ABSTRACT
Franz Schnabel is the leading spokesman of what might be called the non-Prussian German historiography, which represents Catholic southern German traditions. After the first catastrophe in 1918, however, the spiritual descendants of the earlier German liberalism and democrats took the field. They established Otto von Bismarck’s responsibility for the predominance of the policy of ‘Blood and Iron’. It must be admitted that in the procession of such antecedents there is no place for Bismarck. For historical science it is a question of assigning to Bismarck his correct place in the historical sequence, not of justifying him or ‘vindicating his honour’. Bismarck held fast to the traditions of the old statecraft, and thereby placed the German movement under the command of the state-centred conception. He took German nationalism into custody and utilized it, subordinated it to the state conception and made it available for diplomatic craft.
