Many people don’t realize that modern Germany, as a political entity, is a comparatively recent creation (1871). So where did it come from, and how did we get there?
How far back in the mists of dawn shall I go? All the way to Charlemagne (Karl der Große), arguably the first Holy Roman Emperor? Yes, the “First Reich” was the Holy Roman Empire (HRE) — “not holy, not Roman, and not an empire” as Voltaire famously quipped.
The 300+ German principalities of the Holy Roman Empire
Let us fast-forward to the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, which ended the overlapping European Wars of Religion, chief among them the particularly bloody and traumatic Thirty-Years War. Many political scientists use the term “Westphalian sovereignty” for the modern conception of state sovereignty.
At that point, the Holy Roman Empire was a patchwork of some 300 principalities, all tributaries to the Holy…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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