Reframing the German War of 1866 as a civil war, Making Prussians, Raising Germans offers a new understanding of critical aspects of Prussian state-building and German nation-building in the nineteenth century, and investigates the long-term ramifications of civil war in emerging nations. Drawing transnational comparisons with Switzerland, Italy and the United States, it asks why compatriots were driven to take up arms against each other and what the underlying conflicts reveal about the course of German state-building. By addressing key areas of patriotic activity such as the military, cultural memory, the media, the mass education system, female charity and political culture, this book elucidates the ways in which political violence was either contained in or expressed through centre-periphery interactions. Although the culmination of Prusso-German state-building in the Nazi dictatorship represented an exceptionally destructive outcome, the solutions developed previously established Prussian-led Germany as one of the most successful states in recovering from civil war.

'Jasper Heinzen’s book is an outstanding piece of work; innovative, fresh, offering new questions, new answers and powerful new arguments. He succeeds in communicating complex issues in an accessible and lucid fashion that weaves a consistent concern for argument and analysis together with the need to illustrate and describe issues. Historians of identity, education, gender and memory, as well as those working on the genesis of national identities in other nineteenth-century states, will find much here to interest them.'

Frank Lorenz Müller - University of St Andrews, Scotland

'Making Prussians, Raising Germans is a stimulating read. It sets a new standard for thinking about Prussian/Imperial German relations. It will prove valuable to advanced students of modern German history, both for its arguments and its very good bibliography in four languages.'

William W. Hagen - University of California, Davis

'This original and stimulating book offers readers a welcome opportunity to rethink the connections between civil war and state-building. It focuses initially on the provinces annexed by Prussia after the ‘German War’ of 1866, but it quickly broadens out to an ambitious reconsideration of localism, federalism and nationalism in modern Germany history. Striking international comparisons enliven every chapter, encouraging readers to revisit the central problems of conflict and cohesion over seven decades of tumultuous German development. Highly recommended.'

James Retallack - University of Toronto

'Treating the war of 1866 between Prussia and Austria as a German civil war, Jasper Heinzen has written an ambitious, well-researched and innovative cultural history of modern Germany. Drawing on a series of detailed observations to substantiate his larger points, he uses comparison to highly illuminating effect. It is to be hoped that the challenge his monograph poses to much existing historiography in its field will enliven the debate - not only on the evolution of the state and civil society in Germany between 1866 and the inter-war period, but also on the wider dialectics of warfare and nationhood, cultural memory, print culture, education and gender relations.'

Oliver Zimmer - University College, University of Oxford

'… a valuable and thought-provoking addition to the existing historiography on Teutonic state-building during this period, and Heinzen’s genuinely comparative approach will also broaden the book’s appeal well beyond the confines of German history'

Source: German History

‘Heinzen’s book represents an important and original contribution to historians’ continuing efforts to rethink continuities and comparisons in German history and to locate that history in a wider transnational context.’

David E. Barclay - The Journal of Modern History