ABSTRACT
From 1815 (the end of the Napoleonic empire) to 1919 (the end of the Second German Reich), there was 100 years of quest for political unification and economic modernization in ‘Germanic territories’. Both quests were to be successful to an extent undreamed of even by the most ardent revolutionary partisans of pan-Germanism. Both quests were also to end in catastrophes: on the one hand, in 1919, the central European empires collapsed and disappeared in chaos, dismantled into smaller states and leaving republics too weak to ensure peace and democracy; on the other hand, the economy that had surpassed all expectations and successfully outmatched the older industrialization model of Great Britain was to fall in ruins after the First World War, while hyper-inflation would plague the inter-war years and the recurrent economic crisis would pave the way for even more hideous events.
