Germany in the Age of Bismarck

📖 The Scoop

This is the first time that a comprehensive selection of documents on Germany in the Age of Bismarck has been made available to students and other readers in the English language. As the title indicates, the documents have been chosen to illuminate not only Bismarck's own personality and policies but also the nature of the problems he faced and the reactions of his contemporaries. The same is true of Professor Simon's Introduction: he has here taken the opportunity of writing a thorough and searching essay, whereas in his recent Germany: a Brief History space allowed only a much more compressed consideration of the period under discussion here. While the Introduction serves as general background and guide to the documents as well as standing on its own as an original scholarly treatment, it is the documents that are the most novel part of this volume. Editor and publishers are convinced that the development of independent historical thought and judgement on a person as controversial as Bismarck and on a country as complex as the Germany over which he ruled can be best encouraged by the collection in convenient form of materials, letters, essay's, polemics, speeches, memoirs- produced in the period itself. Only in this way can readers get behind the cliches perpetuated in textbooks and obtain a genuine first-hand insight into the workings of minds and institutions in Germany during three of the most eventful decades of her history.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography / Historical (fancy, right?)