1836

(Gall) He passed further exams in philosophy, political science, an oral exam including on law.

Summer Metternich to an American visitor: democracy is 'a dissolving, decomposing principle; it tends to separate men, it loosens society... Monarchy alone tends to bring men together, to unite them into compact and effective masses; to render them capable, by their combined efforts, of the highest degrees of culture and civilisation... [America] will go on much further in democracy, you will become much more democratic. I do not know where it will end, nor how it will end; but it cannot end in a quiet old age.' France is 'like a man who has just passed thoroughly through a severe disease', it is highly unstable, after 25 years in post I've dealt with 28 Ministers of Foreign Affairs. At the age of 25 he had foreseen nothing but change and trouble and had considered going to America. He laboured 'chiefly, almost entirely, to prevent troubles, to prevent evil... I care nothing about the past except as a warning for the future. The present day has no value for me except as the eve of tomorrow. I labour for tomorrow. I do not venture even to think much of the day following but tomorrow, it is with tomorrow that my spirit wrestles [mon esprit lutte]'.

Summer Bismarck became an apprentice official at Aachen. Aachen was a spa with an international clientele. Bismarck was bored by his job. It was a bad combination. He did not stick at his job. He drank and chased girls. One of them was the niece of the Duke of Cleveland, Laura Russell, who he was later told (wrongly, accordingly to Pflanze) was actually an illegitimate daughter. He wracked up debts following her party around Europe then he got into more debt by gambling. According to JS, in a letter omitted from his official Collected Letters he told his brother that he was as good as engaged (though unofficially), contemplated suicide at his debts and had bought 'a cord of yellow silk'.

Gall suggests that over summer/autumn 1836 he gathered information about requirements for the diplomatic service. He also spoke at some point to the Prussian Foreign Minister, Ancillon, who nudged him towards work in the Zollverein service by way of Prussian provincial administration.

Metternich tried to reform the Habsburg government. He would be 'chief of the State Conference', a civil service body with no royal family. It sidelined Kolowrat. Ferdinand approved the changes. Kolowrat, who had gone to the country for 6 months because of illness, returned to Vienna and fought to undermine the changes spreading stories about Metternich among the Archdukes. The plan was undone and Metternich was damaged with the royal family. Worse, Kolowrat managed to get agreed that all matters relating to finance, domestic politics and the secret state police [Hohe Polizei] would be shown only to Kolowrat who would decide if they should be shown to the newly designed State Conference in which the imperial family now sat. By the end of the year, Metternich had lost power and was confined to foreign affairs. Siemann: Kolowrat now was crucial to domestic affairs and if he went away, business was paralysed. This all contributed to the general paralysis of the Empire over the next decade. (I can't judge Riemann's views on this but he seems rather naive in his protestations that Metternich was purely focused on improving the administration — it seems more likely that this master politician used Kolowrat's absence to strike, strengthening his own position and weakening an annoying rival, but he underestimated Kolowrat's weasel-courtier skills.) This power struggle was observed by the courts of Europe. Metternich pointed out to Archduke Ludwig and others that Kolowrat was using his powers of patronage to benefit the network of Bohemian aristocracy and that this network 'are speaking through him who think their power can only be maintained cloaked in fog; and they are right about that'. Behind all this lay a simple fact — much of the Austrian aristocracy did not want reforms that might diminish their power and/or increase taxes on their large estates. In 1838 Metternich engaged in a secret conspiracy to push out Eichhof, an ally of Kolowrat who controlled budgets in the court. In exile after 1848, Metternich wrote how after this 'our empire was without a government... The coach of the state moved on, as vehicles do in consequence of the impulses they have received, and they stop when a force confronts them... The old edifice therefore did not collapse out of inner feebleness but out of a lack of caution in the use of power which had the duty to preserve it.' Cf. Siemann, p699 ff and p734ff.