Unification of Germany

The unification of Germany was the process in which numerous German states merged to become the first German nation-state. Prussia and its Minister-President Otto von Bismarck played an important role in this process. It began with the formation of the North German Confederation at the end of the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 and ended with the proclamation of the German Empire at the end of the Franco-Prussian War.

Quotes

• I never doubted that the victory over France must precede the restoration of the German kingdom, and if we did not succeed in bringing it this time to a perfect conclusion, further wars without the preliminary security of our perfect unification were full in view.
  • Otto von Bismarck, Bismarck: The Man and the Statesman, Being the Reflections and Reminiscences of Otto Prince von Bismarck, Written and Dictated by Himself After His Retirement from Office (1898)

• Nationalism at first had seemed to pose a threat to Europe's monarchies. In the 1860s, however, the kingdoms of Piedmont and Prussia had created new nation states by combining the national principle with their own instincts for self-preservation and self-aggrandizement. The results - the kingdom of Italy and the German Reich - were no doubt very far from being perfect nation states. To Sicilians, the Piedmontese were as foreign as if they had been Frenchmen; the true unification of Italy came after the triumphs of Cavour and Garibaldi, with what were in effect small wars of colonization waged against the peoples of the south. Many Germans, meanwhile, lived outside the borders of Bismarck's new Reich; what historians called his wars of unification had in fact excluded German-speaking Austrians from a Prussian-dominated Kleindeutschland. Nevertheless, an imperfect nation state was, in the eyes of most nationalists, preferable to no nation state at all.
  • Niall Ferguson, The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West (2006), p. 75

• The union of the States of Germany into a form of government similar in many respects to that of the American Union is an event that can not fail to touch deeply the sympathies of the people of the United States. This union has been brought about by the long-continued, persistent efforts of the people, with the deliberate approval of the governments and people of twenty-four of the German States, through their regularly constituted representatives.
  • Ulysses S. Grant, message regarding the unification of Germany (7 February 1871)

See also

• German Empire
• Otto von Bismarck
• German reunification