The View
Some 150 years ago, on January 18, 1871 at Versailles, a united Germany came into being as an empire in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. Reminders of it are low-key, confined to German newspapers and magazines.
A thousand-year Reich had existed in the past, the Holy Roman Empire, that existed from the coronation of Charlemagne by Pope Leo III in Rome in 800AD (and more specifically Germany from 962) until its dissolution in 1806 precipitated by the French revolutionary wars. Theoretically, it represented a unity of Church and state, with three elector archbishops (Cologne, Mainz and Trier) among seven or eight electors, who chose the emperor, latterly almost always a Habsburg. Whatever political unity it possessed was destroyed by the Reformation. Germany has not forgotten the horror of religious war. Under the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, Germany became a patchwork of over 300 states and principalities theoretically sovereign. The surviving ceremonial outer shell was mocked by Voltaire as neither holy, nor roman, nor an empire.
Nationalism
German nationalism from the 18th Century was first of all cultural. The German-speaking countries have given the world some of its best music, literature, philosophy, and also theology. The Napoleonic wars underlined the imperative of political unity, which took another half century to happen. As a young prince, Kaiser Wilhelm I had been present at Leipzig in 1813, ‘the battle of the nations’, which was decisive in the liberation of Germany.
Traditionally, post-Reformation, Ireland looked for succour to continental Catholic powers, like Spain, then France. In the early 1840s, Thomas Davis stressed the need for Ireland to cultivate foreign alliances, including Germany, at this stage down to 39 states led by Prussia and Austria, so as to reduce English interference. Post-1871, the power, prestige, and economic prowess of Germany, rose rapidly, challenging all the great powers about them. Bismarck, the architect of German unity, who understood the need for restraint, became the arbiter of Europe in a peaceful sense. His Germany was the pioneer of the modern social welfare system, and also a model for building an economy behind protection. The economist Friedrich List influenced Seán Lemass during Ireland’s efforts to create a domestic industrial base in the 1930s. German scholars played a key role in research underlying the Irish language revival.
There were also downsides, Bismarck’s anti-Catholic campaign known as the Kulturkampf, an unaccountable military, and an empire built on blood and iron, not popular or parliamentary consent. Enemies were waiting for an opportunity to reverse annexations, of a third of Poland extinguished by three partitions by enlightened despots in the 18th Century, and the provinces of Alsace-Lorraine taken from France in 1871 with no democratic consultation. Under less responsible German leadership, intense power competition and escalating brinkmanship led to war on an unprecedented and horrendous scale. Germany was not solely to blame, but it bore some of the worst consequences.
Prior to the war, some unionists and nationalists looked to Germany and Austria-Hungary for arms, and for political support. Edward Carson lunched with the Kaiser in 1913, and several unionist leaders publicly speculated that another William might defend them, and that rule by the kaiser would be preferable to that of John Redmond. Roger Casement argued that Germany needed to detach Ireland to neutralise British command of the seas.
Land of Home Rule
The war further delayed the promised land of Home Rule, and created the opportunity for a Rising, the plausibility of which for many hinged on the hope of a German intervention. Yet Ireland never figured in published German war aims. Even though President Woodrow Wilson mentally excluded Ireland, the American aim of national self-determination, entering the war in 1917, provided the international context for pressing the case for Ireland’s establishment as a separate state. It has been a durable democracy for a century.
During the inter-war years, the Irish Free State tried to reduce its dependence on Britain, for example, by bringing in Siemens to build the Shannon hydroelectric scheme. A German, Dr Alfred Mahr, directed the National Museum, and Colonel Brase organised and conducted the army band. In the late 1930s, Éamon de Valera supported the policy of appeasement, and negotiated with prime minister Neville Chamberlain return of the ports allowing Ireland to remain neutral during the Second World War and retain diplomatic relations with all sides.
For Germany, 1945 was year zero. It was defeated, disgraced, occupied and partitioned. A Catholic chancellor Konrad Adenauer put the Federal Republic on its feet, embedded it in the West and then in the EEC in partnership with France. The swiftness of recovery in West Germany was remarkable, the economic miracle. In 1976, SPD Chancellor Helmut Schmidt could go to the polls on the platform ‘Modell Deutschland’. The Ostpolitik of Willy Brandt and the reunification of Germany within the EC, strongly supported by Ireland’s Presidency in 1990 under Charles Haughey, set important precedents. Although the German Democratic Republic had been a one-party state that imploded when Soviet support was withdrawn, it did provide its citizens with a comprehensive social safety net.
Conference
At a conference last week at the University of Limerick, ‘Operation Shamrock’, where Irish families took in German children after the war, was recalled. French and German bilateral aid helped Ireland in late 1978 to break with sterling and join the Exchange Rate Mechanism, precursor of the Euro. Chancellor Kohl agreed in 1992 a huge expansion of structural funds, from which Ireland greatly benefited. EU support for Ireland and for the peace process during the Brexit negotiations was vital, and again owed much to Germany. Both Germany and Ireland are more comfortable with the EU as a soft power rather than one that hankers after the colonial era. What is deeply ironic 100 years on is that Davis’ and Casement’s vision of a self-governing Ireland aligned with Germany and Europe rather than Britain has come to pass in political and economic terms. This outcome is not just Ireland’s doing. Vital relationships within and between these islands now need to be reconfigured.