<Table> <Tr> <Td> </Td> <Td> It has been suggested that Founding of the German Empire be merged into this article . (Discuss) Proposed since September 2017 . </Td> </Tr> </Table> <Tr> <Td> </Td> <Td> It has been suggested that Founding of the German Empire be merged into this article . (Discuss) Proposed since September 2017 . </Td> </Tr> <P> The unification of Germany into a politically and administratively integrated nation state officially occurred on 18 January 1871, in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles in France . Princes of the German states, excluding Austria, gathered there to proclaim Wilhelm I of Prussia as German Emperor after the French capitulation in the Franco - Prussian War . Unofficially, the de facto transition of most of the German - speaking populations into a federated organization of states had been developing for some time through alliances formal and informal between princely rulers, but in fits and starts . The self - interests of the various parties hampered the process over nearly a century of autocratic experimentation, beginning in the era of the Napoleonic Wars, which prompted the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation in 1806, and the subsequent rise of German nationalism . </P> <P> Unification exposed tensions due to religious, linguistic, social, and cultural differences among the inhabitants of the new nation, suggesting that 1871 only represented one moment in a continuum of the larger unification processes . The Holy Roman Emperor had been often called "Emperor of all the Germanies"; contemporary news accounts frequently referred to "The Germanies". In the empire, higher nobility were referred to as "Princes of Germany" or "Princes of the Germanies"--for the lands once called East Francia had been organized and governed as pocket kingdoms since before the rise of Charlemagne (800 AD). In the mountainous terrain of much of the territory, isolated peoples developed cultural, educational, linguistic, and religious differences over such a lengthy time period . By the nineteenth century, transportation and communications improvements brought these regions closer together . </P>

When did the unification of germany take place