#2 - Looking Back and Within: 15th Century Germany

The origin of Germany is stranger than most nations in the sense that it had already started before it began. It was not until the mid-15^th century when things were shaken up due to the Germanic peoples disagreeing with an instruction by the Holy Roman Empire they were a part of, that helped start separate the two. It is not unreasonable to see why the German people did not want to follow the Empire’s orders of marching into Constantinople and capture it. These people were tired of being told what to do, while their nation was in complete disarray.

 Pictured to the left are a group of prince electors discussing their next decision. A prince elector was in charge of representing their specific estate. I think it is neat that is was the German prince electors that stood up and ultimately gave stuck it to the Emperor, saying their people would not fight unless he fixed what was going on at home first. Out of all the states the Empire was in control of, it is interesting that it would choose to boss around and ignore the German Nation as the German people were very much responsible for helping gain control of some of the Empire’s territory. Surely, the Empire would realize that eventually the Germans would fight back, but apparently it believed they would not be a threat as they had nothing to back up their independent ways.

Up until then, the Roman Empire was right, the German nation did not have enough to support their separate way of living. They just had ideas to go along with their different dialects and culture. What amazes me, was that it was enough; they just needed help from a book to back them up. Pictured to the right is a statue of the ancient historian Tacitus, who lived during the 1st and 2nd century, and happened to write a text titled Germania that was found and republished. This text gave importance to the Germanic people back then and showed them as an individual group set from the rest. An old book written centuries ago by one person still surprises me on how much weight and power it can give to people. This propelled the German people past adversity and gave them that nationalistic pride. These German people did not need to change very much; they simply needed to look within and realize what Tacitus had noted and observed centuries ago. It is also interesting to see that the German people moved closer toward a true German nation-state through intelligence and culture and not by the common barbaric way of killing and capturing.

word count: 441