Talk: Anschluss

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"Greater German" should be seen in the historic context: In the 19th century, there was a dilemma about how to unify Germany. On one side, the großdeutsche Lösung (Greater German solution) was proposed: Großdeutschland should include all German states, including Prussia and Austria. On the other side, there was an existing Northern German union (I don't remember its name just now) dominated by Prussia, and the easiest solution to unify Germany seemed to extend this union to all of Germany. However, Austria did not want to be part of a Prussia-dominated union, and somehow, one arrived at a kleindeutsche Lösung (Smaller German solution): to unify all German states except Austria (and Switzerland, which didn't take part anyway). The Third Reich alluded to this 19th-century dillema by reusing the word Großdeutschland, probably to express a "relief" that finally, all Germany was unified.

(The großdeutsche Lösung should be distinguished from pangermanism, a movement that tried to subject even countries where only a German minority lived under German hegemony, adopted later by Hitler.)

I also think that Austria and Hungary were together long before already, so there would have been a problem of what to do with Hungary in a Großdeutschland. In the 19th century (perhaps about 1867??), there was a large reorganisation of Austria-Hungary, which led to the double monarchy and gave Hungary some more freedom from Austria. Therefore, the author of the article may have got the impression that Austria-Hungary did only exist from then on, while that state was quite a bit older. -- dnjansen, 1 July 2004

Hungary was one of the subject lands of the Austrian Empire until it granted the Magyars "equal" status in 1867, so Austria-Hungary technically did not exist before then. One element left out of this article is that the German lands unified in 1871 had large numbers of ethnic minorities, especially Poles, and many Germans were not enthusiastic about this. Austria-Hungary was less than 25% German, so the incorporation of so many more minorities within a German empire was, like Hungary's status was from the Austro-Hungarian side, a fundamental objection of Germany to a Grossdeutschland. After WWI, Germany was much more ethnically homogenous, and German Austria was a separate state, so these ethnic obstacles to Anschluss were no longer present. --205.134.0.38 16:14, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Historical and Literary Legacy of the 1938 Anschluss

The section "Understanding the Word: Historical and Literary Legacy of the 1938 Anschluss" is very interesting and relevant to this article, but it seems a bit too POV and essay like at the moment. I'm going to try to reword it a bit, when I get a chance, but if anyone feels like doing so I would invite them to have a try. Peregrine981 04:34, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)