Let's say that Austria-Hungary ended their personal union and Austria itself merged with Germany, claiming
German Austria's territory plus Burgenland and South Tirol by around 1867-1875 or so, after Germany accepted the Frankfurt Parliament's Constitution as several timelines here have postulated.
The first question is, with German Austria added in, do we keep "German Bohemia" as a separate state or merge with Saxony? Does "Sudetenland" stay or merge with Silesia? Which states would this Germany include as of 2012, were it to stay unifed to this day as a stable republic (or even monarchy)? Would Prussia stay unified, or could it be partitioned either due to its own fiscal issues (like
this article postulates merging states by 2020), or as the result of a world war?
The second part is, let's assume Wilhelm II doesn't ever get to be Kaiser, and we have instead the first German Emperor in Friedrich Wilhelm IV in 1848, then his son, Wilhelm I, then Friedrich III (starting in 1870) without cancer, lasting till 1891. Wilhelm II is either stillborn or perhaps is born a girl, and left
Prince Henry as the next emperor till 1916.
(1) - what would the names of these Kaisers be?
(2) - assuming unification first under Friedrich Wilhelm IV, where does Franz Josef go? Do the houses unify or is there some dynastic dispute? He was pretty insistent on Habsburg rule of a unified Germany from what I read. What would the most likely succession after FW4 be?
(3) - let's say that this Germany survives unified at least till 1920, if not till today. Is there a likely war with France where this Germany takes Alsace-Lorraine, sparking French revanchism?
(4) - what, if anything, could be the spark to drag this alternate Germany into a world war with France on one side? I'm guessing Franz Ferdinand wouldn't suffer badly here, but would there be something else causing Germany to enter a war that dominoes into a world war?
(5) - if this Germany were dragged into a war on the opposite side of the UK, France, and the USA as in OTL, without Kaiser Wilhelm II's numerous missteps, would it garner a more lenient peace?