Burlington weekly free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1866-1928, 1919-03-27
GERMANY AS TT WAS
Empire Composed Of rs Div1siOns-Part
Of Them Detached Fragments

In bulletin, the National Geographic
society from It's Washington headquar-
ters presents a graphic picture of the
amazingly complicated geographic pat
tern of what constituted the German
Empire prior to the general disrup-
ton of it's states following the Anal
definite acknowledgment of defeat by
by Prussian autocracy in the signing
of the armistice on November II.
The German Empire resembled moth
ing so much as a political crazy-quilt
with patches of varying sizes and
shapes belonging to Kingdoms. grand
duchies. principalities, duchies. etc.
THE average student of history
knows that the German Empire was
composed of 25 separate Kingdoms,
grand duchies. principalities. imperial
lands and free towns" says the bulle-
tin, but in order fully to appreciate
the problem of reconstituting the Ger
man nation, 1t Is necessary to remember
that these 20 distinct governments did
not by any means represent only rs
homogeneous and contiguous states.
Many Of the states are scattered through
out the dominions in detached frag-
ments.
1.-THE Kingdom of Prussia, which both
in area and in population is larger than
all the other "a states combined. ex-
tends in huge semicircle from the
French border Of Lorraine on the south
west to the Baltic provinces of Russia
on the northeast. besides owning de-
tached areas 'peppered' over the other
states. For an analogy in America
it would be necessary to conceive Of
the State of New York embracing
Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas. Missouri
Michigan, Illinois. parts of Indiana and
Ohio, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey
Delaware. portion of Pennsylvania
and all the New England States. Then
imagine the Empire State also owning
and governing one or two counties in
North Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Ten
nessee and Wisconsin.
I'm the same way, the grand duchy
of Oldenburg is divided into three
parts as If Iowa, a dozen counties in
New Mexico and half a dozen counties
in Michigan were under one governor.
"Then there is Mecklenburg-Stre
with three -fourths Of it's territory on
! the east side of Mecklenburg- Schwerin
and the remaining fourth on the north
west side, the two parts being sepa-
rated by a distance Of nearly 100 miles.
1.-The grand duchy of Hesse is di-
vided into two nearly equal parts by a
narrow "isthmus'' of Prussian terri
tory; Bavaria lies seven-eighths to the
east of Hesse and Baden and one eighth
to the west: Wurttemberg is fairly
Homogeneous kingdom. surrounded by
Baden and Bavaria. but in the south
| it Is pierced by a detached piece of
Prussian land resembling a boomerang
! in shape.
I'm the heart of the empire the
empire that was) is an amazing tangle
of prncipalities known as the Thurin-
! gian states, and here, too. Prussia
possesses several large fragments of ter
ritory
without enumerating the inconse-
quential fragments of Prussan lands,
dotted here and there in other States.
Prussia is divided into IA provinces
East Prussia, West Prussia. Berlin.
Bradenburg, Pomerana, Posen. Silesia.
Saxony mot the kingdom Of Saxony),
Schleswig -Holstein, Hanover, West
phalia, Hesse- Nassau Rhine (Rhein-
provinz) and Hohenzollern.
Fourteen of the 25 states of the en-
pire have an area less than that of our
smallest State, Rhode Island, yet none
of them. not even the three Free CITY
states of Bremen, Lubbock and Ham.
burg. is as small as the District of Co
lumba.
WIN INC exception u iIussih' "hisi'
lacks $4,000 square miles of being as
large as Montana, and Bavaria. which
is about the size of South Carolina
none of the other German states is as
large as Massa chusetts.
with the exception of the three free
cities. the state having the densest pop
ulation is the kingdom of Saxony with
more than 500 persons to the square
mile. For the entire empire the den
sity of population is nearly 10stimes as
great as that of the United States"