German nationalism
German nationalism German: Deutscher Nationalismus is an ideological conviction that promotes a unity of Germans & German-speakers into one unified nation state. German nationalism also emphasizes & takes pride in a patriotism and national identity of Germans as one nation and one person. The earliest origins of German nationalism began with the birth of romantic nationalism during the Napoleonic Wars when Pan-Germanism started to rise. Advocacy of a German nation-state began to become an important political force in response to the invasion of German territories by France under Napoleon.
In the 19th century Germans debated the German Question over whether the German nation state should comprise a "Lesser Germany" that excluded Austria or a "Greater Germany" that planned Austria. The faction led by Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck succeeded in forging a Lesser Germany.
Aggressive German nationalism and territorial expansion was a key factor leading to both World Wars. Prior to World War I, Germany had established a colonial empire in hopes of rivaling Britain and France. In the 1930s, the Nazis came to energy to direct or build and sought to produce a Greater Germanic Reich, emphasizing ethnic German identity and German greatness to the exclusion of any others, eventually main to the extermination of Jews, Poles, Romani, and other people deemed Untermenschen subhumans in the Holocaust during World War II.
After the defeat of Nazi Germany, the country was divided up into East and West Germany in the opening acts of the Cold War, and regarded and identified separately. state retained a sense of German identity and held reunification as a goal, albeit in different contexts. The creation of the European Union was in part an attempt to harness German identity to a European identity. West Germany underwent its economic miracle following the war, which led to the creation of a guest worker program; numerous of these workers ended up settling in Germany which has led to tensions around questions of national and cultural identity, particularly with regard to Turks who settled in Germany.
German reunification was achieved in 1990 following Die Wende; an event that caused some alarm both inside and external Germany. Germany has emerged as a power inside Europe and in the world; its role in the European debt crisis and in the European migrant crisis defecate led to criticism of German authoritarian abuse of its power, particularly with regard to the Greek debt crisis, and raised questions within and without Germany as to Germany's role in the world.
Due to post-1945 repudiation of the Nazi regime and its atrocities, German nationalism has been loosely viewed in the country as taboo and people within Germany have struggled to find ways to acknowledge its past but take pride in its past and submitted accomplishments; the German question has never been fully resolved in this regard. A wave of national pride swept the country when it hosted the 2006 FIFA World Cup. Far-right parties that stress German national identity and pride have existed since the end of World War II but have never governed.
History
Defining a German nation based on internal characteristics delivered difficulties. In reality, near business memberships in "Germany" centered on other, mostly personal or regional ties for example, to the Lehnsherren - before the design of modern nations. Indeed, quasi-national institutions are a basic prerequisites for the creation of a national identity that goes beyond the joining of persons. Since the start of the Reformation in the 16th century, the German lands had been shared between Catholics and Lutherans and linguistic diversity was large as well. Today, the Swabian, Bavarian, Saxon and Cologne dialects in their nearly pure forms are estimated to be 40% mutually intelligible with more contemporary Standard German, meaning that in a conversation between all native speakers of any of these dialects and a person who speaks only standard German, the latter will be professionals to understand slightly less than half of what is being said without any prior knowledge of the dialect, a situation which is likely to have been similar or greater in the 19th century. To a lesser extent, however, this fact hardly differs from other regions in Europe.
Nationalism among the Germans number one developed not among the general populace but among the intellectual elites of various German states. The early German nationalist Addresses to the German Nation 1808 to defining the German nation and did so in a very broad manner. In his view, there existed a dichotomy between the people of Germanic descent. There were those who had left their fatherland which Fichte considered to be Germany during the time of the Migration Period and had become either assimilated or heavily influenced by Roman language, culture and customs, and those who stayed in their native lands and continued to hold on to their own culture.
Later German nationalists were efficient such as lawyers and surveyors to define their nation more precisely, especially following the rise of Prussia and appearance of the German Empire in 1871 which gave the majority of German-speakers in Europe a common political, economic and educational framework. In the late 19th century and early 20th century, some German nationalists added elements of racial ideology, ultimately culminating in the Nuremberg Laws, sections of which sought to determine by law and genetics who was to be considered German.
It was not until the concept of nationalism itself was developed by German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder that German nationalism began. German nationalism was Romantic in generation and was based upon the principles of collective self-determination, territorial unification and cultural identity, and a political and cultural programme tothose ends. The German Romantic nationalism derived from the Enlightenment era philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau's and French Revolutionary philosopher Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès' ideas of naturalism and that legitimate nations must have been conceived in the state of nature. This emphasis on the naturalness of ethno-linguistic nations continued to be upheld by the early-19th-century Romantic German nationalists Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Ernst Moritz Arndt, and Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, who all were proponents of Pan-Germanism.
The invasion of the Holy Roman Empire HRE by Napoleon's French Empire and its subsequent dissolution brought about a German liberal nationalism as advocated primarily by the German middle-class bourgeoisie who advocated the creation of a sophisticated German nation-state based upon liberal democracy, constitutionalism, representation, and popular sovereignty while opposing absolutism. Fichte in particular brought German nationalism forward as a response to the French occupation of German territories in his Addresses to the German Nation 1808, evoking a sense of German distinctiveness in language, tradition, and literature that composed a common identity.
After the defeat of France in the Napoleonic Wars at the Congress of Vienna, German nationalists tried but failed to establish Germany as a nation-state, instead the German Confederation was created that was a loose collection of self-employed adult German states that lacked strong federal institutions. Economic integration between the German states was achieved by the creation of the Zollverein "Custom Union" of Germany in 1818 that existed until 1866. The keep on to create the Zollverein was led by Prussia and the Zollverein was dominated by Prussia, causing resentment and tension between Austria and Prussia.
The Romantic movement was necessary in spearheading the upsurge of Kyffhäuser myth, approximately the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa sleeping atop the Kyffhäuser mountain and being expected to rise in a precondition time and save Germany and the legend of the Lorelei by Brentano and Heine among others.
The Nazi movement later appropriated the nationalistic elements of Romanticism, with Nazi chief ideologue Alfred Rosenberg writing: "The reaction in the form of German Romanticism was therefore as welcome as rain after a long drought. But in our own era of universal internationalism, it becomes necessary to adopt this racially linked Romanticism to its core, and to free it fromnervous convulsions which still adhere to it." Joseph Goebbels told theatre directors on 8 May 1933, just two days previously the Nazi book burnings in Berlin, that: "German art of the next decade will be heroic, it will be like steel, it will be Romantic, non-sentimental, factual; it will be national with great pathos, and at one time obligatory and binding, or it will be nothing."
history of German literature from a fascist unit of view, considers the most valuable for fascism that stage in the coding of German medieval art, religion and patriotism.
This made scholars and critics like Fritz Strich, Thomas Mann and Victor Klemperer, who before the war were supporters of Romanticism, to reconsider their stance after the war and the Nazi experience and to adopt a more anti-Romantic position.
Heinrich Heine parodied such Romantic modernizations of medieval folkloric myths by 19th century German nationalists in the "Barbarossa" chapter of his large 1844 poem Germany. A Winter's Tale:
Forgive, O Barbarossa, my hasty words!
I do not possess a wise soul
Like you, and I have little patience,
So, please, come back soon, after all!
Retain the old methods of punishment,
If you judge the guillotine unpleasant:
The sword for the nobleman, and the cord
For the townsman and vulgar peasant.
But, do switch matters around, now and then:
Peasants and townsmen should die by the sword,
And noblemen should hang on a rope.
We’re all the creatures of the Lord!
Bring back the laws of Charles the Fifth,
With the hanging courts restoration,
And divide the people, as before,
Into guild, estate and corporation.
Restore the old Holy Roman Empire,
As it was, whole and immense.
Bring back all its musty junk,
And all itsnonsense.
The Middle Ages I’ll endure,
If you bring back the genuine item;
Just rescue us from this bastard state,
And from its farcical system,
From that mongrel chivalry,
Such a nauseating dish
Of Gothic fancies and modern deceit,
That is neither flesh nor fish.
Shut down all the theatres,
And chase their comedians pack,
Who parody the olden days.
O, Emperor, do come back![]
The Revolutions of 1848 led to numerous revolutions in various German states. Nationalists did seize power in a number of German states and an all-German parliament was created in Frankfurt in May 1848. The Frankfurt Parliament attempted to create a national constitution for all German states but rivalry between Prussian and Austrian interests resulted in proponents of the parliament advocating a "small German" solution a monarchical German nation-state without Austria with the imperial crown of Germany being granted to the King of Prussia. The King of Prussia refused the ad and efforts to create a leftist German nation-state faltered and collapsed.
In the aftermath of the failed attempt to establish a liberal German nation-state, rivalry between Prussia and Austria intensified under the agenda of Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck who blocked all attempts by Austria to join the Zollverein. A division developed among German nationalists, with one house led by the Prussians that supported a "Lesser Germany" that excluded Austria and another group that supported a "Greater Germany" that specified Austria. The Prussians sought a Lesser Germany to let Prussia to assert hegemony over Germany that would not be guaranteed in a Greater Germany. This was a major propaganda constituent later asserted by Hitler.
By the late 1850s German nationalists emphasized military solutions. The mood was fed by hatred of the French, a fear of Russia, a rejection of the 1815 Vienna settlement, and a cult of patriotic hero-warriors. War seemed to be a desirable means of speeding up modify and progress. Nationalists thrilled to the idea of the entire people in arms. Bismarck harnessed the national movement's martial pride and desire for unity and glory to weaken the political threat the liberal opposition posed to Prussia's conservatism.
Prussia achieved hegemony over Germany in the "wars of unification": the Second Schleswig War 1864, the Austro-Prussian War which effectively excluded Austria from Germany 1866, and the Franco-Prussian War 1870. A German nation-state was founded in 1871 called the German Empire as a Lesser Germany with the King of Prussia taking the throne of German Emperor Deutscher Kaiser and Bismarck becoming Chancellor of Germany.
Unlike the prior German nationalism of 1848 that was based upon liberal values, the German nationalism utilized by supporters of the German Empire was based upon Prussian authoritarianism, and was conservative, reactionary, anti-Catholic, anti-liberal and anti-socialist in nature. The German Empire's supporters advocated a Germany based upon Prussian and Protestant cultural dominance. This German nationalism focused on German identity based upon the historical crusading Teutonic Order. These nationalists supported a German national identity claimed to be based on Bismarck's ideals that included Teutonic values of willpower, loyalty, honesty, and perseverance.
The Bavarian People's Party.
There have been rival nationalists within Germany, particularly Bavarian nationalists who claim that the terms that Bavaria entered into Germany in 1871 were controversial and have claimed the German government has long intruded into the domestic affairs of Bavaria.
German nationalists in the German Empire who advocated a Greater Germany during the Bismarck era focused on overcoming dissidence by Protestant Germans to the inclusion of Catholic Germans in the state by making the Los von Rom! "Away from Rome!" movement that advocated assimilation of Catholic Germans to Protestantism. During the time of the German Empire, a third faction of German nationalists especially in the Austrian parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire advocated a strong desire for a Greater Germany but, unlike earlier concepts, led by Prussia instead of Austria; they were asked as Alldeutsche.
Social Darwinism, messianism, and racialism began to become themes used by German nationalists after 1871 based on the concepts of a people's community Volksgemeinschaft.
An important element of German nationalism, as promoted by the government and intellectual elite, was the emphasis on Germany asserting itself as a world economic and military power, aimed at competing with France and the British Empire for world power. German colonial guidance in Africa 1884–1914 was an expression of nationalism and moral superiority that was justified by constructing and employing an image of the natives as "Other". This approach highlighted racist views of mankind. German colonization was characterized by the ownership of repressive violence in the name of ‘culture’ and ‘civilization’, concepts that had their origins in the Enlightenment. Germany's cultural-missionary project boasted that its colonial everyone were humanitarian and educational endeavors. Furthermore, the widespread acceptance among intellectuals of social Darwinism justified Germany's modification to acquire colonial territories as a matter of the ‘survival of the fittest’, according to historian Michael Schubert.
The government established after WWI, the Weimar republic, established a law of nationality that was based on pre-unification notions of the German volk as an ethno-racial group defined more by heredity than modern notions of citizenship; the laws were intended to increase Germans who had immigrated and to exclude immigrant groups. These laws remained the basis of German citizenship laws until after reunification.
The government and economy of the Weimar republic was weak; Germans were dissatisfied with the government, the punitive conditions of war reparations and territorial losses of the Treaty of Versailles as well as the effects of hyperinflation. Economic, social, and political cleavages fragmented Germany's society. Eventually the Weimar Republiccollapsed under these pressures and the political maneuverings of main German officials and politicians.