At the beginning of the twentieth century, the German-speaking lands were dominated by two states both of which presented, and still present, considerable difficulties for those attempting to understand them. In the north, the German Reich had been formed in 1871 in the wake of a successful war against France. Its formation was also the final stage in a prolonged struggle for power between the dynastic house of Prussia and the Habsburgs. The Franco-Prussian war was accompanied by the invocation of German unity. In speeches, newspapers and subsequently in memoirs, the war was presented as a justified defence of German honour, supposedly insulted by the French. Extensive analogies were drawn between 1870 and 1813, when Prussia had risen against Napoleon after a series of defeats and humiliations.

Yet there were problems with this triumph of German unity, for the separate states, including Prussia, continued to exist within the new Reich. Indeed, the historian Friedrich Meinecke later recalled how he had become aware of a latent problem, namely the ‘defensive struggle’ of the ‘Prussian state personality’ against the rising tide of national unity. The difficulty was compounded by the fact that formally the Reich was the creation of the German princes, and, in principle at least, considerable authority was held by the council, to which all member states sent delegates. Shortly after the creation of the Reich, Otto von Bismarck had declared to the parliament of the Reich: ‘Sovereignty does not lie with the Kaiser; it lies with the totality of the united governments’.