Unification of Germany - Political and Administrative Unification

Political and Administrative Unification

For more details on this topic, see German Empire.

The new German Empire included 25 states, three of them Hanseatic cities. It realized the Kleindeutsche Lösung, ("Lesser German Solution", with the exclusion of Austria), as opposed to a Großdeutsche Lösung or "Greater German Solution", which would have included Austria. Unifying various states into one nation required more than some military victories, however much these might have boosted morale. It also required a rethinking of political, social and cultural behaviors, and the construction of new metaphors about "us" and "them." Who were the new members of this new nation? What did they stand for? How were they to be organized?

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