Ameisen

You just want to say "It's Hammer time!".

A nail.

Especially during Summer Sales.

I accidently hit "back" and it deleted my reply, so I will do the only sensible thing and write an even longer reply.

Germany, as we know it today, starts its form as the Frankish Empire, of the Carolingians (think Pepin and Charlemagne [or as you know him, Karl der Große]). The Frankish Empire divided into East and West Francia (and Lotharingia, whence Lorraine/Lothringen takes its name, being absorbed by these two relatively quickly). West Francia evolved to become France, whereas East Francia went on to form the core of the Holy Roman Empire (nominally the Roman Kingdom, known by the Popes later as the Kingdom of Germany as a sort of spite to the Emperors).

Around this time (before 1400 CE), there was no real distinction between continental West Germanic speakers. No one would say "you are Dutch" or "you are Austrian". You spoke extremely similar dialects of the same language - it is very hard to discern Old Franconian from Old High German. Originally, the Holy Roman Empire was relatively centralized. However, a series of child-Emperors after Otto the Great allowed the various lords to obtain a sizeable level of autonomy. This is also the period in which you see the rise of several important lordships - the Duchy of Austria, the Nordmark (later Brandenburg), and the Duchy of Frisia (later County of Holland). However, there still isn't any real divide culturally, and certainly not a sense of nationality.

The first 'split' from this sort of German Confederation was Switzerland, during the Swabian War. Without going into details (involving the Burgundian Wars and the like) the Swiss wanted to break themselves from the control of the Emperor. They defeated the Emperor and the Swabian League, and became autonomous within the Empire, only becoming independent after the Peace of Westphalia.

The second 'split' was the Netherlands, then known as the United Provinces, from the personal union between the Spanish Empire and the Holy Roman Empire. The Dutch won. However, as Switzerland, Westphalia made the Netherlands independent. Westphalia also lost (officially) the territories of Wirten (Verdun), Lorraine (Lothringen), and parts of Alsace (Elsass).

Basically, one must consider 'Westphalia' to be what fragmented what was then considered 'Germany' into what we have today. However, the concept of a German nationality didn't rise until the Napoleonic Era. You really had three 'nationalities' developing by that time - Dutch, Swiss, and German. Germany was fragmented into many states following Westphalia, and was even more disunited following the collapse of the Empire; one could not clear say "Austria is German" or "the Netherlands is German" and more than you could say they were NOT just "German States" in that time. The 19^th century was a time of great upheaval and confusion. There were discussions about pan-German unions (including the Netherlands and not including the Netherlands), but the only thing that came of it was the German Confederation after the Congress of Vienna. The German Confederation included many territories that would today be considered not German: the entirety of Imperial Germany outside of Alsace-Lorraine, German-Austria (Austria, Bohemia, Moravia, South Tyrol), Greater Luxemburg (including Arlon), and in the beginning, Limburgh. This was destroyed with the Prussian victory over Austria in the Austro-Prussian War. During this time, there were two realistic ideas for a unified Germany, or as was known as the "German Question" - the 'Lesser German solution' (Kleindeutsche Lösung) and the 'Greater German solution' (Großdeutsche Lösung). The former emphasized a smaller union exlusive of Austria and the Habsburgs. The latter emphasized a grant union of all Germans (remember, there were just Germans in this period, Austrians were just Germans living in Austria). Some variants of the latter also included the Netherlands, but this wasn't as common.

With the victory of Prussia in the Franco-Prussian War, Lesser Germany was formed. While it is likely that if there had been a want, the latter COULD have been done, Bismarck was completely unwilling to annex German-Austria - he did not want a larger Catholic population, nor did he want to induct a massive Austrian aristocracy into Germany which could have competed with the German Junkers. There were riots in Vienna about this - many in Austria wanted to join into the Empire.

This is where you start having the first divergence point - with a unified 'German' state, you have distinct concepts arising, which today are relatively tabboo due to unfortunate Nazi connotations. The first is Reichsdeutsche, which referred to Germans living within the Empire proper. The second was either Volksdeutsche or Deutschstämmige, referring to Germans not within the Empire. This had a different connotation in the late 19th-early 20th centuries than it does today. Today, it refers solely to the Diaspora... similar to "German-American". At the time, it quite literally was considered "Germans who had not yet been patriated". This had not yet taken on its later, darker Nazi twist. A Jewish-German living in the Pale would have qualified under this. Austria was beginning to gain a sense of "Not German" due to their extensive history under the Habsburgs, but this had not fully developed by the start of World War 1. After the war, Austria had lost its Empire. Initially, Austria named itself 'Republik Deutsch-Österreich' (Republic of German-Austria) which included/claimed Austria, South Tyrol, and the Sudetenland. This rump state proceeded to try to be annexed by the also-defeated German Empire, but the victorious Entente made it very clear that this was not acceptable. Austria began a further divergence, but it still wasn't complete by the time that an Austrian-became-Bavarian named Adolf Hitler became Chancellor (later Führer) of Germany. Austria joined with the German Empire in 1938 under the Anschluß. Hitler proceeded to do horrible things that are beyond the scope of this discussion (which also resulted in my Prussian-Jewish family leaving Germany) and led Germany into a disastrous war, leaving a further rump Germany, and destroying the Empire. At this point, Austria made a complete split from the German-nationality mentality, as did Luxemburg.

The modern concepts of Luxemburg and Austrian nationality are products of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Not saying that there's anything wrong with that, but as someone who studied history, that tends to be what I work with :). If you managed to form the extremely unlikely 'Greater Germany' in the late-18th/early-19th centuries, you would have ended up with this.

TL;DR and in summary: Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Luxemburg.

Ahh, another programistorian like myself.