German nationalism () is an ideological notion that promotes the unity of Germans and of the Germanosphere into one unified nation-state. It emphasizes and takes pride in the patriotism and national identity of Germans as one nation and one people. German nationalism, and the concept of nationalism itself, began during the late 18th century, which later gave rise to Pan-Germanism. Advocacy of a German nation-state among German speakers, became an important political force in response to the invasion of German territories by France under General Napoleon Bonaparte. In the 19th century, Germans debated the German question over whether the German nation-state should comprise a "Lesser Germany" that excluded the Austrian Empire completely or a "Greater Germany" that included the Austrian Empire or at least its German speaking part. The Faction led by first German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck succeeded in forging a "Lesser Germany" German nation-state, known as the German Empire during the Unification of Germany.
Aggressive German nationalism and territorial expansion were key factors leading to both World Wars. Before the start of World War I, Germany established Its colonial empire, which became the third-largest, after Britain and France. In the 1930s, the Nazis came to power and sought to unify all ethnic Germans under the Dictatorship of Adolf Hitler, eventually leading to the attempted extermination of Jews, Slavs, Romani, and other people who were deemed Untermenschen ("subhumans") during the Holocaust in World War II. After the major defeat of Nazi Germany, the nation was occupied by the Allied forces, then divided into East Germany (by the Soviets) and West Germany (by the Americans and their allies) during the opening stages of the Cold War, and each state retained a sense of German identity and held reunification as a goal, albeit under its own leadership. The creation of the European Union was in part an effort to harness a German identity to a broader European identity. West Germany underwent its economic miracle following the war which led to the creation of a guest worker program; many of these workers settled in Germany which led to tensions around questions of national and cultural identity, especially within regards to Turks who immigrated to Germany.
German reunification was achieved in 1990 following Die Wende, an event that caused some alarm both inside and outside Germany. Germany has emerged as a great power in Europe and in the world; its role in the European debt crisis and the European migrant crisis led to criticism of German authoritarian abuse of its power, especially with regard to the Greek debt crisis, and raised questions within and outside Germany as to its global role. Due to post-1945 repudiation of the Nazi regime and its atrocities, German nationalism has generally been viewed in the country as taboo. A wave of national pride swept the country during the 2006 FIFA World Cup. Far-right parties that stress German national identity and pride have existed since the end of World War II but have never governed. According to the academic Correlates of War project, patriotism in Germany before World War I ranked at or near the top, whereas today it ranks at or near the bottom of patriotism surveys. However, there are also other surveys according to which modern Germany is highly very patriotic.
History
Pre-19th century
Many historians have traced the first wave of German nation-building to around the year 1000. By the start of the 13th century, a stronger sense of German identity had taken shape, and over the next two centuries the idea of a single German people, defined by common lands, language, and character, spread more widely. Scholars such as Alexander of Roes and Lupold of Bebenburg reflected on the role of the Germans within the European order and on questions of political identity.
The early 13th-century law book Sachsenspiegel contains some of the earliest references to a collective German identity. More than ten passages refer explicitly to the 'German language', the 'German lands' (including the stem duchies of Saxony, Franconia, Swabia and Bavaria), the 'history of the Germans' and 'German descent'. These four elements (language, territory, ancestry and a shared history), are regarded by some scholars as the first appearance of key features of a national consciousness within a vernacular legal text of the Middle Ages. The Sachsenspiegel also reflected ideas of 'German descent' in the context of royal elections; seven members of the Electoral College of the Holy Roman Empire were designated a privileged role in electing the Emperor, but the King of Bohemia was denied the status of chief elector on the grounds that he was not considered a German. In the Schwabenspiegel (c. 1275) this criterion was modified, requiring only partial German ancestry, which was in line with the political realities of the 1273 royal election. Later German law books, such as the Schwabenspiegel, the (c. 1275), the Freisinger Rechtsbuch (1328) and the (c. 1360) continued to weave ethnic and historical elements into constitutional law. The Deutschenspiegel and Meißner Rechtsbuch emphasised four markers of German collective identity (language, territory, ancestry and a shared history), while the Schwabenspiegel and Freisinger Rechtsbuch stressed three (excluding language).
During the 15th century, German humanists began to celebrate German culture and language, and praised German achievements like Johannes Gutenberg's invention of the printing press. The humanist Jakob Wimpfeling wrote in 1502:"There is something delightful about the happiness of being German and living in the blessed German land." Since the start of the Reformation in the early 16th century, the German lands had been divided between Catholics and Lutherans. Partly due to the German nation being decentralised, the early German nationalist Friedrich Karl von Moser, writing in the mid-18th century, remarked that compared with "the British, Swiss, Dutch and Swedes", most Germans lacked a "national way of thinking".Jansen, Christian (2011), "The Formation of German Nationalism, 1740–1850," in: Helmut Walser Smith (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Modern German History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 234–259; here: pp. 239–240. It was not until the concept of nationalism itself was developed by German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder around 1770 that German nationalism began, although according to historian , early forms of German nationalism were already present around 1500. German nationalism was Romantic in nature and was based upon the principles of collective self-determination, territorial unification and cultural identity, and a political and cultural programme to achieve those ends. The German Romantic nationalism derived from the Enlightenment era philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau's and French Revolutionary philosopher Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès' ideas of naturalism and that legitimate nations must have been conceived in the state of nature. This emphasis on the naturalness of ethno-linguistic nations continued to be upheld by the early-19th-century Romantic German nationalists Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Ernst Moritz Arndt, and Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, who all were proponents of Pan-Germanism.
19th century The invasion of the Holy Roman Empire by Napoleon's French Empire and its subsequent dissolution brought about a German liberal nationalism as advocated primarily by the German middle-class bourgeoisie and intellectual elites who advocated the creation of a modern German nation-state based upon liberal democracy, constitutionalism, representation, and popular sovereignty while opposing absolutism. Fichte in particular brought German nationalism forward as a response to the French occupation of German territories in his Addresses to the German Nation (1808), evoking a sense of German distinctiveness in language, tradition, and literature that composed a common identity. Others from the cultural elite defined the German nation with broad concepts, including being a "Sprachnation" (a people unified by the same language), a "Kulturnation" (a people unified by the same culture) or an "Erinnerungsgemeinschaft" (a community of remembrance, i.e., sharing a common history).
After the defeat of France in the Napoleonic Wars at the Congress of Vienna, German nationalists tried but failed to establish Germany as a nation-state, instead the German Confederation was created that was a loose collection of independent German states that lacked strong federal institutions. Economic integration between the German states was achieved by the creation of the Zollverein ("Customs Union") of Germany in 1834 that existed until 1866. The move to create the Zollverein was spearheaded by Prussia. The union remained under Prussian dominance, causing resentment and tension between Austria and Prussia.
Romantic nationalism
The Romantic movement was essential in spearheading the upsurge of German nationalism in the 19th century and especially the popular movement aiding the resurgence of Prussia after its defeat to Napoleon in the 1806 Battle of Jena. Fichte – considered a founding father of German nationalismThe German Opposition to Hitler, Michael C. Thomsett (1997) p. 7. – devoted the fourth of his Addresses to the German Nation (1808) to defining the German nation and did so in a broad manner. In his view, there existed a dichotomy between the people of Germanic descent. There were those who had left their fatherland (which Fichte considered to be Germany) during the time of the Migration Period and had become either assimilated or heavily influenced by Roman language, culture and customs, and those who stayed in their native lands and continued to hold on to their own culture.Address to the German Nation, p. 52. Heinrich von Kleist's fervent patriotic stage dramas before his death and Ernst Moritz Arndt's war poetry during the German campaign of 1813 were also instrumental in shaping the character of German nationalism for the next one-and-a-half century in a racialized ethnic rather than civic nationalist direction. Romanticism also played a role in the popularization of the Kyffhäuser myth, about the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa sleeping atop the Kyffhäuser mountain and being expected to rise in a given time and save Germany) and the legend of the Lorelei (by Brentano and Heine) among others.
The Nazi movement later appropriated the nationalistic elements of Romanticism, with Nazi chief ideologue Alfred Rosenberg writing: "The reaction in the form of German Romanticism was therefore as welcome as rain after a long drought. But in our own era of universal internationalism, it becomes necessary to follow this racially linked Romanticism to its core, and to free it from certain nervous convulsions which still adhere to it." Joseph Goebbels told theatre directors on 8 May 1933, just two days before the Nazi book burnings in Berlin, that: "German art of the next decade will be heroic, it will be like steel, it will be Romantic, non-sentimental, factual; it will be national with great pathos, and at once obligatory and binding, or it will be nothing."
This made scholars and critics like Fritz Strich, Thomas Mann and Victor Klemperer, who before the war were supporters of Romanticism, to reconsider their stance after the war and the Nazi experience and to adopt a more anti-Romantic position.
Heinrich Heine parodied such Romantic modernizations of medieval folkloric myths by 19th century German nationalists in the "Barbarossa" chapter of his large 1844 poem Germany. A Winter's Tale:
Forgive, O Barbarossa, my hasty words! I do not possess a wise soul Like you, and I have little patience, So, please, come back soon, after all! ...
Restore the old Holy Roman Empire, As it was, whole and immense. Bring back all its musty junk, And all its foolish nonsense.
The Middle Ages I’ll endure,