But not when compared to Italy. A Bavarian didn't look at a Dortmunder like an inferior race the way a Milano did and does think of a Sicilian. A Bavarian would recognize a Dortmunder as a German. Divisions in Germany were religious (Protestant North vs. Catholic South) and economic (the North industrialized earlier than the south). The peasants were mostly illiterate and knew nothing of one another. The educated classes had the philosophy that unification would elevate the whole of the German people who, without a state, were (in their words of the time) otherwise no different than the Jews.

The Italians were throwing off the yoke of an alien culture (the Austrians) and the north effectively conquered the south.