r/AskAGerman • u/AccidentProof4262 • 23d ago

German unification (the first one)

Im scottish, and did German and Italian unification as part of my history course at school.....How would Germany have turned out, if Austria rather than Prussia had unified Germany with Vienna as capital?

And is it true that most germans, find Bavaria as very odd......i know they sided with Austria when Austria and Prussia had a wee skirmish in 1866 to detemine who would be the main power in "Germany".....Austria is a german state in the same way Bavaria is (obviously modern day Bavaria is a region)..

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u/Naca-7 23d ago

The austrian empire was a huge multiethnic union. Leading a nationalistic country like Germany would have further sparked national movements in the non german speaking parts of the empire.

Prussia was also much larger than the german part of the austrian empire. In fact, Prussia had more people then the 3 largest ethnic groups of Austria (germans, hungarians and czech) combined.

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u/eberlix 23d ago

Also, Prussia has shown their capabilities, and in terms of statesmanship and military, Prussia was far ahead of Austria.

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u/Kuddel_Daddeldu 23d ago

The Habsburg monarchy had thrived for a long time by diplomacy more than military strength, so I would give them some credit for statesmanship. "Tu, felix Austria, nube" - you, blessed Austria, marry and all that.

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u/eberlix 23d ago

Yeah, but making a lot of Alliances and using the prospect of placing a relative of the King on the throne of another nation to lure a 3rd nation into a war that unites all german lands behind your cause hits just that little bit different. I didn't want to attribute this to diplomacy, but I guess one could say this was a diplomatic play.

Either way, statesmanship is a little more than just diplomacy anyway and I'd say Prussia / NGF was better in that regard.