A Duel of Nations: Germany, France, and the Diplomacy of the War of 1870–1871

Bibliographical Essay

251 The purpose of this essay, like the one in the companion volume to which it is a successor, is to acknowledge my many teachers and to record my many obligations, I hope with some degree of accuracy. The essay, like the volume it serves, may stand apart from its predecessor, but, at the same time, it is inextricably connected with it. Inevitably, I used in A Duel of Giants (DG) many of the books I used again here, and this put me into a dilemma: whether to repeat the full evaluation I gave in the first volume, making this essay too long and partially redundant, or to supply only a cross-reference, thereby compelling the reader to shuffle back and forth from one book to another. I therefore decided to adopt a compromise that I trust will be acceptable: whenever a title discussed in any detail in DG reappears here, I have con- fined myself to giving essential bibliographical information, together with a short commentary (though in some cases I found longer ones to be necessary ), and then added in parenthesis a cross-reference to the first appearance in the first volume. The bibliography is divided into three sections, the same arrangement as before. Part 1 focuses on the background, mainly the outstanding personalities that appear in the narrative. Part 2 deals with the primary sources on diplomacy of the Franco-Prussian War itself and is divided into three sections: materials in the archives of the powers; the outstanding series published from these archives; and the private papers of the major actors, themselves arranged as rulers, prime and foreign ministers, diplomats, and others. Each section is arranged by country, ordered as befits a work of diplomatic history, according to the French alphabet, that is, Germany (including Prussia), Austria-Hungary, France, Great Britain, Italy, and Russia. The final section deals with the outstanding works of secondary literature on the Franco-Prussian War itself. Bibliographical Essay bibliographical essay 252 I need hardly emphasize that this essay, like its earlier companion, is subjective and incomplete; ranging as it does over a vast subject, for years of interest to scholars and replete with controversy, it could hardly be anything else. As was the case earlier, I have in the main cited titles that supplied me with ideas, drove me to ask questions, or fired me to dissent. As to information on cities of publication, I have adopted the following formula: unless otherwise indicated, all books with German titles have been published in Berlin; all those with French, in Paris; all those with English, in London. Where a book has been translated into English, I usually give both the English and the original version. PART 1. BACKGROUND Personalities GERMANY. Surveying the literature on him in 2001, I wrote (DG, 200): “There is no outstanding biography of William I in English.” To the best of my knowledge, this remains true today. I have already singled out for praise Kaiser Wilhelm I, by Karl Heinz Börner (Cologne, 1984), an authoritative study of its subject. The book by Erich Marks (original 1897 but many subsequent editions) with the same title is a work of great length and great learning, illuminated by flashes of insight. Börner’s essay “Wilhelm I: Vom Kartätschenprinz zum deutschen Kaiser,” in Gestalten der Bismarckzeit, ed. Gustav Seeber (1978), is an instructive contribution, packed with valuable and stimulating ideas on William’s attitude toward the formation of the German empire. The last volume of Aus dem Leben Kaiser Wilhelms, 1849–1873, by Louis Schneider, 3 vols. (1888), remains informative for all its relative antiquity . Mention should also be made of Wilhelm I: Kaiserfrage und Kölner Dom, by Karl Hempe (Stuttgart, 1936), and of Günter Richter’s essay “Kaiser Wilhelm I,” in Drei deutsche Kaiser, ed. Wilhelm Treue (Freiburg, 1987) (all discussed in DG, 200–202). Wilhelm der Erste: Sein Leben und seine Zeit, by Paul Wiegler (Hellerau, 1927), has some points of interest, though the cautious critic has submerged the creative scholar. Books on Bismarck, of course, exist in profusion, and I can mention only a few. The most recent, Bismarck: A Life, by Jonathan Steinberg (New York, 2011), also happens to be one of the best. It reached me only when this bibliographical essay 253 manuscript was complete; the book is a model of unassuming scholarship and understanding. Of equal importance is the recent...