There was no unified "German" culture before Germany, so it doesn't make sense to talk about a "German" culture. Is it the northern maritime German? The southern Bavarian German? The Rhinelanders? The Swabians? Swiss germans? Northern Italian germans? Austrian Germans?
There was the German ethnicity, and a mosaic of Germanic languages.
I actually disagree with you. If you look at the centuries before 1870 there clearly was a recognition of a common culture, this isn't really controversial.
People often laugh about the Holy Roman Empire (mostly people who have not studied it) but it did actually serve as a distinct legal and cultural tradition for much the area that is now Germany (and more).
The language are different but not that different, with some effort you could understand each other. Many Germans from different parts fought together in mercenary bands or for Holy Roman Empire armies.
During the Revolution in the 1850 they tried to establish a unified Germany, so clearly the idea had wide recognition by then. You don't have movement like that spring up out of nowhere. After the Napoleonic war, German Confederation was a very recognized and understood fact.
Sure if was not fully 'unified' but neither is French or Spanish culture.
- Peter H. Wilson, The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe’s History
- Helmut Walser Smith, Germany: A Nation in Its Time
Nonsense. Just because there was no stricly "unifed" (whatever that means) German culture does not mean that German culture does not exist. There is clearly a shared core of culture and ethnicity to all the listed peoples.
But again you can continue with trying to make it seem as if everything is equal to everything else.
I'll leave you with this little thought experiment. If we put a northen German, a Swiss German and a Spaniard in a room, how long will it take for the two germans to realize they have more in common with each other than the spaniard?
> If we put a northen German, a Swiss German and a Spaniard in a room, how long will it take for the two germans to realize they have more in common with eath other than the spaniard?
Switzerland is actually quite different from Germany.
Because they've been living where they're living now for about 1500 years, speaking the same language or more precisely speaking a group of closely-related languages, descended from the same small initial population.
US culture also starts earlier but the reality is a majority of what makes up US culture only showed up in the region much later. As well as expansion into Spanish and other areas that were absorbed.
In that case, the oldest German citizens are 155 years old. Like the country.
And by that logic even many native Americans are immigrants. The Apache and Sioux people were living up in canada by the Great lakes near the time Spaniards were on the continent and then started migrating south westward. Not to even mention all of the natives who were forcibly moved out of their original places or fled due to war/famine/etc
Your argument is that a group of independent states spanning a huge part of a continent that banded together into a country in the 1800s forms a country that is also an ethnicity, but that a group of independent states spanning a huge part of a continent that banded together even longer ago is not a country that is also an ethnicity?
The difference is that - excepting about 1.4% of the population - everyone here in the US is either an immigrant or descended from immigrants. Most of them long after the Mayflower sailed. However long it takes to create a new capital-E Ethnicity, it hasn't been long enough.
Who cares if most people in the US had ancestors that came from somewhere else? My English ancestors have precisely no bearing on the way I live my life any more than my German, Dutch or Polish (well, they came from what is now Poland, but would never have thought of themselves as polish). The child of immigrants in Germany is going to be far more German than I am despite my ancestry.
American culture is undeniably real. American values and beliefs likewise.
Is the only thing that decides an ethnicity how far back your ancestors have been procreating within a country’s current borders?
Culture and values is a better delineator, and it is pretty undeniable that America has a distinct culture and value set.
Ethnicity is a social construct with some fuzzy boundaries, but I don't think anyone credible tries to claim that there is an "American Ethnicity". Usually when that term comes up it's from some racist overly proud that someone in their ancestry came over on the Mayflower.
Personally I think it's one of the strengths of this country that a first generation immigrant can come here and become an American. I don't think this is very common around the world.
> My English ancestors have precisely no bearing on the way I live my life any more than my German, Dutch or Polish (well, they came from what is now Poland, but would never have thought of themselves as polish). The child of immigrants in Germany is going to be far more German than I am despite my ancestry. American culture is undeniably real. American values and beliefs likewise.
I don't think you are disagreeing with the parent commenter as much as you think. The clear belief statement you are making and not considering your ancestry is a pretty core value of Americans (and one I like) that is not seen in other countries.
Most countries in the world automatically default to "my ancestors were X so I am X, if someone else's ancestors were Y then they are Y, no matter how many generations or how illogical this is". Example: people keep commenting how many players of African descent there are on the French men's soccer team. No one cares or talks about the ancestry of the players on the USMNT.
German citizens didn’t evolve in Germany. Any attempt to delineate ethnicity based on how long you ancestors have been in a country is just a veiled attempt to argue that you belong and they don’t.
And that is what binds them together, they all took the leap of faith, they all seperated from the old world, they all brought only their work and their spirit. The us is a phyle of choice and you must have made that choice to belong to it. This Choice is also the freedom so often referenced. Which also means you can leave the us by abandoning its values.
> excepting about 1.4% of the population - everyone here in the US is either an immigrant or descended from immigrants
Your data and percentage, is very wrong. America has significant Black and Indigenous (usually referred to as Indian or Native) populations. Around 15% Black and 3% Indigenous. Combined, they make up around 18% of the US population, with wild and vigorous arguments they are even a greater percentage than that (20% or so).