Emil Lederer · 1916
Emil Lederer’s 1916 review evaluates the first installment of Carl Grünberg’s documentary compilation on the socialist movement and the World War. He regards it as the most important and comprehensive collection then available in German of official and unofficial socialist documents concerning the conflict. Covering the prewar period and the opening weeks of war, through the second half of August 1914, this installment establishes the basis for two projected continuations.
Lederer’s praise concerns both editorial judgment and the practical organization of research:
Professor Grünberg konnte sich bei der Zusammenstellung dieser Materialien (die mit außerordentlich großer Umsicht, stetiger Bedachtnahme auf das wesentliche erfolgt ist) der Mitarbeit zahlreicher Fachmänner im In- und Ausland erfreuen.
English translation: In compiling these materials (a compilation carried out with extraordinarily great circumspection and constant regard for the essential), Professor Grünberg was able to enjoy the collaboration of numerous specialists at home and abroad.
International cooperation enabled the rapid acquisition of materials that were often difficult to obtain. Selection matters as much as accumulation: Grünberg’s achievement consists in making a dispersed body of contemporary evidence available while maintaining attention to what is essential.
The review also emphasizes the collection’s geographical and institutional reach:
Die Zusammenstellung umfaßt die Beschlüsse und Kundgebungen der Internationale, der sozialistischen Parteien aller am Krieg beteiligten Staaten, sowie der Schweiz, Hollands, Rumäniens, Schwedens und Amerikas.
English translation: The compilation comprises the resolutions and proclamations of the International, of the socialist parties of all the states involved in the war, as well as of Switzerland, Holland, Romania, Sweden and America.
Yet this breadth does not exhaust Lederer’s standard of documentary adequacy. His concluding recommendation asks that later installments also represent divergent currents within the parties. Their sometimes clandestine pamphlets, circulated in very few copies, risk disappearing unless preserved in an accessible form.
The review consequently links approval of Grünberg’s collection to a further archival obligation. Documenting socialism’s responses to war requires more than recording institutional declarations: it also demands the preservation of fragile evidence of internal disagreement. Lederer identifies contemporary collecting as a condition for future historical inquiry, especially where wartime circumstances threaten the survival of sources.
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