Abstract ▼ AI-Helper

Since the 19th century nations in Europe have been in any ways depicted as great figures and regarded as ahistorical phenomena from the archaic past onwards. It was believed that German people have developed into Deutsch and Gallic into French. However recently, nations turn out to be historical pro...

Since the 19th century nations in Europe have been in any ways depicted as great figures and regarded as ahistorical phenomena from the archaic past onwards. It was believed that German people have developed into Deutsch and Gallic into French. However recently, nations turn out to be historical products. Their formation goes back into the early middle ages. It was first through the unity and disunity of the various counties after the so-called migration of German peoples that the Deutsch and the French had emerged. Furthermore, in the 11th and 12the centuries the national feeling to their own people appeared in a series of political events, such as investiture contest und double elections. In order to propagate national feeling, the national histories needed and stressed national heroes, whose domination caused to historical disputes. There have been controversies about the nationality of Carolus Magnus. Ultimately the settlement of the problem depends on how to understand the historical process of every nation state and of the continent. As the pan-Europeanism predominated after the World Wars, Carolus was already respected neither as a father of Deutsch people nor of French, but the father of Europe. A new perception both on the national history and on the european is required by the European Union. Now here the European Middle Ages are to be recognized no less as the independent times, where a variety of peoples originated and formed a new culture, than as an earlier stage in the formation of the modern state.

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