Christopher Clark’s Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia 1600-1947
A revisionist challenge to preconceptions of Prussia,
Born in Australia but now at Cambridge University, Christopher Clark is one of todays foremost historians, unafraid to tackle complex and difficult subjects and challenge conventional wisdom. He is the only living historian included in Perry Anderson’s recent Disputing Disaster: A Sextet on the Great War (Verso, 2024), about the debate over the causes of the conflict, where he criticised Clark’s book The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 for neglecting the importance of the Balkan states and undervaluing the role of imperialism as a driver toward war (Anderson was a lifelong Marxist).
Much of the debate over 1914 has been about the role of Germany and the influence of the Prussia. However, the map of Germany today has 16 provinces, none of them called Prussia, although others carry the names of their medieval ancestors. This is unusual, because Prussia was the kingdom that united 39 statelets and created modern Germany under Otto von Bismark, through successful wars with Austria and France in the nineteenth century. Clark’s book Iron Kingdom is a scholarly history of Prussia, with great attention given to detail, from its seventeenth century beginnings in Brandenburg as an Electorate within the Holy Roman Empire to its demise after Germany’s defeat in the Second World War.
The book assumes some knowledge of wider European history because major events and developments elsewhere in Europe are often not covered. This keeps the book to a manageable size, but sometimes the lack of context makes the motivations of the Prussians less clear. The exception is when events directly affected Prussia, for example the restructuring of the army and reforms to the civil service after the defeats by Napoleon, and the ongoing competition with the Hapsburgs and the Austrian-Hungarian empire until it collapsed in 1806.
Although much of the book is on diplomacy and foreign policy, Clark’s history includes the women of the Hohenzollern court, the role of religion, and the family. The regions and their particular issues, and issues affecting religious and national minorities, are given attention. He discusses Poland, an 18th century failed state, which Prussia helped to dismember. He also shows Prussia became one the most progressive European countries. During the 18th and 19th centuries Prussia developed a comprehensive welfare system, had the highest literacy rates in Europe, and became a European leader in science, education and commerce.
Important enough to be one of the seven Electors with a vote for who (i.e. which member of the Hapsburg extended family) became Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Prussia emerged from medieval Europe as one of the major principalities. Its history became an ‘alteration of moments of precocious strength with moments of perilous weakness’. It was a composite of provinces with individual identities, and as it grew and absorbed new territories during periods of expansion this continued to be the case. Prussian governance relied on provincial presidencies and provincial diets (assemblies) and competed for allegiance with both the regions and the concept of Germany as a nation.
Their society was agrarian, insular and conservative, and deeply Christian. The book has detailed analysis of the Reformation, the effects of the conversion of electors to Calvinism, their long-running attempts to convert Prussian Jews to Christianity, the Pietist movement and other developments in the Protestant church, all of which are interesting. There was a great deal of tension between the Protestant monarchy and majority and the Catholic church and Catholic provinces.
It was also a militaristic culture, full of uniforms, parades and celebrations of both victories and defeats past. From the beginning Prussia’s existence depended on the strength of its military, and Clark emphasises the importance and culture of the Prussian army. Officers came from the land-owning Junker class and resisted reform, against a reformist King after the Napoleonic wars and again against parliamentary democracy after 1848. As the smallest and weakest of the great powers, Prussia bounced between Britain, France, Austria and Russia, developing a defensive mindset that combined with a mission to unite the other German states once ruled by the Hapsburgs.
It can be heavy going at times. There are a lot of Fredricks, Williams and Fredrick Williams to keep track of. The eighteenth century court intrigues and diplomatic manoeuvrings can be a bit mind numbing. Nevertheless, the detail is there as part of the story. It is essentially a political history structured around the reigns of kings and emperors, focused on the major issues of the day with the people who played an important role included, particularly during critical events when there is sometimes a day by day account of their actions. Although there is a huge cast of characters, the story of how they each saw their role and how they served Prussia keeps moving along.
A few of the Fredericks stand out. Frederick William the Great Elector (1640-1688) established Brandenburg-Prussia as a European power after its devastation during the Thirty Years’ War, concentrated power within the monarchy, and rebuilt the military. Frederick the Great (1740-1786) defeated Austria, France and Russia in the Seven Years War (1756-63), annexed Silesia and provided Prussia with a lot more money, produce, and subjects while weakening the Habsburgs. The Prussian army under Frederick William III (1797-1840) was defeated by Napolean in 1806 and he fled to ‘the easternmost corner of the kingdom’, but after the disastrous French Russian campaign in 1812 he joined the Allies in the battle for Europe, and in 1815 ‘the Prussian contribution was crucial’ to the final defeat of Napolean. His son Frederick William IV (1840-1861) was a ‘sensitive and artistically gifted romantic’ who gave in to the liberals and granted Prussia both a constitution and a parliament after the revolution of 1848.
In 1870 the Prussian Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, was determined to unify the German states under Prussian leadership. He goaded the French Emperor Napoleon III into declaring war, then invaded France and won a series of quick victories culminating in the Battle of Sedan. Napoleon III was taken prisoner and a new republican government took power after a popular revolt. The new German Empire was proclaimed at Versailles in January 1871, with King Wilhelm of Prussia becoming the Emperor or Kaiser. France surrendered the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. The German Empire was run by the Prussian bureaucracy backed up by an army that was Prussian trained and led and enforced by the Prussian police force.
After unification in 1871 Prussia made up about 60 per cent of Germany, and Prussian militarism dominated Germany and played an important role leading up to the war in 1914-1918. This is not the same as claiming it was a ‘cause’ of the war. In both this book and The Sleepwalkers Clark shows that the role of the European alliance system and the decisions made by the other great powers were just as important as those made by Germany. He follows the decades of history that led to 1914 and details the mutual misunderstandings and unintended signals from a conspicuously ineffectual set of political leaders that drove the crisis.
After the first world war, there were calls to dismember or separate Prussia from the rest of Germany, but the moderate Social Democratic Government in Prussia formed a coalition with the socialists, kept the civil service operating, and accepted the loss of hegemony that it once had within the Empire. Until 1932, during the Weimar Republic, Prussia still had a Social Democratic state government while the other regions were electing the National Socialists, and was seen as defending democracy against the Nazi street gangs. In 1933 the Prussian Government was dissolved by the recently elected National Socialist German Government after elections had failed to deliver the Nazis a majority in the Prussian Diet.
Later, during the second world war, the resistance to Hitler was dominated by Prussians in the army and Foreign Office. In the assassination attempt of 1944 ‘two thirds came from the Prussian milieu, and many from old, distinguished military families’. Despite Nazi propaganda on the ‘continuity between the Prussian past and the national Socialist present’, Clark says this was ‘opportunistic, distorted and selective’. Prussia was not responsible for Hitler nor the militarism, arrogance and illiberality of the Nazis, and although many in the landed nobility joined the party, few Prussians were in the Nazi leadership group. As he says in the Introduction, ‘polarised judgements’ about Prussia ‘impoverish the complexity of the Prussian experience’.
The victorious allies in 1945 were unaware of the tension between ‘Prussian tradition and the National Socialist regime’ and believed Prussia was the source of German militarism and aggression and had to be abolished. Millions of Prussians fled to the west to escape the Soviet army, and hundreds of thousands of those who remained died. With the Cold War partition of Germany ‘the Prussian past retreated to the horizons of public memory’.
This history of the role Prussia played in Europe and the long process of its unification traces the development of Prussian institutions and culture over 350 years. The book is revisionist in the way it challenges preconceptions of Prussia, and the detailed analysis supports the view that many aspects about it were paradoxical. It was a leading nation during the Enlightenment but very religious, socially conservative but providing education and welfare, politically conservative but a constitutional monarchy after 1848, defensive in foreign policy but aggressive militarily. Allowing regional autonomy but with a mission to unite Germany. These paradoxes, with their attendant tensions, make this book both interesting and relevant to Europe today.
Christopher Clark, Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia 1600-1947. Belknap Press, 2006.
Christopher Clark also wrote The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, (Penguin, 2013), on the diplomats and politicians who led Europe into 1914, which complements this book.
His most recent book is Revolutionary Spring: Fighting for a New World, (Penguin, 2024), a masterly history of 1848 that draws on contemporary sources from cities and countries across Europe to describe the revolts and counter-attacks during the year, and how a different, more democratic, Europe emerged as a result.