Norman Rich

Imperial Germany: Two Views from the Top

In addition to carrying out their professional duties and managing their personal affairs, many high-ranking officials of the Imperial German government conducted an extensive private correspondence with friends and colleagues. These private letters are often more valuable than the voluminous official records which have been made available to scholars since the First World War. They reveal much more about the personality of their writers, they contain more candid expressions of opinion (or at least the opinion the writers wished to convey to their correspondents), and they are frequently our only source of information about the numerous intrigues German officials conducted behind the backs of their superiors or rivals in the imperial service. Two major private document collections of two of the most important officials of Imperial Germany have recently been published: the first of three volumes of the papers of Philipp zu Eulenburg-Hertefeld and two volumes of the papers of Paul von Hatzfeldt-Wildenburg.1 Eulenburgs importance derived primarily from his close friendship with and influence over Emperor William II, Hatzfeldts from his long and distinguished career as a German diplomat, particularly his service as ambassador to Britain and his role in the controversial Anglo-German alliance negotiations. The editorial work of John Rohl for the Eulenburg collection and of Gerhard Ebel and Michael Behnen for the Hatzfeldt volumes is in each case a model of painstaking and meticulous scholarship. The editors have provided each edition with excellent introductions, which include brief biographies of the principals involved, an assessment of the significance of the documents, and a history of the documents themselves-a fascinating story in both cases and crucial to the question of their reliability. To deal with the problem of authenticity, the editors engaged in a tedious process of detective work, comparing copies of documents in their collections with originals in other archives. In the course of their research, they discovered additional Eulenburg and Hatzfeldt letters, which they have included in the present publications. Whenever they were unable to establish the authenticity of a document, they have indicated this fact and noted whatever reservations they might have about a particular text. Especially difficult was the task of