German historian, Heinrich von Treitschke, writes of
King Frederick William IV, the predecessor of Emperor William I, as
follows:--

"He believed in a mysterious enlightenment which is granted
'von Gottes Gnaden' to kings rather than other mortals. All
the blessings of peace, which his People could expect under
a Christian monarch, should Proceed from the wisdom of the
Crown alone; he regarded his high office like a patriarch of
the Old Testament and held the kingship as a fatherly power
established by God Himself for the education of the people.
Whatever happened in the State he connected with the person
of the monarch. If only his age and its royal awakener had
understood each other better! He had, however, in his
strangely complicated process of development, constructed
such extraordinary ideals that though he might sometimes
agree in words with his contemporaries he never did as to
the things, and spoke a different language from his people.
Even General Gerlach, his good friend and servant, used to
say: 'The ways of the King are wonderful;' and the not less
loyal Bunsen wrote about a complaint of the monarch that 'no
one understands me, no one agrees with me,' the
commentary--'When one understood him, how could one agree
with him?'"

It was this king, be it parenthetically remarked, who said, when his
people were clamouring for a Constitution, in 1847: "Now and never
will I admit that a written paper, like a second Providence, force
itself between our God in Heaven and this land"--and a few months
later had to sign the document his people demanded.

Von Treitschke, writing on the last birthday of Emperor William I,
thus spoke of the doctrine:

"A generation ago an attempt was made by a theologizing
State theory to inculcate the doctrine of a power of the
throne, divine, released from all earthly obligations. This
mystery of the Jacobins never found entrance into the clear
common sense of our people."

Prince Bismarck's view of the doctrine was explained in a speech he
made to the Prussian Diet in 1847. He was speaking on "Prussia as a
Christian State." "For me," he said,

"the words 'von Gottes Gnaden,' which Christian rulers join
to their names, are no empty phrase, but I see in them the
recognition that the princes desire to wield the sceptre
which God has assig