FROM 30 NOVEMBER 2020 BIGISSUE.COM | 39
over the centuries founding stone of a German
Empire that would reach west beyond the
Rhine and south to the Alps.
I write a German Empire, not the German
Empire; the title of this book is � e Germans
and Europe, not Germany and Europe,
because the concept of ‘nation-states’ is
essentially a 19th-century one: today ’s Italy
and Germany were geographical regions not
‘countries’ until 1861 and 1871 respectively.
Berlin was still a minor city in the 16th
century, when German-speaking Vienna was
long known as the ‘Gates of Europe’, the line of
defence against the Islamic Turkish Empire.
Vienna’s masters were the German-
speaking Habsburg clan, originally from the
Alps, but by the late 15th century, its head,
born in Ghent, today ’s Belgium, who spoke
French as well as German, had become ruler,
via dynastic links, of another geographical
entity, to be called the Kingdom of Spain.
Charles (Karl) I of Spain, which, with its
New World possessions, was the greatest
power in the world, was also Charles (Karl) V
of the Holy Roman Empire, the Habsburgs’
creation to succeed the ancient empire of
Rome. His possessions too much for one man,
Karl ceded the original Habsburg realms to his
younger brother.
� e ‘Austrian’ Habsburgs continued to
rule from Vienna, considered due to become
capital of the fi rst German-speaking ‘nation-
state’. But military con�lict saw the rise of
Prussia over Austria, Berlin over Vienna, at
a site in today ’s Czech Republic, known as
Hradec Králové, but then, under Austrian rule,
as Königgrätz.
� e Prussians won resoundingly. � eir
king became German Kaiser (from the Roman
Caesar), ‘emperor’ of the new state founded
in 1871. Berliners would, a�ter 1945, call Adolf
Hitler, an Austrian by birth, Austria’s revenge
for Königgrätz.
� e other man who, much earlier, in 1806,
had fi rst laid rest to the Holy Roman Empire,
replacing it with one of his own, was the
quintessential French military hero, Napoléon
Bonaparte. He not only styled himself
emperor, but elevated German cities such as
Hamburg, Cologne and Lübeck to the title
‘Bonne Ville de France’.
My concluding chapter is set in a city
which – like Vienna and Kaliningrad – is
no longer in Germany but played a major
role in German history: the long-disputed
Strasbourg. Set on the Rhine, Strasbourg is a
symbol of the attempts to prevent another war
between France and Germany of today.
When I fi rst entered Königsberg/
Kaliningrad in 1990, it didn’t occur to me that
within a decade almost all the Soviet satellite
states in eastern Europe would no longer
belong to the Warsaw Pact, but an entirely
di�ferent guarantor of peace called
the European Union.
� e departure of one
state is proof its citizens
didn’t understand.� e Germans and Europe by
Peter Millar is out December
10 (Arcadia Books £11.99)But I had one more barrier to breach: the road
to Kaliningrad, the heavily fortifi ed, o�f-limits
Soviet enclave on the Baltic, named for one of
Stalin’s most murderous apparatchiks, which now
lay open with Red Army units pulled away to deal
with the crisis in Vilnius.
I persuaded a reluctant Lithuanian taxi driver
in a Lada to drive me there. It was a daring journey,
along rough roads covered in snow and ice, but the
biggest impediment – Russian troops – no longer
stood in the way.
Our adventurous trip was beset by minor
mechanical calamity. A branch smashed our
windscreen – but eventually I found myself
trundling past a decrepit fortifi cation, known –
like its more famous counterpart far to the
west, as the Brandenburg Gate, but now a bar
where I found myself knocking back beer with
o�f-duty Russian soldiers. I had to be gone
within hours; even to be in Kaliningrad was a
crime for a foreigner.
Prior to 1945, this city had been Königsberg –
the King’s Rock. Founded by Teutonic Knights in
the 13th century, it became a fortress, port, and
easternmost seat of the kingdom of Prussia, and
Illustration:
Joseph Joyce
01
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Pride Against Prejudice:
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� is groundbreaking book, written
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is a must-read for anyone who
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