I was just discussing with my wife that it was basically Napoleon who created Germany - by his merging together of the different German statelets and giving them a common enemy
I would say that’s a clear „yes and no“.
The Eastern Frankish kingdom, which evolved into the Holy Roman Empire, or the First Reich, as historians call it, made the constituent German tribes evolve into a cohesive realm.
Deutsch originally meant „the vernacular“, as opposed to the official Latin, which was used by church and „state“. It was in the late tenth to twelfth centuries that the realm in which German was spoken, was called „Germany“ and the people called themselves „Teutonici“ in Latin. Thus, it took time for a national identity to emerge.
Yes, this went through a severe decline after the Thirty Years War, when the Holy Roman Empire was weakened drastically. And in the latter half of the 18th century, it was the conflict between the Imperial House, the Habsburgs, and the Kingdom of Prussia, which weakened the old realm even more.
Thus, Napoleon was able to shatter it at last. Contrary to what the older scholars have written, recent research suggests that the shock was still great all over Germany. The Holy Roman, i.e. German Emperor had held his title since 962 AD in an unbroken line. So thus, an ancient tradition ended. The era of ethnicity, and of ethnic identity, was beginning…