The Black Eagle Rises

Roger Boyes has a very interesting article in the latest Prospect, on the return of a sense of Prussian identity.

Not as a political cause or entity, but as a shared culture and heritage, a common sense of Prussianness across all the areas forming part of that Kingdom during its 1871-1918 heyday would be no bad thing at all, but rather a significant force for peace and stability across Germany, France, Belgium, Denmark, Poland and Russia.

The best Prussian values were not only noble in themselves, but informed the first Welfare State, both they and it being significant forces for unity between Teutons and Slavs, and between Catholic and Protestant parts of Europe. An insistent and concerted witness to that whole heritage, which notably spawned the attempt to assassinate Hitler, on the part of provinces, municipalities and communities could only be to the benefit of Europe, and of the world, as a whole.

Sooner that than the most unhappy event that Belgium should break up. After all, Germany might not only recognise Flemish independence, but also press a claim to the Eastern Cantons of Wallonia (Wallonia’s independence having been recognised by France), and thus set the precedent of pressing claims to those former parts of the Kingdom of Prussia ceded under the Treaty of Versailles.