A Brief History of Germany Before “Germany”

Katja Hoyer, Blood and Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German Empire 1871–1918

When the Holy Roman Empire collapsed before Napoleon in 1806, it left a crazy quilt of German-speaking microstates across central Europe. These little Germanies were vulnerable to French, Russian, and Austrian dominion, but for decades struggled to unify. Their separate traditions, laws, and dialects made working together too difficult. They waited in vain for someone to unify them, until a militant nationalist stepped into the role: Otto von Bismarck.

If your high school World History course resembled mine, Germany largely disappeared from discussion between 1806 and World War I. Maybe an Anton von Werner painting depicting the Empire’s proclamation, or an orphan portrait of Bismarck, but certainly not context. German-born British historian Katja Hoyer steps into the vacuum. Her introductory history is broad and sweeping, and provides a good bird’s-eye view, assuming an introduction is what you need.

Hoyer organizes her history into five long, thematically linked chapters: the years leading to unification, Kaiser Wilhelm I’s reign, the tragedy of Friedrich III and Bismarck’s downfall, Kaiser Wilhelm II’s reign, and finally World War I. She attempts to present Germany’s arc in the most sympathetic terms possible. After all, under constant pressure from outside forces, Germany certainly needed a unified state to protect its people and traditions from trampling.

That sympathy isn’t rose-tinted, though. In Hoyer’s telling, Germany provided a necessary defensive service, but at great price. Bismarck, the consummate national organizer, found the common needs of Germany’s tiny states, and played them together under Prussia’s banner. Those common needs, though, were mostly for defense against Europe’s other empires. Therefore Germany was “unified” mainly by its ability to spot, and defend against, perceived enemies, foreign and domestic.

Note the “domestic” in that formulation. While Bismarck, and his puppet emperor Wilhelm I, definitely protected Germany against French and Russian territorial ambitions, Bismarck also despised change from within. He brought the same fervor to suppressing liberal democracy and nascent socialism that he did to expelling tsarists and Bonapartists. Karl Marx himself was never welcome back to his native Prussia, Bismarck saw to that.

Katja Hoyer

Basically, Germany looked at a Europe dominated by various empires in their death throes, violently lashing out at one another like wounded wolves, and thought: I’ll have that. It wanted a unitary monarch to rally around, and Bismarck gave them that, in Prussian King Wilhelm I. Admittedly, Wilhelm never wanted that power, and happily delegated actual authority back to Bismarck, which suited both men, and Germany overall, just fine.

Unfortunately, some people believed the nationalist mythology of a unitary Kaiser, and young prince Wilhelm was one. Though the old Kaiser’s son Friedrich III was progressive-minded, and might’ve extended democracy to Germany, he inherited the throne already terminally ill, and reigned only 99 days. Then power passed to Wilhelm II, who honestly believed the claptrap Bismarck had sold Germany, and set course to rule single-handedly.

History shows how that ended.

Hoyer describes this history in sweeping, synoptic terms. She spends little time unpacking individual events, and nothing on individual personalities, except for Bismarck, the two Wilhelms, and a little about Friedrich III. Hoyer cares less about the events and personalities which comprise the narrative, and more about the overall social forces driving them. Thus she cites names and places, without always explaining why they matter in any particular situation.

She also avoids topics that don’t play into her core interest in political history. The book includes two orphaned references to composer Richard Wagner, and a brief passage about how Germany’s urban proletariat turned culture into a consumer commodity, but nothing much about cultural forces overall. Similarly, though Hoyer admits religion and secularism played into national identity, she doesn’t unpack them beyond how political parties exploited them.

This book therefore courts an audience not necessarily familiar with German Imperial history. And the history Hoyer provides is the history of the German state, not the German people. Readers already familiar with pre-WWI German history will probably find this book excessively synoptic, and readers who don’t necessarily know Germany, but enjoy deep dives into history (like me) will wish she paused to unpack why exactly this story matters.

Notwithstanding Hoyer’s brevity, this monograph concisely introduces an aspect of history often treated hastily. Bismarck’s intricate political horse-trading, and his heirs’ inability to preserve what he started, have plenty of steam-age drama. If Hoyer doesn’t unpack much herself, she at least introduces enough to let us decide what’s worth a deeper dive. I suspect many English speakers don’t know this corner of history, and we should.