Editing Unification of Germany (section)

==== Geography, patriotism and language ====
[[File:Maas memel etsch belt.svg|thumb|German linguistic area (green) and political boundaries around 1841 (grey) in comparison to the text's geographic references (bold blue)]]
As travel became easier, faster, and less expensive, Germans started to see unity in factors ''other'' than their language. The [[Brothers Grimm]], who compiled a massive dictionary known as ''The Grimm'', also assembled a compendium of folk tales and fables, which highlighted the story-telling parallels between different regions.{{Efn|They traced the roots of the German language, and drew its different lines of development together.<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Brothers Grimm online |url=http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm.html#jointpublication |website= Grimm Brothers' Home Page |access-date=April 27, 2023}}</ref>}} [[Karl Baedeker]] wrote guidebooks to different cities and regions of Central Europe, indicating places to stay, sites to visit, and giving a short history of castles, battlefields, famous buildings, and famous people. His guides also included distances, roads to avoid, and hiking paths to follow.<ref>{{in lang|de}} Hans Lulfing,  ''Baedecker, Karl'', ''Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB)''. Band 1, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, 1953, p. 516 f.</ref>

The words of [[August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben]] expressed not only the linguistic unity of the German people but also their geographic unity. In ''Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles'', officially called ''[[Das Lied der Deutschen]]'' ("''The Song of the Germans''"), Fallersleben called upon sovereigns throughout the German states to recognize the unifying characteristics of the German people.<ref>{{in lang|de}} Peter Rühmkorf, Heinz Ludwig Arnold, ''Das Lied der Deutschen'' Göttingen: Wallstein, 2001, {{ISBN|3-8924-4463-3}}, pp. 11–14.</ref> Such other patriotic songs as "[[Die Wacht am Rhein]]" ("The Watch on the Rhine") by [[Max Schneckenburger]] began to focus attention on geographic space, not limiting "Germanness" to a common language. Schneckenburger wrote "The Watch on the Rhine" in a specific patriotic response to French assertions that the Rhine was France's "natural" eastern boundary. In the refrain, "Dear fatherland, dear fatherland, put your mind to rest / The watch stands true on the Rhine", and in other such patriotic poetry as Nicholaus Becker's "Das Rheinlied" ("The Rhine"), Germans were called upon to defend their territorial homeland. In 1807, [[Alexander von Humboldt]] argued that national character reflected geographic influence, linking landscape to people. Concurrent with this idea, movements to preserve old fortresses and historic sites emerged, and these particularly focused on the Rhineland, the site of so many confrontations with France and Spain.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Dominick |first=Raymond III |title=The Environmental Movement in Germany |date=1992 |publisher=Indiana University |isbn=0-2533-1819-X |location=Bloomington |pages=3–41 |ol=1549008M}}</ref>