Moreover,
they could not be sacrificed, in the first place, because they had
rendered invaluable services in the wars of independence, they had
arisen as one man, and they had ruined themselves in sacrifices for the
national cause, they had organized the people and led it to victory,
finally because they served to restrain the high nobility whose
domination was feared. They sustained the throne against the princes,
the higher nobility against the democracy, the lesser nobility against
the higher, the two forming an intermediary class between the monarch
and the nation. That was the social conception which prevailed with
those who were working to realize the unity of Germany, so that the
nobility, lesser or higher, in default of its privileges retained its
functions.
Treitschke, in his last lessons, about 1890, called it "a political
class." For the bourgeois, he said, wealth, instruction, letters, arts.
Their part is fine enough. The nobility is apt at governing. That is its
special distinction. For a long time, in fact, the nobility has filled
alone or almost alone the great administrative, governmental, and
military posts.
Bismarck was the finished type, the representative par excellence of
this class of men.
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