What would a Germany that wasn't unified by Prussia look like?

What would the society and culture of a Germany unified by someone else look like? How would the lack of Prussian dominance affect this Germany?
 
It helps to narrow down periods and potential alternate cores. Are we talking Habsburgs following the trouncing of Frederick the Great in an alternate Seven Years War? Are we talking a Protestant confederation led by a surviving Gustavus Adolphus? Why, you could even come up with a scenario involving the Ernestine Wettins, if you were so inclined.
 
It very much depends how Germany would be unified. It could be united by:

- More centralised HRE in Middle Ages.
- Some kind of Protestant Union if king Gustav II Adolf would survive in Lutzen.
- Germany united Habsburgs between Thirty Years War and Napoleonic Wars.
- United Germany is created in 1815/1816 so there is Austria too.
 
What do you mean?

Middle Ages HRE unification?
Hapsburg Germany?
Somehow something like Westphalia or a South German Confederation?
Napoleonic under the Confederation of the Rhine?
 
Let’s go with the Confederation of the Rhine idea, in a general Napoleonic Victory TL, since this would mean a Germany united by neither Prussia nor Austria. Here the main players are Bavaria, Westphalia, and Saxony, the latter having potential as it has a dual monarchy with the Duchy of Warsaw. And just to drive the point home, let’s say Prussia eventually loses Silesia to Saxony.
 

Kaze

Banned
Depends on who unites it. My pet ones are:

Hapsburg.
-- Return of the Holy Roman Empire. I expect that the Protestants would want some law about religious toleration, but it could in theory be done. There was even an offer by some of the Protestant Princes to give up their political power to the Holy Roman Emperor -- if he would sign a law of religious toleration, the Holy Roman Emperor at the time told them to go to hell and continued the counter-reformation.
Confederation of the Rhine--
-- see Hapsburg above.
Bavaria -
--Before Ludwig went mad, the King of Bavaria thought of German unification.
Baron Ludwig von Windthorst.
--He was Bismark's political rival. Bismark said of him, "Everyone has someone to love and someone to hate. I have my wife to love and Windthorst to hate."
Karl Marx.
-- He talked about German unification. But shiver to think of it Karl Marx running a socialist Germany!
 
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