The "German question" was a debate in the 19th century, especially during the Revolutions of 1848, over the best way to achieve a unification of all or most lands inhabited by Germans.^{[page needed]} From 1815 to 1866, about 37 independent German-speaking states existed within the German Confederation. The Großdeutsche Lösung ("Greater German solution") favored unifying all German-speaking peoples under one state, and was promoted by the Austrian Empire and its supporters. The Kleindeutsche Lösung ("Lesser German solution") sought to unify only the northern German states and did not include any part of Austria (either its German-inhabited areas or its areas dominated by other ethnic groups); this proposal was favored by the Kingdom of Prussia.^{[citation needed]}

The solutions are also referred to by the names of the states they proposed to create, Kleindeutschland and Großdeutschland ("Lesser Germany" and "Greater Germany"). Both movements were part of a growing German nationalism. They also drew upon similar contemporary efforts to create a unified nation state of people who shared a common ethnicity and language, such as the Unification of Italy and the Serbian Revolution.^{[citation needed]}

During the Cold War, the term was repurposed to refer to the matters pertaining to the division, and re-unification, of Germany.

There is, in political geography, no Germany proper to speak of. There are Kingdoms and Grand Duchies, and Duchies and Principalities, inhabited by Germans, and each separately ruled by an independent sovereign with all the machinery of State. Yet there is a natural undercurrent tending to a national feeling and toward a union of the Germans into one great nation, ruled by one common head as a national unit.

— The New York Times, July 1, 1866

Over the centuries, the Holy Roman Empire had to cope with a continuous loss of authority to its constituent estates. The disastrous Thirty Years' War proved especially detrimental to the Holy Roman Emperor's authority, as the mightiest two entities within it, the Austrian Habsburg monarchy and Brandenburg-Prussia, evolved into rivalling European absolute powers with territory reaching far beyond Holy Roman Imperial borders. Meanwhile, the many smaller estates splintered further. In the 18th century the Holy Roman Empire consisted of hundreds of separate territories governed by distinct authorities.^{[citation needed]}

This rivalry between Austria and Prussia resulted in the War of the Austrian Succession, and then outlasted the French Revolution and Napoleon's domination of Europe. Facing the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, the ruling House of Habsburg proclaimed the Austrian Empire in 1804. On August 6, 1806, Habsburg Emperor Francis II abdicated the throne of the Holy Roman Empire in the course of the Napoleonic Wars with France. The 1815 restoration by the Final Act of the Vienna Congress established the German Confederation, which was not a nation but a commonwealth association of sovereign states on the territory of the former Holy Roman Empire.^{[citation needed]}

While a number of factors swayed allegiances in the debate, the most prominent was religion. The Großdeutsche Lösung would have implied a dominant position for Catholic Austria, the largest and most powerful German state of the early 19th century. As a result, Catholics and Austria-friendly, mostly southern states usually favored Großdeutschland. A unification of Germany led by Prussia would mean the domination of the new state by the Protestant House of Hohenzollern, a more palatable option to Protestant, mostly northern German states. Another complicating factor was the Austrian Empire's inclusion of a large number of non-Germans, such as Hungarians, Czechs, South Slavs, Italians, Poles, Ruthenians, Romanians and Slovaks. Additional complication was that the Austrians were reluctant to enter a unified Germany if it meant giving up their non-German speaking territories.^{[citation needed]}