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The German Empire ((ドイツ語:Deutsches Kaiserreich)), officially the German Reich,〔''Harper's magazine, Volume 63''. Pp. 593. The term "Reich" does not specifically connote an empire, as has been commonly assumed by English-speaking people, but the term "''Kaiserreich''" literally denotes an empire – particularly a hereditary empire led by a literal emperor, although "''Reich''" has been used in German to denote the Roman Empire because it has a weak hereditary tradition. In the case of the German Empire, the official name in German was ''Deutsches Reich'', which is properly translated as "German Realm", because the head of state in the constitution of the German Empire was officially a "presidency" of a confederation of German states led by the King of Prussia, who would assume "the title of German Emperor" as referring to the German people, but was not emperor of Germany as in an emperor of a state.〕〔World Book, Inc. ''The World Book dictionary, Volume 1''. World Book, Inc., 2003. p. 572. States that Deutsches Reich translates as "German Realm" and was a former official name of Germany.〕〔Joseph Whitaker. ''Whitaker's almanack, 1991''. J Whitaker & Sons, 1990. Pp. 765. Refers to the term Deutsches Reich being translated into English as "German Realm", up to and including the Nazi period.〕 also known as Imperial Germany,〔See, for example, Roger Chickering, ''Imperial Germany and the Great War, 1914–1918''. 3rd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014; Cornelius Torp and Sven Oliver Müller, eds., ''Imperial Germany Revisited: Continuing Debates & New Perspectives''. Oxford: Berghahn, 2011; James Retallack, ed., ''Imperial Germany 1871–1918''. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008; Isabel V. Hull, ''Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany''. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005.〕 was the historical German nation state that existed from the unification of Germany in 1871 to the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II in November 1918, when Germany became a federal republic. The German Empire consisted of 27 constituent territories, with most being ruled by royal families. This included four kingdoms, six grand duchies, six duchies (five after 1876), seven principalities, three free Hanseatic cities, and one imperial territory. Although the Kingdom of Prussia contained most of the Empire's population and territory, it played a lesser role. As Dwyer (2005) points out, Prussia's "political and cultural influence had diminished considerably" by the 1890s.〔Philip G. Dwyer, ''Modern Prussian History, 1830–1947'' (2005) p. 2.〕 After 1850, the states of Germany had rapidly become industrialized, with particular strengths in coal, iron (and later steel), chemicals, and railways. In 1871 it had a population of 41 million people, and by 1913 this had increased to 68 million. A heavily rural collection of states in 1815, the united Germany became predominantly urban.〔J. H. Clapham, ''The Economic Development of France and Germany 1815–1914'' (1936)〕 During its 47 years of existence, the German Empire operated as an industrial, technological, and scientific giant, gaining more Nobel Prizes in science than Britain, France, Russia, and the United States combined. Germany became a great power, boasting a rapidly growing rail network, the world's strongest army, and a fast-growing industrial base.〔Paul Kennedy, ''The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000'' (1987)〕 In less than a decade, its navy became second only to Britain's Royal Navy. When the great crisis of 1914 arrived, the German Empire had only one ally – Austria-Hungary. They were later joined by the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria to form the Central Powers or Quadruple Alliance. In the First World War, German plans to capture Paris quickly in autumn 1914 failed, and the war on the Western Front became a stalemate. The Allied naval blockade caused shortages of food. Germany was repeatedly forced to send troops to bolster Austria and Turkey on other fronts. However, Germany had great success on the Eastern Front; it occupied large Eastern territories following the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. German declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare in early 1917 was designed to strangle the British; it failed, because of the use of a trans-Atlantic convoy system. But the declaration—along with the Zimmermann Telegram—did bring the United States into the war. Meanwhile, German civilians and soldiers had become war-weary and radicalised by the Russian Revolution. The high command under Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff increasingly controlled the country, as they gambled on one last offensive in spring 1918 before the Americans could arrive in force, using large numbers of troops and artillery withdrawn from the Eastern Front. This failed, and by October the armies were in retreat, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire had collapsed, and the German people had lost faith in their political system. The Empire collapsed in the November 1918 Revolution as the Emperor and all the ruling monarchs abdicated, and a republic took over. == Background == (詳細はGerman Confederation had been created by an act of the Congress of Vienna on 8 June 1815 as a result of the Napoleonic Wars, after being alluded to in Article 6 of the 1814 Treaty of Paris. German nationalism rapidly shifted from its liberal and democratic character in 1848, called ''Pan-Germanism'', to Prussian prime minister Otto von Bismarck's pragmatic ''Realpolitik''. Bismarck sought to extend Hohenzollern hegemony throughout the German states; to do so meant unification of the German states and the elimination of Prussia's rival, Austria, from the subsequent empire. He envisioned a conservative, Prussian-dominated Germany. Three wars led to military successes and helped to persuade German people to do this: the Second war of Schleswig against Denmark in 1864, the Austro-Prussian War in 1866, and the Franco-Prussian War against France in 1870–71. The German Confederation ended as a result of the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 between the constituent Confederation entities of the Austrian Empire and its allies on one side and the Kingdom of Prussia and its allies on the other. The war resulted in the Confederation being partially replaced by a North German Confederation in 1867, comprising the 22 states north of the Main. The patriotic fervour generated by the Franco-Prussian War overwhelmed the remaining opposition in the four states south of the Main to a unified Germany, and during November 1870 they joined the North German Confederation by treaty. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「German Empire」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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