Volume 46, Number 17 · November 4, 1999
The End of the Golden Age
By Gordon A. Craig
Einstein's German World
by Fritz Stern
Princeton University Press, 335 pp., $24.95
The last four years of the reign of William II of Germany—that is, those that stretched from the outbreak of the First World War until the Emperor's abdication—were of such tragic weight and consequence that they have tended to obscure the twenty-six years that preceded them. As a result, when these are studied at all it is generally only for the clues they yield to the catastrophe that was to follow. This is an unfortunate distortion, for seen in its own right the period from 1888 to 1914 was characterized by a degree of institutional stability, technological progress, and economic prosperity that Germany as a whole was not to enjoy again until the last years of the twentieth century, as well as by a cultural and intellectual eminence second only to that of the classical age of the years between 1770 and 1830.
Review, 4601 words
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