What comes up in your mind when you hear the words German history? What do you expect to and what can you imagine? The secodn world war (and indeed the first) or the great history of European culture, particularly philosophy including Sigmund Freud and Lacan. Well, many years ago, German was a great empire. Let us see German History pre-1900, and see how great this country was.

What made German the great empire?

The main reason why German was the great empire due to its strategic geography that has strategic land boundaries and high traffic sea boundary. The country was the main road between for the north and the south of Europe and the east and the west. When you can see the map, and find out how the country is actually near from the most leading nations in Europe: Russia, Austria, France, Belgium, Denmark, and Netherland. It was also the highway for daily sail route that would across the North Sea and has 1200 miles on the North from the Baltic seas. The strategic geography made German the great empire at the time. Some colonies were dependent on the Empire consisting of Togo, Cameroun, the Bismarck Archipelago, and others. In the German colonial system, every inhabitant of the colonies either white or non-white inhabitants has right on the political administration that is subject to the centralized bureaucracy. Since many years ago, German become one of the most wanted destination for refugees, and it has received the total number of refugees in the second place after Swiss. Generally, if the people of the colonies wanted to be the citizen of German, they had to pass the naturalization procedure.

Language Composition in German Pre-1900

Since German has become the friendliest country for many immigrants from all over the world, including the conflict areas in Europe, the composition of language in German pre-1900 was not dominated by The German language. The history recorded that although, at the earliest history of the country, the Eastern German was dominated by Germanic tribes. However, around the sixth century, the Slavs came to German and inhabited the Elbe and Saale. The extensive of Slavic settlement in German made the Slavic language one of the dominant foreign speaking languages at the time.

According to the census of 1900, 4,200,000 out of 56,000.000 inhabitants of German Empire were foreign language speakers. Out of the 4,200,000 were from Poles, 107,000 Czechs and Moravian, while others were from Danes, Dutch, Italian, French and Frisians. German has become also the most influential language in Europe and the world. Since the relation and contribution of German in many European cultures and politics, the language has become the important language in education. Moreover in the areas of certain European countries where German settlement were there, such as in the area of Southern Russian provinces in, which one of them founded in 1768 where the German has become the language in schools. In the area consisting of 173 villages, from the time of the settlement foundation, the German language has been dominant in Baltic provinces of the Russian Empire.