Kirchhoff's approach as formulated in his 1882 Paper

To enable a fair appreciation of Kirchhoff's approach, this paper reminds the readers of the content of the original paper by Kirchhoff presented more than 125 years ago here in Berlin, and points out especially that what has been termed Kirchhoff's approach in many textbooks is only a small portion of Kirchhoff's approach as formulated in his 1882 paper.