Hacker News Reader

Comment by gerdesj | Hacker News Reader

"Too bad Germany didn't get invaded by the French until Napoleon."

Read up on the Holy Roman Empire. Germany, France etc are quite complicated concepts.

To add some context here - the concept of a unified "Germany" has only existed four times in history. First under Charlemagne in the 800s, then under Otto von Bismarck in 1871, then under Adolf Hitler until the fall of the Third Reich in 1945 (assuming one considers annexation of the Sudetenland and the Anschluss to fully encompass Germanic people), and finally the modern state of Germany since 1990.

The partial absence of Austria and the German-speaking cantons of Switzerland, Italy, Belgium and perhaps France in all possible variations of these “concepts” means that a United Germany has never been truly achieved I suppose. Probably a good thing for those folks own cultural and dialect identity…

Language is just one element of identity anyway. Also, the concept of "United Country X" is a XIX century invention, largely based on now-discredited racist ideologies. We should aim for something better.

I can think of at least one situation where this idea of a "united country" is still being forcefully pushed today...

Seems arbitrary. Why Bismarck's Kaiser but none of those between Charlemagne and Napoleon? How German was the realm of Charlemagne when it reached further across the Pyrenees than it reached across the Elbe?

Charlemagne, of course, being king of the Franks and emperor of the Romans. Things back then do not match neatly to modern concepts such as a French or a German nation-state.

Weren't France and Germany essentially the same country during Charlemagne?

Correct. The current regional concept of "Germany" proper probably started with the Treaty of Verdun, when the lands of Francia were divided amongst three of Charlemagne's grandsons. The inheritor of Francia Orientalis was in fact also known as "Louis the German".

Don't think anyone was considering themselves French or German yet. There were smaller subdivisions we forgot about (or I forgot about, I'm no historian). They just happened to be all under Charlemagne's rule.

Yes, they were. Actually the core of both countries was one and the Franks did not care much about our modern borders. Western Francia became eventually France, while Eastern Francia became Franconia (roughly, the borders were always blurry and shifted a lot over time).

Of course, the Franks came from further East and never replaced the populations they invaded, so even there and then both cultures and peoples were always mixed.

And not even all of those included all german speaking populations, i.e. a large part of Switzerland, Austria, Liechtenstein and all those regions/cities that were partly german, modern day Transylvania for example

Reply on news.ycombinator.com