Germany

Schlacht bei Königgrätz - Georg Bleibtreu
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Germany came into existence in 1870. So Germany is actually younger than the United States. However, the Germans themselves have been around for much longer than we Americans.

The name itself, Germany, is not used by the Germans, to them their country is Deutschland which apparently comes from a couple of really old words which can be translated to the land of the people (the Old High German word diutisc means the people, rather like many native American tribe names just mean "the people" in their language, or so I'm told). The English name, Germany, actually comes from the Latin Germania which is how Caesar referred to the people east of the Rhine River.

Prior to 1870, the lands populated by the Deutsch were scattered from the Meuse River to the Nieman (a river which the Germans called the Memel, the old words of the German National Anthem contained the phrase "von der Maas bis an die Memel," which indicated that the old German Reich stretched from the Meuse (Maas) River to the Memel (or Nieman) River.

While Germany still borders the Meuse, the territory along the Nieman River now belongs to Russian and Lithuania. When I was in Germany I did notice that the tune of the German National Anthem remains the same, but the words are rather different these days. Of course, Germany is rather smaller than she was in 1914.

I should also mention that the word Reich simply means "empire." Hitler gave the whole idea a bad connotation with his Third or Thousand Year Reich. Which while it was indeed the Third German Empire, it did not last a thousand years. For which we can be very thankful. The Nazis did enough damage to Europe in the 12 years they were in power.

So, does anyone know when was the First Reich and who was in charge? Well the First German Reich later became the Holy Roman Empire. (Which the Emperor Napoléon noted was neither Holy, Roman, nor an Empire.) But when it was started, Charlemagne was the head guy. Charles the Great, (or Karl der Grosse as the Germans call him) was King of the Franks from 768, King of the Lombards from 774 and Emperor of the Romans from 800. He united much of Europe during the early Middle Ages. His capital was (for a time) in Aachen, a town I lived about a half hour north of, back in the day.

Note that none of that was actually Germany. They came to pass due to the machinations and plain hard work of Otto von Bismarck. He was a conservative Prussian statesman who...

What's that? What's this "Prussia" I speak of?

Well, to put it in simple terms, Berlin was the capital of Prussia. The lands around Berlin were known as West Prussia (more or less, I am painting in broad strokes here) and East Prussia was the area around Königsberg, which is now known as Kaliningrad and is in the Kaliningrad Oblast, this used to be the northern half of East Prussia, which the Russians kept after World War II. The just-shifted-to-the-west country of Poland got the southern half and a bunch of other ex-Prussian lands (which the Teutonic knights had kind of stolen from the Poles a long time ago.)

Poland moved westward because, if you recall your history classes on World War II, the Germans and Russians divided Poland in 1939. The Russians kept much of their half but gave the Poles a lot of land which used to be German, which had been Polish, which had (at one time) belonged to Austria. So Poland slid to the west.

Huh, Austria? Yes, Austria used to be a much larger place than it is now. It encompassed modern Austria (officially Republik Österreich, Republic of the Eastern Empire), the Czech Republic, bits of modern Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and bits and pieces of other places which they'd conquered. If you're thinking that Austria (by then known as Austria-Hungary) got  screwed by World War I (a war they, not Germany, started), then you'd be right.

But I'm drifting off topic here. The lands which weren't Austria but which did speak German (or forms thereof) were Prussia, Bavaria, Baden, Württemberg, Hesse-Kassel, Saxony, Hannover, and a bunch of smaller principalities, duchies, bishoprics, etc., etc. The mercenaries which the British hired to crush our Revolution were Germans. (Hessians is what we called them, but they didn't all come from Hesse.)

Napoléon ran roughshod over the Germans, giving the Prussians a sound thrashing and many of those smaller German states allied themselves to France. The Prussians remembered that some years down the road when some of them decided that, "wouldn't it be nice to gather all those little German states together and make one big country?"

So they did. First they wanted to grab bits of Denmark, the modern area we know as Schleswig-Holstein. This area had Danes and Germans living in it. The first Prussian attempt to grab that ended in defeat, the First Schleswig War. So a bit later they tried again, with Austrian help they won the Second Schleswig War.

Now some of those smaller German states had more of an affinity with the Austrians than they did with the Prussians, they didn't really want to be dominated by the Prussians and apparently the Austrians were content to leave them semi-alone. No, Prussia didn't like that. So they threw a war in which the Prussians and their little German buddies fought against the Austrians and their little German buddies.

Austria lost.

Don't think that the French weren't paying attention during all of this. For centuries France had been a "pretty big deal" in Europe and they didn't like the idea of the Prussians competing with them. France and Prussia had disliked each other for a long time. Frederick the Great defeated France in his day, badly, which the French remembered. So Napoléon returned the favor, defeating Prussia very badly in 1806. Yup, they remembered when it was their turn to march into France and defeat Napoléon.

Napoléon's nephew, who called himself Napoléon III (Napoléon II was the first Napoléon's son who died in Austria at a rather young age, his Mom was Austrian, yes European history is a bit complicated) was itching to show that he was a great soldier just like his famous uncle. Which he most certainly was not.

The Franco-Prussian War in 1870 saw Bismarck put the finishing touches on what would become the German Empire (for those keeping score, that was the Second Reich). Not only did the Prussians beat the French (badly) they captured Napoléon III himself at the Battle of Sedan. Then they had the nerve to declare the new German Empire in the palace of Versailles, just outside Paris.

The proclamation of the German Empire - Anton von Werner
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That's Bismarck in the fancy white uniform looking reverently at the new German Emperor, Wilhelm I. Wilhelm had been king of Prussia, now he got to be Kaiser Wilhelm I.

Worth noting is that the German word for emperor, kaiser, is derived from the name Caesar? Interesting, neh? The fellow who first called them Germans loaned his name to them for the word Kaiser. Well not personally but you get my drift.

So that's how we got Germany, which is smaller now than it was in 1870. Which happens when you lose two wars. Wikipedia has a long and fairly accurate article on German unification which you can peruse here, (unification is what Bismarck did, though unification happened again when the Berlin Wall came down) .

History, I love it.

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Even when it is kind of complicated, well, actually especially when it's kind of complicated.