Dr. Friedberg was then a man of sixty-five, and one of the most distinguished jurists of Germany. He had adorned a responsible post in the Ministry of Justice for over twenty years, and had written numerous valuable works, those relating to his special subject of prison reform and the efficacy of criminal law in social improvement standing in the very front rank of literature of that kind. His promotion, however, had been hopelessly blocked by two considerations; he was professedly a Liberal in politics and a close friend of the Crown Prince and Princess, and, what was still worse, he was a Jew.
On the second day of his Regency, Frederic astounded and scandalized aristocratic Berlin by appointing Dr. Friedberg to the highest judicial-administrative post in the kingdom. To glance forward for a moment, it may be noted that when old Kaiser Wilhelm returned to active power in December, he refused to remove Friedberg, out of a feeling of loyalty to his son’s actions as Regent. But he vented his wrath in another way by conspicuously neglecting to give Friedberg the Black Eagle after he had served nine years in the Ministry, though all his associates obtained the decoration upon only six years’ service. This slight upon the Hebrew Minister explains the well-remembered action of Frederic, when he was on his journey home from San Remo to ascend the throne after his father’s death:--as the Ministerial delegation met his train at Leipsic, and entered the carriage, he took the Black Eagle from his own neck and placed it about that of Friedberg.
This action of the emotional sick man, returning through the March snowstorm to play his brief part of phantom Kaiser, created much talk in Germany three years ago, and Friedberg, upon the strength of it, plumed himself greatly as the chief friend of the new monarch. He was the first Jew ever decorated by that exalted and exclusive Black Eagle--and during the short reign of ninety-nine days he held himself like the foremost man in the Empire.
It is a melancholy reflection that this mean-spirited old man, as soon as Frederic died, made haste to lend himself to the work of blackening his benefactor’s memory. He had owed more to Frederic’s friendship and loyalty than any other in Germany, and he requited the debt to the dead Kaiser with such base ingratitude that even Frederic’s enemies were disgusted, and, under the pressure of general disfavour, he had soon to quit his post. But enough of Friedberg’s unpleasant personality. Let us return to 1878.