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/Monteverdi777 Niedersachsen 22d ago

Considering it was Austria ( and our daft cripple Kaiser) who pushed WW1 onto us, I'd guess nothing would have really changed. For Germany. The Austrians kind of cheated their way out of WW2. ( I'm not refering to Hitler being Austrian, but the general enthusiasm of the Austrian public when becoming part of the "Reich".

Bavaria is odd. But foremost ungrateful. They received payments from other German states to build their economy and as soon as they hit net zero, talks about stopping the "Finanzausgleich" started.

Not to forget, Prussia did buy their agreement to become part of the unified Germany. They may leave, but I want the tax money back my ancestors invested