History Of Germany In The Nineteenth Century Vol 1 Classic Reprint PDF Download

Excerpt from History of Germany in the Nineteenth Century, Vol. 1 What scholarship and literature would have lost had he adhered to that first design may be imagined. The spectacle of Treitschke exhausting himself in the endless task of writing the dreary, uninspiring, unheroic annals of the Deutscher Bund, suggests the hardly less congruous spectacle of a Velasquez passing his days in painting Dutch interiors - in either case a fate comparable to the rigours which might have been reserved in a tenth Circle for men of genius who had misused their talents. Treitschke, as the special historian of the Bund, might have done the work better than anyone else, but there were other men able to do it well enough. It was not, however, the unattractiveness of the task that led him to abandon the idea of concentrating upon the history of the Bund. He tells us that he had not been long at work before he recognised that a History of the Germanic Federation would be a history for students and specialists. It was not his ambition to write such a work, but to write German history for the German nation. Hence he found it necessary to carry his researches both further back and further forward. As the plan developed he came to fix on the Peace of Westphalia as his starting point. That landmark gave him just the wide perspective which his scheme, as it had now taken shape, required, for it enabled him to survey in all essential features the beginnings of modern Germany and above all to do full justice to the romantic story of the growth of the Prussian State. It was his intention to bring the narrative down to his own day. Of the History, five portly volumes were published, carrying the story to the revolutionary movements of 1848. The History had not to win its way laboriously into favour like many great works, for it was born famous. Edition after edition has been published, and its place in the estimation - one might almost say the reverence - of the German nation is perhaps greater to-day than ever. Noris there any great mystery about this. The immense amount of research and the stores of erudition embodied in the History, the writers weighty authority alike as professor, publicist, and parliamentarian, and the fascination of his literary style would alone have assured a brilliant success. Yet these were not the recommendations which gave to Treitschke and the History their immense influence over the minds of modern Germany. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.