186 



GERMANY 



' national needs.' But he died in June, and William 

 II., his son, recurred to Bismarck's policy. Ere long 

 differences between the young emperor and the 

 chancellor on social politics led to Bismarck's retire- 

 ment in 1890, his successors being General Von Cap- 

 rivi (1890-94) and Prince Hohenlohe. Anti-Semite 

 controversies continued, and measures for repressing 

 Socialism ; and a law was passed (1893) for a great 

 increase in the war strength of the army (ultimately 

 calculated at 4,360,000). There have been many 

 prosecutions for lese-majesty of late years. But the 

 great features of recent German history have been 

 the growth of German trade and commerce, the 

 great colonial expansion in Africa and Polynesia, 

 and, unfortunately, a bitter feeling of rivalry 

 between Germany and Britain, which during the 

 Transvaal troubles 1895-96, after the German 

 Emperor's telegram to President Kruger, threat- 

 ened to issue in war between the countries. 

 Germany still abides by the triple alliance, though 

 she intervened along with Russia and France 

 between Japan and China in 1895. 



See Monumenta Oermanice Historica, edited by Pertz, 

 Waltz, &c. ; 'Deutsche Geschichte, ' by Dahn, Dove, &c., in 

 Giesebrecht's Geschichte derEuropaischen Staaten ( Gotha, 

 1883 et seq.) ; W. Menzel, Geschichte der Deutschen (5th 

 ed. 5 vols. Stutt. 1855; Eng. trans. Lond. 1848-49); D. 

 Muller, Geschichte dcs Deutschen Volks ( llth ed. Berlin, 

 1884); Stacke, Deutsche Geschichte (Leip. 1880-81); 

 Treitschke, Deutsche Geschichte im 19ten Jahrhundert ( 5 

 vols. Leip. 1879 et seq.); Eanke, Deut. Geschichte im Zeitalter 

 der Reformation (6th ed. 6 vols. 1880-82; Eng. trans. 

 1845-47 ) ; Miiller's Politische Geschichte der Gegenwart 

 (an annual historical register; with a resume" translated 

 into English by Peters, 1876). Also works by Luden, 

 K. B. Menzel, Leo, Waitz, Souehay, Sugenheim, &c. ; see 

 also under FREDERICK THE GREAT, THIRTY YEARS' WAR, 

 BISMARCK, and other special articles. 



Works in English : J. Bryce, Holy Roman Empire 

 (9th ed. 1888); J. Sime, History of Germany ( 1874, in 

 Freeman's ' Historical ' series ) ; C. T. Lewis, History of 

 Gtrmany (3874); S. Baring-Gould, Germany, Present 

 and Past ( 2 vols. 1879 ) ; Baring-Gould and Gilman, 

 Germany ( 1886, ' Story of the Nations ' series ) ; S. 

 Whitman, Imperial Germany ( 1 889 ) ; Official ( German ) 

 Account of franco-German War, translated by Major 

 Clarke (1872-84) ; Seeley's Life of Stein (1879) ; Malle- 

 son's Refounding of the German Empire (1892) ; Harbutt 

 Dawson's Germany and the Germans ( 1894 ) ; E. F. 

 Henderson's History of Germany in the Middle Ages 

 (1894). 



LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. The numerous 

 dialects spoken by the tribes of ancient Germany 

 were all derivatives from one branch of the Aryan 

 or Indo-Germanic family of languages. We can 

 trace the co-existence of the two branches of 

 Teutonic speech known as Low German and 

 High German as far back as the 7th century, 

 but there is no evidence to show that they existed 

 as common uniform languages, from which their 

 variously modified dialects were respectively 

 derived. According to Max Muller, there never 

 was one common % Teutonic language, which 

 diverged into two streams ; while the utmost 

 we can venture to assert in regard to the various 

 Higli and Low German dialects is that they respec- 

 tively passed at different times through the same 

 stages of grammatical development. The High 

 German branch which was spoken in the dialects 

 of Swabia, Bavaria, and Franconia may be classi- 

 fied under three periods the Old High German, 

 dating from the 7th century and extending to 

 the period of the Crusades, or the 12th century ; 

 the Middle High German, beginning in the 12th 

 century and continuing till the Reformation ; 

 and the New High German, dating from Luther's 

 time to our own days. This New High German does 

 not represent the victory of any one High German 

 dialect over the others ; it is rather the result of 

 a compromise, which arose in the public tribunals 



of the empire. Luther found this compromise- 

 speech best suited to his purpose in translating 

 the Bible, and his selection of it effectually con- 

 firmed it in it literary supremacy. The chief 

 modern High German dialects are the Bavarian, 

 spoken with variations in Bavaria, Salzburg, Tyrol, 

 Upper and Lower Austria, and Styria ; Swabian, 

 spoken in Wiirtemberg and the adjacent parts ol 

 Bavaria ; and the Alemannic, spoken in Alsace, 

 the south of Baden, and German Switzerland. 

 The Saxon, Thuringian, Silesian, Franconian, 

 and other High German dialects are grouped to- 

 gether as Middle German dialects. Each of these 

 has a living literature of its own. Low German 

 embraced two main branches, Lower Franconian 

 and Old Saxon. The former, in which we have 

 a fragment of a 9th-century translation of the 

 Psalter, developed a tolerably rich literature in 

 the 13th century, which subsequently gave birth 

 to the Dutch and Flemish tongues. The oldest 

 literary monument of Old Saxon also belongs to 

 the 9th century ; it is a Christian epic known as 

 Der Heliand ( q. v. ) i. e. The Healer or Saviour. Old 

 Saxon developed into Middle Low German after the 

 13th century, with a copious enough literature, of 

 which Reineke Vos (circa 1490), a translation from 

 the Dutch branch, is the most important relic ; and 

 there are traces of popular Low German literature 

 down to the 17th century. The chief extant 

 dialects are the Frisian (q.v. ) and Platt-Deutsch 

 (q.v. ). In addition to the various dialects which 

 are commonly included under the heads of High 

 and Low German, an important evidence of the 

 cultivation of a form of German differing equally 

 from the High and Low groups has been preserved 

 to us in the Gothic translation of the Bible, 

 which was made in the 4th century by Bishop 

 Ulfilas. See GOTHS, PHILOLOGY. 



The diffusion of Christianity among the Germanic 

 tribes had the effect both of suppressing the use 

 of the Runic characters that had been common 

 to them and of changing the character of their 

 literature, for, instead of the heroic sagas and 

 'beast-epics ' ( Thier-epos) of a sanguinary paganism, 

 scriptural paraphrases, legends, and hymns were 

 now selected; while the ancient system of allitera- 

 tion by degrees gave place to the rhyming arrange- 

 ment of the Latin versification common in the 

 early periods of the middle ages. Charlemagne 

 himself made a collection of German popular 

 poetry ; and under his successors in the 9th and 

 10th centuries some of the heroic epics dating from 

 heathen times were written down (e.g. the Hilde- 

 brandslied), while the matter of others received 

 a Latin dress at the hands of monkish poets. 

 Under the Saxon emperors Latin became the 

 language of the court, the church, and the law, 

 while German was left entirely to the people, 

 down to the first flourishing period of German 



Eoetry under the emperors of the Hohenstaufen 

 lie. The Italian wars of this dynasty, the stir- 

 ring events of the Crusades, and the intercourse 

 with the chivalry of France and Italy kindled a 

 love for literature and romance in the princes and 

 nobles of Germany. The vernacular dialects were 

 once more used for literary purposes, especially the 

 Swabian or court-speech. Many, both nobles and 

 men of lower degree, belonged to the order of the 

 Minnesdnger (or Singers of Love), who roamed 

 from castle to castle and from court to court, 

 exhausting their ingenuity in devising new pre- 

 sentments of their usual subject, the romantic 

 passion of love, and in inventing new and elabo- 

 rate forms of versification. The epic subjects 

 chiefly selected during the 13th and 14th centuries, 

 by both courtly and popular singers, were based 

 on the history of Troy, the deeds of Alexander the 

 Great, the legendary lore of Charlemagne and his 



