The American Historical Review/Volume 23/Reviews of Books/The Making of Modern Germany
Six lectures, delivered in Chicago in 1915, form the basis of Schevill's work, which sketches in broad outline the political and social development of Prussia-Germany from the collapse of the medieval empire and the rise of the "hard, resistant nucleus", Brandenburg, to the beginning of the Great War. The appeal to a popular audience justifies the style of presentation, which is vigorous and picturesque, and at times somewhat flamboyant. Here and there the author rises to real eloquence, as in his descriptions of the effects of the Thirty Years' War. He does not disdain colloquialisms, and now and then lapses into a solecism ("the then ruler", p. 36). The book shows evidences of too great haste in preparation in not a few loose and even incorrect statements. The following are instances: "[Prussia] by giving up the territory acquired in the three partitions of Poland" (p. 89, it retained West Prussia and received back Posen, cf. p. 229); "The reduction of military service from three to two years occurred shortly before 1900" (p. 130, it was in 1893). It would be very hard to show that Austria in April, 1849, "threatened with war" if Frederick William IV. should accept the imperial crown from the Frankfort Parliament (p. 118). The Socialist vote in 1912 was nearly four and one-quarter millions, not three and one-half, as stated (p. 174). Incorrect is the statement that "Germany compels school attendance only until the fourteenth year"—it is corrected, in fact, on the next page—as well as the statement regarding the loyalty of the Poles in East Prussia and Silesia (p. 230). In East Prussia the land in Polish hands increased 1900 to 1912, as a result of systematic, aggressive effort, by more than 27,000 hectares, and in Silesia in 1908 the Wasserpolacken captured five Reichstag districts in the uplands. The Expropriation Law of 1908 was not simply "dangled as a threat" (p. 232). It was put into practice in 1912.
Schevill's book really falls into two parts: an historical and an argumentative part. The first, down to the Bismarck era, is a sympathetic and at times brilliant sketch of the development of Prussia into a "patriarchal state" with "traditions of work and service". With considerable skill the author selects the fundamental points in the story down through Frederick's programme and the subsequent struggle with Napoleon to the catastrophic results of Berlin's "official neutrality". In recounting Prussia's regeneration he does not overlook, as so many historians of Prussia do, the continuance for years after 1815 of the transforming impulses which Stein set in motion, though few will agree with the assertion that after this date "the view that the state was an end in itself … lost all but a few hidebound supporters" (p. 92). The thesis that the authoritative and collective tendencies in Prussia are an organic development dominates the discussion and in his eagerness to develop this through the nineteenth century Schevill occasionally overlooks important points, such as the unifying effects of the enthusiasms of the Frankfort Parliament and the constitutional results of Bismarck's victory over the Prussian Liberals in 1863, so crucial for the development of the Bismarckian state.
The book was planned before the war, nevertheless the conflict determines the tone and content of the discussion of Bismarck and after. Schevill defends vigorously and ably the German constitution as a "healthy interaction" of authority and democracy, and finds that the authoritative principle has taken a more genuinely democratic course than English and American liberalism. A statement of Lord Northcliffe's that the Germans are "second-rate imitators" introduces eight pages on German contributions to science, municipal government, etc. The author's arguments, like Delbrück's, in defense of the German dualistic system give the impression of one tilting against windmills. The British middle-class Liberalism, which Schevill attacks (p. 166 ff.), has long since ceased to exist in theory or practice save as a sort of bogey-man for critics. Is the British social legislation, from the factory laws of the 'forties down to Lloyd George's sick-insurance bill, not evidence of a growing fusion of liberalism with democracy, that freedom with equality, which Schevill finds so antipodal?
Appendixes on the Polish question and Alsace-Lorraine give a fair and sympathetic statement of the German position on these matters. Still another appendix (there are eight in all) absolves Bismarck from the charge of falsifying the Ems Despatch. Over against the fine-spun arguments of Schevill and others on this point one would like to set the classic remark of the hard-headed Moltke, when Bismarck read him the "concentrated" form of Abeken's message: "So hat das einen anderen Klang. Vorher klang es wie eine Chamade [signal for negotiations], jetzt wie eine Fanfare [flourish in answer to a challenge]." (Gedanken und Erinnerungen, II. 91.)
This work was published before January 1, 1929 and is anonymous or pseudonymous due to unknown authorship. It is in the public domain in the United States as well as countries and areas where the copyright terms of anonymous or pseudonymous works are 95 years or less since publication.
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