The eight studies collected together in this book were written at various times and in a variety of contexts over a period of some twenty-five years. They are nevertheless all concerned with the same fundamental theme, the system of government of the German Reich under Kaiser Wilhelm II. The book opens with a character-sketch of this remarkable ruler, who was not merely some exotic ‘Fabulous Monster’, as one British writer dubbed him, but who in a number of ways embodied the split personality of that ‘transitional generation’ which bridged the old Prussian world of Wilhelm I and Bismarck on the one hand and the ‘modern’ world of mass industrial society on the other. It ends with an investigation into the nature and extent of the Kaiser's anti-semitism which enables us to see how close he came, in the bitterness of exile, to the Weltanschauung of Adolf Hitler. Most of the studies in this book, however, are not primarily concerned with the Kaiser. Their main focus is, first, on the mentality of the Kaiser's friends and advisers; second, on the structural foundations on which his so-called ‘personal rule’ was first erected and then sustained, including the court and court society, the higher civil service and the diplomatic corps; and third, and above all, on the interdependent relationship between the Kaiser, his court and the state. The book is therefore predominantly a work of cultural and social history. It sets out to analyse the structure and the mentality of the German ruling elite in the era of Kaiser Wilhelm II.

The studies are all based closely on original sources. Rather than providing a sweeping essayistic interpretation, each chapter is perhaps more like a pointillist painting, or like a photomontage composed of several individual photographs. Each of these pictures is an independent composition which originated as such and which can therefore be read and judged on its own merits. These individual pictures, however, can and should also be seen as facets of a larger totality. If I may stay with the artistic analogy for a moment longer, this means that the book works in the same way as a Cubist painting in which an object can be seen in several different perspectives simultaneously.