baehr_p_richter_m_dictatorship_in_history_and_theory_bonapar

impartial social referee or political mediator. A political system of this sort, Manteuffel insisted, would balance standisch¨ and constitutional structures and would most effectively help to maintain a stable monarchical order. Now it might be suggested that these ideas possibly contain Bonapartist elements; but on the whole, the evidence of his eight years as minister president suggests that Manteuffel was not so much a Bonapartist as a statist neo-absolutist, which is not quite the same thing. Indeed, Manteuffel himself looked more to Frederick II than to Napoleon as a role model. (It is interesting to note in this connection that Ludwig von Gerlach disliked the “godless” cynic Frederick, even opposing the erection in 1851 of the famous statue of that monarch on Unter den Linden in Berlin.)

Carl Ludwig von Hinckeldey (1805–56), another of Frederick William’s advisors after 1848, might more accurately be called a “crypto-Bonapartist”; certainly the maledictions of the High Conservatives suggest that they thought he was. Like Manteuffel, Hinckeldey was a career bureaucrat whose pre-1848 record was so outstanding that Frederick William IV named him police president of Berlin at the time of the counterrevolution in November 1848.24 Hinckeldey was able to leverage his position as Berlin police chief to become what Karl August Varnhagen von Ense called Prussia’s unofficial “second king.” In fact, Hinckeldey was one of the most creative and astute conservative officials in nineteenth-century Prussia, and his resemblance to his Parisian contemporary, Baron Haussmann, is quite remarkable. He enjoyed a meteoric career after 1848 and quickly gained the King’s complete confidence as his principal advisor on security matters. Hinckeldey was often quite indifferent to bureaucratic norms and procedures, especially that painstaking sense of order and “legality” (Rechtsstaatlichkeit) which was so characteristic of the civil service. He was more than willing to bend the law in his zeal to crush “subversion” and harass opponents of the government, even though he sometimes found himself in competition with Manteuffel. At the same time, Hinckeldey envisaged a vastly expanded role for positive state action as part of a conservative strategy to mobilize popular support for the monarchical cause. Thus he created a modern political police force, organized surveillance of political opponents of all stripes, and regularly confiscated newspapers that had offended him, especially the Kreuzzeitung. At

24 Although, in contrast to Baron Haussmann, Hinckeldey is little-known in this country, several biographical essays have appeared over the years: Berthold Schulze, “Polizeiprasident¨ Carl von Hinckeldey,” Jahrbuch fur¨ die Geschichte Mittelund Ostdeutschlands 4 (1955): 81–108; Heinrich von Sybel’s posthumous “Carl Ludwig von Hinckeldey 1852 bis 1856,” Historische Zeitschrift 189 (1959), 108–23; Wolfram Siemann, “Deutschlands Ruhe, Sicherheit und Ordnung.” Die Anfange¨ der politischen Polizei 1806–1866 (Tubingen,¨ 1985), 342–55; Barclay, Frederick William IV, 240–4, 274–5.

the same time, he introduced a number of modernizing reforms to Berlin itself that, like Haussmann’s simultaneous rebuilding of Paris, transformed the face of the city and paved the way for its explosive growth after the 1860s. He created a system of public baths for the poor, established a regular fire department for the first time, updated the municipal street cleaning system, and promoted the construction of a new waterworks. His efforts helped to ensure a steady supply of cheap but healthy food to the city, and he used his police force to plant trees on public streets. He was also responsible for introducing the familiar public notice columns (Litfasssaulen¨ ) that visitors to Berlin can still see today. By undertaking all these projects, Hinckeldey became a hero to the Berlin bourgeoisie, who also appreciated his personal sobriety and incorruptibility, his modest lifestyle, and his commitment to what we would now call “family values.” With his mixture of rough authoritarianism, populism, and welfare paternalism, with his emphasis on the extension of state power and his simultaneous support for modern forms of economic activity, Hinckeldey does indeed represent an early form of Prussian crypto-Bonapartism. Certainly his conservative enemies thought so, and they could scarcely hide their glee when a well-born aristocrat shot and killed him in a duel in 1856.

The examples of Manteuffel, Hinckeldey, and even the King himself led the High Conservatives to the gloomy conclusion that, despite their own political successes, post-1848 Prussia was succumbing to a creeping Bonapartism. It was especially painful to them to observe their fellow conservatives succumb to revolutionary amorality, despotism, bureaucratic excess, and lack of principle. However, perhaps the most worrisome example of apostasy, from their point of view, was the Gerlachs’ erstwhile proteg´ e,´ Otto von Bismarck.25 This familiar story, which Henry Kissinger has recently retold, concerns Bismarck’s shift from High Conservative Prinzipienpolitik to a Realpolitik based on amoral calculations of state interest. As Prussian representative to the Diet of the German Confederation in Frankfurt am Main, Bismarck increasingly chafed under the dominance of Austria in that organization. Moreover, by 1856, the year in which the Crimean War had come to an end, he had reached the conclusion that, if it were in Prussia’s state interest to treat with Napoleon III, it should not hesitate to do so.

25 Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York, 1994), 120–36. On the Gerlach-Bismarck exchange and the evolution of the latter’s views, see Lothar Gall, Bismarck: The White Revolutionary, trans. J. A. Underwood, 2 vols. (London, 1986), 1: 131–40; Ernst Engelberg, Bismarck. Urpreusse und Reichsgrunder¨

(Berlin, 1985), 409–50; Otto Pflanze, Bismarck and the Development of Germany, vol. 1, The Period of Unification, 1815–1871, 2nd ed. (Princeton, 1990), 92–97; Frank-Lothar Kroll, “Bismarck und Friedrich Wilhelm IV,” in Jost Dulffer,¨ Bernd Martin, and Gunter¨ Wollstein, eds., Deutschland in Europa. Gedenkschrift fur¨ Andreas Hillgruber (Frankfurt am Main and Berlin, 1990), 205–28, esp. 221–2.

Throughout the so-called Oriental crisis and the subsequent Crimean conflict, Frederick William IV had pursued a policy of strict neutrality; he was supported in this by the Kreuzzeitung party and, more opportunistically, by Manteuffel, who in contrast to the Gerlachs certainly had no objection to dealing with a Bonaparte. However, by the end of the war Bismarck had decided that the Bonapartist regime posed a greater threat to Austria than to Prussia, and that Prussia should thus not be afraid of dealing with the Second Empire. Fear of ideological contamination and of the spread of revolution should take a back seat to the advancement of Prussian state interests. In any case, Bismarck was under no illusions about France’s actual capacity for revolutionary expansion in the 1850s and 1860s; the world had changed since 1806, and the nephew was not the uncle. Such ideas were, of course, anathema to Leopold von Gerlach, who with his brother Ludwig had helped launch Bismarck’s political career in 1847–8. The growing gap within the ranks of the Prussian conservatives – and the political and intellectual isolation of the older generation of High Conservatives – became increasingly evident in the remarkable exchange of letters between Leopold and Bismarck that began in 1856 and ended in 1860. Gerlach insisted in this correspondence that his “political principle is and remains the struggle against the revolution. You will not persuade Bonaparte that he is not on the side of revolution.” Bismarck countered these arguments by asserting that Prussia would have to deal with France “without regard to its current ruler, purely as a piece, an unavoidable piece in the chess game of politics, a game in which it is my duty to serve only my king and my country.”26

Bismarck, of course, had the last word. Leopold von Gerlach died in January 1861, only a few days after Frederick William IV. Ludwig von Gerlach lived on until 1877, railing against virtually all of Bismarck’s policies (especially the war with Austria), denouncing him as a Caesarist, and, in the 1870s, actually joining the Catholic Center party, which he believed represented the only effective opposition to Bismarck’s godlessness and amorality.

So what conclusions can we reach from all this? First, it seems to me that a consideration of Prussian conservatives’ responses to, evaluation of, and, to a certain extent, adoption of Bonapartist outlooks and strategies tells us more about the evolution of conservative thinking and conservative action than it does about Bonapartism itself. For the first half of the century, Prussian conservatives generally tended to regard Napoleon as a

26Leopold von Gerlach to Bismarck, May 6, 1857, and Bismarck to Gerlach, May 2, 1857, quoted in Gall, Bismarck, 1: 130, 133.

peculiarly diabolical character and his system, with its mixture of despotic and plebiscitary elements, as the logical, perhaps inevitable end result of bureaucratic absolutism and of revolution. However, after 1848, conservatives began to rethink the nature and purpose of state action, even as they were beginning to reevaluate Prussia’s European role after the breakdown of the Vienna system. In doing so, they began to adopt certain measures and practices that the High Conservatives deplored but could not reverse. Second, the example of shifting conservative responses to Bonapartism reminds us just how difficult it is to come up with typologies of German conservatism. Many distinguished scholars have tried to do so, from Karl Mannheim and Sigmund Neumann to Ernst Rudolf Huber, Klaus Epstein, and Hans-Ulrich Wehler.27 Although we can learn a great deal from their efforts, nineteenth-century conservatism remains a phenomenon that is at once protean and slippery, and one which tends to elude classification.

27Karl Mannheim, Konservatismus. Ein Beitrag zur Soziologie des Wissens, ed. David Kettler, Volker Meja, and Nico Stehr (Frankfurt am Main, 1984); David Kettler, Volker Meja, and Nico Stehr, “Karl Mannheim and Conservatism: The Ancestry of Historical Thinking,” American Sociological Review 49, no. 1 (February 1984): 71–85; Sigmund Neumann, Die Stufen des preussischen Konservatismus. Ein Beitrag zum Staatsund Gesellschaftsbild Deutschlands im 19. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1930); Klaus Epstein, The Genesis of German Conservatism (Princeton, 1966); Ernst Rudolf Huber, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte seit 1789, vol. 2, Der Kampf um Einheit und Freiheit 1830 bis 1850, 3rd ed. (Stuttgart, 1988), 331–45; Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, vol. 2, Von der Reformara¨ bis zur industriellen und politischen “Deutschen Doppelrevolution” 1815–1845/49 (Munich, 1987), 440–57.

and more minute in its application, a power more absolute than any ever exercised by a French king.”1 Although this judgment in L’Ancien Regime´ ostensibly was leveled against the Convention, the Committee of Public Safety, and above all, the First Empire of Napoleon Bonaparte, no French reader in 1856 could have missed the tacit parallelism with Louis Napoleon and the Second Empire.

Both Bonapartes executed military coups that overthrew republican governments, themselves created after great revolutions. They used plebiscites based on universal manhood suffrage to register ostensible popular approval, first of their use of violence, and then of the empires they founded. Thus, both empires and emperors were post-democratic, claiming that their regimes were legitimate because the people had delegated to them the supreme power to rule directly in the general interest of the nation. This pseudodemocratic argument held that by such an exercise of popular sovereignty after the use of force, the people withdrew approval for the parliaments they had previously chosen to represent them. Hence, it was argued, voters could and did confer political power upon the man who had overthrown the representative institutions of the republic. The two Bonapartes’ empires were also post-revolutionary. Their founders further justified them by reference to their own stances vis-a`-vis the great revolutions that prepared their way. Both Bonapartes reassured the beneficiaries of the Revolution that, on the one side, they had nothing to fear from the nobility or the Church, and, on the other, that the Empires protected them from radicals or extremists, whether Jacobins. Sans-culottes, or socialists.

From this diagnosis, however, Tocqueville did not conclude that either revolution or democracy in France necessarily entailed such a repressive regime, or if it were established, guaranteed its indefinite continuation. Tocqueville rejected any such historical determinism. His point was rather that a democratic revolution was subject to certain dangers, which could be mitigated or obviated, but only if the electorate were alerted to these perils and their representatives took decisions calculated to avoid them. As will be seen, Tocqueville rejected the view that France was irremediably decadent or doomed.2

1 Alexis de Tocqueville, L’Ancien Regime´ et la Revolution,´ Oeuvres completes`, II, 1: 248. Henceforth, this edition (Paris, 1951) will be designated as OC. The Pleiade´ edition of Tocqueville (Paris, 1991) will be designated as OCP. The older edition of the Oeuvres completes`, edited by Gustave de Beaumont, 9 vols. (Paris, 1864–6) will be designated as OCB. There are two critical editions of De la Democratie´ en Amerique´ ; one edited by Jean-Claude Lamberti and James Schleifer in OCP, II; the other by Eduardo Nolla, 2 vols. (Paris, 1990).

2 “I have long been convinced that the soil of French society cannot at present provide a solid or permanent foundation for [any type] of government. [Yet] I do not believe that all is over, nor, on the

Tocqueville’s analyses of the two Napoleonic regimes also have an intrinsic value. Had he lived to complete his projected volume on Napoleon Bonaparte and his empire, Tocqueville would in all probability have contributed as much to their analysis and evaluation as did his L’Ancien Regime´

to the study of the French Revolution. When examined within the context of Tocqueville’s career as a political theorist and actor, the two Bonapartes and their empires turn out to have been among Tocqueville’s most durable concerns. This is not to say that on these subjects Tocqueville never altered his views. Indeed, references to the Bonapartes can and should serve as one marker for tracing both the alterations and consistencies in Tocqueville’s thought. While maintaining his repertoire of themes and concepts, Tocqueville’s use of them varied greatly, depending upon the theoretical problems which at any particular point most concerned him. Perhaps even more important was his judgment at any given time of the relationship of his analysis to the French political situation. He wrote not only as a theorist, but to attain his goals as a political actor.

II

Bonaparte’s success in appropriating the first French Revolution was initially attributed to his unique combination of charisma with exceptional military and administrative abilities. Little thought was given to the question of whether Bonaparte had invented a new type of regime which, after his passing from the scene, could be institutionalized and used by lesser mortals.

After the Bourbon Restoration was overthrown in 1830, its successor, the July Monarchy, itself fell in 1848. This second great revolution was at first French, but became European in scope. Its initial product, the Second Republic, was ended by Louis Napoleon’s coup d’etat´ . Following his uncle’s precedent, Louis Napoleon claimed that both the forcible seizure of power and the establishment of the Second Empire had been legitimized by a plebiscite based on his restoration of universal manhood suffrage. Since the nephew’s abilities had been rated as far below those of his indubitably exceptionally gifted uncle, the question was at once raised about the meaning of this significant repetition of a pattern once assumed to be unique.

other hand, that all is lost. I consider my country as a sick man, whom we cannot, it is true, hope to cure all at once, but whose illness, at least for the moment, may be greatly alleviated, whose existence may be made extremely prosperous. This sickness may thus lead to great things.” This translation is adapted from Correspondence and Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior, 1834–59, ed. M. C. M. Simpson, 2 vols. ( New York, 1968), I: 89–90.

Why had Louis Napoleon succeeded in producing for the second time an undesired and unanticipated outcome of a great European revolution begun in Paris? Rather than being attributed to a unique individual, the recurrence of Bonapartism now had to be conceptualized and explained. Tocqueville’s diagnosis differed fundamentally from other theorists’. Tocqueville’s problematic – his comparative diagnosis of democracy in France, America, and Great Britain; his theory of revolution; his stress on the continuity between the centralization of preand post-revolutionary France – all pushed him to formulate in his own distinctive set of terms his inquiry into these imperial regimes.

It was only after Louis Napoleon’s coup that many political theorists and actors came to believe that a qualitatively new form of government had appeared in the wake of revolution and democratization. Novel but contested terms were proposed to conceptualize this type of regime. Even the names of the “isms” meant to designate it provoked controversy. Contemporaries had to choose among such neologisms as “Bonapartism,” “Caesarism,” “Napoleonism,” and “Imperialism.” Quite discrepant meanings and implications came to be connected with these rival political and social concepts. To treat both empires under the same rubric, to class them together as the same phenomenon, and give them the name of Napoleonism or Bonapartism is already to go some way toward treating them as a modern French rather than as a European or Western form of regime. To call the phenomenon Caesarism or Imperialism is already to posit a pattern of significant recurrences under modern conditions of ancient political experiences dating back to the termination of the Roman Republic and the creation of the Principate. This is to give up the concept of a distinctively modern post-revolutionary and post-democratic type of regime such as Tocqueville believed had been established by the two Bonapartes.

Such concepts or regime types provide evaluative redescriptions of rule by an individual who, after seizing power by force from elected constitutional and representative governments, then establishes an authoritarian, highly centralized, and nonrepresentative regime refusing previous civil liberties in the name of a legitimacy claimed to be democratic. Thereafter, popular participation in the political process is considered by those holding power to have been permanently waived by the electorate.

In the second half of the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, theoretical speculations about the regime called Bonapartism and/or Caesarism constituted an integral part of political discourse throughout Europe. Disputes about the characteristics, functions, and worth of such

a regime were almost as prominent in nineteenth-century discussion of politics as “absolute monarchy” had been in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and debates about “totalitarianism” in the twentieth century.

Concepts such as Bonapartism and Caesarism tended to be used pejoratively as denoting illegitimate forms of domination by theorists of diverse views: royalist, reactionary, conservative, republican, liberal, and anarchist. However, there were many others who used Bonapartism and Caesarism in positive senses to characterize that mode of rule or type of leader that, in their view, alone could resolve what they saw as the political and social dilemmas of the century. Among them was Auguste Romieu, who in 1850 wrote L’ere des Cesars´ . He predicted that since liberalism was impotent and monarchical legitimism dead, the rule of force by the military would succeed indecisive parliaments. Other positive characterizations of such regimes claimed that they represented the triumph of the will over mere reason; of heroic and idealistic national purpose over selfish group or personal interests, as well as the recognition by the masses that they need to be led by exceptional leaders or elites. Did such formulations feed currents of twentieth-century fascist thought and even Leninism and Stalinism?

III

Rather than attempting to present here the diverse forms and uses to which the concepts of Bonapartism and Caesarism have been put, I shall first list the principal issues separating different conceptualizations of the two Empires, of the way they were established, and of those who led them. This grid of differences will then be used to raise questions about Tocqueville’s formulation and uses of the concept. For he has been identified, and rightly so, as having been the first to develop a political sociology of this phenomenon.3 Equally significant is the fact that Tocqueville intended, but did not live to complete the final two volumes of his L’Ancien Regime´ et la Revolution´ : the second on the Revolution itself; the third on Napoleon Bonaparte and his Empire. It was here that Tocqueville proposed to assess the ultimate effects

3 Dieter Groh, “Casarismus¨ ,” in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, ed. Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck, 9 vols. (1972–97), 1: 726–71, in particular 745–8. See also Heinz Gollwitzer, “The Caesarism of Napoleon III as seen by public opinion in Germany,” tr. Gordon C. Wells, Economy and Society XVI, 357–404, and above all Peter Baehr, Caesar and the Fading of the Roman World. A Study in Republicanism and Caesarism (New Brunswick, 1998).