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The first medieval Duchy of Saxony was a late Early Middle Ages "Carolingian stem duchy", which emerged around the start of the 8th century AD and grew to include the greater part of Northern Germany, what are now the modern German states of Bremen, Hamburg, Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia, Schleswig-Holstein and Saxony-Anhalt.
The Kingdom of Saxony was the fifth state of the German Empire in area and third in population; in 1905 the average population per square mile was 778.8. Saxony was the most densely peopled state of the empire, and indeed of all Europe; the reason was the very large immigration on account of the development of manufactures.
Gradually, the latter region became known as Saxony, ultimately usurping the name's original geographical meaning. The area formerly known as Upper Saxony now lies in Central Germany – in the eastern part of the present-day Federal Republic of Germany: note the names of the federal states of Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt.
The unification of Germany (German: Deutsche Einigung, pronounced [ˈdɔʏtʃə ˈʔaɪnɪɡʊŋ] ⓘ) was a process of building the first nation-state for Germans with federal features based on the concept of Lesser Germany (one without Habsburgs' multi-ethnic Austria or its German-speaking part).
In January 1871, along with the rest of Prussia, Hanover became part of the German Empire upon the unification of Germany. Briefly revived as the State of Hanover in 1946, the state was later merged with some smaller states to form the current state of Lower Saxony in West Germany.
Germany is traditionally a country organized as a federal state.After the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, the German-speaking territories of the empire became allied in the German Confederation (1815–1866), a league of states with some federalistic elements.
The East German states, including Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt, were abolished in 1952, but they were recreated as part of the reunification of Germany in 1990 (with some slight border changes; in particular territories around Torgau, which were part of Saxony-Anhalt between 1945 and 1952, passed to Saxony) as modern states of Germany.
At the time of the Erfurt Union in 1849/1850 it already looked like the Kingdom of Prussia could only unite the north of Germany. The large kingdoms of Bavaria and Württemberg, as well as Saxony, which finally had to join the North German Confederation after 1866 as a result of its defeat on the side of Austria, vehemently rejected the attempt at unification under Prussian leadership.