¶ It was in this year, also, that he made his entry into Prussian politics--to the study of which he was to devote his long life and his surprising genius. However, to present a clear idea of the work Bismarck was to do, it is necessary to return, briefly, to an earlier day, and to trace a complex historical movement through the past. We shall summarize, on broad lines, the problem presented by the question of German national unity. The German problem comprised a political, sociological and racial situation toward whose solution hundreds, if not thousands, of notable men and women, for several generations past, had sought in vain. ¶ "Nothing," says Wilhelm Gorlach, "can more clearly prove Bismarck's historical importance than the fact that we are obliged to go back several centuries to understand the connection of his actions." BOOK THE SECOND The German National Problem CHAPTER V The Great Sorrow 14 The German crazy-quilt, of many hues and colors, and how this blanket was patched and mended through the years. ¶ From the 18th Century, and indeed before that time, to say nothing of years to come as late as 1871, there was in fact no Germany. The term was a mere geographical "designation." We shall hear more of this, as Bismarck assumes the stupendous task of German unity, in a real sense of the word; but we will never understand what Bismarck and other statesmen who hoped for German unity had to deal with, unless we take a broad survey of conditions in Germany from the year 1750; not only from the political but also from the social and domestic side, as represented in 300-odd German principalities that like a crazy-quilt were thrown helter-skelter from Hamburg on the North to Vienna on the South. ¶ Many of the holdings were gained through musty papers from rulers of the ancient Holy Roman Empire, a nation Voltaire declared "neither holy, nor empire, nor Roman." ¶ There were free cities, great landlords, and there were great robber-barons--thieves of high or low degree. ¶ At Cologne, Treves and Mayence archbishops held the lower valley of the Moselle, also some of finest parts of the Rhein valley. ¶ Next, came dukes, landgraves, margraves, cities of the Empire, and then still smaller, duchies in duodecimo, down through some 800 minor landlords who as the owners of some borough or village walked this earth genuine game cocks on their own dunghills. Political conditions were distressing; old feuds, old hates prevailed. There were restrictions on commerce, statute labor, barbarous penal laws, religious persecution and Jew-baiting. * * * * *