What had prevented German unification before the mid 1800s

Hello!

==

There had been German failures in the past, failures that must be set against the successes of France and Britain. By the end of the Middle Ages, which had seen Britain and France emerge as unified nations, Germany remained a crazy patchwork of some three hundred individual states. But there was the disaster of religious differences which followed the Reformation.

Exposed tensions due to religious, linguistic, social, and cultural differences.