At each successive general election the numbers of socialist deputies to the imperial parliament increased; and in 1877 it was calculated that, although only twelve members of the party were returned, about a tenth of the entire body of voters were socialists. Some alarm was excited by these facts, but no one thought of putting down the movement by force until one day in May 1878 a shot was fired at the aged emperor in Berlin, as he drove along the Unter den Linden with his daughter, the grand-duchess of Baden, by his side. The criminal, a youth named Hödel, boasted of his socialist opinions and aims. A wave of anger swept over the nation; and the reactionary party, fancying it had an opportunity of laying a rough hand on far more than socialism, succeeded in inducing the imperial Government to draw up without delay a severe measure, directed nominally against the socialists, but in reality against all politicians obnoxious to the conservatives. The bill was hurried through the federal council and submitted to the diet. By that time the majority of the liberals had recovered their self-control; and with the aid of the centre party they threw out the proposed scheme by an immense majority. Parliament was prorogued, and it was uncertain whether there would be any further attempt at repression.

Suddenly the announcement came that the emperor had again been shot at, and that this time he had been wounded. For some days Germany was convulsed with rage and horror, and on all sides the cry was raised that now at last socialism must be sternly dealt with. Taking courage, the Government dissolved parliament, and pressure of every kind was put upon the electors to secure a thoroughly reactionary diet. The country, however, reflected that, although it was necessary to protect society, it might not be necessary to sacrifice the liberties which it had with so much difficulty conquered. Accordingly, when the new parliament assembled in August 1878, it was found that the liberals had not sustained very serious losses. The progressists bitterly opposed the measure introduced by the Government; but by some means Prince Bismarck managed, as he had often done before, to overcome the objections of the national liberals. By their support a law was passed which gave the police of the empire, for two years and a half, enormous special powers. These powers were at once rigidly enforced; and socialism appeared to vanish from the land. Whether, however, it may not spring up in some great national crisis, all the stronger for the sufferings of its adherents, is a point that can be determined only when some great national crisis occurs.

The socialists and the ultramontanes, without having anything else in common, have joined in opposition to measures for promoting the national unity. They have been aided by the Polish deputies, by the members for Alsace and Lorraine, and by the so-called particularists, conservative politicians ardently attached to the ancient customs and rights of the individual states. Notwithstanding this formidable band of allies, considerable progress has been made in the task of transforming a loose confederation of countries into a true nation. Between 1872 and 1875 utter anarchy in important departments of life was brought to an end by laws relating to imperial coinage, imperial paper money, and the system of banking. And in 1877 thorough investigation resulted in the appointment of a supreme imperial tribunal (Reichsgericht). It was proposed that this tribunal should sit in Berlin; but many liberals having no desire that that city should assume in Germany the place which belongs in France to Paris, a large majority decided for Leipsic. This was taken as a hint that, while Germany wishes to be united, she will not voluntarily see herself transformed into a magnified Prussia.

In spite of their military strength, their victories, and the establishment of their empire, the Germans are not, politically, a contented people; and the reason is that they have outgrown their institutions. While a statesman of extraordinary genius and authority stands in the way, a progressive system maybe impossible; but the more intelligent classes have never lost the desire to add to the hardly-earned national unity the crowning triumph of unfettered representative government.

Bibliography.—Luden, Die Geschichte des deutschen Volks.·, Leo, Vorlesungen uber die Geschichte des deutschen Volks und Reichs ·, Giesebrecht, Geschichte der deutschen Kaiserzeit·, Waitz, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte·, Mayer, Deutsche Geschichte·, Souchay, Geschichte der deutschen Monarchie·. Sugenheim, Geschichte des deutschen Volks und seiner Cultur. (J∙ SI.)

PART HL—LANGUAGE.

In its ordinary sense the name German Language or Deutsche Sprache is now generally used to denote, in all their stages from the earliest time to the present day, the different languages and dialects of Teutonic origin spoken in the German and Austrian empires and in Switzerland, not including, however, the Frisian language, which once was spoken, and still in a few remnants survives, on the shores and islands of the German Ocean, nor the dialects of the Danish population of nortnern Schleswig. Flemish and Dutch, although very closely connected with German, are likewise excluded. But the word Deutsch has also been, and still continues to be, used in a wider sense. Jacob Grimm introduced it, in his famous Deutsche Grammatik, as a comprehensive name for that family of the so-called Indo-European or Aryan languages, for which English writers generally use the name of “Teutonic,” and of which the principal branches are represented by Gothic, the Scandinavian languages, English, Frisian, and German. In this Grimm has had many followers, but scarcely anywhere out of Germany; and even there the fact that the name, in this application, besides being incorrect from an historical point of view (as the word has never been used thus by any one of the people to whom it has been applied by Grimm), is also liable to be misunderstood, has caused a growing tendency towards confining it again to its original meaning described above, and using Germanisch, or Germanic, in the collective sense of the English “Teutonic.” But even in the stricter sense the designation Deutsch is not of very long standing, nor has the word always been a real proper name for a distinct people or tribe. In Bishop Ulfilas’s Gothic version of the Bible we find the adverb thiudisko (eθvικω<s), Gal. ii. 14, which is clearly a derivative from thiuda (fθvο<i), meaning primarily “after the manner of the people.” German writers of tbe earlier centuries were therefore as fully justified in calling their own language diutisc, or, in a Latinized form, theudiscus, theοtiscus, that is, their popular or vernacular language, as were those mediaeval Latin writers of all nations who distinguished their national languages by the name of lingua vulgaris irom. Latin, the only literary language fully acknowledged in their time. It was not until the I Oth century that another Latinized form frequently used in later times, viz., teutonicus, began to be used instead of the older theοtiscus, of which the only rivals in former times had been such local names as frαnciscus (frenkisc} or saxoηi-cus, which were no doubt derived from the names of single tribes, but were often also used in the same comprehensive sense as theotiscus, without necessarily implying any allusion to dialectal differences between the languages of the tribes they properly belonged to. The last name we have to mention here is the Latin Germanus, with its different derivatives in the modern languages, including the English form German. Many attempts have been made to elucidate the origin of this word, but as yet nothing can be taken for certain beyond the fact that it is neither of Latin nor of German origin. Most probably it was a Celtic word, and, according to what Tacitus says in his Germania (ch. ii.), it was originally the name of a Celtic tribe, from which, by some strange error of the Roman and Greek historians, it has been transferred to the non-Celtic inhabitants of Germany. Accordingly the name has never been used by the Germans themselves except in imitation of its use in the works of Latin writers.

As to its geographical extension the German language has undergone very great changes in the course of the last two thousand years. At the dawn of history no Germans were to be found to the left of the Rhine, and even to the right of it Celtic tribes occur in the earliest times. There were Celts also in the south of the present Germany as far north at least as the Danube and the Main; Bohemia, too, derives its name from an early Celtic population, the Boii. Only the midland and north were inhabited by Germanic nations or tribes, stretching as far east as Poland, and perhaps covering even parts of the adjoining territories of Russia, where Slavonic and. Finnish tribes were their neighbours. But of these Germanic tribes and their languages some have left no equivalents in our modern German tribes and dialects. We have mentioned the Frisian language as not belonging to German in its proper sense, although the Frisians have kept their original residence up to the present day, and have always been in constant connexion and frequent intercourse with their “German” neighbours. Many other tribes have wandered from their seats and colonized other countries. It was as late as the middle of the 5th century that the Jutes, Angles, and Saxons began their voyages of conquest to England, where they founded a new people and a new language, leaving their native soil open to Danish invasions. Much earlier the midland tribes had already been slowly pushing on to the west and south, and expelling or subduing and assimilating the Celtic owners of the territories they invaded. But what was gained in these parts was counterbalanced by great losses in the north and east. The territories about the lower and middle Elbe, Oder, and Vistula, abandoned by the Lombards, the Burgundians, the Goths, and some other Germanic tribes, as well as Bohemia, which for some short time had been in the possession of the German Marcomans, were soon filled up by the immigration of numerous tribes of the great Slavonic family. Without going into details of the facts which are well known to the student of history, we may simply state that, since about 500 a.d., when the great migration of the nations had come to an end so far as Germany was concerned, no further change of any great importance has taken place in the western and southern parts. In the east the German population at this time did not go beyond a line that may be drawn from about Kiel to the Böhmerwald, passing near Hamburg, Magdeburg, ^Naumburg, Coburg, and Baireuth. As is well known, it is in later centuries that almost all the eastern districts have been recovered for the German language.

In the 6th century the remains of the numerous smaller Germanic tribes, mentioned before and during the migration of the nations, had consolidated into seven larger bodies or aggregations of tribes. The Frisians still held the extreme north of Holland and Germany. Their midland and eastern neighbours were then called by the new name of Saxons, borrowed from the Saxons who had left the Continent for England. In the main parts of the Netherlands and Belgium, along both sides of the Rhine, and across Germany to the Thuringian and Bohemian Forests, the powerful Frankish confederation had established itself, and it soon incorporated the smaller and less vigorous tribes of the Hessians and Thuringians, which were surrounded by the midland or eastern Franks, the Saxons, and the Slavs. Alsatia, Switzerland, and South Germany eastward to the river Lech were occupied by the Alemannians, while the inhabitants of the remaining districts of the present Bavaria and Austria bore the collective name of Bavarians.

The history of the German language cannot be severed from the history of these tribes, for Frisian, Saxon, Frankish (Hessian, Thuringian), Alemannian, and Bavarian are the leading dialects of the Continental branch of the Teutonic family. What Dr J. A. H. Murray has pointed out about the origin of the principal English dialects may equally well be said of these Continental idioms. Having no specimens of the languages of the Continental tribes for nearly three centuries after their final settlement, we cannot tell to what extent they originally agreed with or differed from each other, although there must have been some dialectal differences to begin with, which were afterwards increased and multiplied, partly by phonetic changes (most probably resulting from scarcely discernible phonetic peculiarities, which, even in the earliest times, must have prevailed in those idioms), and partly by such alterations of the inflexional systems as are known to occur frequently in all languages whose character is not merely literary. But, however scanty our means of illustrating the earliest history of these idioms may be, there is no doubt that they were not all of them related to each other in the same degree. Three main groups are easily distinguishable :—

(1) Frisian and Saxon, whose nearest relation is English;

(2) Frankish, Hessian, and Thuringian; and (3) Alemaunian and Bavarian. Frisian is generally considered as a separate language. From Saxon the later Low German dialects {Niederdeutsche Mundarten) have sprung. The members of the third group (generally designated as Oberdeutsch, or Upper German), combined with Mitteldeutsch, or the midland dialects, viz., Thuringian, Hessian, and part of the Frankish dialects, are the sources of the later Hochdeutsch or High German. The greatest difference prevails between the first and third groups; the second may be characterized as containing various transition dialects. The southern Frankish dialects are very closely akin to the adjacent Upper German idioms, while Dutch, the utmost offshoot of the Frankish language to the north, does not very materially differ from Saxon or Frisian in the earliest period. The most striking phonetic feature of the languages of the first group is their regular dropping of the nasal sounds before the spirants f, th, s, accompanied by subsequent lengthening of the preceding vowels. Thus we have in Anglo-Saxon or Old English fiif, after, cuft, gas (Mod. English five, other, {uni) couth, goose), in Old Frisian fif, othar, cuth, gos, in Old Saxon fif, othar, cuth,gοs, corresponding to such Gothic forms as fimf, anthar, kunths, or the ordinary High German fünf, ander, kund, gans. Since, however, Dutch partakes of this peculiarity to some extent, we cannot easily form a decisive opinion as to the value of this fact as a distinctive mark; but more stress may be laid on a very remarkable difference in the inflexional system of the verb. Here the languages of the first group have melted together the forms of the three persons of the plural number, thus we, ge, his findaft, or fundon, we, you, they find, or found, in Old English ∙,wi,gι, hia findaft, or fundon in Old Frisian; wi, gi, sia findaft, or fundon in Old Saxon. The corresponding Old High German forms are wir findam, ir findat, sie findant for the present, wir funium, ir funtut, sie funtun for the perfect tense. Old Dutch joins, in this case, the German branch; from werthaη, to become, for instance, are derived wι werthun, gι werthift, sia τverthunt, &c. The declension of the substantives shows another remarkable difference. While the languages of the first group have retained the original s in the nominative plural of such words as Old English dagas, days, Old Saxon dagos, or changed it to r, as Old Frisian dagar, Dutch and German have dropped it altogether, the corresponding forms being daga and taga. These facts must be taken for decisive, as it seems to be certain that they existed before any distinction of Low and High German in their modern sense (a distinction chiefly dependent on subsequent changes in their mute system) could be thought of. From a purely grammatical point of view, Dutch, although generally considered a separate language (which no doubt it is, with regard to its literary and political position), is entitled to claim a closer relation to High German than even Low German, whose non· literary character, taken along with the political union of northern and southern Germany, has led to the current opinion that it is only a dialect of “German” in its narrower sense. We do not mean to deny that there is, at present, a more conspicuous conformity between Dutch and Low German than between Low German and High German; but this is only due to the fact that High German, after the final settlement of the German tribes, has deviated much more from its original features than either Dutch or Low German. The most striking peculiarities of High German, as opposed to all other Teutonic idioms, have mainly been caused by the second or High German “Lautverschiebung,” or change of mute consonants, which forme part of a long series of sound-changes generally comprehended under the name of Germanische Lautverschiebung or Grimm’s Law. This Lautverschiebung began, perhaps as early as the 7th century, in the south, and thence slowly spread northward, but with decreasing vigour and consistency, Dutch and Low German not being touched at all. It was only thus that the idiom of the Netherlands Franks of the later centuries was separated from the dialects of their “German” relations. Before, however, the first literary documents are met with, this separation is complete; and we may therefore restrict ourselves here to a short history of High and Low German alone.

The German language presents, as do most of the cognate tongues, three maiu stages of development,—Old, Middle, and Modern,—distinguished by their inflexional and literary character. In accordance with Mr Henry Sweet’s description of the stages of the English language, Old German may be defined as the period of full inflections (Old Low German, dages, dage, dagu∙, dagos, dago, dagun ; Old High German, tages, tage, tagu; tagä, tago, tagum), while the Middle period is that of levelled inflections (Middle Low German, dages, dage, dagen∙, Middle High German, tages, tage, tagen)·, but it is chiefly the literary character that distinguishes Modern High German from Low German and its own earlier stages. A special form of High German is established in this period for all literary purposes, supplanting the dialects both of Low and of High German that formerly were freely used in literary intercourse. Assuming two periods of transition besides, we have the following divisions, with the approximate dates: [table]

The same divisions have to be made for Low German, but the scheme cannot be so fully carried through, as the time between 1000 and 1200 is almost destitute of literary monuments.

Old German.— The inflexional characteristics of Old German are almost identical with those of Old English. Nouns had the same five cases,—nominative, accusative (only in a few instances kept distinct), genitive, dative, and instrumental. Strong and weak declensions of nouns and their subdivisions are likewise the same. The dual of the first and second personal pronouns is almost extinct in Old High German, but is quite common in Low German. In the verb we find the...