In 1919, the National Assembly, which met in Weimar after the collapse of the German Empire, again designated black-red-gold as the flag of the newly founded Weimar Republic.. This was preceded by ...

Charlemagne’s Holy Roman Empire lasted for a thousand years, and although it collapsed 200 years ago, its antique capital, Aachen, remains the spiritual centre of today’s EU.

Whaley, by contrast, salutes Westphalia for creating a system that would last a further 160 years until Napoleon’s army wrecked the Holy Roman Empire once and for all in 1806.

In his new book The Silver Empire: how Germany created its first common currency, which forms the basis of this event, Oliver Volckart analyses why the vast majority of the approximate 300 members of ...