He arrived in Prussia in 1750, grieving the death of his lover, the Marquise du Châtelet. The French king Louis XV, contemptuous toward the Enlightenment thinkers, was said to have declared ...

Prussia's development as a successful, modern industrial state gave hope to German nationalists. Economically, unification through the Zollverein economic alliance of 1834 had been a success ...

But they repeatedly reversed these decisions. Apart from Austria, Prussia was the strongest German state. It was the only state that showed any real ability to unite Germany. It was clear that ...