I am not very well studied in German history so I thought I would ask the experts. I watched this video titled The Problem With Africa's Borders, by Atlas Pro, and I have some questions that I dont believe were fully fleshed out in the video. From what I know, the Holy Roman Empire was comprised of a collection of German ethnic groups (states with their own princes), including parts of modern day Italy ruled over by one monarch. From every map I have seen, the states were irregularly shaped and innumerable. I recall that because there were so many states looking for any chance to gain more influence, they often fought each other. When you look at modern day Germany, it is clearly whole (I know there is a lot of history of disputed land and changing borders between the late 1800s and 1990, but I think a german identity was already formed by the late 1800s) I AM NOT GERMAN SO I DO NOT KNOW. I could be completely wrong and there is still active tribalism going on in the country. My questions from these assumptions are:
How did they get over this? Did they just stop caring so much about their tribal heritage and adopt a national identity? Am I misunderstanding the reasoning behind the skirmishes by thinking it was caused by a desire to promote the role of their tribal "common heritage"?
Today you see something similar happening in Africa. I will be talking about Nigeria specifically for this post. While the 'tribes' are not divided into states, there are tribes that predominantly inhabit certain states in the country. There is favoritism and corruption in every level of management, resulting in poor allocation of resources and manpower. While there is a common language spoken, the tribal traditions, religious beliefs, and tribal languages are very different. There is an intense loyalty to one's own tribe so the common mentality is tribe first then country. This sentiment is not normally shared by Nigerians who live in another country. Most Nigerians I know, who do not live in Nigeria, primarily value their national identity, and see their tribal identity as secondary (most, not all). I see this as evidence that tribalism is only important when there are multiple ethnic groups within the scope a single governing body. If you change the scope to a regional level, the competition becomes more about "National identity". We see something like this in the competition between states in the US. Similarly, there is rivalry between "Nigerians" and "Ghanaian" despite both countries having over 400 ethnic groups combined. On a global scale, you will find most sub-saharan Africans relating to one another despite having completely different language roots and genetic ancestry. Does something like disruptive tribalism simply go away with time? Did the HRE have corruption problems or were the tribes more responsible in order to benefit their state. I feel like I have a surface level understanding of how these systems work. Sorry for any errors in my writing, please let me know if there is something that needs clarifying.
At the time of the formation of the Holy Roman Empire (usually dated around the end of the 10th century) the tribes of the Classical Antiquity had already disappeared. The tribal societal system, had been replaced by feudalism. The states of the Holy Roman Empire therefore, did not correspond to the earlier tribal lands; though there certainly was some overlap.
During the 13th century, the Holy Roman Empire was greatly weakened by internal and external power struggles; which meant that the Emperor would never again have the amount of sovereign power previous emperors had had over the realm. In effect, rather than a unitary state or single empire, it's better to see the Holy Roman Empire as a conglomeration of semi-independent states after this period.
As for corruption, the politics of the Holy Roman Empire, and the feudal states that formed it, were full of corruption, nepotism, favoritism; but (as there were no tribes) it didn't not take place in a tribal context. It took place between ruling dynasties, the nobility and urban elites.
German identity was not fully formed by the 1800s, it would take the larger part of the 19th century to truly form "the Germans". The formation of German national identity is, for the most part, an extremely vague and tricky subject. In any case, for most of the Middle Ages the ancestors of much of the people now known as Germans identified with a specific city, town, village or region. Among the nobility, there would have been some supraregional identity, but nothing resembling the modern concept of a nationality or ethnicity in any meaningful way.
As for modern-day Germany, it has regionalism; but this is usually merely a form of chauvinism, it does not compare in any way to the situation you described in Nigeria.