Another frustrating English language anomaly when dealing with Imperial Germany is that the language was not standard. The myth that one could just look things up in the dictionary takes some background. There were a slew of dictionaries and official languages that followed state or dialectic lines. There were dictionaries of the different dialects called Mundart such as the Wörterbuch der Elsässischen Mundarten. In 1876, Prussia tried to bring the dialects together, but the various states rejected the attempt. In 1879, Bavaria published its own grammar guide, followed by Austria and Prussia one year later. Using the Bavarian and Prussian rules, Konrad Duden published a more widely accepted dictionary. Its use spread slowly and only Württemberg accepted it.
The General German Language Association was founded in 1885 well after the foundation of the empire. In June 1901, in order to make sure uniform grammar and spelling were adopted in all German-speaking states (including Austria and Switzerland), a second conference was called to further spelling and grammar reform (Beratungen über die Einheitlichkeit der deutschen Rechtschreibung). Better known as II Orthographische Konferenz, this received a much wider reception and in 1901 a lot of "th’s" were abolished and replaced by a simple "t"(e.g., Thal or Fürstenthum). In several words and names, “k” replaced "c" except in Cassel and Cöln. Many other letter "c’s" in words with a French background were turned into "z’s. "Ie"" replaced the "i" that had a long pronunciation. The standards were generally accepted and turned into official regulations by December 1902.
The Kaiser initially opposed the change and official documents were to be written in both forms until 1911. The changes were not adopted by many publishers because they did not wish to change their typeset. In theory, the Study Group for German Word Research (Arbeitsgemeinschaft für deutsche Wortforschung) did not fix this until 1939. That is why you may find different spellings in texts written between 1871 and 1918. Additionally, there was an unbelievably convoluted way for alphabetization that is often encountered where certain letter groups such as "sch" were treated as a single letter. Many other anomalies also exist.
