'What and where is Germany?' The question is one that over the following 200 years Germans have tried to answer. This book traces the evolution of the 'question' in its European context through its various guises, from pre-unification times, through the Bismarkian and Wilhelmine empire to dictatorship, partition, and eventually re-unification.

'What and where is Germany?' The question, posed by Goethe and Schiller in 1797, is one that over the following 200 years Germans have tried time and again to answer. But it has never been a matter for Germans alone. Since the early ninteenth century fellow Europeans have asked themselves how Germany could fit into the existing as well as the future political and mental map of Europe. Occasionally, it has turned into an issue of world politics, especially in the era of German Unification from 1848-71 and the so-called Cold War between 1945 and 1989. Even now, long after the unexpected reunification, many observers are reluctant to deny the possibility that the old problem might resurface, although in changed form. Alter's new study traces the evolution of the 'question' in its European context through its various guises, from pre-unification times, through the Bismarkian and Wilhelmine empire to dictatorship, partition, and eventually re-unification. His astute analysis of an issue that has, more than any other in modern European history, shaped the politics and destiny of the continent is a distinctive contribution to an understanding of past and present.

The German question and Europe
Vienna 1815 - the quest for stability
economic progress and political failure
German unity - first attempt 1870-1871
the German question in war and peace
the nemesis of dictatorship
Germany in the Cold War
the German question 1989-1990 - a dream come true.