The story of how Germany finally created a national state is well known. But to paraphrase the Italian statesman Massimo d’Azeglio, having made Germany, how did one make Germans? This episode covers the long march of unification from liberal dream to everyday reality, showing the challenges German patriots had to overcome along the way. Here the story was not just a triumph over external enemies in Denmark, Austria and France, but the more difficult obstacle of overcoming internal regional, confessional and class divisions even after the national state was completed. In the episode we’ll therefore discuss the genius of Otto von Bismarck, but also the various institutions, monuments and cultural phenomena that helped create the modern German nation.

Image: Anton von Werner, Proclamation of the German Empire (1885); Otto von Bismarck Stiftung, Friedrichsruh, Germany

Rammstein, "Deutschland" (2019)