German question

The "German question" was a debate in the 19th century, especially during the Revolutions of 1848, over the best way to achieve a unification of all or most lands inhabited by Germans. From 1815 to 1866, about 37 independent German-speaking states existed within the German Confederation. The Großdeutsche Lösung ("Greater German solution") favored unifying all German-speaking peoples under one state, and was promoted by the Austrian Empire and its supporters. The Kleindeutsche Lösung ("Lesser German solution") sought only to unify the northern German states and did not include any part of Austria (either its German-inhabited areas or its areas dominated by other ethnic groups); this proposal was favored by the Kingdom of Prussia. The solutions are also referred to by the names of the states they proposed to create, Kleindeutschland and Großdeutschland ("Lesser Germany" and "Greater Germany"). Both movements were part of a growing German nationalism. They also drew upon similar contemporary efforts to create a unified nation state of people who shared a common ethnicity and language, such as the Unification of Italy by the House of Savoy and the Serbian Revolution. During the Cold War, the term was repurposed to refer to the matters pertaining to the division, and re-unification, of Germany. There is, in political geography, no Germany proper to speak of. There are Kingdoms and Grand Duchies, and Duchies and Principalities, inhabited by Germans, and each separately ruled by an independent sovereign with all the machinery of State. Yet there is a natural undercurrent tending to a national feeling and toward a union of the Germans into one great nation, ruled by one common head as a national unit. Over the centuries, the loose German Holy Roman Empire had to cope with a continuous loss of authority to its constituent Imperial States. The disastrous Thirty Years' War proved especially detrimental to the Holy Roman Emperor's authority, as the mightiest two entities within it, the Austrian Habsburg monarchy and Brandenburg-Prussia, evolved into rivalling European absolute powers with territory reaching far beyond Holy Roman Imperial borders.