We have all heard of the third Reich. What were the first and second reichs. I did a search, but was told that
The search for just the word Reich returned too many to read.
The first German “Reich,” IIRC, was supposedly Charlemagne’s kingdom. Being Frankish, he was counted as “German.” The second, IIRC, was Bismarck’s Germany. Or was it the Holy Roman Empire? Or was the HRE considered a continuation of Charlemagne’s “Reich”?
Here’s a link that works: Fixed link (You left a quite mark in)
The First Reich was the Holy Roman Empire, which began with the crowning of Charlemagne in 800 AD, and which nominally lasted until 1806.
The Second Reich was the German Empire following the unification of Germany under Prussian leadership in 1871, until the abdication of Emperor Wilhelm II in 1919.
So there had already been one ‘thousand year Reich’ already…
A note on the usage of these terms: The Holy Roman Empire was, of course, not referred to as the First Reich at the time. Neither was the term Second Reich in use for the 1871-1918 empire (which was referred to as Deutsches Reich, nowadays mostly as the Kaiserreich as strictly speaking Deutsches Reich was the state’s name from 1871 to 1943).
Nowadays the designations First Reich and Second Reich are not in use in Germany, mainly because the use of these terms would support the notion that made the Nazis adopt the term Third Reich, i.e. legitimacy as a third ‘unification’. I’d look askance at another German who’d refer to First and Second Reichs.
Not really, since through most of its history the HRE had little actual power.
Voltaire apparently said once that the Holy Roman Empire was “Niether Holy, nor Roman, nor an empire” and he was quite right.
Here I am; look all you like!