Prussia's scholar-diplomats

The first Prussian Ambassador in London was Ezechiel von Spanheim (1629-1710). He was a scholar and reformed theologian, tutor at first to Karl Ludwig, the Prince Elector of the Palatinate, the brother-in-law of Elizabeth, the "Winter Queen", daughter of King James I. The Elector sent him on special diplomatic missions, but after 1680 he entered the services of Brandenburg and came to London in 1701, when the Elector of Brandenburg, Frederick III, became Frederick I of Prussia. "Welcome, Prussians, you are good Englishmen", the London crowds shouted when his cortège of 38 carriages arrived in the capital. It was their highest form of compliment at a time when Prussia was England's ally against Louis XIV and Spain.


Spanheim spent nine years in London and became doyen of the diplomatic corps. He managed to continue his scholarly work and conducted an extensive correspondence with Leibniz, Pufendorf and other luminaries, and also to resist attempts by his parsimonious sovereign to reduce his status of ambassadeur extraordinaire to ambassadeur ordinaire so as to be able to cut his 6,000 Thaler salary. He was given a barony and died m London, buried by his wife's side in Westminster Abbey.


There was a breakdown in Anglo-Prussian diplomatic relations in the mid-18^th century. But George II needed a Continental ally to protect his beloved Hanoverian homeland against the French and in January 1756 signed the Westminster Convention with his nephew Frederick the Great. After the Seven Years War had begun, a new Prussian Minister arrived in London, Baron Dodo Heinrich zu Inn und Knyphausen who stayed for five years until the end of the War in 1763. His mission was to hold the English Government to the terms of the alliance and send troop reinforcements to Frederick's campaigns, but the English were preoccupied with overseas conquests in North America and rather than sending ships and soldiers, as Frederick wanted, they preferred to subsidise the Prussian King with some 4 million Pounds a year. Knyphausen found it not easy both to serve the interests of his soldier-king and to adjust to the political ups and downs of the English Government's attitude towards the Prussian alliance.


Another Anglo-Prussian war alliance, this time in the defeat of Napoleon, led to the arrival in London of a great scholar-diplomat, Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835), the founder of modern linguistic studies, historian and philosopher, friend of Goethe and Schiller. His younger brother was the famous natural scientist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), the friend of Darwin and Edmund Burke and honoured by the Royal Society. Wilhelm von Humboldt disliked London because of the weather and the enforced separation from his wife who could not stand the smog. Moreover, the King, Friedrich Wilhelm IV, and his Chancellor Hardenberg had wanted him out of the way because of his liberal views, so he felt as though in exile. London at least enabled him to study his beloved Parthenon Marbles which Lord Elgin had just acquired and was exhibiting in Leicester Square. In those days the diplomatic corps comprised 30 foreign legations, the Prussian being one of many representing German states, others were Baden, Bavaria, Hanover, the Hanseatic cities Hamburg and Bremen whose links with England went back to medieval times; and there were also representatives of the Grand Duchy Hessen and Electoral Hessen, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Saxony and Württemberg.


When Queen Victoria was crowned in 1837, the Prussian Minister in London was Heinrich von Bülow, Wilhelm von Humboldt's son-in-law, who served in the British capital from 1827 to 1845. He and his wife considered the move from cosy Berlin, as it then was, to London almost like banishment to Siberia. Bülow was greeted by a gun salute and military display thanks to the lingering memory of the Anglo-Prussian alliance and Waterloo. However, at his Legation he had to make do with only one secretary, an administrative officer and a chaplain; he himself had to code and decode his own dispatches, and be his own Economics Attaché when the German Customs Union increased the importance of trade affairs; and this apart from all his political and social engagements. By 1843 he had suffered a total mental and physical breakdown and died three years later, aged only 55. His successor was another scholar-diplomat, Christian-Karl Josias Bunsen (1791-1860). He was married to a wealthy English-woman, Frances Waddington, related to Quaker families like the Gurneys and to Elizabeth Fry, the social reformer. As an Orientalist and Protestant theologian, Bunsen had long discussions with the theological-minded Gladstone and was much interested in the famous conflict over the Anglican bishopric of Jerusalem. He disapproved of John Henry Newman who converted to Catholicism in 1845, and of the Anglo-Catholic revival in the Church of England. As Prussian Minister from 1841 he was popular with Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. It was in Bunsen's time - in March 1849 - that the move took place of the Prussian Legation from No. 4 to No. 9. Carlton House Terrace. When the Queen's eldest daughter, the Princess Royal (Vicky), married the liberal Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm, Bunsen gave a great ball at the Carlton House Terrace Legation which was attended by members of the Royal family.


Bunsen's period ended the era of happy British relations with "dear Prussia", as the young Queen Victoria called it. Bismarck came to dominate the conduct of Prussia's foreign affairs with the aim of unifying Germany by military means, and Anglo-German relations suffered accordingly. With his greater interest in cultural and theological matters, Bunsen's diplomatic abilities were certainly not appreciated in Berlin when he failed to get British support for Prussia's claim to Schleswig-Holstein, or, Anglophile that he was, tried to involve neutral Prussia on Britain's side in the Crimean War. So he was recalled.


Theodor Fontane (1819-1898) spent almost four years in Britain in the 1840s and 50s and knew it perhaps better than any other great German writer in the nineteenth century. The Prussian Minister C.J.F. Bunsen invited the young writer to his Carlton House Terrace residence. Fontane who had a hard time in London described his impressions in a letter dated 2 June 1852 to Friedrich Eggers "Went twice to Bunsen, for Breakfast and Lunch. Beautiful, large rooms, liveried servants, excellent food, friendly service, lively conversation and anecdotes in all languages you can think of. I listened to it all feeling like the mutton on the platter and thought actually that I was about to be carved up myself. There is little that Bunsen can do for me. The Cesars of his kind don't care for lean people like myself. I think little of the fatties: they stuff themselves and let others starve with a vengeance. These people may have dignity but I don't like them much. " -- The Chalk drawing of Fontane in 1843 is by Georg Kersting and reproduced from Theodor Fontane: Wanderungen durch England and Schottland, Vol. 1, edited by Hans-Heinrich Reuter, Verlag der Nation, Berlin, 1979.

Enlarge image Theodor Fontane