I personally think that if Italy is included in any super-germany/Holy Roman Empire, That it would eventually stop being German and revert back to Roman in name at least. But the culture would be definetly Germanic as Northern Italy was really since the Lombards settled there. So a Germanic speaking Western Roman Empire. I can see Germanic being spread around Europe the Way Latin was. Now that would be quite interesting in my honest opinion.
How large can Germany get?
- Thread starter machine3589
- Start date
I personally think that if Italy is included in any super-germany/Holy Roman Empire, That it would eventually stop being German and revert back to Roman in name at least. But the culture would be definetly Germanic as Northern Italy was really since the Lombards settled there. So a Germanic speaking Western Roman Empire. I can see Germanic being spread around Europe the Way Latin was. Now that would be quite interesting in my honest opinion.
Eurofed
Banned
Very very unlikely. By the time the typical PoDs for HRE centralization happen (962-1250 CE), the Lombards had been thoroughly assimilated in the native Italian stock centuries ago, the language in northern Italy was Romance dialects just as in the rest of the area. Anyway, any "Germany" that takes shape in the Middle Ages (which is the best way to make it as larger and powerful as possible) is going to use Latin as the linguage of the elites and the neo-Roman imperial ideal as unifying ideology for centuries anyway, regardless of whether it owns Italy or not. And even a united Germany has not enough weight, within the HRE, in comparison to an united Italy, to ever Germanize it. If it includes Italy, in modern times there are roughly equal chances that it shifts to use German and Italian equally as languages of the administration, culture, and business, it becomes a giant Switzerland or an European Canada. Alternatively, Latin remains the lingua franca of administration, business, and culture, and in modern times it may replace German and Italian dialects. But the Roman imperial ideal would be a big part of the nation's ideology.
In any case, such a HRE super-Germany would be mixed, but have a prevailing German character: demographically and economically, it would roughly be 60-66% German and 33-40% Italian, give or take a few points. Poles, Czechs, Hungarians, Slovenes, Croats, I deem they would end up more or less thoroughly assimilated, they would not have the same demographic and economic weight that the German and Italian areas had. Now, a strong HRE, besides surely keeping the bits that France "stole" IOTL, might easily end up "stealing" some choice bits of France ITTL: Burgundy, Dauphine, Provence. Their outcome is... interesting to speculate about.
Bulls Run ... For info --
The actual text reads-
"Von der Maas bis an die Memel, von der Etsch bis an den Belt"
The Maas (Meuse in French) was a historical boundary of the HRE before the French Cardinal Richelieu took much of Elsas and Lothrigen as his pound of flesh for help in the 30 Years War (http://picsdigger.com/image/8b4286b9/) in 1648.
Die Memel (or the Nieman) was the easternmost claim -and the location of where the Russian Czar Alexander signed the peace of Tilsit in 1807 during one of many eras of French aggression against continental Europe - (how do you say "Drang nach Osten" in French?)
Der Etsch is a river in the Alps (Adige in Italien) which runs south through Bozen, Meran, Trento and Verona to the Adriatic. The Belt is the waterways separating Denmark islands from Holstein and Jutland.
The author of the song (Hoffmann von Fallersleben (1798-1874)) ( http://www.deutsche-kaiserreich.de/deutschlandlied.htm )used these traditional externalitites to define the generalized "Deutsche Laender" inhabited by Swiss, Bavarians, Austrians, and the assorted other tribes that constituted the ethnography and settlement areas of HRE German territory.
Berniep2 .. with apology to Susano ... he probably would have a more exact interpretation.
The actual text reads-
"Von der Maas bis an die Memel, von der Etsch bis an den Belt"
The Maas (Meuse in French) was a historical boundary of the HRE before the French Cardinal Richelieu took much of Elsas and Lothrigen as his pound of flesh for help in the 30 Years War (http://picsdigger.com/image/8b4286b9/) in 1648.
Die Memel (or the Nieman) was the easternmost claim -and the location of where the Russian Czar Alexander signed the peace of Tilsit in 1807 during one of many eras of French aggression against continental Europe - (how do you say "Drang nach Osten" in French?)
Der Etsch is a river in the Alps (Adige in Italien) which runs south through Bozen, Meran, Trento and Verona to the Adriatic. The Belt is the waterways separating Denmark islands from Holstein and Jutland.
The author of the song (Hoffmann von Fallersleben (1798-1874)) ( http://www.deutsche-kaiserreich.de/deutschlandlied.htm )used these traditional externalitites to define the generalized "Deutsche Laender" inhabited by Swiss, Bavarians, Austrians, and the assorted other tribes that constituted the ethnography and settlement areas of HRE German territory.
Berniep2 .. with apology to Susano ... he probably would have a more exact interpretation.
Last edited: