[jboynyc]

"Enormous timespan"? I think if you take some history into account you will reconsider that. We tend to project the existence of a construct called Germany backward in time, but Germany did not really come into existence until a bunch of small states were united under Prussian leadership in 1871, and even then it remained a pretty fragile construct. Lots of tribalisms remained. Still, if you count the timespan between 1871 and 1945, you get a bit over 70 years. That's not nothing, but not that much more than 40 years. You should probably subtract the four years of WWI and the 12 catastrophic years of Nazi rule, and then you are left with less than 60 years of shared history before the division into east and west.

[emsy]

A nation is not defined by borders and politics.

[dragonwriter]

I think you are confusing nation with state, which is an easy to mistake to make when the nation-state -- the idea of state tightly coupled to nations -- has been a norm for several centuries, but while nation-states might be the current norm, nations and states remain distinct concepts.

In the specific context of Germany, while its true that Germany has been a nation for quite a long time (long before it was a single state), but nations are just social identities, and both sides in the Cold War were quite active in actively using propaganda to build "us" vs. "them" identities, and its not that surprising that without strong organized active supporting for the old pan-German identity and with active efforts to create opposing identities to replace it over a couple of generations, that there is a gulf created which will take another couple of generations of active effort -- at least -- to erase.

[jboynyc]

Yes, it is. Nationalism as a political ideology just likes to pretend as though it weren't.

[AnonymousPlanet]

Ok, since we're kind of nitpicking over the word "nation": what do you suppose was the Holy Roman Empire of German Nation?

I'm aware that you were referring to the idea of a nation as it was established around the time of the French revolution. However, "Germany" as some kind of coherent construct is not just a recent concept.

[antocv]

Oh please then do tell what it is defined by.

[danbruc]

That is the distinction between nation and state - nation just means people sharing language, culture, history and so on but does not imply living together in one state. So even while Germans lived in two states while Germany was divided they still were one nation. And I just want to explain the difference, I don't want to make any statement whether this distinction is relevant or not for the parent comment.