"...Bismarck's introduction of a newer, even more draconian package of Anti-Socialist Laws into the Reichstag and Bundesrat on June 1 outraged Frederick and immediately led to a meeting at the Sanssouci where household staff were alleged to hear Kaiser and Chancellor shouting at one another from behind the office door. Von Bennigsen, for his part, spent most of June aggressively whipping not only "hards" in his own party who might be amenable to defecting to Bismarck's gathering anti-Socialist coalition in the lower house but also smaller-party members, doing everything he could to ameliorate the concerns of the Center Party, going so far as to pledge that the National Liberals would block a German-wide "new Kulturkampf" if such a thing were proposed by a future Chancellor. The fact that von Bennigsen was so openly discussing the idea that there might soon be a new Chancellor as head of the Bundesrat spoke to what was becoming an open secret in what soon came to be known as the "Hot Summer" for its political tensions: that the Kaiser was readying to cashier Bismarck and that their long-running feud had hit a point of no return. From his perch in the upper house, Bismarck had become so alienated from his ostensible Vice Chancellor von Bennigsen that the two men ceased speaking by midsummer. Members of various parties, including socialists now that the original laws had expired on July 1st with no renewal, demonstrated in city streets both for and against the Chancellor, and Bismarck, never a fiery orator so much as a canny operator, gave a well-received and surprisingly fiery address at the annual picnic for veterans of the Unification Wars at the Tiergarten. The Picnic Speech seemed to draw a line in the sand: Bismarck declared angrily, "Shall we allow Leipzig's factories to burn like those of Liege? What do we say the day that Koblenz looks like Charleroi? How many subversives must march in the streets before we say enough?" Frederick was so angered upon hearing that Bismarck had intended to originally deliver the Picnic Speech on the Reichstag floor that he remarked, "Had the old man challenged me as such, he'd have been retired that day." Empress Victoria, for her part, nudged her husband aggressively to sack Bismarck immediately and stop dithering, but Bismarck had left the throne out of his challenge implicitly, focusing his critique on enemies within the body politic, and as he often did, Frederick hesitated.
The irony of course was that Frederick, a firm classical liberal but one married to the ideals of social order, detested socialism and had been appalled by the chaos in Belgium earlier in the year. The relatively moderate Social Democrats of Germany, however, had never agitated at the level of the true radicals of "Red Brussels," where many of the German left's most aggressive members had decamped in self-imposed exile thanks to the 1878 package of Anti-Socialist Laws. Frederick was of the view that a more liberal political structure, particularly a more centralized government in Berlin and a celebration of Germanism, would satisfy many of the agitators; he had even come around to passing an eight-week sickness insurance policy like Bismarck had moved through the Landtag of Prussia across the whole of Germany, despite his earlier skepticism. He saw the laws being proposed to ban Socialism entirely as likely to exacerbate the problem rather than solve it, and anathema to a free and open liberal society. In many ways, his personal antipathy towards the Iron Chancellor but fear of angering the Junkers and military that still loved "the fat old man" left him deadlocked on what action to take; in later years, a British newspaper would quip that Friedrich III was "Hamlet on the Havel" for his indecision and procrastination in taking on the power bloc that directly challenged him.
The crisis came to an early inflection point when the Bundesrat narrowly passed the Anti-Socialist Laws of 1883, which banned meetings of "subversive organizations" for the first time and which was drawn so broadly as to potentially encompass a whole host of other political groups. The package was introduced into the Reichstag by the German Conservative Party, dominated by Bismarck's allies among the Junkers and Prussian military. For many military officers, the new package represented a just revenge, even more so than the original slate, for the murder of Kaiser Wilhelm five years earlier; Waldersee himself spoke at a rally outside the Reichstag in August angrily decrying "those who would spit on the Kaiser's grave in the name of democracy." It was clear even then that Marshal von Moltke had lost control of many of his younger officers, but Friedrich did not want to intervene in "staff matters." Before rafters full of onlookers, von Bennigsen led a raucous debate in the Reichstag over the package and eventually the temperature of the body was read to desire a much softer slate of laws, less strict even than the 1878 versions, but open to negotiation and compromise. On a narrow vote, von Bennigsen's coalition held and defeated the laws as written, with the Liberal leader pleading in his closing remarks as angry protests erupted in the galleries and outside for a new debate to be held. Democracy had, in that moment, arrived in Germany; Bismarck had suffered his first defeat at the hands of a democratically elected body (of course with the open secret of the Kaiser's acquiescence). Friedrich was pilloried in many newspapers and public opinion polarized.
A week later, the Landtag of Bavaria passed a softer Anti-Socialist Law as well as a substantial increase in subsidies for Catholic schools..."
- Frederick and Victoria: Consorts of Germany