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    Episode 12: Why is Austria not in Germany? (Ad Free)

    In this episode, Katja and Chris explore the long and complicated relationship between Germany and Austria. They explain how religious differences and Great Power rivalry sustained two competing German identities in Central Europe. Starting from Katja’s childhood memories of crossing the Austro-German border into a familiar yet foreign world, they debate the Holy Roman Empire, the impact of Napoleon, the Hohenzollern-Habsburg dynastic rivalry, the 1848 revolutions, Bismarck, and the competing “small” (kleindeutsch) and “greater” (grossdeutsch) answers to the nineteenth century “German Question”. They show that the idea of “Anschluss”, or union between the German-speaking states, had existed long before Hitler. Perhaps surpisingly, considering what was later to come in 1938, the cause had been associated far more with liberal and progressive forces than those of the political Right.