Students will analyze the creation of the German Empire as constructed "from above" by Prussian leadership through political institutions, economic interest, diplomacy, and war and the consequences of this for political, religious, and nationalistic opponents of German unification. Students will be able to explain the sources of German nationalism-including cultural, intellectual, religious, political, and social-and to describe the tensions between nationalism as cultural or linguistic "sameness," e.g., "German," and nationalism as defined by loyalty to a national political institution, e.g., "Germany.".The numerable challenges to German unification meant that, as one prominent historian of Germany observed, the making of Germany was only slightly less difficult than the making of Germans. And finally, the "makers" of Germany had to contend with foreign powers, especially Russia, France, and the Austrian Empire, all of whom had much to gain and lose with the emergence of a new central European power, necessitating the use of both skillful diplomacy and military aggression. Moreover, the creation of the German Empire necessitated that various political and socio-economic interests either were suppressed or incorporated into the broader national structure. Although those living in the states that became part of the German Empire largely shared a common linguistic (German) and religious (Protestant) bond, the borders of the new empire included millions who identified neither with German language and culture (French, Danes, and Poles) nor with the dominant religion (Catholics and Jews). Nor was it by any means inevitable that the more than 100 independent German principalities, kingdoms, free cities, and archbishoprics would coalesce under Prussian leadership into a unified, modern, national political entity. Germany only unified as recently as 1871, when Wilhelm I became the leader of the German Empire following the Franco-Prussian War. The post Cold War reunification of Germany in 1990 seemed such a natural consequence of the end of the Cold War and the collapse of Soviet power in Eastern Europe that it is easy to forget that Germany had a fairly brief life span as a unified nation-state.
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