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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
The examination and evaluation of Bismarck's statesmanship has been resumed with much vigor in Germany. The topic has always — and naturally — been a favorite of German historians. Yet the current discussion differs from previous examinations of Bismarck's policies. It is concerned not so much with a factual analysis of these policies as with their overall significance and validity.
1 Eyck, Erich, Bismarck: Leben und Werk (Erlenbach-Zurich, 1941–44)Google Scholar. Recently an abbreviated one-volume edition has been published in English; Bismarck and the German Empire (London, 1950)Google Scholar; it fails to measure up, however, to the full-length German original.
2 An example of the old Bismarck orthodoxy may be found in Meyer, Arnold Oskar, Bismarck: Der Mensch und der Staatsmann (Stuttgart, 1950)Google Scholar, which was, however, completed in 1943, before the German collapse. This same attitude is still reflected in a postwar paper of Kaehler, S. A., “Der 1. April 1895 und sein zeitgeschichtlicher Hintergrund,” Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen, Phil.-Hist. Klasse, 1948, pp. 30–41.Google Scholar
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17 von Bismarck, Otto, Aie gesammelten Werke, ed. by Windel-band, Wolfgang and Frauendienst, Werner (Berlin, 1923–1935), XV, 278, 411Google Scholar; also VIII, 106–07.
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22 Ritter, , Merkur, p. 674.Google Scholar
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25 Ibid., V, 457, VII, 176–77, 260.
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36 Ibid., p. 27.
