Hello,

Jasper Heinzen, Making Prussians, Raising Germans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).

Bodie A. Ashton, The Kingdom of Württemberg and the Making of Germany, 1815-1871 (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017).

Alon Confino, The Nation as a Local Metaphor (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1997).

All these works challenge the perception that within the German speaking lands of Central Europe there was a desire, which manifested itself in the wars of 1866 and 1871, to create a unified Germany.

Alon Confino argues that even after the unification of Germany there was still no great desire to identify as German. He cites the demise of Sedantag as a collective memory practice and the ambivalence of both the right and left of Wurttemberg towards it as evidence of a rejection of attempted cultural homogenising forces . He suggest the more important cultural symbol of unification was the Hiemat, which suggested local affiliations were accepted as vital for the continuation of the newly created German Empire.

Bodie A. Ashton suggests that Württemberg, and by extension Middle Germany, had far greater autonomy in deciding whether or not to participate in the unification of Germany. After the creation of the German Confederation Württemberg continued to solidify local particularisms and local traditions which continued to foster concepts of local identity over a German one. The decision to enter into the Unification was largely driven by the pragmatic desires of the political elite, who as supported by Cofino, maintained their cultural differences from Berlin.

Jasper Heinzen provides a lively analysis of the events leading up to Unification and the state-building that came afterwards. His thesis still identifies the German peoples as separate before Unification, and that there existed differing identities long after 1871. By examining the 1866 was a civil war he highlights the real and conscious process the governments of Germany and the local elites went through to normalize unification and internalise a central identity. He concludes this was a slow, but successful process which only reach its zenith in the lead up to the Second World War.

All works, two new and one influential, dispute the existence of a homogenised German national identity that drove the German speaking lands to unification. Whilst at the same time they reject school of thinking which position Prussia under Bismarck as a monolith able to coerce the other states to its will.

If you would like a follow up read on early Prussian national identity read Karen Hagemann, Revisiting Prussia's Wars Against Napoleon: History, Culture, and Memory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), and chase up the literary career of Ernst Moritz Arndt for a small idea of intellectual thinking on German unity.

If you have any questions feel free to ask.

Thank you,

EK.