German Confederation - Situation in space and time, Impact of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic invasions

A C European state system created at the Congress of Vienna (1815) to fill the void left by Napoleon I's destruction (1806) of the Holy Roman Empire. Dominated until after 1848 by Austria, it comprised 39 states: 35 monarchies and four free cities. Its purpose was to guarantee the external and internal peace of Germany and the independence of the member states. It was rendered unstable by the subsequent rising power of Prussia, and was dissolved in 1866 following the Austro–Prussian War. It was replaced by the North German Confederation under Prussian leadership.

Deutscher Bund
German Confederation

← 1815 — 1866 →
Flag Coat of arms
The German Confederation in 1820. The two major powers - the Kingdom of Prussia (blue) and the Austrian Empire (yellow) - were not totally enclosed by the confederation's borders (red)
Capital	Frankfurt 50°7′N 8°41′E
Government	Confederation
Presidency	Austria
Parliament
- 1848-1849	Frankfurt Parliament
History
- Established	June 18 1815
- Disestablished	August 23 1866

The German Confederation (German: Deutscher Bund) was the association of Central European states created by the Congress of Vienna in 1815 to organize the surviving states of the Holy Roman Empire, which had been abolished in 1806.

Situation in space and time

Between 1806 and 1815, Napoleon had organized the German states into the Confederation of the Rhine, but this collapsed when Napoleon's Invasion of Russia failed in 1813. The German Confederation had roughly the same boundaries as the Empire at the time of the French Revolution (less what is now Belgium).

The Confederation was dissolved in 1866 after the Austro-Prussian War, and was 'succeeded' in 1866 by the Prussian-dominated North German Confederation. Its territory comprised the parts of the German Confederation north of the river Main, plus Prussia's eastern territories and the Duchy of Schleswig, but excluded Luxembourg. The North German Confederation was renamed on 18 January 1871 German Empire, under Prussia's Hohenzollern dynasty.

All the constituent states of the German Confederation became part of the Kaiserreich in 1871, except the Dutch province of Limburg and the presently independent countries remaining in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (Austria, Czech Republic, as well as parts of Italy, Poland, and Slovenia), Luxembourg (except the part lost to Belgium in 1839), and Liechtenstein.

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Impact of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic invasions

The late 18th century was a period of political, economic, intellectual, and cultural reform, the Enlightenment (represented by figures such as Locke, Rousseau, Voltaire, and Adam Smith), but also involving early Romanticism, climaxed in the French Revolution, where freedom of the individual and nation was asserted against privilege and custom.

However, the defeat of Napoleon enabled conservative and reactionary regimes such as those of the Kingdom of Prussia, the Austrian Empire and Tsarist Russia to survive, laying the groundwork for the Congress of Vienna and the alliance that strove to oppose radical demands for change ushered in by the French Revolution.

After Napoleon's final defeat at Waterloo in 1815, the surviving member states of the defunct Holy Roman Empire joined to form the German Confederation (Deutscher Bund) — a rather loose organisation, especially because the two great rivals, the Austrian Empire and the Prussian kingdom, each feared domination by the other. Later to emerge as the dominant German state, the political base of a united Germany, and a power that would vie for continental preeminence toward the end of the nineteenth century, Prussia was at that time seemingly backward.

Apart from Prussia, in Germany as a whole — or more precisely in the many German states —, political disunity, conflicts of interests between noblility and merchants, and the guild system, which discouraged competition and innovation, retarded the progress of industrialism. While this kept the middle class small, affording the old order a measure of stability not seen in France, Prussia's vulnerability to Napoleon's military proved to many perceptive intellects among the old order that a fragile, divided, and backward Germany could very well have been prey to its cohesive and industrializing neighbor.

After 1815, Prussia's defeats by Napoleonic France highlighted the need for administrative, economic, and social reforms to improve the efficiency of the bureaucracy and encourage practical merit-based education.

The reforms laid the foundation for Prussia's future military might by professionalizing the military, decreeing universal military conscription.

Romanticism, nationalism, and Liberalism in the Vormärz era

Although the forces unleashed by the French Revolution were seemingly under control after the Vienna Congress, the conflict between conservative forces and liberal nationalists was only deferred at best.

This competition entailed the forces of the old order competing with those inspired by the French Revolution and the Rights of Man. The sociological breakdown of the competition was roughly one side engaged mostly in commerce, trade and industry and the other associated with landowning aristocracy or military aristocracy (the Junker) in Prussia, the forces behind the Habsburg empire in Austria, and the conservative backers of the particularist, small princely states and city-states in Germany. The Wartburg Festival in 1817 celebrated Martin Luther as a proto-German nationalist, linking Lutheranism to German nationalism, helping to arouse religious sentiments for the cause of German nationhood.

Economic Integration

Meanwhile, Prussia would continue to repress liberalism and continue with reform from above. Inadvertently, these reforms would spark the unification movement and augment a middle class demanding further political rights, but at the time backwardness and Prussia's fears of its stronger neighbors was the larger threat.

By 1842 the Zollverein included most German states.

However, by developing a strong industrial base, the Prussian state strengthened the middle class and thus the nationalist movement. Economic integration, especially increased national consciousness among the German states, made political unity a far likelier scenario.

The crucial factor enabling Prussia's conservative regime to survive the Vormärz era was a rough coalition between leading sectors of the landed upper class and the emerging commercial and manufacturing interests. It is necessary to add that, even if the commercial and industrial element is weak, it must be strong enough (or soon become strong enough) to become worthy of co-optation, and the French Revolution terrified enough perceptive elements of Prussia's Junkers for the state to be sufficiently accommodating.

While relative stability was maintained until 1848, with enough bourgeois elements still content to exchange the "right to rule for the right to make money," the landed upper class found its economic base sinking. While the Zollverein brought economic progress and helped to keep the bourgeoisie at bay for a while, it would only increase the ranks of the middle class swiftly - the very social base for the nationalism and liberalism that the Prussian state sought to stem.

The Zollverein represented a move toward economic integration and modern industrial capitalism and the victory of centralism over localism, quickly bringing the era of guilds in the small German princely states to an end.

The Zollverein also weakened Austrian domination of the Confederation as economic unity increased the desire for political unity and nationalism. In the following years, the other German states began to regard Prussia, not Austria, as their leader.

Goethe on German unification

Goethe said in his conversation with Eckermann:

"I do not fear that Germany will not be united; jo

The Revolutions of 1848

Main article: The Revolutions of 1848 in the German states

However, the Zollverein, at this point, still did not suffice to eliminate the desires of the German middle class to attain the right to rule.

On March 15, 1848, the subjects of Frederick William IV of Prussia thus vented their long-repressed political aspirations in violent rioting in Berlin as barricades were erected all over the French capital to contain urban combat between Parisians and the army. In France, where the conservative aristocracy was soundly pushed aside by the Revolutions of 1789, 1830, and 1848, the new Second Republic erupted into civil war between rival revolutionary groups — the bourgeois moderates who favored order and constitutional democracy and the socialists, supported by the Parisian working class.

On May 18 the Frankfurt Parliament opened its first session from various German states and Austria proper. His document sponsored a confederation of North German states and concentrated real power in the hands of the King and the upper classes.

Bismarck and the Wars of Unification

Shortly after the "humiliation of Olmütz," a new generation of statesmen began to respond to popular demands for national unity for their own ends not only in Germany, but in Italy and Japan as well, continuing Prussia's tradition of autocracy and reform from above.

Territorial legacy

The current countries whose territory were partly or entirely located inside the boundaries of German Confederation 1815–1866 are:

Luxembourg (entire territory) Liechtenstein (entire territory) Czech Republic (entire territory) Germany (all states) Austria (all states except Burgenland) Slovenia (except for Prekmurje) Poland (West Pomeranian Voivodship, Lubusz Voivodship, Lower Silesian Voivodship, Opole Voivodship, part of Silesia), temporary : Poznan (Posen) Territory, formerly South-east Prussia, formerly Free City of Gdansk (Danzig) Belgium (German-speaking community and some other territory at the east of the province of Liège); the larger province of Luxembourg had left the Confederation at its accession to Belgium in 1839 Netherlands (province of Limburg - the province joined the Confederation after 1839) Italy (autonomous northern regions of Trentino-South Tyrol and Friuli-Venezia Giulia) Croatia (county of Istria) Russia temporary : (formerly North-east Prussia) Lithuania temporary :(formerly Memel-Territory (Memelland)), The Danish crown had been a member only in chief of its duchy of Holstein.