While German-speaking people have a long history, Germany as a nation state dates only from 1871.
 Earlier periods are subject to definition debates.
 The Franks, for instance, were a union of Germanic tribes; nevertheless, some of the Franks later identified themselves as Dutch, Flemish, French and again others as Germans.
 The capital of medieval ruler Charlemagne's empire was the city of Aachen, now part of Germany, yet he was a Frank.
 France was named after the Franks and the Dutch and Flemish people are the only ones to speak a language that descends from Frankish (the language of the Franks).
 Hence nearly all continental Western European historians can claim his victories as their heritage.
 The Holy Roman Empire he founded was largely but far from entirely German speaking.
 The Kingdom of Prussia, which unified Germany in the 19th century, had significant territory in what is now Poland.
 In the early 19th century, the philosopher Schlegel referred to Germany as a "Kulturnation", a nation of shared culture and political disunity, analogous to ancient Greece.
 Until the unification of 1871, Austria was considered a part of Germany even though much of its empire was not in the Holy Roman Empire and was non-German.
Group C of UEFA Euro 2016 contained Germany, Ukraine, Poland and Northern Ireland.
 Germany was the only former European champion in this group, having won the championship three times (in 1972 and 1980 as West Germany and in 1996 as unified Germany).
 Matches were played from 12 to 21 June 2016.
SMS "Delphin" was a "Camäleon"-class gunboat of the Prussian Navy (later the Imperial German Navy) that was launched in 1860.
 A small vessel, armed with only three light guns, "Delphin" served during the Second Schleswig War of 1864 and the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, part of the conflicts that unified Germany.
 The ship was present at, but was only lightly engaged in the Battle of Jasmund during the Second Schleswig War.
 The ship spent much of the rest of her career in the Mediterranean Sea, going on three lengthy deployments there in 1865–1866, 1867–1870, and 1871–1873.
 During the last tour, she took part in operations off the coast of Spain with an Anglo-German squadron during the Third Carlist War, where she helped to suppress forces rebelling against the Spanish government.
 For the rest of the 1870s, she served as a survey vessel in the North and Baltic Seas before being decommissioned in August 1881, stricken from the naval register the following month, and subsequently broken up for scrap.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights in Germany have evolved significantly over the course of the last decades.
 During the 1920s, LGBT people in Berlin were generally tolerated by society and many bars and clubs specifically pertaining to gay men were opened.
 Although same-sex sexual activity between men was already made illegal under Paragraph 175 by the German Empire in 1871, Nazi Germany extended these laws during World War II, which resulted in the persecution and deaths of thousands of homosexual citizens.
 The Nazi extensions were repealed in 1950 and same-sex sexual activity between men was decriminalised in both East and West Germany in 1968 and 1969, respectively.
 The age of consent was equalized in unified Germany in 1994.
Richard Bickerton Pemell Lyons, 1st Earl Lyons, 1st Viscount Lyons, 2nd Baron Lyons, 2nd Baronet, of Christchurch (26 April 1817 – 5 December 1887) was an eminent British diplomat, the favourite of Queen Victoria.
 Lyons was an imperative element of British diplomacy during each of the four great crises of the second half of the 19th century: Italian unification, the American Civil War, the decline of the Ottoman Empire, and the replacement of France, by the unified Germany, as the dominant Continental power.
 He is best known for solving the Trent Affair during the American Civil War, for laying the foundations for the Special Relationship, and for predicting, 32 years before World War One, the occurrence of an imperial war between France and Germany that would destroy Britain’s international dominance.
The Deutsche Mark (] , "German mark"), abbreviated "DM" or    , was the official currency of West Germany from 1948 until 1990 and later the unified Germany from 1990 until 2002.
 It was first issued under Allied occupation in 1948 to replace the Reichsmark, and served as the Federal Republic of Germany's official currency from its founding the following year until the adoption of the euro.
 In English, but not in German, it is commonly called the "Deutschmark" ( ).
A trade restriction is an artificial restriction on the trade of goods and/or services between two countries.
 It is the byproduct of protectionism.
 However, the term is controversial because what one part may see as a trade restriction another may see as a way to protect consumers from inferior, harmful or dangerous products.
 For instance Germany required the production of beer to adhere to its purity law.
 The law, originally implemented in Bavaria in 1516 and eventually becoming law for newly unified Germany in 1871, made many foreign beers unable to be sold in Germany as "beer".
 This law was struck down in 1987 by the European Court of Justice, but is still voluntarily followed by many German breweries.
SMS "Comet" was a "Camäleon"-class gunboat of the Prussian Navy (later the Imperial German Navy) that was launched in 1860.
 A small vessel, armed with only three light guns, "Comet" served during the Second Schleswig War of 1864 and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, part of the conflicts that unified Germany.
 The ship was present at, but was only lightly engaged in the Battle of Jasmund during the Second Schleswig War.
 She served in a variety of roles during peacetime, including fishery protection and survey work.
 "Comet" went on one lengthy deployment abroad, with an assignment to the Mediterranean Sea from 1876 to 1879.
 She saw little active service after returning to Germany and was decommissioned and hulked in 1881.
 The vessel remained in the navy's inventory until at least 1891, being broken up sometime thereafter.
Bismarckia is a monotypic genus of flowering plant in the palm family endemic to western and northern Madagascar where they grow in open grassland.
 The genus is named for the first chancellor of the German Empire Otto von Bismarck and the epithet for its only species, Bismarckia nobilis, comes from Latin for 'noble'.
Otto Eduard Leopold, Prince of Bismarck, Duke of Lauenburg (1 April 1815 – 30 July 1898), known as Otto von Bismarck (] ), was a conservative Prussian statesman who dominated German and European affairs from the 1860s until 1890.
 In the 1860s, he engineered a series of wars that unified the German states, deliberately excluding Austria, into a powerful German Empire under Prussian leadership.
 With that accomplished by 1871, he skillfully used balance of power diplomacy to maintain Germany's position in a Europe which, despite many disputes and war scares, remained at peace.
 For historian Eric Hobsbawm, it was Bismarck who "remained undisputed world champion at the game of multilateral diplomatic chess for almost twenty years after 1871, [and] devoted himself exclusively, and successfully, to maintaining peace between the powers".
 However, his annexation of Alsace-Lorraine gave new fuel to French nationalism and promoted Germanophobia in France.
 This helped set the stage for the First World War.

Question: Which leader, who unified Germany in the 1860s has a genus of plants in Madagascar named after him? 
Answer: Otto von Bismarck