fin de siècle German optimism

"The bravery, intelligence and refined manners of the Saracens made a great impression on the Christian knights, and they soon began to imitate those whom they had at first despised. New branches of learning, especially astronomy, mathematics and medicine, were brought to Europe from the East; more luxurious habits of life, giving rise to finer arts of industry, followed; and commerce, compelled to supply the Crusaders and Christian colonists at such a distance, was rapidly developed to an extent unknown since the fall of the Roman Empire."

(page 244)

Book review, Title A History of Germany, Author Bayard Taylor, Rating 4.0,

A History of Germany Bayard Taylor Book review

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This is the first history of Germany I have read since the mid-1970's. It is nearly a complete history, stopping in 1883, ten years after it's author died. (his wife extended the history 14 more years in a subsequent edition.) An American writer, Bayard Taylor was most well-known for his travel writing, but was also a poet and a historian. His history reads easily, as might be expected from a writer of popular travel accounts, and is reasonably complete.

Taylor spent a good deal of his adult life in Germany as a Goethe scholar and popular writer, and married a German lady. He clearly admired the German people, particularly the achievements of the early German Empire, formally constructed in 1871 and led by Chancellor Bismarck. Taylor’s view carried the expectations of the Enlightenment, and ironically ends with an optimistic outlook for Germany, who forty years after this book was published, started World War I, and then twenty years later, World War II.

His accounts of early German tribes, the Carolingian period, and the Holy Roman Empire are worth the read.

This book has the additional quality of being beyond copyright, and is thereby free for any reader.