GERMANY, or THE GERMAN EM PIRE. In the following series of articles will be found the history and development of Ger man civilization in every sphere of activity up to the beginning of the Great World War in 1914. The war history will be found fully described in Volume 29 under the title WAR, EUROPEAN, OR GREAT WORLD WAR. In view of the events, 1914-18, these articles will be found worthy of careful study by all students of history, government, national ideals, and of the rise and fall of nations. The series comprise the following articles: 1. Physiography. 13. German Painting.
2. Political History to 1871. 14. German Sculpture.
3. Political History 1871 to 15. German Architecture. 1918. 16. German Musk.
4. Parties and Party Poli- 17. German Kultur. tics. 18. Germany's Economic Or 5. The Government. ganisation.
6. The Judiciary. 19. Germany's National 7. History of German Lan- Wealth.
guage. 20. German Commerce.
8. History of German Lit- 21. German Industries. . erature. 22. German Agriculture.
9. History of German Sci- 23. Money, Banking. Ex. ence and Philosophy. change.
10. History of German Re- 24. Traffic and Transports ligion. tion in Germany.
11. The. German University 25. German Army.
System. 26. German Navy 12. German Schools. 27. Germany and the War.
Germany, or the German Empire (Deutsches Reich, emperor Deutscher Kaiser, 208,830 square miles), the third in size of the European states and the most central of the powers of Europe, covers the territory between the Alps and the North and Baltic seas, between 56° and N. and 6° and 23° E. It is bounded, east by Russia, southeast and south by Austria and Switzer land, west by France, Luxemburg, Belgium and the Netherlands, north by Denmark.
Physiographically, the German territory con sists of three main divisions: The Alpine region, the "Mittelgebirge (Central Ranges), and the North German Lowland.
The highest elevations are in the south, where the Northern Limestone Alps enter on Bavarian territory (Zugspitz, 9,660 feet). At their base a plateau covered with glacial drift, about 2;000 feet high, interspersed with many lakes (Bodensee, Stranberger, Chinemsee) stretches north as far as the Danube, drained by the tributaries of this river which bounds it along a large fault line.
The Mittelgebirge is an old mountainous country of Appalachian type, whose ranges are controlled by two directions of tectonic move ments: The Rhenish, running southwest northeast, and the Hercynian System, running southeast-northwest. To the former belong (see map), beginning in the south: The Swa bian Jura, Erzgebirge, Black Forest-Odenwald Spessart, Taunus, Westerwald on the right, and Vogesen-Hardt, Hunsriick and Eifel, left of the Rhine; to the latter : The Bohemian Forest, Thuringian Forest, Teutoburger Forest, the Weser Mountains and Sudeten; the horseshoe shape of the Fichtelgebirge and the parallelo gram of the Harz present a combination of the two. Intersecting each other in many places, these ranges produce a chessboard-like 'dissection of the country which has not been without influence on the political dissection of Otntral Germany into (many small states.
The north is a large lowland, narrow at the west and widening toward the east where it joins the great Russian lowland. It is dissected by two heights of land extending, respectively, from Silesia along the middle course of the Elbe and across that river between the lower courses of Elbe and Weser to the North Sea, and from eastern Prussia along the Baltic Coast into Slesvig-Holstein. The latter culmi nates near Dantzig in the Turmberg (1,000 feet) and is dotted with innumerable lakes (“Seenplatten)) of Prussia, Pomerania and Mecklenburg) ; the former consists mostly of glacial sands (Flaming, Liineburger Heide) and is of little interest economically or scenically.
Rivers.— The courses of the rivers are ad justed to these topographic conditions flowing partly in one, partly in the other, direction. Thus the Rhine flows first north-northeast, then west-southwest, then northwest. The Danube first northeast and then southeast ; the rivers of the lowland; Weser, Elbe, Oder, alternate be tween a more westerly or northwesterly direc tion where they follow the general slope of the Hercynian system predominating in the east and a northerly course where they cut through the heights of land. The Main is perhaps the best illustration of the complicated topography of central western Germany; Neckar, Moselle and Lahn dissect, the former, the terraced country east of the Black Forest; the latter two, the old peneplain through which the lower Rhine has cut its gorge. The largest tributaries of the lowland rivers on the right repeat the zigzag of the main watercourses so exactly that they almost establish connections between the corresponding reaches of the latter: Weser Aller-Elbe, Elbe-Havel-Spree-Oder, Oder-War the-Netze-Vistula. An extensive canal system utilizes these conditions for commercial pur poses, thus reconstructing the watercourses of the glacial period when at different stages of the advance and retreat of the ice sheet the waters collected at its southern margin and flowed westward or northwestward along it to join the ocean in the present lower courses of the Weser and Elbe. The tributaries on the left generally continue the south-north reaches of the main rivers, and during the eastward ex pansion of the nation often gained strategic importance, such as the Saale-Elbe line ip the struggles with the Slays. The Vistula belongs to Germany only in its lower course; east of it the Pregel and Memel are coastal rivers of great commercial importance; so is the Ems in the extreme northwest; the Eider in Slesvig, by means of a small canal, once connected the Baltic with the North Sea until it was super seded by the large Kaiser Wilhelm Canal. Of the large rivers the Rhine is the only one which, owing to its Alpine origin, affords good shipping all the year round. The others gen erally suffer from lack of water during the dry season, and only by extensive river regula tion has it been possible to satisfy the needs of modern river transportation.