Of more serious import were the yearly and increasing deficits in the imperial budget, and the consequent enormous growth of the debt. This was partly due to the commercial and industrial depression of the early years of the century, partly was another Resignation of Prince von Bülow. outcome of the federal constitution, which made it difficult to adjust the budget to the growing needs of the Empire without disarranging the finances of its constitutent states. The crisis became acute when the estimates for the year 1909 showed that some £25,000,000 would have to be raised by additional taxes, largely to meet the cost of the expanded naval programme. The budget presented to the Reichstag by Prince Bülow, which laid new burdens upon the landed and capitalist classes, was fiercely opposed by the Agrarians, and led to the break-up of the Liberal-Conservative bloc on whose support the chancellor had relied since the elections of 1906. The budget was torn to pieces in the committee selected to report on it; the Liberal members, after a vain protest, seceded; and the Conservative majority had a free hand to amend it in accordance with their views. In the long and acrimonious debates that followed in the Reichstag itself the strange spectacle was presented of the chancellor fighting a coalition of the Conservatives and the Catholic Centre with the aid of the Socialists and Liberals. The contest was from the first hopeless, and, but for the personal request of the emperor that he would pilot the Finance Bill through the House in some shape or other, Prince Bülow would have resigned early in the year. So soon as the budget was passed he once more tendered his resignation, and on the 14th of July a special edition of the Imperial Gazette announced that it had been accepted by the emperor. The post of imperial chancellor was at the same time conferred on Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, the imperial secretary of state for the interior.[9]

(W. A. P.)

Bibliography of German History.—Although the authorities for the history of Germany may be said to begin with Caesar, it is Tacitus who is especially useful, his Germania being an invaluable mine of information about the early inhabitants of the country. In the dark and disordered centuries which followed there are only a few scanty notices of the Germans, mainly in the works of foreign writers like Gregory of Tours and Jordanes; and then the 8th and 9th centuries, the time of the revival of learning which is associated with the name of Charlemagne, is reached. By the end of this period Christianity had been firmly established among most of the German tribes; the monks were the trustees of the new learning, and we must look mainly, although not exclusively, to the monasteries for our authorities. The work of the monks generally took the form of Annales or Chronica, and among the numerous German monasteries which are famous in this connexion may be mentioned Fulda, Reichenau, St Gall and Lorsch. For contemporary history and also for the century or so which preceded the lifetimes of their authors these writings are fairly trustworthy, but beyond this they are little more than collections of legends. There are also a large number of lives of saints and churchmen, in which the legendary element is still more conspicuous.

With regard to the Annales and Chronica three important considerations must be mentioned. They are local, they are monastic, and they are partisan. The writer in the Saxon abbey of Corvey, or in the Franconian abbey of Fulda, knows only about events which happened near his own doors; he records, it is true, occurrences which rumour has brought to his ears, but in general he is trustworthy only for the history of his own neighbourhood. The Saxon and the Franconian annalists know nothing of the distant Bavarians; there is even a gulf between the Bavarian and the Swabian. Then the Annals are monastic. To their writers the affairs of the great world are of less importance than those of the monastery itself. The Saxon Widukind, for instance, gives more space to the tale of the martyrdom of St Vitus than he does to several of the important campaigns of Henry the Fowler. Lastly, the annalist is a partisan. One is concerned to glorify at all costs the Carolingian house; another sacrifices almost everything to attack the emperor Henry IV. and to defend the Papacy; while a third holds a brief for some king or emperor, like Louis the Pious or Otto the Great.

Two difficulties are met with in giving an account of the sources of German history. In the 7th, 8th and 9th centuries it is hard, if not impossible, to disentangle the history of Germany from that of the rest of the Frankish empire of which it formed part; in fact it is not until the time of the dissensions between the sons of the emperor Louis I. that there are any signs of demarcation between the East and the West Franks, or, in other words, any separate history of Germany. The second difficulty arises later and is due to the connexion of Germany with the Empire. Germany was always the great pillar of the imperial power; for several centuries it was the Empire in everything but in name, and yet its political history is often overshadowed by the glamour of events in Italy. While the chroniclers were recording the deeds of Frederick I. and of Frederick II. in the peninsula, the domestic history of Germany remained to a large extent unwritten.

Among the early German chroniclers the Saxon Widukind, the author of the Res gestae Saxonicae, is worthy of mention. He was a monk of Corvey, and his work is the best authority for the early history of Saxony. Lambert, a monk of Hersfeld, and Widukind’s countryman, Bruno, in his De bello Saxonico, tell the story of the great contest between the emperor Henry IV. and Pope Gregory VII., with special reference to the Saxon part of the struggle. But perhaps the ablest and the most serviceable of these early writers is Otto of Freising, a member of the Babenberg family. Otto was also related to the great house of Hohenstaufen, a relationship which gave him access to sources of information usually withheld from the ordinary monastic annalist, and his work is very valuable for the earlier part of the career of Frederick I. Something is learned, too, from biographies written by the monks, of which Einhard’s Vita Karoli Magni is the greatest and the best, and Wipo’s life of the emperor Conrad II. is valuable, while another Carolingian courtier, Nithard, has a special interest as, almost alone among these early chroniclers, being a soldier and not a monk.

The monastic writers remain our chief authorities until the great change brought about by the invention of printing, although a certain amount of work was done by clerical writers attached to the courts of various rulers. Parallel with this event the revival of learning was producing a great number of men who could write, and, more important still, of men who were throwing off the monastic habits of thought and passing into a new intellectual atmosphere. The Renaissance was followed by the fierce controversies aroused by the Reformation, and the result was the output of an enormous mass of writings covering every phase of the mighty combat and possessing every literary virtue save that of impartiality. But apart from these polemical writings, many of which had only an ephemeral value, the Renaissance was the source of another stream of historical literature. Several princes and other leading personages, foremost among whom was the emperor Maximilian I., had spent a good deal of time and money in collecting the manuscripts of the medieval chroniclers, and these now began to be printed. The chronicle of Otto of Freising, which appeared in 1515, and the Vita of Einhard, which appeared six years later, are only two among the many printed at this time. The publication of collections of chronicles began in 1529, and the uncritical fashion in which these were reproduced made forgeries easy and frequent. There was, indeed, more than a zeal for pure learning behind this new movement; for both parties in the great religious controversy of the time used these records of the past as a storehouse of weapons of offence. The Protestants eagerly sought out the writings which exposed and denounced the arrogance of the popes, while the Romanists attempted to counter them with the numerous lives of the saints.

But before the raw material of history thus began to increase enormously in bulk, it had already begun to change its character and to assume its modern form. The Chronicle still survived as a medium of conveying information, though more often than not this was now written by a layman; but new stores of information were coming into existence, or rather the old stores were expanding and taking a different form. Very roughly these may be divided into six sections. (1) Official documents issued by the emperors and other German rulers. (2) Treaties concluded between Germany and other powers and also between one German state and another. (3) Despatches sent to England, Spain and other countries by their representatives in various parts of Germany. (4) Controversial writings or treatises written to attack or defend a given position, largely the product of the Reformation period. (5) The correspondence of eminent and observant persons. (6) An enormous mass of personal impressions taking the form of Commentaries, Memoirs and Diaries (Tagebücher). Moreover, important personages still find eulogistic biographers and defenders, e.g. the fanciful writings about the emperor Maximilian I. or Pufendorf’s De rebus gestis Friderici Wilhelmi Magni electoris Brandenburgici.

Through the dust aroused by the great Reformation controversy appear the dim beginnings of the scientific spirit in the writing of history, and in this connexion the name of Aventinus, “the Bavarian Herodotus,” may be mentioned. But for many years hardly any progress was made in this direction. Even if they possessed the requisite qualifications the historiographers attached to the courts of the emperor Charles V. and of lesser potentates could not afford to be impartial. Thus new histories were written and old ones unearthed, collected and printed, but no attempt was made to criticize and collate the manuscripts of the past, or to present two sides of a question in the writings of the present. Among the collections of authorities made during the 16th and 17th centuries those of J. Pistorius (Frankfort, 1583-1607), of E. Lindenbrog (Frankfort, 1609) and of M. Freher (Frankfort, 1600-1611), may be noticed, although these were only put together and printed in the most haphazard and unconnected fashion. Passing thus through these two centuries we reach the beginning of the 18th century and the work done for German historical scholarship by the philosopher Leibnitz, who sought to do for his own country what Muratori was doing for Italy. For some years it had been recognized that the collection and arrangement of the authorities for German history was too great an undertaking for any one man, and societies under very influential patronage were founded for this purpose. But very slight results attended these elaborate schemes, although their failure did not deter Leibnitz from pursuing the same end. The two chief collections which were issued by the philosopher are the Accessiones historicae (1698-1700) and the Scriptores rerum Brunsvicensium; the latter of these, containing documents centring round the history of the Welf family, was published in three volumes at Hanover (1707-1711). Leibnitz worked at another collection, the Origines Guelficae, which was completed and issued by his pupils (Hanover, 1750-1780), and also at Annales imperii occidentis Brunsvicenses, which, although the most valuable collection of the kind yet made, was not published until edited by G. H. Pertz (Hanover, 1843-1846). Other collections followed those of Leibnitz, among which may be mentioned the Corpus historicum medii aevi of J. G. Eccard (Leipzig, 1723) and the Scriptores rerum Germanicarum of J. B. Mencke (Leipzig, 1728). But these collections are merely heaps of historical material, good and bad; the documents therein were not examined and they are now quite superseded. They give, however, evidence of the great industry of their authors, and are the foundations upon which modern German scholarship has built.

In the 19th century the scientific spirit received a great impetus from the German system of education, one feature of which was that the universities began to require original work for some of their degrees. In this field of scientific research the Germans were the pioneers, and in it they are still pre-eminent, with Ranke as their most famous name and the Monumenta Germaniae historica as their greatest production. The Monumenta is a critical and ordered collection of documents relating to the history of Germany between 500 and 1500. It owes its origin mainly to the efforts of the statesman Stein, who was responsible for the foundation of the Gesellschaft für ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde, under the auspices of which the work was begun. The Gesellschaft was established in 1819, and, the editorial work having been entrusted to G. H. Pertz, the first volume of the Monumenta was published in 1826. The work was divided into five sections: Scriptores, Leges, Diplomata, Epistolae and Antiquitates, but it was many years before anything was done with regard to the two last-named sections. In the three remaining ones, however, folio volumes were published regularly, and by 1909 thirty folio volumes of Scriptores, five of Leges and one of Diplomata imperii had appeared. But meanwhile a change of organization had taken place. When Pertz resigned his editorial position in 1874 and the Gesellschaft was dissolved, twenty-four folio volumes had been published. The Prussian Academy of Sciences now made itself responsible for the continuance of the work, and a board of direction was appointed, the presidents of which were successively G. Waitz, W. Wattenbach, E. Dümmler and O. Holder-Egger. Soon afterwards as money became more plentiful the scope of work was extended; the production of the folio volumes continued, but the five sections were subdivided and in each of these a series of quarto volumes was issued. The titles of these new sections give a sufficient idea of their contents. The Scriptores are divided into Auctores antiquissimi, Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum, Scriptores rerum Langobardicarum et Italicarum, Libelli de lite imperatorum et pontificum, Gesta pontificum Romanorum and Deutsche Chroniken, or Scriptores qui vernacula lingua usi sunt. The Leges are divided into Leges nationum Germanicarum, Capitularia regum Francorum, Concilia, Constitutiones imperatorum et regum and Formulae. Three quarto volumes of Diplomata regum et imperatorum Germaniae and one of Diplomata Karolingorum had been published by 1909. Work was also begun upon the Antiquitates and the Epistolae. The sections of the former are Poëtae Latini medii aevi, Libri confraternitatum and Necrologia Germaniae, and of the latter Epistolae saeculi XIII. and Epistolae Merovingici et Karolini aevi. Meanwhile the publication of the Scriptores proper continues, although the thirty-first and subsequent volumes are in quarto and not in folio, and the number of volumes in the whole undertaking is continually being increased. The archives of the Gesellschaft have been published in twelve volumes, and a large number of volumes of the Neues Archiv have appeared. Some of the MSS. have been printed in facsimile, and an index to the Monumenta, edited by O. Holder-Egger and K. Zeumer, appeared in 1890. The writings of the more important chroniclers have been published separately, and many of them have been translated into German.