As we all know, King Frederick William IV of Prussia, albeit with great reluctance, accepted the Frankfurt Parliament's proposal that he be made Emperor of the German Empire in 1848, but what if he refused the crown and Germany wasn't unified in 1848? Would Germany have remained a series of small Kingdoms? Or would it have been unified anyway, albeit later and probably under a republican government? How would it have affected Europe? Could Austria have survived as opposed to being annexed by the German Empire (with the Czechs, Hungarians, and Croats gaining independence)?