The sovereign rights which the individual states renounced in order to form the REICH were voluntarily ceded only to a very small degree. For the most part they had no practical existence or they were simply taken by Prussia under the pressure of her preponderant power. The principle followed by Bismarck was not to give the REICH what he could take from the individual states but to demand from the individual states only what was absolutely necessary for the REICH. A moderate and wise policy. On the one side Bismarck showed the greatest regard for customs and traditions; on the other side his policy secured for the new REICH from its foundation onwards a great measure of love and willing co-operation. But it would be a fundamental error to attribute Bismarck's decision to any conviction on his part that the REICH was thus acquiring all the
rights of sovereignty which would suflice for all time. That was far from Bismarck's idea. On the contrary, he wished to leave over for the future what it would be difficult to carry through at the moment and might not have been readily agreed to by the individual states. He trusted to the levelling effect of time and to the pressure exercised by the process of evolution, the steady action of which appeared more effective than an attempt to break the resistance which the individual states offered at the moment. By this policy he showed his great ability in the art of statesmanship. And, as a matter of fact, the sovereignty of the REICH has continually increased at the cost of the sovereignty of the individual states. The passing of time has achieved what Bismarck hoped it would.
The German collapse and the abolition of the monarchical form of government necessarily hastened this development. The German federal states, which had not been grounded on ethnical foundations but arose rather out of political conditions, were bound to lose their importance the moment the monarchical form of government and the dynasties connected with it were abolished, for it was to the spirit inherent in these that the individual states owned their political origin and development. Thus deprived of their internal RAISON D'ĂŠTRE, they renounced all right to survival and were induced by purely practical reasons to fuse with their neighbours or else they joined the more powerful states out of their own free will. That proved in a striking manner how extraordinarily frail was the actual sovereignty these small
It was only natural and logical that the federal states should lose all sovereign control over the finances the moment the REICH, in consequence of a lost war, was subjected to financial obligations which could never be guaranteed through separate treaties with the individual states. The subsequent steps which led the REICH to take over the posts and railways were an enforced advance in the process of enslaving our people, a process which the peace treaties gradually developed. The REICH was forced to secure possession of resources which had to be constantly increased in order to satisfy the demands made by further extortions.
those of the REICH had now to look on passively while the pressure of events forced the REICH, in its own interests, to abolish the existence of the individual states. They were the victims of their own defaults.