German unification in the context of "Lesser Germany"

Albrecht Theodor Emil Graf von Roon (German pronunciation: [ˈalbʁɛçt fɔn ˈʁoːn]; 30 April 1803 – 23 February 1879) was a Prussian soldier and statesman. As Minister of War from 1859 to 1873, Roon, along with Otto von Bismarck and Helmuth von Moltke, was a dominating figure in Prussia's government during the key decade of the 1860s, when a series of successful wars against Denmark, Austria, and France led to German unification under Prussia's leadership. A moderate conservative and supporter of executive monarchy, he was an avid modernizer who worked to improve the efficiency of the army.
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The German Empire was a federation of 25 constituent states plus the imperial territory of Alsace–Lorraine. The states were the successors of the over 300 individual political entities of numerous types and sizes that had existed under the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. They were consolidated during the Napoleonic Wars of 1803–1815 and then again through the process of German unification (1866–1871).

The Constitution of the German Empire was strongly federal. It left most matters concerning administration, justice, schools, churches, election laws and finance to the states. The Empire's upper house, the Bundesrat, consisted of members appointed by the states to represent their interests in parliament.

Heimat (German: [ˈhaɪmaːt] ) is a German word translating to 'home' or 'homeland'. The word has connotations specific to German culture, German society and specifically German Romanticism, German nationalism, German statehood and regionalism so that it has no exact English equivalent. The word describes a state of belonging "the opposite of feeling alien," and its definition is not limited to a geographical place.

Bundesautobahn 44 (translates from German as Federal Motorway 44, short form Autobahn 44, abbreviated as BAB 44 or A 44) is a German Autobahn. It consists of three main sections and a few smaller sections. It begins in Aachen at the German–Belgian border (Belgian motorway A3) and ends near Kassel (Bundesautobahn 7). Before German unification it was a regional motorway. In the 1990s, it became an integral part of the German motorway system. The A 44 is a heavily-used link between the Rhine-Ruhr-Area and the new German states, especially Thuringia, and also eastern European states like Poland.

Vormärz (German pronunciation: [ˈfoːɐ̯ˌmɛʁts] ; English: pre-March) was a period in the history of Germany preceding the 1848 March Revolution in the states of the German Confederation. The beginning of the period is less well-defined. Some place the starting point directly after the fall of Napoleon and the establishment of the German Confederation in 1815. Others, typically those who emphasise the Vormärz as a period of political uprising, place the beginning at the French July Revolution of 1830. The era also saw a gradual shift in developments from Germany being a country primarily based on agriculture to one evolving into an industrial society during the late Industrial Revolution. This was accompanied by developments in science, literacy, literature and political awareness.

Internationally known as the Age of Metternich, within Germany it was characterized by the dominance of Austria and Prussia within the German Confederation. Both Austria and Prussia established repressive absolutist police states domestically, and pressured other German states to do the same. These authoritarian regimes practiced censorship and mass surveillance on an unprecedented scale in response to even moderate reformist calls for liberalism, constitutional monarchy, and German unification, as well as more radical, revolutionary calls for republicanism and universal suffrage.

The German Conservative Party (German: Deutschkonservative Partei, DkP) was a right-wing political party of the German Empire founded in 1876. It largely represented the wealthy landowning German nobility and the Prussian Junker class.

The party was a response to German unification, universal and equal franchise in national elections and rapid industrialization. It changed from a diffuse party of broad ideology into an interest party in Bismarckian Germany. In the early 1870s, Otto von Bismarck formed his majority with the base in the National Liberal Party which emphasized free trade and anti-Catholicism. Bismarck broke with them in the late 1870s, by which time the German Conservative Party and the Free Conservative Party had brought together the landed Junkers in the East and the rapidly growing industrial leadership in the major cities. They now became the main base of Bismarck's support and successive Chancellors down to 1918.