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To the Anglo-Saxon, of course, brought up with individualistic views of life and demanding complete personal freedom, the German Rechtstaat would be galling, not to say intolerable.
The imperial ego, which is quite consistent with the German view of monarchical rule and conformity with the Rechtstaat, is specially advertised by the pictures and statues of the Emperor which are to be found all over Germany, to the apparent exclusion of the pictures and statues of national and local men of distinction.
The Englishman, however, has his Rechtstaat too, but the limits it places on his liberty are not nearly so restrictive in regard to public meeting, public talking, public writing, in short, public action of all sorts, as in Germany.
This idea was embodied in the Rechtstaat, or State based on law, which was introduced by Frederick the Great, the "first servant of the State." The State, he said, exists for the sake of the citizens. "One must be insane," he wrote,
American outspokenness in politics, for example, must be refreshing to minds penned within the limits of the Rechtstaat. He sees in them, too, millionaires, or at least people who come from a country where money is so abundant that, as many country-people still think, you have only to stoop to pick it up.
The German conception of the Rechtstaat entails, as one of its consequences, a sharp contrast between the rights and privileges of the Crown and the rights and privileges of the people; and therefore, while the Emperor is never without apprehension that the people may try to increase their rights and privileges at the expense of those of the Crown, the people are not without apprehension that the Crown may try to increase its rights and privileges at the expense of the political liberties of the people.
The Rechtstaat exists in Germany to the present day, the Emperor is at the head of it, and the people are content to live within its confines.
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