be formidable to foreign countries. From then on it ceased to settle its internal affairs independently for itself, to decide about itself; it has given its destiny out of its hands.

23) In the margin: How long is it since an imperial war was waged with general participation!

Germany’s fate, however, differs essentially from the fate of Italy in that the states into which Italy had fallen apart were, through the condition of the world generally, still for a long time capable of asserting themselves even against far greater powers, or in that disproportionate extent had not made power likewise disproportionate; rather, as Greece was capable not only of withstanding the Persians but of defeating them, so in earlier times a city like Milan was able to defy the power of Frederick and to maintain itself against it, and still later Venice held out against the League of Cambrai. A possibility of small states resisting great ones has, however, now vanished entirely; and the sovereignty of the states of Germany was formed rather at a time when this possibility was no longer present. The states of Germany have therefore passed not from union into complete separation, but at once again into unions of another kind; the mass has not fallen apart into many pieces and so remained for a time broken up, but new nuclei have formed in the mass, around which the parts that tore themselves loose from the whole gathered into new masses.

Religion and independence as states were formerly the interests around which, as around centres, the German estates gathered; both centres formed their political system. These centres, however, have vanished. Religion has not only been preserved, but the spirit of the times has placed it beyond all danger;

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