Origins and historical background of German federalism
- Pages
- 61-67
Abstract
The number of federal states in the modern world is extremely small. The Federal Republic of Germany is the largest and most famous federation in Europe. However, German democracy and German federalism are often perceived as externally imposed political values as a result of the country's defeat in World War II. Such an attitude needs revising. Of course, Germany did not have the same deep tradition of parliamentarism as France or Great Britain, or federalism like the United States of America, but German history was not deprived of certain prerequisites for both democracy and federalism. Of course, the state-territorial structure of Kaiser Germany was significantly different from the United States and had its own specifics. In this article, the author attempts at illuminating the historical origins of German federalism that developed at the end of the 19th century during the formation of the North German Union and the German Empire in 1871.