Unification of Germany

This article deals with the unification of 1871. For the unification of West and East Germany in 1990, see German reunification.

The German Empire of 1871-1918. By omitting the German part of the multinational Austrian Empire, Bismarck chose a "little Germany" solution.

The Unification of Germany into a single nation state, from which all of the states since that time bearing the name of Germany descend, took place on 18 January 1871 with the proclamation of the German Empire at the Versailles Palace's Hall of Mirrors. Princes of the many German states united in proclaiming King Wilhelm of Prussia Emperor Wilhelm I of the German Empire.

Much debate among historians concentrates on whether or not Otto von Bismarck, the Minister-President of Prussia, had a master-plan to expand the North German Confederation of 1866 by uniting the remaining independent German states into a newly-defined nation state, the German Empire, or whether he simply sought to expand the power of Prussia. Additional factors beyond the strength of Bismarck's Realpolitik led to unification:

• Although the Holy Roman Empire had been informally dissolved in 1806 with the abdication of the Emperor, Francis, on August 6, there remained in the German states an overarching and commonly experienced linguistic, cultural and legal tradition further enhanced by the experience of German speaking Europe in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars.
• The creation of the Prussian Zollverein in 1818, and its subsequent expansion to include other independent states of the German Confederation reduced economic competition between and within states, and encouraged active cooperation.
• Although the development of the spheres of influence model after the Napoleonic Wars (1815) supposedly established Austrian dominance in Central Europe, Prussia's rising competence, embodied in the Realpolitik of "Iron Chancellor" Bismarck, challenged the Austrian authority for real leadership within the German states.
• European liberalism offered a strong intellectual basis for unification.
• Danish irridentism provided a focus for expression of German unity.
• The military successes of Prussia and its allies in three regional wars generated enthusiasm and pride that politicians could harness to promote unity.

German Speaking Central Europe in the early 19th century

Main article: Holy Roman Empire

Before 1806, the German lands comprised more than 300 political entities within the Holy Roman Empire. They ranged in size from such tiny principalities as Hohenlohe to such sizable kingdoms as Bavaria and Prussia. Their governance also differed in type: they included free imperial cities such as Nuremberg, ecclesiastical territories such as the Abbey of Reichenau, and dynastic states like Bavaria, Baden, and Württemberg. These German states formed the Holy Roman Empire, at times made up of more than 1,000 entities: see list of states in the Holy Roman Empire. With few exceptions, the head of the house of Habsburg had been elected emperor since the fourteenth century, holding the title of Holy Roman Emperor. Among the German speaking states, the Holy Roman Empire offered legal mechanisms for the resolution of conflicts. Various courts provided a venue to resolve disputes between peasants and landlords, and between and within separate jurisdictions. Through an organization of "Kreise" (circles), groups of states consolidated resources for economic activity, and protection, both legal and physical, and promoted regional and organizational interests.

The War of the Second Coalition (1799-1802) resulted in the defeat of the imperial and allied forces by Napoleon Bonaparte; the subsequent treaties of Amiens and Luneville transferred large portions of the Holy Roman Empire, usually the ecclesiastical territories and many of the imperial cities, to several dynastic states with the Mediatization of 1803, particularly enhancing the territories of Württemberg and Baden. In 1806, after a successful invasion of Prussia and the defeat of Prussia and Russia at the joint battles of Jena-Auerstadt, Napoleon Bonaparte forced a treaty in which the Emperor formerly dissolved the Holy Roman Empire.

The Rise of German Nationalism under Napoleon

Main article: Napoleonic Wars

Under the French Empire (1800-1815), popular German nationalism thrived in the reorganized German states. Due in part to the shared experience (albeit under French hegemony), various justifications emerged to identify "Germany" as single state. As Johann Fichte said in 1806:

The first, original, and truly natural boundaries of states are beyond doubt their internal boundaries. Those who speak the same language are joined to each other by a multitude of invisible bonds by nature herself, long before any human art begins; they understand each other and have the power of continuing to make themselves understood more and more clearly; they belong together and are by nature one and an inseparable whole.

A common language may serve as the basis of a nation, but it takes more than language to unify several hundred polities. The experience of German-speaking Central Europe during the years of French hegemony contributed to a sense of common cause. The exigencies of Napoleon’s campaigns in Poland (1806-07), the Iberian peninsula, western Germany, and his disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812 disillusioned many. The economic débâcle of Napoleon's Continental System led to the near ruin of the Central European economy. The invasion of Russia included nearly 125,000 troops from German lands, and the loss of that army encouraged many Germans, both the high and the low born, to envision a Central Europe free of Napoleon’s influence. The creation of such student militias as the Lützow Free Corps exemplify this tendency.

The débâcle in Russia loosened the French grip on the German princes, and Napoleon could feel them slipping from his control. In 1813 he mounted another campaign in the German states; the subsequent War of Liberation culminated in the great battle of Leipzig, also known as the Battle of Nations. In the largest European land battle of the 19th century, over 500,000 combatants engaged in ferocious fighting over three days. It resulted in a decisive victory for the Coalition of Austrian, Russian, Prussian, Swedish and Saxon forces, and it ended French power east of the Rhine. Their success encouraged the Coalition forces to pursue Napoleon across the Rhine, resulting in the collapse of his army and government in France, and his incarceration on Elba.

Continuing military victories encouraged German enthusiasm. During the so-called 100 Days of 1815, a largely Prussian force under the command of Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, contributed to the victory at Waterloo (18 June 1815). Although the Prussian army had gained its reputation in the Seven Years War, its humiliating defeat at Jena and Auerstadt crushed the pride many Prussians felt in their soldiers. During their Russian exile, several officers, including Clausewitz, contemplated reorganization and new training methods. These had not yet gone entirely into effect by 1815, but the critical role played by Blücher's troops, especially after having to retreat from the field at Ligny the day before, turned the tide of combat against the French. The Prussian cavalry pursued the defeated French in the evening of the 18th, sealing the victory.

The reorganization of Central Europe and the rise of German Dualism

Main article: Vienna Congress

After Napoleon's defeat, the Congress of Vienna established a new European system based on the balance of power. This system reorganized Europe into spheres of influence which, in some cases, suppressed the aspirations of the various nationalities, including the Germans and Italians. Generally speaking, an enlarged Prussia and the 38 other states consolidated from the mediatized territories of 1803 were confederated within the Austrian Empire's sphere of influence. The Congress established a loose German Confederation (1815-1866), headed by Austria, with a "Federal Diet" (called the Bundestag or Bundesversammlung, an assembly of appointed leaders) which met in the city of Frankfurt am Main. In recognition of the position traditionally held by the Habsburgs, the kings of Austria became the titular presidents of this parliament. Despite the nomenclature of "Diet" and "Assembly," however, this institution should in no way be construed as a broadly, or popularly, elected group of representatives. Most of the states did not have constitutions, and those that did, such as the Duchy of Baden, based suffrage on strict property requirements. Furthermore, this impractical solution did not reflect the new status of Prussia in the overall scheme.

The surge of German nationalism, initially allied with liberalism, shifted political, social and cultural relationships within the German states. In this context, one can detect roots of German nationalism in the experience of Germans in the Napoleonic period. The Burschenschaft (student organizations), and demonstrations such as those held at Wartburg Castle in October 1817 contributed to growing sense of unity among German speakers of Central Europe. Furthermore, implicit, and sometimes explicit promises made during the War of Liberation engendered in Germans a belief in popular sovereignty, promises which largely went unfulfilled once peace had been achieved. Agitation by student organizations encouraged conservative leaders to fear the rise of national sentiment; the assassination of August von Kotzebue in 1819 by a radical student seeking German unification was followed by the proclamation of the Carlsbad Decrees, which hampered intellectual leadership of the nationalist movement. The Austrian statesman, Metternich, was able to harness conservative outrage at the assassination to consolidate legislation that would further limit the press and constrain the rising liberal and nationalist movements. Consequently, the Burschenschaft were driven underground; publications of nationalist material was restricted, censorship expanded, and university professors prohibited from encouraging nationalist discussion.

The Customs Union

Main article: Zollverein

Another factor in unifying the German states, the Zollverein, helped to create a larger sense of economic connectedness. Initially conceived as a Prussian customs union in 1818, the Zollverein linked the many Prussian and Hohenzollern territories. Over the ensuing thirty years (and more) other German states joined. The Union helped to reduce protectionist barriers between the German states, especially improving the transport of raw materials and finished goods, making it both easier to move goods across territorial borders, and less costly to buy, transport and sell raw materials. This was particularly important for the emerging industrial centers, most of which were located in the Rhineland, the Saar, and the Ruhr valleys.

The Railroads

Friedrich List, the German economist, called the railroads and the Customs Union "Siamese Twins," emphasizing their important relationship to one another. Patriotic historians of the Second Reich later regarded the railways as the first indicator of a unified state: the prolific historian, Wilhelm Raabe, wrote "The German empire was founded with the construction of the first railway..." Not everyone greeted the iron monster with enthusiasm: Frederick William III saw no advantage in traveling from Berling to Potsdam a few hours sooner, and others saw the railways as an "evil" that destroyed the the landscape: Nikolaus Lenau, the poet, wrote An der Frühling 1838 (In the Spring of 1838), and places the exact time that the steam trains began to puff their way across the German landscape.

The first rail line was laid in 1835, between Nuremberg and Fürth; it was only six kilometers long, and operated only in the daylight, but it was profitable and popular. Within three years, 141 km of track had been laid; by 1840, 462, and by 1860, 11,157. Lacking a central organizing feature, the rails were laid in webs, linking towns and markets within regions, and then regions within larger regions. As the rails expanded, it became cheaper to transport goods: in 1840, 18 Pfennig per ton per kilometer and in 1870, five Pfennig. The effects of the railway were immediate. For example, raw materials could travel up and down the Ruhr Valley, without having to unload and reload. They encouraged economic activity by creating demand for commodities and by facilitating commerce. They also changed how cities looked, how people traveled, and their impact reached throughout the social order: from the highest born to the lowest, the rails influenced everyone. Although some of the far-flung provinces were not connected to the rail system until the 1890s, by mid-century, certainly by 1865, the majority of population, manufacturing and production centers had been linked via rail.

The Vormärz and the 19th century liberal movement

The period of Austrian and Prussian police-states and vast censorship before the Revolutions of 1848 in Germany later became known as the Vormärz, "before March", referring to March 1848. During this period, European liberalism gained momentum; the agenda included economic, social, and political issues. Most European liberals in the Vormärz sought unification under nationalist principles, promoted the transition to capitalism, sought the expansion of male suffrage, among other issues. Their "radicalness" depended upon where they stood on the spectrum of male suffrage: the wider the definition of suffrage, the more radical.

Pro-nationalist students march at Hambach in 1832

Despite considerable conservative reaction, ideas of unity joined with notions of popular sovereignty in German-speaking lands. The 1832 Hambach Festival proved a monumental success, drawing upwards of 30,000 participants. Promoted as a county fair, it drew participants to celebrate fraternity (civil rights), liberty, and national unity. Gathering in the town below, celebrants began a long march to the ruins of the Hambach castle on the heights above the small town of Hambach, in the Palatine province of Bavaria. Carrying flags, beating drums, and singing, the participants took the better part of the morning and mid-day to arrive at the castle grounds, where they listened to a variety of speeches. The speakers included nationalist orators from across the conservative to radical spectrum of politics. The overall content of the speeches suggested a fundamental difference between the German nationalism of the 1830s and the French nationalism of the Revolution: the focus of German nationalism lay in the education of the people; once the populace was educated as to what was needed, they would accomplish it. The speeches from the Hambach Festival emphasized the overall peaceable nature of German nationalism: the point was not to build barricades, but to build emotional bridges between groups.

As he had done in 1819, with the Kotzebue assassination, Metternich used the popular demonstration at Hambach to enact conservative social policy. The six articles reaffirmed the principle of monarchical authority. A few weeks later, the Frankfurt Diet voted for an addition 10 Articles, which reiterated existing rules on censorship, political organizations, and other public activity. Furthermore, the member states agreed to send military assistance to any government threatened by unrest. Prince Wrede led half of the Bavarian army to the Palatinate, to subdue the province, where the hapless speakers at Hambach were arrested. One, Karl Heinrich Brüggemann, a law student and representative of the secret Burchenschaft, was eventually deported from Bavaria to Prussia, where he was condemned to death, but later pardoned.

The rise of nationalism in the German states was complicated by several other factors. The man-made factors included the political competition among the members of the German confederation, particularly between the Austrians and the Prussians, and socio-economic competition among the commercial and merchant interests and the old land-owning and aristocratic interests. Natural factors included widespread drought in the early 1830s, and again in the 1840s, and a food crisis in the 1840s. Further complications emerged as a result of a shift in industrialization and manufacturing; as men sought jobs, they left their villages and small towns to work during the week in the cities, returning for a day and a half on weekends.

The economic, social and cultural dislocation of “ordinary” people, the economic hardship of an economy in transition, and the pressures of meteorological disasters all contributed to growing problems in Central Europe. The failure of most of the governments to deal with the food crisis of the mid-1840s, caused by the potato blight (related to the famous Great Famine in Ireland) and several seasons of bad weather, encouraged many to think, possibly correctly, that the rich and powerful had no interest in their problems. Conversely, those in authority were justifiably concerned about the growing unrest, political and social agitation among the working classes, and the disaffection of the intelligentsia. No amount of censorship, fines, imprisonment, or banishment, it seemed, could stem the criticism. Furthermore, it was becoming increasingly clear that the Austrians, under the Habsburg leadership, would inhibit any drive to unify a German nation state in which they were not the primary leader; the Prussians, on the other hand would inhibit any drive to unify into a state in which they were not the primary player.

First Efforts at Unification

Main article: Revolutions of 1848

Both the Wartburg rally in 1817 and the Hambach Festival in 1832 had crucially lacked any clear-cut program of unification. At Hambach in particular the positions of the many speakers illustrated their disparate agendas. Held together only by the idea of unification, their notions of how to achieve such a state did not include hard cut facts, but simply the amorphous idea that the Volk, if properly educated, would bring about unification on their own. Grand speeches, flags, exuberant students, and picnic lunches did not translate into a new political, bureaucratic and administrative apparatus; no constitution miraculously appeared, although there was indeed plenty of talk of constitutions.

The role of the revolutions of 1848 and of the Frankfurt Parliament

The widespread revolutions of 1848-1849 had German unification as one of their major objectives. The German revolutionaries pressured various state governments, particularly in the Rhineland, for a parliamentary assembly whose responsibility it would be to draft a constitution that created a federal union. Ultimately, it was hoped that this constitution would establish universal male suffrage, a permanent national parliament, and a unified Germany, possibly under the leadership of the Prussian king, who appeared to be the most logical candidate: Prussia was the largest state in terms of territory, and also the strongest.

In April 1849, the Frankfurt Parliament offered the title of Kaiser (Emperor) to the Prussian king, Friedrich Wilhelm IV. He refused for a variety of reasons. On the one hand, he feared the opposition of the other German princes and the military intervention of Austria and Russia, he also entertained a fundamental opposition to accepting a crown from a popularly elected parliament:

I am not able to return a favorable reply to the offer of a crown on the part of the German National Assembly, because the Assembly has not the right, without the consent of the German governments, to bestow the crown which they tendered me, and moreover because they offered the crown upon condition that I would accept a constitution which could not be reconciled with the rights of the German states.

In private, he reportedly stated he would not accept a crown of clay. The Frankfurt Parliament ended in partial failure: while the liberals did not achieve the unification they sought, they did manage to work through many constitutional issues and collaborative reforms with the German princes.

The Revolution of 1848 and the Frankfurt Parliament in Retrospective Analysis

The successes and failures of the Frankfurt Parliament have occasioned decades of debate among historians of the German past and contribute to the historiographical explanations of German nation building. One school of thought, emerging after 1918 and gaining momentum in the aftermath of World War II, maintained that the so-called failure of the German liberals in the Frankfurt Parliament led to bourgeoisie’s compromise with the conservatives, especially conservative Prussian landholders (Junkers), and subsequently, to Germany’s so-called Sonderweg (peculiar path) in the 20th century. Failure to achieve unification in 1848, this argument holds, resulted in the late formation of the nation-state (1871), which in turn delayed the development of positive national values. Furthermore, this argument maintains, the failure of 1848 reaffirmed latent aristocratic longings among the German middle class; consequently, this group never developed a self-conscious program of modernization. More recent scholarship has refuted this idea, claiming that there was no actual Sonderweg for Germany, any more than any nation's history is its own peculiar path, an historiographic idea known as Exceptionalism. Instead, this new argument maintains, 1848 marked specific achievements by the liberal politicians: many of their ideas and programs later were incorporated into Bismarck’s social programs (for example, social insurance, education programs, and wider definitions of suffrage). In addition, this counter argument maintains, the notion of a special, or peculiar path, relies upon the fact that some other nation’s path (in this case, Britain's) is the accepted norm. This new argument called into question the norms of the British model and recent studies of national development in Britain and other "normal" states (for example, France and the United States), these states suggest that even there, the modern nation-hood did not develop evenly, or particularly early, but was largely a mid-to-late nineteenth century proposition. Broadly speaking, by the end of the 1990s, this latter view has become the accepted view, although some historians still find the Sonderweg analysis helpful in understand the period of National Socialism.

The Erfurt Union and the Punctation of Olmütz: the problem of spheres of influence

After the Frankfurt Parliament disbanded, the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm IV, under the influence of General Joseph Maria von Radowitz, supported the establishment of a federation of German states, but excluding Austria, by the free agreement of the German princes in the Erfurt Union. This limited union under Prussia would have eliminated the Austrian influence among the other German states almost entirely. Combined diplomatic pressure from Austria and Russia, a guarantor of the 1815 agreements that established European spheres of influence, forced Prussia to relinquish the idea of the Erfurt Union at a meeting in the small town of Olmütz in Moravia. They agreed to the restoration of the German Confederation under Austrian leadership. This became known as the Punctation of Olmütz, also known as the "Humiliation of Olmütz".

While seemingly minor events, the Erfurt Union proposal and the Punctation of Olmütz bring the problems of influence in the German states into sharp focus. The question of unification was not a matter of if, but a matter of when, and when was contingent upon strength. One of the Frankfurt Parliament members, Johann Gustav Droysen, summed up the problem succinctly:

We cannot conceal the fact that the whole German question is a simple alternative between Prussia and Austria. In these states, German life has its positive and negative poles - in the former, all the interests which are national and reformative, in the latter, all that are dynastic and destructive. The German question is not a constitutional question, but a question of power; and the Prussian monarchy is now wholly German, while that of Austria cannot be.

Unification under these conditions raised a basic problem. The possibility of German unification (and Italian unification also) challenged the fundamental precepts of balance laid out in 1815; unification would overturn the principles of overlapping spheres of influence. Metternich, Castlereagh and Tsar Alexander (and his foreign secretary Count Karl Nesselrode) were the principal architects of this convention, and they conceived of, and organized, a Europe, and indeed a world, balanced by, and guaranteed by, four powers: Great Britain, France, Russia, and Austria. Each power had its geographic spheres of influence; for France, this sphere included the Iberian peninsula and shared influence in the Italian states; for the Russians, the eastern regions of Central Europe, and balancing influence in the Balkans; for the Austrians, this sphere included much of the Central European territories of the old Reich (Holy Roman Empire); and for the British, the rest of the world, especially the seas.

The system of spheres of influence depended upon the fragmentation of the German and Italian states, not their consolidation into one state. Consequently, a German nation united under one banner presented a significant problem: not only who were the Germans and where was Germany? but also posed the question, who was in charge, and who could defend Germany best? Different groups offered different solutions to this problem. In the Kleindeutschland (little Germany) solution, the German states would be united under the leadership of Prussia; in the Grossdeutschland (Greater Germany) solution, the German states would be united under the leadership of the Austrian state. This controversy, called dualism, dominated Prusso-Austrian diplomacy, and the politics of the German states, for the next twenty years.

The Role of Bismarck and his Realpolitik

Main article: Otto von Bismarck

In the early 1860s political conflict about army reforms (and how to pay for them) caused a constitutional crisis in Prussia. In the subsequent power-struggle, the Prussian king, Wilhelm I, appointed Otto von Bismarck as Minister-President of Prussia in 1862.

Bismarck, left, with Roon (center) and Moltke (right): three leaders of Prussia in the 1860s

At the same time as Bismarck rose to power, Helmuth von Moltke the Elder held the position of chief of the Prussian General Staff and Albrecht von Roon, that of the Prussian Minister of War. Von Roon had busily set about reorganizing the Prussian army, rewriting training manuals, and revamping the officer corps; Moltke concentrated on redesigning the strategic defence of Prussia, and streamlining operational command. Bismarck hoped that he could resolve the constitutional crisis and establish Prussia as the leading German power through foreign triumphs, which he understood would be largely diplomatic, but backed up by the possible use of Prussian military might, thus the work of the other two men was of supreme importance to him.

The convergence of Bismarck's diplomacy, von Roon's reorganization of the army, and Moltke's military strategy occurred at a time when the Crimean War of 1854-55 and the Italian War of 1859 had disrupted and re-aligned relations among the Great Powers — Great Britain, France, Austria and Russia. In the aftermath of this disarray, the rise of Prussia/Germany influenced the restructuring of the European balance of power. Ultimately, while events led to a conservative, Prussian-dominated German state, that conservatism became tempered with pragmatism: Realpolitik.

"Blood and Iron" speech

On September 30, 1862, Bismarck made his now famous speech to the Budget Committee of the Prussian Chamber of Deputies, at the end of which occurred "[o]ne of Bismarck's most widely misinterpreted utterances [...] also one of the most imperfectly recorded". "The great questions of the time will not be resolved by speeches and majority decisions—that was the great mistake of 1848 and 1849—but by iron and blood." Bismarck’s words, iron and blood (or blood and iron, as often attributed), have been variously misquoted or misappropriated as evidence of German lust for blood and power. First, his speech, and the phrase—“the great questions of time will not be resolved by speeches and majority decisions”—is often taken as a repudiation of the political process, a repudiation that Bismarck did not himself believe. A quintessential politician, Bismarck had built his power-base on absorbing and co-opting measures from both sides of the political argument. His social reform bills of the late 1860s directly reflected many of the issues argued so passionately by the Frankfurt liberals in 1848. Second, his emphasis on blood and iron did not imply simply the unrivaled military might of the Prussian army, but rather two important aspects: first, the ability of the assorted German states to produce the iron (and the related war materials) and second, the willingness to use them if and when necessary.

Founding a unified state

The need to use both iron and blood soon became apparent. By 1862, when Bismarck made this speech, the idea of a German nation-state in the spirit of Pan-Germanism had shifted from the liberal and democratic character of 1848 to accommodate Bismarck's Realpolitik. Ever the pragmatist, Bismarck accurately understood the possibilities, obstacles and advantages of a unified state. The conditions of the treaties binding the various German states to one another prohibited him from unilateral action. For all the German states to go to war, or, as he suspected would be the case, to be forced to declare war together on a single enemy, his diplomatic opponents needed to declare war on one of the German states first. This required political and diplomatic skill worthy of Machiavelli, and Bismarck achieved German unity largely through his ability to manipulate circumstances to his needs. Fundamental to unification of Germany were three events: the irridentist aspirations of Christian IX of Denmark; the Italian nationalist activities on the Austrian border, and French fears of Hohenzollern encirclement. Through three military successes: the Second War of Schleswig (1864), the Austro-Prussian War (1866), and the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71), Prussia, with the combination of Bismarck's diplomacy and political leadership, von Roon's military reorganization, and Moltke's military strategy, proved to the rest of the German states, and indeed to all of Europe, that Prussia was able to protect the interests of the various German states better than the Austrians could, and that none of the European signatories of the 1815 peace treaty could uphold Austrian power in this central European sphere of influence.

Danish irridentism

The first opportunity came in 1863, with the threat of Danish irridentism. The Danish November Constitution, signed on November 18, 1863 by King Christian IX of Denmark, declared the duchy of Schleswig a part of Denmark. The German Confederation saw this act as a violation of the London Protocol of 1852, which emphasized the separate status of the kingdom of Denmark as distinct from the independent duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. Furthermore, the Schleswig and Holstein population valued its separate status as well: a large portion of the duchy of Holstein was of German origin and spoke German in every day life; in Schleswig, the population was more mixed, with a sizable Danish minority. Diplomatic attempts to have the November Constitution repealed collapsed and fighting commenced when Prussian and Austrian troops crossed the border into Schleswig on February 1, 1864. Originally, the Danes attempted to defend their country using the Danewerke, an ancient earthen wall, but it was indefensible. The Danes proved no match for the combined Prussian and Austrian forces; furthermore, the Scandinavian states offered no help because Denmark was in violation of the Protocols. The Second Schleswig War resulted in victory for the combined armies of Prussia and Austria and the two countries won control of Schleswig and Holstein in the following peace settlement signed on October 30, 1863 in Vienna.

The Austro-Prussian War

In 1866, in concert with the newly-formed Italy, Bismarck created a diplomatic environment in which Austria declared war on Prussia: the Austro-Prussian War (also known as the Seven Weeks' War or German Civil War). The dramatic prelude to the war occurred largely in Frankfurt where, at the Parliament, the two powers would claim to speak for all the German states.

In April 1866, the Prussian representative in Florence signed a secret agreement with the Italians, which committed the two states to assist each other in a war with Austria. The next day, the Prussian delegate to the Frankfurt assembly presented a plan calling for a national constitution, and a national diet created through direct elections and universal suffrage. The knowledge of Bismarck's difficult and ambiguous relationship, with the Landtag in Prussia, sometimes cajoling, sometimes riding roughshod over the representatives, caused justifiable skepticism among German liberals, who saw this proposal as a ply to enhance Prussian power.

The debate over the proposed national constitution became moot, however, when news of Italian troop movements in the Tirol (April 21) and the Venetian border reached Vienna. The Austrian government ordered partial mobilization in the southern regions; the Italians responded by ordering full mobilization of their own. Despite calls for rational thought and action, Prussia and Austria continued to rush toward armed conflict. On May 1, the Kaiser gave Motke command over his armed forces, and the next day full-scale mobilization began.

In the diet, the group of middle-sized states, known as Mittelstaaten, (Bavaria, Wuerttemberg, Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt, Saxony-Weimar, Saxony-Meiningen, Saxony-Coburg and Nassau) supported complete demobilization within the confederation. Their individual governments rejected an enticing mix of promises and a potent combination of threats with which Bismarck sought their support against the Habsburgs. Ultimately, the Prussian war cabinet understood that it had no supporters among the German states against the Habsburgs except the duke of Mecklenburg, a tiny principality bordering on Brandenburg with no real military strength or political clout, and Garibaldi, the Italian president.

Public opinion was also against Prussian domination. City councils throughout the German states, liberal parliamentary members who favored a unified state, and chambers of commerce who also saw great benefit in unification were nearly unilaterally opposed to any war between Prussia and Austria: any such conflict would only serve the dynasties, not their interests. Catholic populations along the Rhine, in such cosmopolitan regions as Cologne and the Saarland, seem to have continued to side with Austria. By the late spring, nearly every important state opposed Berlin's effort to reorganize the German states by force. On the one side, the Prussian cabinet, under Bismarck's iron hand, saw German unity as a question of power, and who had the strength, backed up with the military, to wield it. On the other side, the liberals in Frankfurt diet saw German unity as a process of negotiation, and the distribution of power among the many parties.

Although several German states initially sided with Austria in this conflict, they were intercepted by Prussian troops and sent home. Austria, with support from Saxony, faced Prussia on its own. Complicated its situation, the Italian states' mobilization on the border in the south required the Austrians to fight another war on a second front, and on the Adriatic, called the Third Italian War of Independence. A decisive one-day victory at the Battle of Königgrätz gave Prussia an uncontested victory. Bismarck sought a quick peace without annexations to avoid intervention by France or Russia, with France being already involved on Austrian side, which formally handed over Venetia to France. The French public resented the Prussian victory and demanded "Revanche pour Sadova", which lead to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.

North German Confederation

The subsequent peace treaty allowed Bismarck to exclude Prussia's long-time rival, Austria, as well as most of its allies from the now-defunct German Confederation, when forming the North German Confederation with the states that had supported it. Prussia annexed Hanover, Hesse Kassel, Nassau, and the city of Frankfurt. Hesse Darmstadt lost some territory, but not its sovereignty. The states south of the Main River, Baden, Württemberg and Bavaria, signed separate treaties requiring an indemnity and alliances bringing them into Prussia's sphere of influence.

This war also resulted in the end of Austrian dominance of the German states and a shift in Austria's influence in the Balkans. In 1867, the Austrian emperor Franz Joseph, his power greatly weakened by this defeat, accepted the Ausgleich in which he had to give equal status to his Hungarian holdings, creating the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary. Austria's relationship with the new nation-state of Italy underwent major restructure; although the Austrians were far more successful in the military field against Italian troops, the monarchy lost the important province of Venetia and a substantial portion of the Tirol. Austria ceased to dominate the German-speaking lands of Central Europe, and the first sphere of influence established in the 1815 Treaty was irrevocably broken. The reality of defeat for Austria resulted in a rethinking of internal divisions, local autonomy, and liberalism.

The new North German Confederation became the direct precursor to the 1871 German Empire, which largely took over its constitution, its flag, and its governmental and administrative role in 1871. Prusssia, under Bismarck's adroit management, had overcome Austria's active resistance to the idea of a unified Germany through military victory, but however much his policy lessened Austria's influence over the German states, it also splintered the spirit of pan-German unity: most of the German states had allied with Austria and resented Prussian power politics.

The Franco-Prussian War seals German unification

By 1870, three of the important lessons of the Austro Prussian war became immediately apparent: through force of arms, a powerful state could change alliances and spheres of influence. Through diplomatic maneuvering, a skillful leader could create an environment in which a state would have to declare war first, thus forcing states in protective alliances to come to the aid of the so-called victim of external aggression. Finally, Prussian military capacity far exceeded that of the Austrians, and Prussia was clearly the only state within the Confederation, specifically, and among the German states generally, capable of protecting all of them from potential interference or aggression. In 1866, most of the mid-sized German states had opposed Prussia; by 1870, these states had been forced into protective alliances with Prussia, in which they had to send forces if another European state declared war on any of the members of the North German Confederation. With more skillful manipulation of European affairs, Bismarck again created a situation in which France played the role of aggressor, and Prussia, the role of protector of German rights and liberties.

The Spheres of Influence Fall Apart in Iberia

The next chink in the armor created in 1815 Vienna, and protected and nurtured so carefully by Metternich and his conservative allies over the next forty years, appeared in Spain. In 1868, a revolution in Spain had overthrown the Queen Isabella II, and the throne had remained empty while Isabella lived in sumptuous exile in Paris. The Spaniards, looking for a suitable Catholic successor, offered the crown to a prince of the other Hohenzollern line, Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen in 1870. (The Spanish regency had previously offered this post to three other European princes, each of whom Napoleon III (as regional power-broker) had rejected.) The publics of both France, Spain, and the German states remained unaware of the proposed Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen monarchy, called the Hohenzollern Candidature, and Bismarck encouraged Leopold to accept the offer. A successful installment of a Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen king in Spain would mean that two countries on either side of France both had kings of German descent, unacceptable to Napoleon III or to his minister of foreign affairs, Agenor, duc de Gramont. When the news leaked, Gramont wrote a sharply formulated ultimatum, stating that if any Prussian prince should accept the crown of Spain, the French government would respond. Although the prince withdrew as a candidate, thus defusing the crisis, the French ambassador approached the Prussian king directly while on vacation in Ems, voicing further demands. Bismarck used the internal message on the French ultimatum, called the Ems Dispatch, as a template for a short statement to the press. With further alterations when translated by the French agency Havas, the so-called Ems Dispatch was a pretext for the French public to demand a declaration of war.

Military Operations

Main article: Franco Prussian War

Napoleon III developed a strategy similar to that of his uncle, Napoleon Bonaparte: divide and conquer. He hoped that Austria would join in a war of revenge, and that her former allies, particularly the south German states of Baden, Württemberg, and Bavaria, would join in the cause. But France stood against the North German Confederation. The 1866 treaty came into effect: all German states united militarily, if not necessarily happily, to fight France. Instead of a war of revenge against Prussia, supported by various German allies, France was in a war against the German states, supported by no one. The reorganization of the military by Roon and the brilliant operational strategy of Moltke combined against France to spectacular effect. The speed of Prussian mobilization astonished the French, and the Prussian ability to concentrate power at specific points, reminiscent of Napoleon's strategies seventy years earlier, overwhelmed French mobilization. Utilizing the efficiently laid rail system, Prussian troops were delivered to battle areas rested and prepared to fight, but French troops had to march for miles to reach combat zones. After several battles, notably Spicheren, Wörth, Mars la Tour, and Gravelotte, the Germans defeated the main French armies and advanced on the primary city of Metz, and the French capital, Paris. They captured the French emperor, and took an entire army as prisoners at the Sedan on September 1, 1870.

January 18, 1871: The proclamation of the German Empire in the Hall of Mirrors of the Palace of Versailles. Bismarck appears in white. The Archduke of Baden stands beside Wilhelm, leading the cheers. Crown Prince Friedrich, later Friedrich III, stands on his father's right. Painting by Anton von Werner.

The Proclamation of the German Empire

The loss of the Emperor, and of the army itself, which marched into captivity at a makeshift camp in the Saarland (Camp Misery, the French called it) threw the French government into turmoil; Napoleon's energetic opponents overthrew the government and proclaimed a republic. The German High Command expected an overture of peace from the French, but the newly-proclaimed French Third Republic refused peace negotiations, and continuing to resist. The Prussian army invested the city of Paris, and held it under siege until mid-January, with regular bombardment. On January 18, 1871, 170 years after the founding of the Kingdom of Prussia, the German Princes and senior military commanders proclaimed William "German Emperor" in the Hall of Mirrors of the French Palace of Versailles. This location held special significance because of the number of paintings which showed German regions that Louis XIV had annexed in the War of the Grand Alliance (1688-1697). It had also served as headquarters for the military and Prussian Court throughout the Autumn fighting and the three month Siege of Paris. Under the peace treaty, France gave up almost all of its traditionally German regions: Alsace and the German-speaking part of Lorraine, paid what were considered to be astronomical indemnities, and accepted German administration of Paris and most of northern France (see map) until the indemnification was paid.

Occupation of France after the unification of Germany, 1871

The Franco-Prussian war confirmed Prussia as the dominant player in a unified German state and, with the proclamation of Wilhelm as Kaiser, Prussia assumed the leadership of the new empire. The southern states became officially incorporated into a unified Germany at the Treaty of Versailles of 1871 (26 February 1871; later ratified in the Treaty of Frankfurt of 10 May 1871), which ended the Franco-Prussian War. Bismarck, as the first chancellor of a unified Germany, had led the transformation of Germany from a loose confederation into a federal nation state. But he had not done it alone. Unification occurred by building on a tradition of legal collaboration under the Holy Roman Empire and economic collaboration through the Zollverein. The difficulties of the Vormärz, the impact of the 1848 liberals, the importance of Roon's military reorganization, and Moltke's strategic brilliance, all played a part in political unification.

The New Empire

Main article: German Empire

The new German Empire included 25 states, three of them Hanseatic cities. It realized the Kleindeutsche Lösung, ("Lesser German Solution", with the exclusion of Austria), as opposed to a Großdeutsche Lösung or "Greater German Solution", which would have included Austria. Bismarck achieved German unity largely through three military successes: the Second War of Schleswig (1864), the Austro-Prussian War (1866), and the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71). But unifying various states into one nation required more than some military victories, as important as these might have been for morale and public relations. It also required a rethinking of political, social and cultural behaviors, and the construction of new metaphors about "us" and "them". Who were the new members of this new nation? What did they stand for? How were they organized?

Constituent states of the Empire

The German Empire has often be referred to as a federation of monarchs, but, as has been pointed out, strictly speaking it was not.

Member states of the German Empire (peach), with Prussia shown in blue.

The provinces of Prussia at the time of the German Empire.

German Colonial Empire in 1914

  German Empire

  Colonies of the German Empire

State		Capital
Kingdoms (Königreiche)
	Prussia (Preußen) as a whole	Berlin
	Bavaria (Bayern)	Munich
	Saxony (Sachsen)	Dresden
	Württemberg	Stuttgart
Grand Duchies (Großherzogtümer)
	Baden	Karlsruhe
	Hesse (Hessen)	Darmstadt
	Mecklenburg-Schwerin	Schwerin
	Mecklenburg-Strelitz	Neustrelitz
	Oldenburg	Oldenburg
	Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach (Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach)	Weimar
Duchies (Herzogtümer)
	Anhalt	Dessau
	Brunswick (Braunschweig)	Braunschweig
	Saxe-Altenburg (Sachsen-Altenburg)	Altenburg
	Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha)	Coburg
	Saxe-Meiningen (Sachsen-Meiningen)	Meiningen
Principalities (Fürstentümer)
	Lippe	Detmold
	Reuss-Gera (Junior Line)	Gera
	Reuss-Greiz (Elder Line)	Greiz
	Schaumburg-Lippe	Bückeburg
	Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt	Rudolstadt
	Schwarzburg-Sondershausen	Sondershausen
	Waldeck and Pyrmont (Waldeck und Pyrmont)	Arolsen
Free and Hanseatic Cities (Freie und Hansestädte)
	Bremen
	Hamburg
	Lübeck
Imperial Territories (Reichsländer)
	Alsace–Lorraine (Elsass-Lothringen)	Straßburg

The Kingdom of Prussia, the largest of the constituent states, covered some 60% of the territory of the German Empire. Before becoming integrated as Provinces of Prussia, several of these states had maintained sovereignty following the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, or had emerged as sovereign states after the Congress of Vienna in 1815.

The contributions of the Prussian Kings to unification

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Kings of Prussia During Unification
Portrait	Name	Reign	Contributions to Unification
	Friedrich Wilhelm III	1770-1840, Reign, 1797–1840	Son of Frederick William II. Upon becoming king, he attempted financial reform of his father's government, dismissing ministers and trying to bring under control the financial excess of the government. Unfortunately, he suffered from Hohenzollern parsimony and lacked his ancestors' shrewdness. With the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, he had relinquished the title of Elector of Brandenburg, but was able to incorporate his territories in Brandenburg into the Kingdom of Prussia. As the commander in chief at the battle of Jena and Auerstadt, his (lack of) leadership led to one of the Prussian army's most humiliating defeats. Only his pregnant wife, Louisa, appeared to have any military acumen or ability to rally the troops. Following his retreat, and another loss at Tilset, he stood banks of the Nieman, while Napoleon and Alexander I discussed settlement terms which involved his kingdom, but from which he was excluded. His state paid great indemnification, and lost control of a considerable portion of its western provinces. Despite losses in the Napoleonic wars, at the Congress of Vienna, Prussia's territory in Germany was greatly increased, making it the dominant power of northern Germany. Austria remained the overall dominant power in Central Europe.
	Friedrich Wilhelm IV	1795-1861, King, 1840–1861, incapacitated, 1858	Son of Frederick Wilhelm III. During the revolutions of 1848-1849, he had the chance to become Emperor of the Germans, but turned down the offer on a theoretically basis, saying (reputedly) that he would not accept a crown of mud and clay. He did accept a new constitution that created a parliament with two chambers, an elite upper house based on landed, inherited privilege, and an lower house, elected by all taxpayers, but in a tiered system based on the amount of taxes paid that denied true universal suffrage. The constitution also reserved for the king the power of appointing all ministers, reestablished the conservative district assemblies and provincial diets, and guaranteed that the bureaucracy and the military remained firmly in the hands of the king. A stroke in 1857 left him partially paralyzed, and his brother served as Regent until Frederick Wilhelm's death in 1861.
	Wilhelm I	1797-1888, Regent, 1858-1861, King, 1861–1888	Brother of Friedrich Wilhelm IV, and regent during his final illness. Wilhelm appointed Bismarck as Chancellor in 1862 in the hope of resolving a constitutional crisis. A cautious man, he entered into all diplomatic proceedings with great deliberation. While he was king, Prussia annexed further territories as a result of the Second War of Schleswig in 1864 and the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, and became the dominant power in the North German Confederation. Following victory at Sedan in 1871, he was proclaimed Wilhelm I was proclaimed German Emperor in 1871, while still retaining the title and powers of King of Prussia. Wilhelm was a conservative man, and he neither liked, nor trusted his son, Crown Prince Frederick (later Friedrich III, 1888). As a liberal, Friedrich's policies often contradicted his father's; eventually, Wilhelm excluded Friedrich from government meetings and affairs.

Political and administrative structure of the Empire

Bismarck himself had prepared in broad outline the 1866 North German Constitution, which became (with some adjustments) the 1871 Constitution of the German Empire. With this constitution, the new Germany acquired some democratic features: notably the Reichstag, which — in contrast to the parliament of Prussia — represented citizens on the basis of elections by direct and equal male suffrage of all males who had attained the age of 25. This made the Reichstag the most democratic parliament in Europe. However, legislation also required the consent of the Bundesrat, the federal council of deputies from the states, in which Prussia had a large influence. Behind a constitutional façade, Prussia thus exercised predominant influence in both bodies, and with executive power vested in the Prussian King as Kaiser, who appointed the federal chancellor — Otto von Bismarck. The chancellor was accountable solely to and served entirely at the discretion of the Emperor. Officially, the chancellor functioned as a one-man cabinet and was responsible for the conduct of all state affairs; in practice, the State Secretaries (bureaucratic top officials in charge of such fields as finance, war, foreign affairs, etc) acted as unofficial portfolio ministers. With the exception of the years 1872–1873 and 1892–1894, the chancellor was always simultaneously the prime minister of the imperial dynasty's hegemonic home-kingdom, Prussia. The Reichstag had the power to pass, amend or reject bills, but could not initiate legislation. Although authoritarian in many respects, the empire permitted the development of political parties. The power of initiating legislation rested with the chancellor. One problem with this constitution was that it was designed for certain types of people to hold the position of chancellor and king. The constitution failed to consider the scenario of a powerful king and a chancellor who is a figurehead. The other states retained their own governments, but the military forces of the smaller states came under Prussian control. The military of the larger states (such as the Kingdoms of Bavaria and Saxony) underwent reform to coordinate with Prussian military principles, with the federal government controlling them in wartime.

Beyond the political mechanism: forming a nation

Main article: Nationalism

Yet a constitution, a political reorganization, and the provision of an imperial superstructure, including the Reichstag and the imperial chambers does not make a nation. The Zollverein had largely abolished tolls and tariffs between the many German states, encouraging economy unity, but even the revised Customs Union (reorganized in 1867-68), combined with the political and administrative structuring, did not make a nation. A key element of the nation-state requires the creation of a national culture, usually through deliberate national policy. In the new German nation, the Kulturkampf (1872-1878) that followed political unification attempted to address, with a remarkable lack of success, some of the contradictions in German society. In particular, it involved a struggle over language, education, and religion. A policy of Germanization of non-German people of the empire's population, including the Polish and Danish minorities, started with language, in particularly, the German language, compulsory schooling (Germanization), and the attempted creation of standardized curricula that promoted the idea of a shared past in those schools, and the development and celebration of a shared past. Finally, it extended to the religion of the new Empire's population.

Kulturkampf

Main article: Kulturkampf

The idea of nation did not necessarily mean a pluralistic one, and Catholics in particular came under scrutiny; some, and especially Bismarck, feared that the Catholics' connection to the papacy might make them less loyal to the nation. Bismarck as chancellor tried without much success to limit the influence of the Roman Catholic Church and of its party-political arm, the Catholic Center Party in schools and education and language-related policies. The Catholic Center Party remained particularly well entrenched in the Catholic strongholds of Bavaria and southern Baden, and in urban areas that held high populations of displaced rural workers seeking jobs in the heavy industry, and sought to protect the rights not only of Catholics, but other minorities, including the Poles, and the French minorities in the Alsatian lands. The May Laws of 1873 brought the appointment of priests, and their education, under the control of the state, resulting in the closure of many seminaries, and a shortage of priests.The Congregations Law of 1875 abolished religious orders, ended state subsidies to the Catholic Church, and removed religious protections from the Prussian constitution.

Integrating the Jewish Community

Main article: History of the Jews in Germany

The Germanized Jews remained another vulnerable population in the new German nation-state. Since 1780, after emancipation under Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II, Jews in the former Habsburg teritories had enjoyed considerable economic and legal privileges that their counterparts in other German speaking territories did not: they could own land, for example, and were not required to live in the Jewish quarter (also called Jüden Gasse, or Jew's alley). They could also attend the university and enter the professions. During the Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras, many of the previously strong barriers between Jews and Christians broke down. Napoleon had ordered the emancipation of Jews throughout territories under French hegemony. Wealthy Jews, like their French counterparts, sponsored salons; in particular, several Jewish salonnières held important gatherings in Frankfurt and Berlin, in which German intellectuals developed their own form of republican intellectualism. Throughout the subsequent decades, beginning almost immediately after the defeat of the French, reaction against the mixing of Jews and Christians limited the intellectual impact of these salons. Beyond the salons, throughout the nineteenth century Jews continued a process of Germanization in which they intentionally adopted German modes of dress and speech, and worked to insert themselves into the emerging German public sphere. The emergence of a reform movement among German Jews reflected this effort.

The core values of Judaism meshed with emerging the emerging socialist agendas; by the years of unification, German Jews played an important role in the intellectual underpinnings of the German socialist movement, and even after World War I, the Jewish Left in Germany continued its activism in labor, government, and social reform. The expulsion of Jews from Russia in the 1880s and 1890s complicated integration in to the German public sphere. Such Jews arrived in north German cities in the thousands; considerably less well-educated and less affluent, their often dismal poverty dismayed many of the Germanized Jews; their poverty, and many of the problems related to it (such as illness, overcrowded housing, unemployment, school absenteeism, refusal to learn German, etc.) emphasized their distinctiveness for not only the Christian Germans, but the indigenous Jewish populations.

Writing the story of the nation

Main article: Historiography and nationalism

Another important element in nation-building, the story of the heroic past, fell to such nationalist German historians as the liberal constitutionalist Friedrich Dahlmann, his conservative student, Heinrich von Treitschke, and others less conservative, such as Theodor Mommsen, and Heinrich von Sybel, to name a two. Dahlmann himself died before unification, but he laid the groundwork for the nationalist histories to come through his histories of the English and French revolutions, by casting these revolutions as fundamental to the construction of a nation.

Heinrich von Treitschke's History of Germany in the Nineteenth Century, published in 1879, has perhaps a misleading title: it is more a history of Prussia than a history of all German states, and it tells the story of the German-speaking peoples through the guise of Prussia's destiny to unite all German states under its leadership. The creation of this Borussian myth (Borussia is the Latin name for Prussia) established Prussia as Germany's savior; it was the destiny of all Germans to be united, this myth maintains, and it was Prussia's destiny to accomplish this. It is the role of the nationalist historian to write the history of the nation; this means viewing that nation's past with the goal of a nationalist history in mind. The process of writing history, or histories, is a process of remembering and forgetting: of selecting certain elements to be remembered, that is, emphasized, and ignoring, or forgetting, other elements and events.

Mommsen's contributions to the Monumenta Germaniae Historica laid the ground work for additional scholarship on the study of the German nation, expanding the notion of "Germany" to mean other areas beyond Prussia. A liberal professor, historian, and theologian, and generally a titan among late nineteenth century scholars, Mommsen served as a delegate to the Prussian House of Representatives from 1863 to 1866 and again from 1873 to 1879, and as a delegate to the Reichstag from 1881 to 1884, for the liberal German Progress Party (Deutsche Fortschrittspartei), later for the National Liberal Party. He opposed the antisemitic programs of Bismarck's Kulturkampf, and indeed the vitriolic text that Treitschke often employed, and, with the publication of his Studien über die Judenfrage (Studies of the Jewish Question), encouraged assimilation and Germanisation of Jews.

Parallels with Italy and Japan

The evolution of the German Empire exhibits some parallels to developments in Italy and Japan. Similarly to Bismarck, Count Camillo Benso di Cavour in Italy used diplomacy and declarations of war to achieve his objectives: he allied with France before attacking Austria, securing the unification of Italy (except for the Papal States and Austrian Venice) by 1861 as a kingdom under the Piedmontese dynasty. In the interests of Piedmont-Sardinia, Cavour, hostile to the more revolutionary romantic nationalism of liberal republicans such as Giuseppe Garibaldi and Giuseppe Mazzini, sought to unify Italy along conservative lines.

Japan followed a similar course of conservative modernization after the fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate and the Meiji Restoration, 1868 to 1918. Japan set up a commission in 1882 to study various governmental structures throughout the world; Bismarck's Germany particularly impressed the Commissioners, who issued a constitution in 1889 that modeled the German Empire, featuring a premiership with powers analogous to Bismarck's position as chancellor, and with a cabinet responsible to the Emperor alone.

One common factor in the social anatomy of these governments involved the retention of a very substantial share in political power by landed elites — in Germany's case the Prussian Junkers. The Sonderweg hypothesis attributed this to the absence of a revolutionary breakthrough by the middle classes, or by peasants in combination with urban workers. Recent scholarship has, to great extent, refuted the dominance of this social group, however, through research into the roles of the Grand Bourgeoisie, for example, the merchant classes of the Hanseatic cities, and the industrial leadership, particularly important in the Rhineland, in the construction of the new state. Additional studies into different groups of Wilhelmine Germany have all contributed to a new view of Wilhelmine Germany that refutes the Sonderweg hypothesis. Junker power was balanced in the western provinces by that of the Grand Bourgeoisie, which included bankers, merchants, and industrialists. While the Sonderweg thesis may still be useful to explain Germany's experience with National Socialism, it is no longer the dominant point of analysis in studies of Central Europe. Instead, scholars have begun to see how conservative social policies absorbed or appropriated many of the elements of the liberal revolutionaries of the 1840s and socialists in the 1860s and later; imperial policy of the Second Reich tended to reflect a cautious but pragmatic approach to social, political, and economic problems. In particular, Bismarck's predominantly conservative values largely reflected the classical conservativism of Edmund Burke: specific members of society are inherently better prepared, and better qualified to lead and these individuals often come from the strata of the landed elite and moneyed interests.

See also

• The Holy Roman Empire for a more detailed look at the various entities of German-speaking Europe prior to 1806.
• The Napoleonic Wars for a more detailed examination of the military aspects of the German War of Liberation and the impact of the Napoleonic alliances.
• Revolutions of 1848 for a broader examination of the impact of the Revolutions in Europe
• Liberalism for an understanding of the inter-relationship of political, social, and economic ideas in the development of the concept of "nation"
• German Empire, for a more detailed look at the unified German state of 1871 onwards.
• German reunification at the end of the Cold War.

References cited

• Blackbourn, David. Marpingen: apparitions of the Virgin Mary in nineteenth-century Germany. 1st American ed. New York: Knopf, 1994.
• Blackbourn, David, and Geoff Eley. The peculiarities of German history: bourgeois society and politics in nineteenth-century Germany. Oxford [Oxfordshire] ; New York: Oxford University Press, 1984.
• Blackbourn, David. The long nineteenth century: a history of Germany, 1780-1918. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
• Confino, Alon. The Nation as a Local Metaphor: Württemberg, Imperial Germany, and National Memory, 1871-1918. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997.
• Escudier, Alexandre, Brigitte Sauzay, and Rudolf von Thadden. Gedenken im Zwiespalt: Konfliktlinien europäischen Erinnerns, Genshagener Gespräche; Bd. 4. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2001
• Evans, Richard J. Death in Hamburg: Society and Politics in the Cholera Years, 1830-1910. Penguin, 2005.
• Flores, Richard R. Remembering the Alamo: memory, modernity, and the master symbol. 1st ed, History, culture, and society series. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002.
• Hollyday, F. B. M. Bismarck (Great Lives Observed), Prentice-Hall, (1970).
• Holt, Alexander Wheeler; Chilton (1917), The History of Europe from 1862 to 1914: From the Accession of Bismarck to the Outbreak of the Great War, Macmillan. Accessed online at Google Books.
• Howard, Michael Eliot. The Franco-Prussian War: the German invasion of France, 1870-1871. New York,: Macmillan, 1961.
• Lee, Lloyd. The politics of Harmony: Civil Service, Liberalism, and Social Reform in Baden, 1800-1850. Cranbury, NJ: Associated university Presses, 1980.
• Koshar, Rudy. Germany's Transient Pasts: Preservation and the National Memory in the Twentieth Century. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998.
• Kohn, Hans. German history; some new German views. Boston,: Beacon Press, 1954.
• Llobera, Josep R., and Goldsmiths' College. The role of historical memory in (ethno)nation-building, Goldsmiths sociology papers. London: Goldsmiths College, 1996.
• Nipperdey, Thomas. Germany from Napoleon to Bismarck, 1800-1866. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996.
• Scott, H. M. The Birth of a Great Power System. London, New York: Longman, 2006.
• Sheehan, James J. German history 1770-1866, Oxford History of Modern Europe. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989.
• TAYLOR, A. J. P. (1954): The Struggle for Mastery in Europe 1914-1918, Oxford University Press.
• Sperber, Jonathan. The European Revolutions, 1848-1851, New Approaches to European History. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1984.
• Sperber, Jonathan. Popular Catholicism in nineteenth-century Germany. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984.
• Sperber, Jonathan. Rhineland radicals: the democratic movement and the revolution of 1848-1849. 1st Princeton Paperback printing, 1993 ed. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993.
• Vann, James Allen. The Swabian Kreis: Institutional Growth in the Holy Roman Empire 1648-1715. Vol. LII, Studies Presented to International Commission for the History of Representative and Parliamentary Institutions. Bruxelles: Librairie Encyclopediique, 1975.
• Wawro, Geoffrey (2000), Warfare and Society in Europe, 1792-1914, Routledge, ISBN 0415214459. Accessed online at Google Books. The website provides only a partial copy of the book; the relevant pages were accessed on 28 August 2008.

Suggestions for further reading

In addition to the material in sources cited, below is a bibliography including thoughtful studies of various issues in 19th century German history.

Politics of Repression

• Bazillion, Richard J. Modernizing Germany: Karl Biedermann's career in the kingdom of Saxony, 1835-1901, American university studies. Series IX, History, vol. 84. New York: P. Lang, 1990.
• Cocks, Geoffrey, and Konrad Hugo Jarausch. German professions, 1800-1950. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
• Groh, John E. Nineteenth century German Protestantism: the church as social model. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1982.
• Henne, Helmut, and Georg Objartel. German student jargon in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Berlin; New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1983.
• Ohles, Frederik. Germany's rude awakening: censorship in the land of the Brothers Grimm. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1992.
• Smith, Woodruff D. Politics and the sciences of culture in Germany, 1840-1920. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Prussian History and Prussian Military Organization

• Bucholz, Arden. Moltke, Schlieffen, and Prussian war planning. New York: Berg: Distributed exclusively in the U.S. and Canada by St. Martin's, 1991.
• Clemente, Steven E. For King and Kaiser!: the making of the Prussian Army officer, 1860-1914, Contributions in military studies, no. 123. New York: Greenwood Press, 1992.
• Dwyer, Philip G. Modern Prussian history, 1830-1947. Harlow, England; New York: Longman, 2001.
• Friedrich, Otto. Blood and iron: from Bismarck to Hitler the von Moltke family's impact on German history. 1st ed. New York, NY: Harper Collins, 1995.
• Lüdtke, Alf. Police and State in Prussia, 1815-1850. Cambridge [England]; New York Paris: Cambridge University Press ; Editions de la Maison des sciences de l'homme, 1989.
• Showalter, Dennis E. Railroads and rifles: soldiers, technology, and the unification of Germany. Hamden, Conn: Archon Books, 1975.
• Stargardt, Nicholas. The German idea of militarism: radical and socialist critics, 1866-1914. Cambridge [England]; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
• Victoria and Albert Museum. Dept. of Prints and Drawings., and Susan Lambert. The Franco-Prussian War and the Commune in caricature, 1870-71 [Catalog of a collection of prints in the possession of the Department of Prints and Drawings of the Victoria and Albert Museum.] London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1971.

Nation-Building

• Hughes, Michael. Nationalism and society: Germany, 1800-1945. London ; New York: E. Arnold, 1988.
• Kollander, Patricia. Frederick III: Germany's liberal emperor, Contributions to the study of world history, no. 50. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1995.
• Schleunes, Karl A. Schooling and society: the politics of education in Prussia and Bavaria, 1750-1900. Oxford, UK ; New York: Berg Publishers: Distributed exclusively in the US and Canada by St. Martin's Press, 1989.
• Schulze, Hagen. The course of German nationalism: from Frederick the Great to Bismarck, 1763-1867. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Austria

• Kann, Robert A. History of the Habsburg Empire: 1526-1918,(Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1974).
• Sked, Alan. Decline and Fall of the Habsburg Empire 1815-1918, 1989, 2001.

Kulturkampf

• Lowenstein, Steven M. The Berlin Jewish community: enlightenment, family, and crisis, 1770-1830, Studies in Jewish history. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
• Sorkin, David Jan. The transformation of German Jewry, 1780-1840, Studies in Jewish history. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
• Sperber, Jonathan. Popular Catholicism in nineteenth-century Germany. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984.

External links

Online documents related to unification

Documents of German Unification

Online encyclopedia-style articles

• External analysis of German Unification
• German Unification