Book Description

The present volume is the 1924 English translation of Field-Marshal Alfred Count von Waldersee’s memoirs by Frederic Whyte. “Field-Marshal Alfred Count von Waldersee’s Denkwürdigkeiten are in three volumes in the German edition. The two first, covering the years 1832-1900, were issued at the end of 1922; the third, covering the period August 1900-March 1904, appeared late in 1923. The entire work was edited by Herr Heinrich Otto Meisner, with the approval and assistance of the Field-Marshal’s nephew, Lieut.-General George Count von Waldersee, who contributed a brief Preface to Volume I. The nephew acclaims the uncle as ‘Christian, Nobleman, Prussian, German, Soldier and Servant of his Sovereigns.” “There is a second Preface by Herr Meisner, who abstains from panegyrics and merely explains how the work has been pieced together. The Field-Marshal, it seems, had intended eventually to prepare a book of Reminiscences for the press, but only a very few pages of the Denkwürdigkeiten as printed were written with a view to publication. They have been compiled almost altogether from private diaries, correspondence and memoranda. Hence the impression which they give of absolute genuineness; hence, also, much of their value as a trustworthy historical document. As the well-known critic, Richard Bahr, remarked in the Münchener Zeitung, the work presents in this respect a welcome contrast with many of the autobiographical volumes which have recently appeared in Germany—’self-justification-screeds,’ as he calls them. The Reminiscences which the Field-Marshal contemplated writing might, indeed, have had to be placed in the same category, but here we have the author almost ‘un-retouched,’ and almost as natural and as ingenuous as Pepys.”—Frederic Whyte