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No. 44. | Vienna, 4 November 1898. | Second Year.

Episode or Historical Event?

On the Journey of Wilhelm II. to Jerusalem
By O. Erter.

Without doubt the question which we set above these lines may be raised even now. It raises itself, indeed, of its own accord; for in order to arrive at a judgment upon the significance of Wilhelm II.'s journey to Jerusalem, it is above all necessary to distinguish what in it is fitted to leave behind an abiding effect upon the future, and what of it will sink away as a fleeting momentary decoration in the flood-tide of everyday life. This is no trifling with a mere dialectical alternative. The episode is something accidental; it has no conditioning premises and no necessary consequences. Facts and events become historical only by virtue of that causality through which they stand in indissoluble connection with the past and with the future. We hold the journey of Wilhelm II. to Jerusalem to be a momentous historical event, and we will say why it appears to us as such.

As pilgrims, following a pious need of the heart, sundry princes and princes' sons have come to Jerusalem during the last four decades. Emperor Franz Josef, upon whose crown the title of King of Jerusalem has descended from the days of the old Empire, was in the Promised Land; Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia, the later Emperor Friedrich III., tarried in Jerusalem on his way home from the opening of the Suez Canal; and a Russian Grand Duke too set foot upon the holy places as the emissary of the Emperor of Russia. Their visits assuredly had also the purpose of encouraging the adherents of their several confessions settled in Palestine, but this was a secondary purpose. The Protestant-ecclesiastical tendency of Wilhelm II.'s journey to Jerusalem, likewise, is only its occasion, not its motive force. Not the confessional but the national moment stands foremost. Herewith, however, it is shown that the spirit of our historical epoch has the decisive share in Wilhelm II.'s journey to Jerusalem; for the spirit of our historical epoch is guided not by confessional but by national motives.

Unmistakably has this come to light in the noisy prelude to Wilhelm II.'s journey to Jerusalem. In France the confessional moment was thrust forward by raising the question of the right of protection, and the Pope inclined to the French side by certifying France's claim to the protectorate over all the Catholics in the Orient. Yet behind this stormy controversy something quite other lay concealed, namely the very worldly antagonism of national prestige. It was a trial of strength not between Catholicism and Protestantism, but between France and Germany. And this was bound to fall out in Germany's favour, because in Berlin men did not entrench themselves behind the folding-screen of confessionalism, but, in accordance with the spirit of our historical epoch, took up the national standpoint. German Catholics in the Orient have a claim to German protection if they demand it, and Germany has the right to grant it. French Catholics in the Orient will hold to the protection of France, and no one will begrudge them the same. The Protestant German Emperor and the Catholic French Government have to exercise the right of protection not in the name of religion but in the name of the nation; not the confession of the protected person, but his nationality, decides his claim to protection. This is the actual result of the dispute over the protectorate, and one may well be permitted to call it a historical one, for it has finally done away with a practice of more than three hundred years and has definitively brought the state authority of Germany to bear in the Orient also, beside that of France.

Still more plainly did the historical significance of Wilhelm II.'s journey reveal itself in another direction. Everywhere, from the moment in which the journey was announced, there was the impression that a far-reaching economic purpose was in question. This impression uttered itself in a different key according to the greater or lesser interest which in the various quarters felt itself affected. Here suspicious, there full of expectation. But there as here men were upon the right track, for in reality it is the first peaceful and confiding meeting of the Occident with the Orient which the visit of Wilhelm II. to Constantinople and Jerusalem inaugurates. Such a meeting has never before taken place. The Crusaders came as enemies into the Ori-