A Short History of Germany
Written in 1897, when Germany was still basking in the glow of recent unification, this is a remarkable time capsule: an American woman's vigorous, partisan account of German history from the Teutonic forests to the Kaiserreich. Mary Platt Parmele adored Germany, and her passionanimates every page. She tells the story of a people who seemed, at the turn of the century, to embody the triumph of will and culture over fractured tribal origins. We follow Hermann's doomed resistance against Rome, the bewildering migrations of Goths and Vandals, the dark centuries of fragmentation, and the slow, agonizing rise of a unified nation. Parmele writes with a novelist's verve, turning battles and treaties into vivid drama. What gives this book its peculiar power today is knowing what came after: the catastrophes of the 20th century that transformed the Germany she celebrated. Reading it now feels like overhearing a conversation about a friend before their tragedy. For history lovers, it's a fascinating artifact and a reminder that every national story is written in pencil.
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“Baron Otto von Bismarck-Schönhausen had just returned from St. Petersburg, where he had been Prussian ambassador. He was a conservative of the extreme type, hated and feared by the liberal and national party no less than Metternich. But no man better than he comprehended the policy of Austria, and all the complicated threads composing””
— Mary Platt Parmele
“The dream of the people, like that of Hermann eighteen hundred years before, was of a German UNITY;””
— Mary Platt Parmele
“Prussian people who converted their whole male population into an army and their country into an arsenal, and with one voice, and animated by one heart, refused longer to bear the degradation put upon them by their King.””
— Mary Platt Parmele
“It was not the people of Prussia who bartered their allegiance to the fatherland for peace and for Hanover. It was their King and princes who brought this stain upon them, and their beautiful Queen Louise, mother of the late Emperor William, had pleaded in vain with the King to pursue a loyal and patriotic course. The””
— Mary Platt Parmele
“Even the Pyramids were made to serve his consummate art and ambition! Although””
— Mary Platt Parmele
“treaty of Campo Formio was signed in 1797, Napoleon had won fourteen battles, and had subjugated Italy.””
— Mary Platt Parmele
“The German Empire had in its best time existed by grace of God and force of circumstances, more than by reason of a sound and perfect organism.””
— Mary Platt Parmele
“this Golden Age in Germany music, too, had become a great art, with such immortal names as Mozart, Gluck, Haydn, and Beethoven; and the period of great orchestration also had commenced.[1]””
— Mary Platt Parmele
“It is not to be supposed that Frederick felt much sympathy with the free young Republic established in America. And if he sent a sword of honor to Washington in 1783, it was because he recognized the greatness of the man; and perhaps, too, because he felt a malicious pleasure in the humiliation of George III.! The””
— Mary Platt Parmele
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Parmele, Mary Platt. A Short History of Germany. Lex, lex-books.com/book/a-short-history-of-germany-65f487e1-e435-43a0-a429-705ed423a66b.Parmele, M. P. (n.d.). A Short History of Germany. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/a-short-history-of-germany-65f487e1-e435-43a0-a429-705ed423a66bParmele, Mary Platt. A Short History of Germany. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/a-short-history-of-germany-65f487e1-e435-43a0-a429-705ed423a66b.