History Memes

Welcome to reality. It's war. And diplomacy. Which is war with different means.

Why would anybody give up power if they didn't have to?

I find the standard historical descriptor “unification” to be statist embellishing and give the false idea that this was somehow grassroots.

"War is politics through other means", and all that jazz. German unification movements were widespread and a key component of Prussia's success was leveraging that grassroots enthusiasm towards a unified German nation to assist them, by portraying themselves as the most likely to be able to achieve it.

Fighting the French did help a lot

Why didn't Bohemia, the largest polity, not simply eat the other polities?

Napoleon the third to be specific. Bismarck helped. A little bit.

"France, under Emperor Napoleon III, viewed Prussia’s growing power with suspicion and sought to curb its influence.

The immediate catalyst for the Franco-Prussian War was the Ems Dispatch, a diplomatic communication edited by Bismarck to provoke French ire. The altered message made it seem as though the Prussian King Wilhelm I had insulted the French ambassador, leading to public outrage in France and a declaration of war on July 19, 1870."

"The Franco-Prussian War had profound consequences for both France and Germany, as well as for the broader European political landscape.

The most significant outcome of the war was the unification of Germany. On January 18, 1871, in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles, King Wilhelm I of Prussia was proclaimed Emperor of the German Empire. This unification shifted the balance of power in Europe, establishing Germany as a major continental power."

Großherzogtum Baden FTW

I‘m gonna take a bath in Baden-Baden now.

You know you done fucked up when your city gets attacked and your citizens run out to join the attacking army

A language is a dialect with an army and navy

germany has about 4-5 truly difficult dialects I'd say. (being an native speaker) I could understand every dialect after being immersed for a couple of hours except for bavarian tho 😅

there are a lot more local accents and dialects but Sächsisch, Pfälzerisch & Bayrisch are the ones that are really difficult to understand even for german natives from other areas. Hessisch partially as well. These are all bound to their local areas.

I'm speaking Hochdeutsch ("plain german" which should be the german y'all are learning in school) but there is also Plattdeutsch (spoken mostly in the north) which is it's own language that is on it's way to extinction.

Many german dialects are as you say, sometimes unintelligible with each other. However they are of the type where if you spend 1-2 weeks immersed in it you will very quickly start to understand it. Same thing happens in English. I heard an anecdote of someone who watched the Scottish series "Lemmy's show" for the first time and could barely understand anything they were saying. But as they reached the end of the first season they had very little trouble. Intrigued I did the same and had the same experience (great show btw).

I'm not native speaker of German but I had such an experience. I learnt standard German in school as a foreign language. Last year I visited the Austrian family of my partner. The first day I could barely understand anything they were saying but after 2 weeks I could comprehend most of it. So where do we really draw the lines of a language? If you can comprehend it with less than one week of training is it really a language? I would say no. If yes then I would say some English dialects ought to be classified as languages (as I know some do, calling it the scots language).

It comes down to language structure and how similar they are. For example it’s easier for me to understand Dutch than Danish. Luxembourgish (recently recognized as separate language) to me is rural Hessian with some random French words thrown in - again easier than Dutch to me. For the German dialects you can use the same writing and it should be understood throughout Germany, Austria and most of Switzerland. Except for regionally used words like e.g. “leiwand” (Viennese for good/perfect). Another exception is if the writer is from Cologne - nobody understands their language.

At some point it included Rome, so at least that part is kind of true.

At the least, one understands the desperation of 19th century German nationalists in general. Border gore aside, imagine the tariffs and border controls one must go through for a simple day trip!