Research Paper on:
Taylor and Mommsen on Bismarck

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
of the impact of those events on culture and trends coming after an general explanation of what happened during the focal period. A.J.P. Taylors book Bismarck: The Man and the  Statesman (1955) comes under this first category. Taylors examination of Bismarcks life begins with his boyhood and proceeds in a chronological fashion through his life and career and concludes with  his the influence of his legacy on posterity. The second category of history text is one that is written by an historian with an intended readership of other historians,  or at least assumes a scholarly familiarity with the topic under discussion. This sort of writing makes frequent references to other historians and their theories on the era, with the  implied assumption that the reader has at least a vague idea of the work to which the writer is referring. Wolfgang J. Mommsens text on Bismarck - Imperial Germany, 1867-1918  - comes under this heading. This text is comprised of essays that Mommsen has published on the topic of Imperial Germany. In comparing his text with that of Taylor, this  examination will focus on the ninth essay in the collection, "Domestic Factors in German Foreign Policy." This examination will demonstrate how these two authors address the same topic, but  in very different ways. Taylors approach has a more simplistic, general approach, since his purpose was to provide an overall perspective on the life of Otto Von Bismarck. Mommsens  text is necessarily much more detailed, but only in so far as the author picks one specific area of Bismarcks life and Germanys history and then explores in depth within  this narrowing of the subject matter. But, while the two texts are very different, this examination will show that these books are complementary. Taylors provides the novice reader a