As the centennial of the Franco-Prussian War and the founding of the German Empire approaches, historians are likely to find renewed interest in the Bismarckian political edifice. It may be hoped that studies which result will examine the Empire from points of view different from those which have dominated most treatments during the last half century. However valuable some of these may have been, they have sought answers to questions other than those which properly should concern the profession in the future. Twentieth-century students of German history have lived and worked under the impact of two catastrophic world wars. They have understandably been mostly interested in exploring those aspects of German history which seemed to offer an explanation for Germany's role in bringing about those catastrophes. In recent years several scholars have begun to investigate the impact on German politics during the Bismarck era of various old and new socio-economic groupings as they responded to the sweeping changes which the nineteenth century brought to the German and the world economic structure. Their work has contributed new and valuable insights as well as opening the way to further research and controversy. What follows is still another effort to cast familiar ingredients into a new mold so that the product will be at once a closer approximation of the reality of the past and more meaningful to scholars of the present.

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A few months ago the musical world observed the centennial of the first complete performance of Richard Wagner'sDer Ring des Nibelungen, which took place in the then barely completed BayreuthFestspielhaus, August 13–17, 1876. Few works of art have had so long a gestation period; more than a quarter century separates Wagner's original sketches, which date from the fall of 1848, and the realization of the tetrology on the stage. The dramatic structure of the enormous music-drama became definitive by February 1853, when Wagner allowed to be printed privately the texts of the four operas. The music forDas Rheingold, Die Walküre, and the first two acts ofSiegfriedwas complete by the end of July 1857. There followed, however, an interval of almost twelve years before Wagner again took up work on theRingin March 1869. He composed the music for the final act ofSiegfriedand for all ofGütterdämmerungbetween then and November 1874.

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