German nationalism (German: Deutscher Nationalismus) is a form of nationalism which asserts that Germans are one nation, promotes German history, language, culture, and national identity, and advocates for the unification of the German Volkes. German nationalism began picking up steam in the early-19th century with the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, culminating in the establishment of the German Empire in 1871. German nationalism gained a negative connotation as a result of the First and Second World Wars, the rise of Nazism, and the Holocaust.
Although originally based around the Germans' common language and culture, many German nationalists have a racialised view of what it means to be a German, and consider people who are members of certain ethnic or racial groups or who are descended from members of certain ethnic or racial groups (e.g. Jews) to not be Germans (see German-blooded and the Nuremberg Laws). Some German nationalists emphasise loyalty to the Volk, while others (constitutional patriots, who emerged in the 1980s during the Cold War) emphasise loyalty to the Constitution and shared political values such as liberalism and pluralism,[Note 1] arguing that any other kind of patriotism would "alienate us from the West".[1]
Notes
- ↑ This was seen by its advocates as a sort of post-nationalism.
References
- ↑ Habermas, Jürgen (1987).: Eine Art Schadensabwicklung. Frankfurt am Main. Suhrkamp Verlag. p. 135.