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{|width="100%" by breaking off all diplomatic intercourse with the papal court. Thus the relation between the Catholic church and the imperial government at the beginning of 1873 was one of open war. This was particularly the case in the kingdom of Prussia, where the relation between church and state was regulated by a number of new laws which all the bishops positively refused to obey. The government then imposed heavy fines upon the bishops, and in many cases withdrew the support which the ministers and institutions of the church had received from the state government. An interesting correspondence on the subject took place between the pope and the emperor. The pope expressed the hope that the cruel laws against the church did not meet the approbation of the emperor, and asked for his personal interference in behalf of the church; to which the emperor replied that in a constitutional state like Prussia every law required the sanction of the sovereign, and that the former peace between the different Christian churches had been wantonly disturbed by the unlawful conduct of the bishops. A germ of new difficulties between the state governments and the Catholic church was the legal position claimed by the Old Catholics, who maintained that the pope and the bishops who adhered to the decree of the Vatican council had abandoned the Catholic church, and that they alone were entitled to be regarded as the true representatives of that Catholic church which in Germany until 1870 was regarded as one of the state churches. Although the state governments, in view of the comparatively small number of the Old Catholics, declined to accept their view of the ecclesiastical situation, they at the same time refused to treat them as seceders from the Catholic church, and took the ground that the movement was an internal affair of that church, with which the state had no right to meddle. In Prussia, the missionary bishop of the Old Catholics was accordingly recognized in October, 1873, as a bishop of the Catholic church, and as such he at once received a salary from the state. The political changes in France greatly encouraged the hopes of the Catholic opposition in Germany, and in several southern districts of Bavaria led to threatening demonstrations against the very existence of the German empire. As a similar effect was produced by the political attitude of the French government in Italy, the visit of the king of Italy to Berlin was enthusiastically hailed by the liberal parties, both in Italy and in Germany, as an indication that the two governments intended to act in full concert against the common enemy. The relations between the governments of the smaller states and the emperor up to the close of 1873 were friendly, and no serious discrepancy of opinions on any important subject was shown in the deliberations of the federal council.—Among the best historical works on Germany are K. A. Menzel's Geschichte der Deutschen (8 vols., 1815-'22), and Neuere Geschichte der Deutschen (12 vols., 1826-'48); Luden's Geschichte des deutschen Volkes (to the 13th century, 12 vols., 1829-'39); and Giesebrecht's Geschichte der deutschen Kaiserzeit (vols. i.-iii., 3d ed., 1862-'8).  GERMANY, Language and Literature of. The formation, the history, and the philological affinities of the German tongue have been treated at length in the article , and we shall therefore restrict our remarks in this article to a brief sketch of the modern High German language as now spoken and written. In this the five vowels, a, e, i (y), o, and u, sound as in Italian, the sound being lengthened by doubling the vowels: ä (or ae), when long, is like a in mate, when short almost like e in met; ö (oe), long, is like but somewhat duller than the French eu in feu, when short it resembles the English u in tub; ü (ue) is also duller than the French u in sur and turc. C before e and i (y) and z always, stands for tz or ts, as in English pets; ck for kk, as in English peck, suck; g is always hard, generally as in get, give, but sometimes almost like German ch, as in ewig, weg; h before a vowel has the same sound as in our has, hen; ch is harsher than h, and like the Greek the Spanish jota; j sounds like y in yes; r is always whirring; v, in German words, has the sound of f, and in foreign of the English v; w sounds like English v. S has a threefold sound: 1, like the Latin s, in the combination st, at the end of a syllable, as fest, Fürst, and in forms derived therefrom, festest, Fürsten, &c., at the end of words, as in das, gutes, &c., and when double, as in nass, Wasser, &c.; 2, much like the English z, at the beginning of words, before vowels, and between vowels, as in Sonne, dieser, &c.; 3, like the English sh in shell, at the beginning of words before some consonants, as Scandal (Latin), spät, still, &c., though in a part of Germany it is pronounced like the English s in sea. Sch is like the English sh in shell. Sz stands for ss after long vowels or at the end of words, and is thus written also in derivative forms, as masz and misz from messen. Ai is pronounced like the English ay (yes); au like ou in our; ei (or ey) like i in mine. Eu has a very peculiar sound, approaching the English oi, and äu is somewhat heavier. E, the weakest sound, is most frequently employed: 1, for filling up the transition between consonants, thus, er liebet for liebt (the latter form is now more common); hence it is often elided, as nah'n for nahen, as in English pow'r for power, heav'n for heaven; 2, for lengthening i when that letter precedes it, as in wieder, again, distinguishing it from wider, against, counter; 3, as a mark of the plural, as Steine, stones, from Stein. H, the weakest consonant, is also used for lengthening a preceding vowel, as in sehr, wohl, &c. Besides e, three dentals and three liquids serve for all grammatical inflections. They are d, s, t, and m, n, r; s, m,
 * width="50%" align="center"|GERMANY
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 * } the imperial government of Germany replied