The arduous path from the colourful diversity of the Holy Roman Empire to the Prussian-dominated German nation-state, Bismarck's German Empire of 1871, led through revolutions, wars and economic upheavals, but also through the cultural splendour of German Classicism and Romanticism. Hagen Schulze takes a fresh look at late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German history, explaining it as the interaction of revolutionary forces from below and from above, of economics, politics, and culture. None of the results were predetermined, and yet their outcome was of momentous significance for all of Europe, if not the world.
List of maps; Chronological table; Introduction; Part I. Three Weeks in March: 1. The chronicle of the 1848 Berlin revolution; Part II. The German Nationalist Movement's Road to the Creation of the Reich: 2. The background: Europe's transformation from an agrarian society to a modern civilisation of the masses; 3. The rise of a national culture; 4. What has become of the German Fatherland?; 5. The nationalist movement's passage from an elitist to a mass phenomenon; 6. From Rhine Crisis to revolution; 7. 1848: the whole of Germany it shall be; 8. On the road to a national economy; 9. Speeches and majority decisions; 10. Blood and Iron; 11. Revolution from above and below; Part III. Documentary Appendix: Notes; Bibliography and source material; Notes to bibliography; A critical bibliography of works in English; Index.
