The Unification of Germany

Before 1871, the current nation of Germany was separated into many autonomous states. While many attempts were made to bring about the unification of Germany into a single political entity, none of them succeeded. One of the main causes of this was economic crisis in the 1850s, which kept the German states from joining together for more than twenty years. However, several factors would contribute to the eventual unification of Germany under Otto Von Bismarck. For instance, the Napoleonic Wars were instrumental in shaking up the European order that had dominated for centuries. When the dust settled after Napoleon’s conquests, the German states had been reorganized from a loose conglomeration of nearly 1,000 sovereignties into 39 streamlined states. Also, a wave of German nationalism swept the country, drawing those of Germanic derivation to view themselves as one people despite the political divisions.


Otto von Bismarck, a Prussian lawyer, diplomat, and statesman, was appointed Prime Minister of Prussia in 1862. Bismarck was an advocate of Realpolitik, a diplomatic philosophy that favored making strategic political decisions based on practical concerns rather than on ideology, and applied his philosophy while executing his office in Prussian government.


Bismarck’s primary means to this end of unification was a series of wars in the 1860s and 1870s, namely, the Second War of Schleswig, the Austro-Prussian War, and the Franco-Prussian War. Although none of these conflicts began with Prussian aggression, they highlighted the need for the unification of Germany. The Schleswig War began when Denmark annexed South Jutland, which covered nearly seventy kilometers of the German / Danish border. Prussian and Austrian forces won this war, reclaiming Schleswig and gaining control of Holstein, a Danish county. Following this, Allies Austria and Prussia began to disagree as well, resulting in the German civil war known as the Seven Weeks War. After this war, the Prussians obtained even more land, cash, weapons, and resources. Finally, the Franco-Prussian War, which began over a dispute about who should take the Spanish throne, provided the needed thrust toward the unification of Germany. Bismarck unified the country as one under the pretext of fighting the war as a single state, and the change took. William I, former King of Prussia, was appointed as chief regent of the new Germany on January 18, 1871.


The unified German state lasted more than half a century, until the Allies divided the country into East and West Germany after World War II. This separation lasted a further forty-five years, until the country was once again re-unified at the end of the Cold War in 1990. Despite the long history of divisiveness in Germany, many Germans are fiercely nationalistic, and have viewed themselves as belonging to a single entity of Germanic people since the unification of Germany in the late nineteenth century.