1 A. The ground: fragmentation to unification

• The old Reich: the Holy Roman Empire's thousand-year sprawl — "neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire" (Voltaire) — hundreds of sovereign bits; crushed by Napoleon (1806's dissolution), then reassembled by the Congress of Vienna (1815) as a loose GermanConfederation of 39 states — Austria presiding, Prussia sulking.• The German question:Grossdeutsch (include Austria's Germans — the Catholic-south solution) vs Kleindeutsch (a Germany without Austria, led by Protestant Prussia — the answer history chose).• Nationalism's schooling: romantic nationalism (Herder's Volksgeist — the word itself German; Political Thoughts' romantic thread); the 1848 Frankfurt Parliament — the professors' attempt: a liberal, elected Germany — failing on the double question (the crown offered to a Prussian king who would not take it from "a gutter" power refused to be made by address) — the lesson absorbed: unification would come by blood and iron, notspeeches and majorities (Bismarck's own later phrase).