[Prince Bernhard Heinrich Karl Martin]. German statesman, born on the 3rd of May 1849, at Klein-Flottbeck, in Holstein. The Bülow family is one very widely extended in north Germany, and many members have attained distinction in the civil and military service of Prussia, Denmark and Mecklenburg. Prince Bülow’s great-uncle, Heinrich von Bülow, who was distinguished for his admiration of England and English institutions, was Prussian ambassador in England from 1827 to 1840, and married a daughter of Wilhelm von Humboldt (see the letters of Gabrielle von Bülow). His father was Bernhard Ernst von Bülow.
Prince Bülow must not be confused with his contemporary Otto v. Bülow (1827–1901), an official in the Prussian foreign office, who in 1882 was appointed German envoy at Bern, from 1892 to 1898 was Prussian envoy to the Vatican, and died at Rome on the 22nd of November 1901.
Bernhard von Bülow, after serving in the Franco-Prussian War, entered the Prussian civil service, and was then transferred to the diplomatic service. In 1876 he was appointed attaché to the German embassy in Paris, and after returning for a while to the foreign office at Berlin, became second secretary to the embassy in Paris in 1880. From 1884 he was first secretary to the embassy at St. Petersburg, and acted as chargé d’affaires; in 1888 he was appointed envoy at Bucharest, and in 1893 to the post of German ambassador at Rome. In 1897, on the retirement of Baron Marschall von Bieberstein, he was appointed secretary of state for foreign affairs (the same office which his father had held) under Prince Hohenlohe, with a seat in the Prussian ministry. The appointment caused much surprise at the time, as Bülow was little known outside diplomatic circles. The explanations suggested were that he had made himself very popular at Rome and that his appointment was therefore calculated to strengthen the loosening bonds of the Triple Alliance, and also that his early close association with Bismarck would ensure the maintenance of the Bismarckian tradition. As foreign secretary Herr von Bülow was chiefly responsible for carrying out the policy of colonial expansion with which the emperor had identified himself, and in 1899, on bringing to a successful conclusion the negotiations by which the Caroline Islands were acquired by Germany, he was raised to the rank of count. On the resignation of Hohenlohe in 1900 he was chosen to succeed him as chancellor of the empire and president of the Prussian ministry.
The Berliner Neueste Nachrichten, commenting on this appointment, very aptly characterized the relations of the new chancellor to the emperor, in contrast to the position occupied by Bismarck. “The Germany of William II.,” it said, “does not admit a Titan in the position of the highest official of the Empire. A cautious and versatile diplomatist like Bernhard von Bülow appears to be best adapted to the personal and political necessities of the present situation.” Count Bülow, indeed, though, like Bismarck, a “realist,” utilitarian and opportunist in his policy, made no effort to emulate the masterful independence of the great chancellor. He was accused, indeed, of being little more than the complacent executor of the emperor’s will, and defended himself in the Reichstag against the charge. The substance of the relations between the emperor and himself, he declared, rested on mutual goodwill, and added: “I must lay it down most emphatically that the prerogative of the emperor’s personal initiative must not be curtailed, and will not be curtailed, by any chancellor…. As regards the chancellor, however, I say that no imperial chancellor worthy of the name … would take up any position which in his conscience he did not regard as justifiable.” It is clear that the position of a chancellor holding these views in relation to a ruler so masterful and so impulsive as the emperor William II. could be no easy one; and Bülow’s long continuance in office is the best proof of his genius. His first conspicuous act as chancellor was a masterly defence in the Reichstag of German action in China, a defence which was, indeed, rendered easier by the fact that Prince Hohenlohe had—to use his own words—“dug a canal” for the flood of imperial ambition of which warning had been given in the famous “mailed fist” speech. Such incidents as this, however, though they served to exhibit consummate tact and diplomatic skill, give little index to the fundamental character of his work as chancellor. Of this it may be said, in general, that it carried on the best traditions of the Prussian service in wholehearted devotion to the interests of the state. The accusation that he was an “agrarian” he thought it necessary to rebut in a speech delivered on the 18th of February 1906 to the German Handelstag. He was an agrarian, he declared, in so far as he came of a land-owning family, and was interested in the prosperity of agriculture; but as chancellor, whose function it is to watch over the welfare of all classes, he was equally concerned with the interests of commerce and industry (Kölnische Zeitung, Feb. 20, 1906). Some credit for the immense material expansion of Germany under his chancellorship is certainly due to his zeal and self-devotion. This was generously recognized by the emperor in a letter publicly addressed to the chancellor on the 21st of May 1906, immediately after the passage of the Finance Bill. “I am fully conscious,” it ran, “of the conspicuous share in the initiation and realization of this work of reform … which must be ascribed to the statesmanlike skill and self-sacrificing devotion with which you have conducted and promoted those arduous labours.” Rumours had from time to time been rife of a “chancellor crisis” and Bülow’s dismissal; in the Berliner Tageblatt this letter was compared to the “Never!” with which the emperor William I. had replied to Bismarck’s proffered resignation.
On the 6th of June 1905 Count Bülow was raised to the rank of prince (Fürst), on the occasion of the marriage of the crown prince. The coincidence of this date with the fall of M. Delcassé, the French minister for foreign affairs—a triumph for Germany and a humiliation for France—was much commented on at the time (see The Times, June 7, 1905); and the elevation of Bismarck to the rank of prince in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles was recalled. Whatever element of truth there may have been in this, however, the significance of the incident was much exaggerated.
On the 5th of April 1906, while attending a debate in the Reichstag, Prince Bülow was seized with illness, the result of overwork and an attack of influenza, and was carried unconscious from the hall. At first it was thought that the attack would be fatal, and Lord Fitzmaurice in the House of Lords compared the incident with that of the death of Chatham, a compliment much appreciated in Germany. The illness, however, quickly took a favourable turn, and after a month’s rest the chancellor was able to resume his duties. In 1907 Prince Bülow was made the subject of a disgraceful libel, which received more attention than it deserved because it coincided with the Harden-Moltke scandals; his character was, however, completely vindicated, and the libeller, a journalist named Brand, received a term of imprisonment.
The parliamentary skill of Prince Bülow in holding together the heterogeneous elements of which the government majority in the Reichstag was composed, no less than the diplomatic tact with which he from time to time “interpreted” the imperial indiscretions to the world, was put to a rude test by the famous “interview” with the German emperor, published in the London Daily Telegraph of the 28th of October 1908 (see William II., German emperor), which aroused universal reprobation in Germany. Prince Bülow assumed the official responsibility, and tendered his resignation to the emperor, which was not accepted; but the chancellor’s explanation in the Reichstag on the 10th of November showed how keenly he felt his position. He declared his conviction that the disastrous results of the interview would “induce the emperor in future to observe that strict reserve, even in private conversations, which is equally indispensable in the interest of a uniform policy and for the authority of the crown,” adding that, in the contrary case, neither he nor any successor of his could assume the responsibility (The Times, Nov. 11, 1908, p. 9). The attitude of the emperor showed that he had taken the lesson to heart. It was not the imperial indiscretions, but the effect of his budget proposals in breaking up the Liberal-Conservative bloc, on whose support he depended in the Reichstag, that eventually drove Prince Bülow from office. At the emperor’s request he remained to pilot the mutilated budget through the House; but on the 14th of July 1909 the acceptance of his resignation was announced.
Prince Bülow married, on the 9th of January 1886, Maria Anna Zoe Rosalia Beccadelli di Bologna, Princess Camporeale, whose first marriage with Count Karl von Dönhoff had been dissolved and declared null by the Holy See in 1884. The princess, an accomplished pianist and pupil of Liszt, was a stepdaughter of the Italian statesman Minghetti.
See J. Penzler, Graf Bülows Reden nebst urkundlichen Beiträgen zu seiner Politik (Leipzig, 1903).—[Unattributed author].
Prince Bülow, after his resignation of the German chancellorship in 1909, lived principally at the villa in Rome which he had purchased with a view to his retirement. Part of the summer he usually spent at Flottbeck near Hamburg or on the island of Norderney. A large fortune left him by a cousin, a Hamburg merchant, enabled him to live in elegant leisure and to make his house in Rome a centre of literary and political society. He employed his leisure in writing for the centenary celebrations of the Wars of Liberation, a remarkable book on Imperial Germany, extolling its achievements and defending the main lines of his own foreign policy (Engl. translation, M. Lavenz, 1914). In a revised edition (Engl. translation 1916) he omitted or altered many passages which seemed compromising in the light of the World War, e.g., his exposition of his policy of lulling Great Britain into a sense of security, while the great German navy was being constructed. He was understood to be in deep disfavour with William II., who never forgave him his attitude and action with regard to the Daily Telegraph interview in 1908.
On the outbreak of war Bülow found opportunity to identify himself publicly with the German cause, and, from his own point of view, he doubtless felt what, after Germany’s collapse, was made a ground of bitter reproach to him, that no one had been more actively identified than he with the main lines of the German policy which led up to the war.
He was once more to be employed in the service of his country, this time on a desperate enterprise. Italy, which had declared her neutrality at the outbreak of the war, did not eventually confine herself to the declaration that the casus foederis had not arisen for her as a member of the Triple Alliance. She had already intimated (July 5, 1914) through diplomatic channels that she considered the action of Austria-Hungary against Serbia to be aggressive and provocative. On December 9, 1914, Baron Sonnino addressed a note to the Austro-Hungarian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Count Berchtold, calling attention to Art. VII. of the treaty by which Italy participated in the Triple Alliance, with particular reference to the words in that clause according to which the Austro-Hungarian Government was bound, in the event of its disturbing the status quo in the Balkans even by a temporary occupation of Serbian territory, to come to an agreement with Italy and to arrange for compensations. By this note the questions of the Trentino and Trieste were formally opened. Austria-Hungary manifested great reluctance to enter upon the question of compensations, but Berlin was more alert and more anxiously concerned. Prince Bülow was, therefore, entrusted with the temporary charge of the German embassy in Rome, the actual ambassador, Herr von Flotow, going on sick-leave (Dec. 19, 1914). He at once plunged into active negotiations, and began by expressing his entire sympathy on principle with the Italian demand for compensations. He had, however, to fight the intransigeance of the Hungarian prime minister, Tisza, and Tisza’s nominee, who was Berchtold’s successor, Baron Burian. Bülow was from the first for the complete cession of the Trentino to Italy, but Austria-Hungary was willing to cede only part of it. Sonnino, for his part, pointed out that Italian feeling would not be satisfied even with the whole of the Trentino, but would also, in accordance with the irredentist programme, demand Trieste. Bülow continued to urge that all he could mediate for was the Trentino but that Austria would fight to keep Trieste. Early in April 1915 Italy put forward in the course of the negotiations, which were secret, her demands for the Trentino, Trieste, the Cuzolari Is., off the Dalmatian coast, the recognition by Austria-Hungary of Italian sovereignty over Vallona, etc. The negotiations dragged on till the middle of May, when Bülow made a grave but characteristic tactical mistake. He is understood to have induced the Italian ex-premier Giolitti to come to Rome from Turin in the hope that Giolitti’s following in the Chamber would be powerful enough to prevent a rupture and to bring about the acceptance of the Austro-Hungarian terms. An equally characteristic propaganda was believed to have been instituted by Bülow, in conjunction with the Austro-Hungarian ambassador Macchio, among the partisans of Giolitti behind the back of the Italian Government. The prime minister, Salandra, suddenly resigned. There was a great outburst of popular indignation, fanned by the impassioned eloquence of D’Annunzio and finding expression in demonstrations in front of the Quirinal (the royal palace) and on the Capitol, the municipal centre of Rome. After a great majority in the Italian Parliament had on May 20th expressed confidence in Salandra, general mobilization was ordered on May 22nd, and the formal declaration of war against Austria-Hungary followed on May 23, 1915. On May 24th Bülow left Rome.
During the war he lived in Berlin, and although since the peace he has again resided in Rome for part of every year, he spends many months in Germany. His name was mentioned in a ministerial crisis of 1921 as a possible chancellor, but he was entirely inacceptable to the vast majority of the German people and of the Reichstag.—[George Saunders].
