The plan of the Deutschtümmler has been shattered…,” Metternich wrote exultantly to a subordinate in Berlin in November of 1831. Despite the advice of his foreign minister, Count Christian von Bernstorff, King Frederick William of Prussia had just agreed that any Prussian-South German military agreement had to be preceded by a preliminary political understanding between Austria and Prussia. Metternich was so relieved by this turn of events because he had been sure that current Prussian-South German military discussions were leading, not to plans for the defense of Germany in the face of the threatening French revolutionary government, but to the reorganization of the German Confederation along constitutional lines—under the aegis of Prussia. From Metternich's perspective such a change of politics and political leadership in Germany would only cause dissension among the German governments and benefit only their common enemy— “the all-devouring revolution.”

Between 1890 and 1914 the Center party was, in Friedrich Naumann's words, “the measure of all things” in German politics. Throughout this period it possessed a quarter of the seats in the Reichstag, and held the balance of power between left and right. Its importance from the standpoint of Bismarck's successors as chancellor stemmed from the electoral and parliamentary decline of the National Liberals and Conservatives, the parties which had formed theKartell through which Bismarck governed the Reichstag. After 1890 these no longer commanded a majority, and other parties had to be won over by the government. With the Social Democrats permanently hostile, this narrowed the government's choice down to the Progressives and Center, either of which would give the Kartell parties a majority, and both of which were to be used to this effect. However, the Progressives were used only sparingly (above all during the Biilow Bloc of 1907–9) because of their increasing shift to the left. The historic reason for this was the party's antimilitarism; and this move to the left was reinforced by fears among Progressive leaders that their supporters might otherwise defect to the Social Democrats. The Center was therefore the only alternative. For most of the Wilhelmine period successive chancellors depended for their parliamentary majorities on the Center, which in turn showed itself willing to become a “party of government.”

In the past twenty years the German Revolution of 1918–19 has been the subject of an ongoing debate. In chronological order the discussion has focused on 1) the Majority Socialists' fateful alliance with the unreformed army officer corps for the purpose of suppressing Bolshevism; 2) the thesis that the republic's institutions were crippled from birth because they were “improvised” under pressure of military and governmental collapse; 3) the search for a “third way,” i.e., for an alternative to Bolshevism or bourgeois parliamentary democracy that would have provided a healthier start for the Weimar Republic.

In the past forty-three years Marxologists were compelled to absorb two new manuscripts of extraordinary significance. Although prepared in Moscow by D. Rjazanov, the Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels: Historisch-kritische Gesamtausgabe was issued in Berlin in 1932 and contained the first publication of Marx's Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts In 1939 and 1941 respectively, single volumes of a limited two-volume edition of the Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie were published by the Foreign Language Publishers in Moscow. Generally, this edition went unnoticed until a single-volume publication of the Grundrisse was issued by Dietz Verlag of Berlin 1953. and shortly thereafter the Grundrisse became a manuscript of enormous importance to Marxist theory. The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts and the Grundrisse caused a revolution in the interpretation of Marxism. The Marx of the Second International, of Eduard Bernstein and Karl Kautsky, the Marx of Bolshevism, of Lenin and Stalin and “Diamat,” was completely revised. In essence, the publication of these new sources commenced forty-three years of extensive revision and intensive contention which still continue. This was not surprising, because the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts and the Grundrisse proved to be major repositories of Marxist philosophy: they revealed for the first time the full amplitude of Marxist humanism.