Germania

Long, long ago various Germanic tribes began migrating from their northern European homes pushing ever further and deeper into the lands once settled by Celts replacing them with no lack of brutality. This went on for some time before the same peoples, seeing the splendour, affluence, and modernity of Rome decided they wanted a bit of it for themselves and moved en masse into the empire. At first the new settlers didn’t cause too many problems. Many were welcomed as warriors by an empire that was simply not able to inspire its own people, especially in the empire’s cultural hearth, to take up arms. Eventually, however, they overwhelmed the weakening and increasingly rudderless empire causing its eventual demise in the West. A more brutal fate would await those Romans who had assumed that they could hold out in the East when a more ferocious people emerged from the steppes of Central Asia.

The Germanic tribes kept fanning out, spreading to Sicily, Iberia, the British Isles, the Balkans, Russia and everywhere in between. The largest portion of them, however, would come to settle in the cool, grey, damp middle of Europe. These peoples would find the forging of any significant and real unity to be a bit easier said than done. Sure, there were attempts. The Papacy, longing to see some sort of unity be re-established, figured that it couldn’t hurt to try recreating the Roman Empire in the middle of the continents with a “Holy” attached at the front for good measure. For a time this held, but only for a time. Always divided among a number of states with their own egos and ambitions, it would prove to be inevitable that a man with certain quirks would cause a bit of frustration for the ruling elite. This came to a head in the early 17th century when a couple of people had a minor scuffle. After tiring themselves out they agreed to a truce, the Peace of Westphalia. Once again some sort of order was established.

The old Holy Roman Empire, having weakened to nothing but a mere formality, was finally done away with when an egotistical Corsican decided that he didn’t care for how many different states the Germanic peoples to his east had settled upon. Following the grand French tradition of knowing better than everyone else he set about to redraw the lines in order to make them more “manageable”. This action would have immeasurable consequences. One of which was to make union possible, the other was to make it inevitable. The strongest of them, Prussia, united the myriad states into some sort of empire — each kept its own government and parliament and had unique coinage. They simply recognised the superiority of Prussia and recognised the Prussian king as the emperor of all the lands in the union. This order, of a sort, would hold until the First World War’s conclusion in which Germany was brought under a proper sort of union.
With the exception of the era of separation, this would be the new sense of what Germany was.

There is something missing in this… That is, what shaped it — why did Germany become a country so much later than Denmark, Portugal, England, France, or Sweden? Why was this union so difficult. For that matter, why was it more a product of reaction to external events than internal drive? (Okay, England was united by a Danish king, but who’s counting? The United Kingdom is also older than Germany. That has to count for something) Quite frankly, people didn’t really care. Germans were happy enough when there was peace and they could be left alone to do what they did best. Farmers were happy enough to farm, shoe makers were happy enough to make shoes, composers compose, painters paint, writers write, and politicians to feed from the trough.

Germans were not that terribly interested in puissance, in glory. Germans were also not especially militaristic. Were the Prussians, arguably the most military-based German society, really any more likely to engage in warfare than the Austrians, French, or Spanish? Not really. Even during the run up to the First World War Germans were no more keen on having a conflict than anyone else. If anything, the haughty rhetoric was a response to Germany feeling encircled by superpowers allied against it — France to the west, the UK to the northwest, and Russia to the east. The romanticism of the 19th century, especially pronounced in Germany, was needed to give a disorganised group of people a sense of unity. Italy wasn’t exactly free of it, either. The Third Reich was a bizarre period in German history, arguably the world’s worst. Yet it could have happened anywhere. Germany did it, yes, but French, Russian, and, with all due respect, British societies were not really any more enlightened. That Hitler came to power was a response to Germany’s particular problems.

Today Germany remains a largely localised society. Trierers are Trierers, Berliners Berliners, Bavarians, well, Bavarians. The wine growers of Trier like to focus on making wine. Berliners like to focus on being a bit odd and regaining their status as the continent’s cultural centre, and Bavarians focus on making beer, cars, and making fun of Berliners. There is a sense that Germany is still not truly united, especially in the cast of the former East and West. Given the choice, it’s unlikely that Germany would have even become a country. Germans don’t like change, especially when what they had before worked just fine. Germans also don’t, by and large, care about being a regional, much less global, hegemon.  They don’t really care too much if the euro collapses, if things go back to what they were 30 or 40 years ago. What they generally want is just to have a peaceful life without too many difficulties and to go about doing what they do.

Author: Christopher-Dorset

A Bloody Kangaroo View all posts by Christopher-Dorset