The
unification of Germany into a politically and administratively integrated
nation state officially occurred on 18 January 1871 at the
Versailles Palace in the
Hall of Mirrors in
France. Princes of the German states 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, as self-interests of parties hampered the process over nearly a century of aristocratic experimentation from the dissolution of the
Holy Roman Empire (1806) and the subsequent rise of
nationalism over the span of the
Napoleonic Wars era.