How Germany Became A Country
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How Germany Became A Country
At only 151 years old, Germany is a very young nation
Germany is one of the world’s most significant and recognizable countries. Almost anybody alive can mention several German stereotypes without much thought— efficient, punctual, humorless, reliable cars, good at football, that sort of thing. Germany is Europe’s leading economic force, and was probably the single most important country of the 20th-century, thanks to its critical importance in both World Wars as well as being the meeting point of East and West during the Cold War.
It was a very busy 20th-century for a nation that only really came into being in the previous century. The modern German nation was created in 1871 — making it younger than plastic, traffic lights, washing machines, and typewriters. It’s a remarkable contrast with ancient neighbors like France and Britain. Indeed, even the US is more than twice as old. No major world power has been a nation-state for less time.
Germany will undoubtedly play a major role in world affairs in the years to come, and to understand it as a country it helps to know something of its origins. After all, there are ancient things in Germany, from castles and churches to swords and paintings — so what was there before the modern nation?
Well, to see what Germany looked like 200 years ago, it helps to look at somewhere in today’s world like Luxembourg or Lichtenstein. Back in the old days, Germany was divided into hundreds of separate states, most of which were small city-states built around a single walled town. They were officially part of a loose federation called the Holy Roman Empire, though this entity had little real authority by the 1700s, and member states often fought wars against each other. There was something of a loosely shared cultural identity, but probably less than we might assume today — dialects were strong and not necessarily always mutually intelligible (just as Swiss German, standard German, and Luxembourgish are not all intelligible today); there was no shared religious identity; and there were several competing forms of government.
Although most of these states were small, a handful were reasonably large; two of them, in fact, were amongst the Great Powers of Europe, which referred to the leading military and political forces of the continent (France, Russia, and Great Britain were the others). The German states of Prussia and Austria were both ranked amongst these Great Powers due to their influence on continental affairs.
It’s worth pointing out that both states were very different. Austria was known for the prestige of its reigning Habsburg dynasty (one of history’s richest and most powerful royal families, and at one point also the rulers of the Spanish Empire and the Netherlands), as well as for talented diplomats and a preference for marriages over war.
Confusingly, although the Austrian heartland was culturally German, it ruled over a much larger empire which at times also included most of modern Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Bosnia, as well as fairly large chunks of Romania, Serbia, western Ukraine, southern Poland, and northern Italy. It was a big empire, but a divided one, and the wars and genocides of the Balkans as recently as 20 years ago should give some idea of how hard it was for the Austrians to keep control of this part of Europe.
Finally, Austria was a Catholic country, even if most of its imperial subjects weren’t. The Habsburg royal family were proud defenders of the faith, and a long-time bulwark against the Islamic Ottoman Empire. They were also well known for corruption, inbreeding, and extravagance.
Prussia was an entirely different kettle of fish. For one, it was small — with a population of around 2 million in the year 1700, it was diminutive compared to Austria (10 million). That it was still able to play such a critical role in European affairs despite its small size was due to several features considered remarkable even at the time. First and foremost of these was “Prussian militarism”. Military writer Georg Heinrich von Berenhorst famously wrote that Prussia was “not a country with an army, but an army with a country”. This militaristic culture can probably be traced back to Prussia’s origins as a settlement of the Teutonic Crusaders in the Middle Ages, but would become even more important over time, as I’ll explain a little later in this piece.
The Kingdom of Prussia was diverse too, with Germans, Poles, Kashubians, and several other ethnic groups making up its population; furthermore, its territory was actually rather broken up, with several other states in the way of Prussia being physically united. Nevertheless, it was a far more coordinated and centralized state than Austria. While Austria was traditionally viewed as the leader of the German states and had long been a power player in Europe, Prussia was more of an up-and-coming place. Much of its land was acquired in the 1600s, and it first become a true European powerhouse in the 1700s, when a series of brilliant reformers and “soldier-kings” turned Prussia into a well-oiled machine amongst German states: Prussia became known for one of Europe’s finest professional armies, a competent bureaucracy, a strong central government, and a fair degree of legal and educational sophistication.
On a cultural level, Prussians were defined by Protestantism (especially Calvinism) and a list of virtues that included austerity, discipline, hard work, and many other adjectives that presumably didn’t make them fun at a party. Some contemporary sayings include:
Lerne leiden ohne zu klagen: Learn to suffer without complaining
Gegen sich mehr noch als gegen andere: Be even harder on yourself than on others
Seid gehorsam, doch nicht ohne Freimut: Be obedient, but not without frankness
They may have been a bit dull, but the Prussians were undeniably solid fighters, which become clear in 1740 when the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI died, controversially leaving the throne to Maria Theresa of Austria (controversial, of course, because she was a woman). The Prussian King Frederick the Great took advantage of the opportunity to seize the territory of Silesia from the Austrians. As you may have guessed from “the Great” part of Frederick’s name, he won quite handily, establishing Prussia and Austria as bitter rivals thereafter.
Things took a turn for the strange a few decades later, however, when the French Revolution broke out. For all their differences, Austria and Prussia (and Russia, and Great Britain, and frankly almost everywhere in Europe) were both monarchies. They were equally horrified when the muck-splattered peasants of their neighboring country arrested (and later decapitated) their rightful king, and Prussia and Austria decided to join a grand coalition of European nations to defend authoritarianism. France didn’t stand a chance.
Well … that was the theory.
It would be reasonable to think that France (in a state of total chaos thanks to the Revolution) was more or less doomed against such odds, but it’s worth noting that France was by far Europe’s most populous country at the outbreak of the Revolution, with a significantly larger population than even Russia. Furthermore, because of the patriotic and nationalist fervor surrounding the Revolution, it was almost uniquely able to rely upon mass conscription, whereas its authoritarian neighbors were only willing to trust small, permanent armies —after all, if you were a despotic king, would you give all the commoners guns and trust in their loyalty? When war broke out between France and the German states in 1792, the Austrians and the Prussians were able to field a combined army of 81,000 troops. By the following year, after the French conscription, the number of active soldiers at France’s disposal was somewhere in the region of 800,000.
Against such numbers, Europe was helpless. French troops were badly trained and equipped, but morale was high, and its enemies had no idea how to hold off the seemingly endless French legions. Furthermore, equally huge numbers of conscripted craftsmen eventually remedied the equipment imbalance, while the Revolutionary commitment to democracy and meritocracy led to a crop of exceptionally capable generals, at least compared to enemy generals who had often quite literally bought their ranks. Several years into the war, France fell under the control of Napoleon Bonaparte, perhaps history’s most brilliant general, who turned the French army into one of the best-trained, best-led military forces in history. While Britain was protected from France by water, and Russia by sheer distance, the German states spent over 20 years getting beaten around like a punching bag. Fractured and underprepared, the German peoples saw their armies annihilated, their land pillaged, their territory occupied, and their reputations shredded time and time again by France.
In the end, France was defeated due to overextending itself and economic issues, and the German states played a big role in France’s defeat (in particular, it was the Prussian army’s arrival that defeated France at Waterloo). Yet there was little cause for celebration from the Germans. France suffered few consequences after Napoleon’s defeat, and the German people were acutely aware of how badly the French had outclassed them — and how easily they could be defeated in the future by large, powerful nation-states.
The 1800s would therefore become the century when German nationalism became a serious political movement. The states were brought together by shared experiences of fighting alongside each other, and a sense of shared German identity was reinforced by the French occupation. More generally, the French Revolution had a symbolic resonance that was impossible to ignore, showing the power of a nation united not by royal allegiances, but by identity. On a practical level, rulers and elites realized the staggering power of mass conscription, and did everything they could to foster strong identities and a sense of patriotism.
In 1815, after France’s defeat, the German Federation was formed. This alliance of 39 German states was rarely able to agree on anything, due to the bitter disagreement between Prussia and Austria, its leading powers. However, it did reflect the increasing sense of a national identity. The 1800s were dominated by the so-called German question: if Germany was to be united, what state would be the one to do it? There were generally thought to be two possibilities. The first is that Austria would absorb all of the other states, creating a fully unified German nation. The second possibility was that the northern German states would coalesce under Prussia, and there would be two Germanies: Austria, and a united northern German Empire. Austria was still substantially bigger than any other state, which is why the prospect of Prussia annexing Austria was not seen as realistic.
Throughout the 1800s, Prussia’s economic growth surpassed that of the Austrian Empire. In the era of the Industrial Revolution, Prussia benefited hugely from having Germany’s most coal and iron-rich regions (Silesia, the Saarland, and the Rhineland) under its sway, as well as a forward-thinking economic policy that emphasized tax reforms, railway and road development, free trade, and universities. In 1834, most north German states founded the Zollverein, a customs union from which Austria was excluded, further segregating northern and southern Germans.
Popular histories often claim that Austria became a backwater during this period. The truth is more nuanced: Austria itself remained every bit as prosperous as Prussia, as did Bohemia (modern Czech Republic), which was wealthier than France. Hungary was only slightly behind, and Adriatic cities like Trieste flourished. However, it’s true that more south-eastern provinces of the Austrian Empire did not enjoy much of an economic boom. Perhaps more seriously for its aspirations, Austria’s lack of militaristic spirit, poor training, and stodgy thinking all seriously hampered its readiness for war. For example, when Austria introduced conscription, many recruits were simply dismissed to work on their farms rather than receiving thorough training, because commanders preferred to work with experienced soldiers. Austrian military doctrine also placed an outdated focus on features like cavalry forces.
Things eventually came to blows in 1866. Otto von Bismarck, the famous German Chancellor, manoeuvred Prussia and Austria into war. Few German states allied with Prussia, but Italy did, leaving Austria trapped between large enemies to its north and south. Prussia secured a comfortable victory, humiliating Austria and strengthening Prussia’s claim as the rightful protector of the German peoples. Over the next few years, most northern German states signed mutual defence pacts with Prussia. Bismarck also seems to have used the war to goad France into attacking; he allegedly promised France parts of Belgium and Luxembourg in return for not getting involved in the Austro-Prussian War, before reneging on that promise. France was irate, and in 1870 took advantage of a diplomatic dispute to declare war on Prussia. This triggered the north German defence pacts, and heavily industrialized Prussia and its allied counterattacked with devastating speed, easily defeating France.
The jubilation surrounding the victory, as well as the realization that they stood no chance against Prussia, led to a consolidation of the German states into the German Empire in 1871. Germany’s borders have changed a lot since then: they got smaller after the World Wars, and expanded during the 1930s with the annexation of many neighbors, particularly Austria. After World War II, the country was split into four pieces, then two, and stayed divided for several more decades before reunification.
Hopefully, Germany will become neither bigger nor smaller in the coming years. Its short existence has already been eventful enough.
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