Germany: The Unification

Germany's Unification was really triggered primarily by a collective hatred of France. Like many bonds between groups that didn't see eye to eye previously, unification against a common enemy proved to be crucial for the many kingdoms that made up Germany. Previous to the French Revolution, Germany had been a series of small mostly independent kingdoms that fought with each other routinely. However, when Napoleon rose to power, his conquest of Europe brought him to controlling much of the territories of the Germanic kingdoms. After Napoleon's demise in Russia, the kingdoms, led by Prussia, quickly rose up and eradicated the French menace. What followed was a messy union of the Germanic people, the German Confederation, that was not unlike the first attempt at government in the United States under the Articles of Confederation.

This confederation was more than the first real attempt at unification of Germany. It was also the first of many real identity crises of the German people. With no real structure to the unification, Germans were not sure what to think of their sudden collage of a country. With Prussia in control, the other major kingdoms of Germanic people felt that the confederation would not adequately represent all of the kingdoms, and would instead only represent the ideals of Prussia, which the other kingdoms were not on board with. This crisis was a severe hurdle for Germany to overcome in it's infancy. Sure, the country was unified territorially, but the people had no sense of uniform culture, and the culture that was being promoted by the government was often one that was highly Prussian. this would have been fine if it were a situation where Prussia was the only real superpower of the newly united kingdoms. However, with perfectly legitimate kingdoms like Saxony and Bavaria now subjected to highly Prussian rule, there was bound to be clashing.

The identity crisis of Germany was really only put aside whenever Germany was threatened as a whole by a bigger enemy. Commonly, as referenced earlier, this opponent was France. As with most European countries during the 1800s, the Germans were subjected to multiple expansion attempts by the French. Each were met with mostly unified resistance from the Germans, and this proved to be successful each time. This gave the Germans some hope that the country would eventually unify, and it did. It has been a difficult road for Germans to gain unified cultural identity, but nothing unifies like war, and this was monumental in the development of a cultural identity.

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