Ebook Twelve Years at the Imperial German Court

The Memoirs of Count Zedlitz-Trutzschler deserve a place of their own in the already voluminous literature about William II. It may confidently be predicted that they will be the standard authority on the subject, and indispensable to the future historian. The value of the book lies chiefly in its artlessness. The writer tells quite simply what he saw and heard, without any attempt at literary artifice, and therefore produces a consistent picture which possibly the most consummate skill could not have achieved.

The effect is what may be called cumulative. It is not a single incident which impresses the reader, but the long series of episodes, slight in themselves, which show how - slowly but surely - the worse elements in the Emperor's nature gained the upper hand, how they reacted on his surroundings, and how tragically the circumstances of the time in turn reacted on him. The writer is scrupulously impartial; he tells of the good and the evil in William II. While in the early days of his life at Court he was - like everybody else - dazzled by the brilliant personality of the Emperor, in the end his feelings had undergone a complete revulsion.