Bismarck wrote uninterruptedly for sixty years. The official collected works run to nineteen volumes, quarto sized, with an average of more than 500 pages each.25 Volume VIc alone runs to 438 pages just to include the reports sent to the Kaiser, dictation notes, and other official writings from 1871 to 1890. Bismarck wrote thousands of letters to family, friends, and others. He controlled both domestic and foreign policy for twenty-eight years so his correspondence and official writing covered everything from the threat of war with Russia to the state monopoly on tobacco.
