Alsace–Lorraine, officially the Imperial Territory of Alsace–Lorraine, was a former territory of the German Empire, located in modern day France. It was established in 1871 by the German Empire after it had occupied the region during the Franco-Prussian War. The region was officially ceded to the German Empire in the Treaty of Frankfurt. French resentment about the loss of the territory was one of the contributing factors to World War I. Alsace–Lorraine was ceded to France in 1920 as part of the Treaty of Versailles following Germany's defeat in the war, although already annexed in 1918.
The general government of Elsass (1875) by A. Petermann
The Black Stain (1887) by Albert Bettannier.
Statue in the Place Maginot in Nancy that personifies the loss of Alsace as the separation of a mother and daughter.
The neo-Romanesque Metz railway station, built in 1908. Kaiser Wilhelm II instigated the construction of various buildings in Alsace–Lorraine that were to be representative of German architecture.
The German Empire, also referred to as Imperial Germany, the Second Reich or simply Germany, was the period of the German Reich from the unification of Germany in 1871 until the November Revolution in 1918, when the German Reich changed its form of government from a monarchy to a republic.
The German colonial empire in 1914
Chancellor Bismarck
Wilhelm I in 1884
Die Proklamation des Deutschen Kaiserreiches by Anton von Werner (1877), depicting the proclamation of Emperor William I (18 January 1871, Palace of Versailles). From left, on the podium (in black): Crown Prince Frederick (later Frederick III), his father the emperor, and Frederick I of Baden, proposing a toast to the new emperor. At centre (in white): Otto von Bismarck, first Chancellor of Germany, Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, Prussian Chief of Staff.