Auswärtiges Amt
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Introduction
The term "Auswärtiges Amt" was the name of the Foreign Office established in 1870 by the North German Confederation, which then became the German Empire's Foreign Office in 1871. It is still the name of the German foreign ministry today. From 1871 to 1919, the Foreign Office was led by a Foreign Secretary, and since 1919, it has been led by the Foreign Minister of Germany.
History
The Auswärtiges Amt was established in 1870 to form the foreign policy of the North German Confederation, and from 1871 of the German Empire. The Foreign Office was originally led by a secretary of state (therefore not called a ministry), while the Chancellor, who usually also held the office of Prussian Minister of Foreign Affairs, remained in charge of foreign affairs.
In the first years of the German nation-state under Otto von Bismarck, the Foreign Office on Wilhelmstrasse No. 76 next to the Reich Chancellery had two departments: one for political affairs and the other for economic, legal and consular matters. After Bismarck's dismissal in 1890, another department for colonial policy was established, spun off as the separate Reichskolonialamt in 1907. Bismarck in order to maintain his control of the Auswärtiges Amt appointed his son Herbert von Bismarck as State Secretary. That Bismarck appointed his rather incompetent son as State Secretary reflected his determination to be his own foreign minister, and his need for an utterly loyal man to run the Auswärtiges Amt when he was not around. Bismarck would not accept opinions contrary to his own, and only those diplomats who were devoted to him rose to high rank. One British diplomat wrote of Count Paul von Hatzfeldt that he was "a shrewd, cautious man without convictions, who does what he is told intelligently and diligently, and that is what Bismarck likes in his agents". However, Bismarck did greatly value accurate information, and as such diplomats tended to report what they believed to be the truth back to Berlin.
Right from the start, the Auswärtiges Amt was very socially exclusive. To join, one needed a university degree, preferably in jurisprudence and needed to prove that one had a considerable private income. In 1880, a candidate had to prove that he had a private income of at least 6,000 marks/annum in order to join; by 1900, the requirement was 10,000 marks/annum and by 1912, a candidate needed at least 15,000 marks/annum to join. This requirement explains why so many German diplomats married richer women because without the wealth of their wives they would never had been able to join the Auswärtiges Amt. The income requirement to enter the AA was only dropped in 1918. Aristocrats were very much overrepresented in the Auswärtiges Amt. During the Imperial period, 69% of the 548 men who served in the Auswärtiges Amt were noblemen, and every single ambassador during the Second Reich was an aristocrat. The most important department by far was the Political Department which between 1871-1918 was 61% aristocratic; middle-class men tended to serve in the less important Legal, Trade and Colonial Departments. In the 19th century, it was believed that only aristocrats had the proper social standing and graces to correctly represent the Reich abroad as ambassadors, which explains why no commoner was ever appointed ambassador during the Imperial era.
The British historian John C. G. Röhl wrote: "In the great embassies of Europe-in London, Vienna, St Petersburg, Rome, Madrid and Constantinople, but in Paris, too-only an aristocrat of one of the highest-born families could play the role in court society which his position as ambassador demanded. He had to invite the right people and be invited by them in return in order to represent the interests of his country with dignity-and also in order to collect the secret information which he required for his reports. His wife, too, had to be acceptable at court and preferably possess money, charm and intelligence."
