Fatherlands: State-Building and Nationhood in Nineteenth-Century Germany. . - Reviews - book review

Fatherlands: State-Building and Nationhood in Nineteenth-Century Germany. Abigail Green. Cambridge University Press. [pounds sterling]45.00 (US$64.95). 386 pages. ISBN 0-521-79313-0. This study of the German Empire established in 1871 looks at the 'unification process' that began in that year with reference to the non-Prussian parts of the new Hohenzollern empire. It first examines how far local patriotism 'coexisted with national identity' before 1871. It also investigates how far these local patriotisms continued as German nationalism took root under the new regime. The author puts her study neatly when she says her aim is to look at 'how national Germany was before unification and how federal it remained thereafter'. The author confines her study to three German states: Hanover, Saxony and Wiirttemberg but pays some attention to Bavaria. Her interest is with the tensions between federalism and nationalism and with the similarities among these three kingdoms as their peoples came to terms with the new Germa ny. The author looks at the historic background, the rulers and governments of the three kingdoms, the 'formulation and development' of government policy, the effects of the 1848 revolution, the effects of railways, state education and propaganda. She concludes that the new Empire did change the nature of German nationalism but 'did not shake the fundamental understanding of what it meant to be a German'. Outside Prussia, 'different indigenous traditions survived' Prussian domination.

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