3 ms·
As a counter-example: Germany as a country has a very short history - "pan-germanism" was a movement to unify all German-speaking countries, which included quit
by a_bonobo 11y ago
As a counter-example: Germany as a country has a very short history - "pan-germanism" was a movement to unify all German-speaking countries, which included quite a bit of Poland, Austria and Switzerland. There were 39 states in the first German Bund ~1870, there were way more states in the preceding Holy Roman Empire (that one included what's now the Netherlands, Belgium, parts of Italy etc.). These were merged into the Empire, which turned shortly into the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, West and East Germany, and is now the Bundesrepublik.
Culturally these parts were quite different, most often dominated by Prussia vs. the rest [1]. But Prussia has been forgotten by now, which makes me hopeful that you can have a large country with people who are thought to be "culturally incompatible". Some German-speaking areas that were included in the first German Bund aren't German speaking anymore since the Second World War. Sudeten-Germans and other German minorities were kicked out after Hitler lost.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-Germanism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-Germanism
[1] My favorite book about this is "Diary of a Man in Despair", it's written by a Prussian who pretended to be a Bavarian who keeps on criticizing Prussians
- jkot 11y agoHoly Roman Empire started around 800AD.
- danielam 11y agoAs they say, the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman nor an Empire.
- wolfgke 11y agoMainly the war against the Napoleon empire united the German states in the 19th century and lead to the national movement.
- pluma 11y agoIt was a factor but not the entire reason. Pan-German sentiments were pre-existing.
- pluma 11y ago> Prussian who pretended to be a Bavarian who keeps on criticizing Prussians Dreckspreissen. The funny thing is that this rivalry with Prussia still exists, except over the centuries the term "Prussia" has become a generic name for all of Germany north of Bavaria.
- danielam 11y agoYou actually prove his point more than anything. The German Empire was very short lived in part because it attempted to impose a political order onto a variety of ethnicities. The policy of germanizing these groups, Kulturkampf and its associated so-called 19th century Ostsiedlung (of "Drang nach Osten" fame) went hand in hand with the imperial drive to assimilate and subjugate its members culturally and religiously. The resulting resentment contributed to WWI. Despite certain national undertones during WWII, the major cause for WWII was imperial in nature, i.e., the attempt at reestablishing the German Reich, this time across Europe, as well as the expansion of the Russian Empire in the form of the Soviet Union which likewise tried to eradicate conquered nations and ethnicities in order to create a Soviet people (what some sarcastically call Homo Sovieticus). They failed. The latter, which managed to live on for another 50 years after WWII, failed in part because the idea of the Soviet people as buckling under the seething pressure of national and ethnic difference and consciousness.