Page:Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire (1899).djvu/43

Rh of human life—birth, marriage, death—called for the blessing of the Church, and once or twice a year came the solemn confession and the sacrament. Religious belief and political faith were closely joined, for the Church was but a department of the State; the King was chief bishop, as he was general of the army, and the sanctity of the Church was transferred to the Crown to the nobles and peasants, criticism of, or opposition to, the King had in it something of sacrilege the words "by the Grace of God" added to the royal title were more than an empty phrase. Society was still organised on the old patriarchal basis at the bottom was the peasant; above him, was the guädiger Herr; above him, Unser allergnädigste Herr, the King, who lived in Berlin; and above him, the Herr Gott in Heaven.

To the inhabitants of South Germany, and the men of the towns, these nobles of Further Pomerania, the Junker as they were called, with their feudal life, their medieval beliefs, their simple monarchism, were the incarnation of political folly; to them liberalism seemed another form of atheism, but in this solitude and fresh air of the great plain was reared a race of men who would always be ready, as their fathers had been, to draw their sword and go out to conquer new provinces for their King to govern.