Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The territorial evolution of Germany in this article include all changes in the modern territory of Germany from its unification making it a country on 1 January 1871 to the present although the history of "Germany" as a territorial polity concept and the history of the ethnic Germans are much longer and much more complex.
Flag of the North German Confederation (1866–1871) and the German Empire (1871–1918) Imperial Germany 1871–1918. Chancellor Otto von Bismarck determined the political course of the German Empire until 1890. He fostered alliances in Europe to contain France on the one hand and aspired to consolidate Germany's influence in Europe on the other.
The process symbolically concluded when most of south German states joined the North German Confederation with the ceremonial proclamation of the German Empire i.e. the German Reich having 25 member states and led by the Kingdom of Prussia of Hohenzollerns on 18 January 1871; the event was later celebrated as the customary date of the German ...
The Southern states joined the federal state in 1870/71, which was consequently renamed the German Empire (1871–1918). The state continued as the Weimar Republic (1919–1933). Present-day Germany is a federal republic which combines the States of Germany.
Germany saw the French Republic as its principal danger on the European continent as it could mobilize much faster than Russia and bordered Germany's industrial core in the Rhineland. Unlike Britain and Russia, the French entered the war mainly for revenge against Germany, in particular for France's loss of Alsace-Lorraine to Germany in 1871 ...
Map of the North German Confederation. Prussia with its provinces are shown in blue.. The North German Confederation (German: Norddeutscher Bund ⓘ) [1] was initially a German military alliance established in August 1866 under the leadership of the Kingdom of Prussia, which was transformed in the subsequent year into a confederated state (a de facto federal state) that existed from July 1867 ...
In referring to the entire period between 1871 and 1945, the partially translated English phrase "German Reich" (/-ˈ r aɪ k /) is applied by historians in formal contexts; [3] although in common English usage this state was and is known simply as Germany, the English term "German Empire" is reserved to denote the German state between 1871 and 1918.
3 March – German federal election, 1871; 21 March – Otto von Bismarck is appointed as the first Imperial Chancellor of the German Empire and his Bismarck cabinet was sworn in. 16 April – Constitution of the German Empire, the basic law of the German Empire of 1871–1918, passed by German Reichtstag and coming into effect on 4 May 1871.