Pan-Germanism is an outdated pan-nationalist political idea. But it has always generated fear among neighbouring nations. Today, in an operetta, sinister and bizarre form, these fears are reflected in the perception of European integration as the German project of building the Fourth Reich.

Pangermanists originally aimed to unite all German-speaking nations (tribes) in one nation-state known as Great Germany (Großdeutschland). 

The beginnings of Pan-Germanism are connected with the birth of Romantic nationalism during the Napoleonic Wars. The Holy Roman Empire (of the German Nation) turned into a loose confederation early on (where the main, if not the exclusive prerogative of the elected emperor was the granting of aristocratic titles). The Reformation deepened the divisions. It made the fragmentation a natural state of national existence for Germany. Following the formal dissolution of the thousand-year-old Reich under Napoleon’s dictation in 1806, the supporters of the idea of Greater Germany tried to unite the German-speaking inhabitants of Europe (under the leadership of the Austrians). 
 
Pan-Germanism was widespread among the revolutionaries of 1848. But with time it took on hegemonic features, sometimes postulating joining with ethnic Germans who, with settlements along the Baltic and Slavic lands, wandered far east. The German Anthem (Deutschlandlied), written in 1841 by Hoffmann von Fallersleben (to a Haydn melody originally sung by the Austrians to Francis II), spread Germany out with geopolitical imagination: “Von der Maas bis an die Memel, von der Etsch bis and den Belt”, that is, from Lorraine to Klaipeda, from South Tyrol to Flensburg. Immediately after World War II, the Lied was not performed, so as not to evoke bad associations, and it returned as the anthem of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1951, but only with the third stanza (without reference to the border posts of the German community and the mirage of the great unification). 

The rivalry for primacy in Germany was settled in its favour by Prussia in the dispute with Austria (1866). The Prussians united the country on their terms, but without the German Austrians who remained the dominant force within their own multi-ethnic K&K empire. 

The all-German movement gained institutional format in 1891, when Ernst Hasse, a professor at Leipzig University and a member of the Reichstag, organized the Pan-German League, an ultra-nationalist formation accused of promoting imperialism, anti-Semitism and supporting German ethnic minorities in other countries. The organization gained much support among the educated middle and upper classes. 

Pan-Germanism in Austria organized itself at the beginning of the 20th century. The Society of Pan-German Nationalists (founded by Georg von Schönerer) demanded that all German-speaking territories of Austria-Hungary be incorporated into the German Empire (“through unity to purity”), rejecting Austrian patriotism and Austrian identity. Schönerer’s racist German nationalism was the inspiration for Hitler’s Nazi ideology. And it became the ideological base of the alliance of the nationalists with the Nazis who pressed for the Anschluss. They reheated the mood that prevailed in Austria after the defeat in World War I, when “German Austria” was attempted to be incorporated into Germany. This was prevented by the Treaty of Saint Germain in 1919, which allowed Austrians to give up independence only with the consent of the League of Nations.

The Pan-German movement adopted overt ethnocentric and racist traits in Germany after World War I. It undoubtedly inspired the doctrine of “Heim ins Reich”, implemented by Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler. It was behind the annexation of the Sudetes, the anschluss of Austria, the incorporation of Klaipeda, and the demands for Gdańsk to be incorporated into the Reich. And the Great German Reich, built on the foundations of the Nazi Great German Reich, was to cover a vast region from Lorraine, Belgium and the Netherlands, Switzerland, Denmark and southern Sweden to the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea, assimilating (and when necessary displacing) the nations living there. 
After World War II, Pan-Germanism became a taboo in both West and East Germany. The collapse of the GDR revived old debates (and old fears). After all, people were going out to the streets of Leipzig, Dresden or East Berlin chanting: “Wir sind ein Volk”. The message of the protests was unambiguous. And despite carefully concealed fears in some capitals (e.g. Paris or London, not only in Warsaw), it was difficult to deny Germany the right to reunification.
 
By coincidence, I was in Berlin when the historic wall fell there in November 1989. Anyway, I found out about it only on Saturday afternoon, when I arrived at the Polish embassy at Unter den Linden. I was driving in a private car (with my family) and, unfortunately, a few weeks earlier, the radio had been stolen from my car. I knew nothing about the effects of Krolikowski’s declaration. Driving through the outskirts of Berlin, I saw dozens of randomly abandoned cars in the vicinity of the S-ban stations, I saw a deserted city and only in the center it was explained to me that East Berliners had moved en masse to the west side. I myself tried to get to the station on Friedrichstrasse, from where I wanted to get by train to West Berlin, where the meeting for which I came was taking place. But the crowd was so dense that I decided to walk through Checkpoint Charlie and take the subway on the west side.

The conference I attended (organized by the Aspen Institute) was dominated by the question of a possible reunification of Germany. I remember my doubts about the thesis made by the then secretary of state at the Bonn Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who announced that the reunification was not and would not be on the international agenda for a long time. His grandiloquence was not convincing. Crowds of people in the streets of West Berlin and around the wall, especially in the evening hours, when a real fiesta took place from Saturday to Sunday, conveyed a clear message: no one will be able to stop it. I participated in this world of joy as well (I explain by the way: I did not manage to spot Sarkozy there).

The reunification of Germany in 1990 did not have any serious political consequences in terms of the threat of a revival of the spirit of German chauvinism. Currently Pan-Germanism is mainly confined to certain nationalist groups in Germany and Austria. And the three countries of the German cultural area maintain a solid identity. My Austrian friends like to recall the fact that they are the best illustration of the thesis that a state makes a nation. 

And the Germans, Austrians and Swiss sometimes find it difficult to find a common language, even if it is German. In the fall of 1993, I was approached by the military advisers of Germany, Switzerland and Austria from their missions to the CSCE in Vienna. They asked me to interpret the meaning of a term in the Vienna Document of 1992 on Confidence and Security Building Measures in Europe. I was the main coordinator of the negotiations on this document, so I was expected to issue a binding interpretation that would settle the dispute, how to translate the disputed term into German. The Vienna Document was negotiated in English, but then it was translated into the other five official languages, including German. It turned out that reconciling the German text (i.e. authorizing the translator’s work product) took more time than negotiating the Vienna Document itself. It was explained to me: “one language but three military cultures”. Nota bene, at that time, the language disputes in the OSCE over the English language between Americans, Canadians and British were settled by the Irish (where English is only the second official language).