Timeline for What kept the idea of a "German question" or unification in 19th Century Europe?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
14 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jul 12 at 12:38 | comment | added | MCW♦ | ? Swiss is not a dialect of German? Paragraph 2 is more witty than accurate. "Dialect" is better understood as dialect continum. The imprecision detracts from the question more than the wit contributes. This is a logical fallacy akin to strawman; reasoning built on a false premise. This distracts from the core of the question about nation formation. | |
| Jul 12 at 12:20 | history | edited | Roger V. | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 93 characters in body
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| Jul 6 at 16:09 | comment | added | T.E.D.♦ | Perhaps it was that Army and Navy. | |
| Jul 6 at 9:32 | comment | added | ccprog | Lixembourg "just considered itself a separate entity and developed an identity based on that"? If you look at the case of the Luxembourg crisis you can see very clearly that its independence in the end was the result of a power play between Germany (Prussia really) and France, where public opinion inside and outside Luxembourg were more of a tool of Bismarck and Napoleon III. than any sort of "grassroot" feeling. | |
| Jul 6 at 5:18 | comment | added | Roger V. | @ThomasBy IMHO this diversity is hard to quantify: Grimm distinguished 26 german dialects, if I am not mistaken. Today they are largely displaced by High German... but only in Germany - Swiss films still have to be subtitled for Germans, and there are editors earning living by assuring correct usage of German, Austrian and Swiss varieties in documents. | |
| Jul 5 at 19:42 | comment | added | Tomas By | Arabic is much more diverse, I believe (and much larger area). | |
| Jul 5 at 19:23 | comment | added | Roger V. | Another similar example is the Pan-Arabism - the idea that Arabs are one people that should live in a single state. Note that the dialects of Arabic are just as diverse as dialects of German. The crux here is likely a state (held as a unit by a king or a dictator) vs. a nation-state - grounded in shared linguistic and cultural identity. | |
| Jul 5 at 18:14 | answer | added | o.m. | timeline score: 5 | |
| Jul 5 at 16:40 | comment | added | Dan M | You should look at the history of germany since the Holy Roman Empire (and before), how the emperor was elected and the politics behind. | |
| Jul 5 at 15:26 | review | Close votes | |||
| Jul 6 at 0:03 | |||||
| Jul 5 at 11:17 | comment | added | MCW♦ | Documenting preliminary research will improve both the probability of an answer and the quality of the answer(s). I think you've answered your own question - there were competing drives - some sought unification around language and the formation of a nation-state. Others sought an independent path (like Luxembourg). A full answer would have to also address the concept of a nation state, incentives for nation-states, nation-state formation initiatives throughout Europe, and the German reaction to Napoleonic France. | |
| Jul 5 at 7:32 | comment | added | Jan | "we would expect most of the different varieties of the German language to be simply taken as specific languages (e.g Bavarian, Hessian, Swabian, etc) in their own states." Might there be some way to confirm or refute that expectation? | |
| Jul 5 at 7:30 | comment | added | Jan | A simple heuristic for distinguishing between German and Dutch from the early 19th century is given here: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kannitverstan | |
| Jul 5 at 6:15 | history | asked | embedded_dev | CC BY-SA 4.0 |