Kaiserin Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein, German Empress
The Empress [Augusta Victoria] had always sympathized with the Roman Catholic Church, though the rumor that she had joined it had no justification. But she had many Catholic friends, and she was by nature adverse to any kind of persecution, be it religious or political. The Kulturkampf had been for her a source of great sorrow. During the whole time that it lasted she never attempted to hide her disapproval of a policy in which she saw a considerable danger to the security of the German State, and she never missed an opportunity of showing the nature of her feelings on the subject.
[Prince] Bismarck, with all his genius and his keen knowledge of human nature, was quite unable to gauge the importance which, by passive resistance, the Catholic clergy and Catholic faction in the Chambers would in time acquire. He treated the Roman Church as a negligible quantity, and fully believed that in the nineteenth century it had lost its influence over the masses, especially in Germany, where Protestantism had thoroughly permeated public opinion. He committed the great mistake of confounding Catholicism and Polish nationalism, and the result was that in the long run he had to resign himself to see one of these elements triumph and the other remain unbeaten….
Kaiser Wilhelm II with Kaiserin Auguste Viktoria, 1898
[L]ater on Bismarck complained that he had been led into error by Falk, whose sole aim whilst in office was to destroy the Catholic Church, which the Chancellor pretended had never been his intention. He had merely wanted to fight against the separatist tendencies of the Poles, and to him Poles and Catholics were one and the same; that his persecution of the Roman Church had been a political and not a religious struggle. That, at least, was how he tried to explain it, and in this manner hide the extent of the defeat which his plans had encountered.
Princess Catherine Radziwill, Germany Under Three Emperors (New York: Cassell and Company, Ltd., 1917) 212, 217-9.
Short Stories on Honor, Chivalry, and the World of Nobility—no. 308
Tagged as:
Elites,
Monarchy,
Nobility,
Short Stories
