ABSTRACT
This book provides non-historians with a clear introduction to events in the German-speaking world during the last two centuries, while also highlighting some of the unresolved issues and controversies. Much of Germany's political history had for centuries centred on the struggle for power between the rulers of the individual territories and the Kaiser, who was elected for life by the most important princes of the Reich, but was almost always a member of the Habsburg dynasty. The two powerful dynasties, the Austrian Habsburgs and the Prussian Hohenzollern, both ruled extensive territories to the east of the Reich in addition to their lands within it. In Germany, principles of the Enlightenment were welcomed by the educated classes, who initially perceived no threat from these developments to the political and social order. The federal systems present in the modern German and Austrian republics are a direct political legacy of the regional autonomies in the Holy Roman Empire.
