Sunday, August 30, 2009
Week of 8/24 - 8/28
Coming from a background of American and Latin American history, the first week of this class has been very informative. Personally, I have always thought of Germany as having its own unique identity, and while I'd always know it was essentially a collection of different countries some of the material still came as a surprise. I do agree that this is one of the main reasons why the French were able to invade Germany as well as the lack of any true form of rebellion, despite the oppressive conditions the people were facing. The Frankfurt Parliament in particular seemed to suffer from the different regions of Germany having their own specific interests to look out for, in addition to any political divides between the peoples. I found the discussion on the German middle class to be particularly fascinating, it reminded me a lot of Nixon's "silent majority" and it seems like in almost every society there's this large group of the population that is not part of the more extreme and radical groups, both right and left. For me the failures of the 1848 rebellions is still a little bit difficult to get my head around, as it seems like everything that could have gone wrong for Germany did. I guess if you want to have a successful rebellion, the conditions need to be absolutely perfect, or you just have to have enough luck.
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I am like you Sam, where German history has not been my forte. I prefer medieval/Renaissance/Reformation England, Fance and Italy (seems like an odd mix). however I am finding that the process of becoming a unified Germany is fascinating. I suppose that I knew before Germany was not a unified country but a conglomeration of small independant entities, but knowing and understanding are very different things. I too could not understand why the huge Austria/Germany power that I think of today couldnt stop Napolean. Now I realize that there wasnt a solid power to do so. It simply did not exist. I find it interesting that no one came to one anothers rescue, but I suppose its hard to get 2 people to agree on anything, much less numerous nations...
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ReplyDeleteNot to break the mold here, I have to agree as well. Although I’ve always been interested in German history, my understanding of the various events that came together to form what is now the unified Germanic nation is incredibly intriguing. I’m with you about the conditions for a revolution needing to be just right to accomplish anything, but if you think about it is that always the case? I’m sure many revolutions have gotten away with not having the perfect position behind them to ensure success. To be fair, governments based on these kinds of revolutions are also shaky at best. It is very interesting to look at how these different regions couldn’t come together to work against the French. If the concept of all of those people being German was not new and, on top of that, many people accepted it, how could they not all see that under a common threat, they all had a common enemy? One would think that that time would have had the perfect conditions for a unified German state.
Revolutions are difficult creatures and few turn out as happily as their creators imagine them. Often, history glorifies revolutions that contemporaries abhorred (hence why the French Revolution remained the boogeyman of Europe for decades). Arguably the problem Germany faced was deciding who was the enemy. Was it Napoleon? Was it the local king/duke/bishop? Was it the local lord but not the king? Was it the factory owner? These divisions complicated a lot of issues for 19th century Germany.
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