What it says on the tin. What would need to happen for Germany to be unified by Prussia instead of Austria?
I think a Napoleonic defeat at Waterloo means Prussia can keep its armies, instead of having them crushed a few weeks after the English. In turn, this gives them more weight in the negotiations, which could lead to (I know, this is near-ASB) Prussian Rhinelands. That would give Prussia the critical size for taking on Austria and maybe uniting Germany.
I think Austria would've tried to bind a stronger Prussia with itself and the rest of Germany. Perhaps not a Confederation of the Rhine, but a broader German Confederation? It would probably not mean much, with two big powers in it, but it would for a while fetter the Prussian hold on the industrial power of the Rhinelands.Agreed. Plus the Second Confederation of the Rhine wouldn't have existed, so its influence on German history would have been butterflied away.
Maybe the OP's idea of Prussia was a Germanized territory and fully incorporated to Brandenburg.Why would the Prussians even want to unify Germany, when they, except for small minority in larger towns, are not germans and are in culture and language much much cloaer to samogitians and curonians of the kingdom of Lithuania?