National unification of the German states began under the influences of Germany under Napoleon. French troops conquered and occupied the territories that had constituted the Holy Roman Empire from the 1790’s to 1814 as a mere symbol of unity that had been disintegrating and became fragmentated into separate states from the Middle Ages to the end of the Thirty Years War. The German states were composed of more than 1,800 political entities, ranging in size and influence from seventy-seven major secular principalities, down to fifty-one imperial cities, forty-five imperial villages, and 1,475 territories ruled by imperial knights. Napoleon led to the consolidation of many of the middle-sized German states to absorb large numbers of small independent territories, which allowed the more powerful. The French seized the territory of the let bank of the Rhine, and the boundaries of the German states were realigned on 25 February 1803 as a result of the deliberations of an Imperial Deputation according to the designs of French and Russian plans. Following the destruction of Austrian and Russian forces at the Battle of Austerlitz on 2 December 1805, the Peace of Pressburg was signed on 26 December 1805 between French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte and Holy Roman Emperor Francis II. The Holy Roman Empire, which Napoleon considered to be an archaic and inefficient organisation of states, was dissolved while he sought to secure the allegiance of the subject German states. Seventeen German princes were compelled to separate themselves from the Holy Roman Empire on 12 July 1806, and declared themselves to be reorganised and permanently united as subjects of Napoleon in a Rheinbund, or a Confederation of the Rhine as a military alliance composed of a coalition of German states with Napoleon as its self-appointed protector with a representative Diet in Frankfurt. Bavaria, Württemberg, Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt and Nassau were united with twelve small principalities, ostensibly to secure peace in southern Germany. These member states were to submit their public concerns to a congress in Frankfurt-am-Main, and pledged to enter into service for joint concerns for joint defence, with Napoleon at the command of any military action. The Holy Roman Emperor Francis II was compelled to abdicate on 6 August 1806 to help him have a power within the German states that could serve as an ally, which also exposed the self-serving German princes who would lend their support to a foreign power. Austria and Prussia remained separate states.
Frederick William III, the king of Prussia, was induced to acquiesce to the new political arrangements, while being led to believe that a separate union of states could be formed under his own auspices in northern Germany, which was then undermined by Napoleon declaring his intention to take the Hanse cities under his protection. Napoleon continued advancing further eastward upon the Prussian interests in the German states by attempting to purchase peace by offering Hannover to England and Prussian Poland to Russia. These actions along with the creation of the Rhine Confederation led to armed conflict between Prussia and France. The Prussian army was decisively defeated in battles between Jena, Weimar and Auerstadt on 24 October 1806 as a result of defects in its organisation, training and leadership, while it was mostly composed of poorly-led unmotivated foreign mercenaries, in stark contrast to the French truly citizen army committed to a national cause, with troops taking independent action and any necessary flexibility to take rapid action. The Prussian monarchy was hereafter subjugated to the French Empire when Napoleon entered Berlin on 27 November. Hostilities continued until a definitive settlement was reached in the Peace of Tilsit on 9 July 1807, which resulted in Prussia losing half of its territory, including all of its land west of the Elbe River, leading to the creation of the kingdom of Westphalia, and the duchy of Berg was placed under French rule, while Prussia’s acquisitions in the east became part of the new Grand Duchy of Warsaw. Prussia was greatly reduced into being a buffer state between France and Russia, and was forced to pay three hundred million thalers while being obliged to maintain a French army in its diminished territory until this debt was paid. The war of liberation against the Napoleonic empire would hereafter spark the upsurge of German nationalism.
This political modernisation consolidation process of integrating smaller German states into the larger ones was matched with introducing French legal codes, measurements and weights to most German-speaking areas, and thus contributed to modernising economic activity. Since the Prussian royal administration was concerned about their defeat at the hands of Napoleonic France, it started a thorough reform and modernization of the state aimed at bridging the gap between state and society by involving citizens directly or indirectly into state affairs. The reformed Prussia also became the hope of many other Germans who started increasingly suffering under French occupation, which became increasingly repressive and exploiting, with their compulsory cooperation with France that drafted large numbers of Germans into its armies and imposed stifling trade restrictions in its efforts to block English goods from the continent.
Napoleon’s defeat of Prussia appeared to German reformers as a judgement passed on the outmoded military and political system of the state. The defeats at Jena and Auerstadt led to German reformers adapting French reforms to Prussian conditions to regenerate the sustainability of the state by creating a citizen army, rather than the military merely being an instrument responsible to the monarchy holding absolute political power, which precluded the urban middle classes from participating in the government as citizens. This thus entailed carrying out a revolution from above based on the rule of law and give the Prussian monarchy a degree of popular legitimacy in reaction to the French occupation that induced preparing taking action for resistance at a national level. The state administration and the army from 1806 to 1811 were modernised in preparation to regain independence from France. Baron Heinrich Friedrich Karl vom und zum Stein sought to reorganise Prussia by nullifying the earlier corporative privileges of the nobility by adapting the achievements of the French revolution in Prussia to reform the civil service, and thus eliminate inefficiency. Following his appointment as chief adviser to the king on 1 October 1807 in a cabinet council, be began initiating several reform ideas into concrete policies, with the underlying hope of establishing a united German empire in which every property holder would be granted a representative share in the conduct of local administrative matters, along with taking part in the legislative and executive processes of the state. Reforms from above were administered during this time in Prussia between that would contribute to being in a position to challenge French rule, while seeking to reorganise Prussia by nullifying the earlier corporative privileges of the nobility by adapting the achievements of the French revolution in Prussia to reform the civil service, and thus eliminate inefficiency. Napoleon forced his dismissal from office on 24 November 1808, as a result of a letter he had written on 15 August 1808, in which he had requested the prince of Wittgenstein to initiate a revolution in Westphalia, which was a satellite state of Napoleonic France. Prince Karl von Hardenburg, who was appointed chancellor in June 1810, maintained the importance of introducing political and economic innovations to achieve establishing a new social order.
Prince Karl von Hardenburg, who was appointed chancellor in June 1810, maintained the importance of introducing political and economic innovations to achieve establishing a new social order by pressing for legal and economic reforms. Gerhard Johann David von Scharnhorst, the Chief of the Prussian General Staff dismantled the earlier military rituals, and replaced them with rejuvenated training and initiatives, and created a national reserve composing a nationalised body of citizen soldiers outside the standing army, led by a newly created general staff to plan, study and coordinate future strategic movements. Inefficient and incompetent officers who had been responsible for the surrenders of 1806 were dismissed, and commissioned ranks were opened to non-nobles, and national defence was to be introduced as the primary duty, as well as a privilege, of every citizen, which would create a national militia that would compose a political union among them. Although Napoleon fixed the strength of the Prussian army at 42,000, and forbade the organisation of a militia, Scharnhorst as the head of a Military Reorganisation Commission circumvented these impositions through a Cabinet Order issued on 6 August 1808 by passing as many trained troops as possible through the ranks, allowing them to serve temporarily to provide them with adequate military training, before dispatching them to furlough, thus allowing for new streams of recruits to build a reserve of trained troops who remained subject to drilling in secret.
State reforms were introduced to encourage the development of a liberalised state with civil and social reorganisation of Prussia. Censorship was temporarily mitigated, and finances were restored along with an improved distribution of taxes, and alleviating the burdens of the poor. Serfdom was abolished, beginning with the promulgation of the Emancipation Edict of 9 October 1807 to open the way for free trade in land, and abolish the earlier caste system to set up a state consisting of citizens that could identify with the state, and begin opening careers in different occupations to talent, rather than class privilege. Towns received self-government with the expectation to take responsibility for managing municipal affairs. Many of the liberal principles of the French revolution were written into law to establish a satisfactory code of jurisprudence. There were improvements in nearly all fields of state enterprise, including improving the educational system. Most importantly, a new army was carefully trained, and a spirit of German nationalism was cultivated, and instigated a sense of national unity where a central German authority did not exist during the Napoleonic wars.
Prussian reformers hoped would mobilise nationalist forces, which the French Revolution had generated for France and its population. There were essentially four basic reforms that von Stein had started: the legal emancipation of the Prussian peasants, making them free subjects with the abolition of serfdom in principle on 9 October 1807; creating municipal self-government with full participation of professional classes in November 1808, and establishing separate autonomous administrative districts in a federal state self-governed by separate diets (Landtage); establishing a modern bureaucracy, rationalizing administrations and opening careers on the basis of talent, with a division of judicial and executive powers; instituting the Krümper System in the military with the purpose of making fundamental improvements in the army to achieve liberation from French occupation, which was first applied to the entire Prussian army in 1809 to train military reserve replacements for wartime service. The army was reorganised by Gerhard von Scharnhorst, who was appointed adjutant general of the king on 31 May 1808, headed a commission for the complete reorganisation of the army. Scharnhorst and August von Gneisenau created the new Prussian general staff, and engaged in the work of reconstructing the Prussian army in the Military Reorganisation Commission, along with implementing military reforms under the direction of Hermann von Boyen and Karl von Clausewitz to redress evident deficiencies. They thus strove to create military forces that would fight for the independence of a nation as its natural defenders, with its leaders promoted on the basis of merit. Education reforms were implemented by Alexander von Humboldt that contributed to the modernisation of Prussia.
Scharnhorst carried out the military reorganisation by replacing the professional army with a national one on the basis of the liberal and democratic principle of universal military service, designed to create a people’s army, rather than a standing army of an autocratic state, with improved weapons and training, dismissing incompetent officers, and establishing a military reserve. Every physically fit male citizen could be enlisted for military duty as self-actualising patriots who could aspire to be promoted to higher ranks. He fixed three years as the training period, and proceeded to pass thousands of recruits through the army, and then retaining them after their active service on various reserve classes. Gneisenau and Scharnhorst thus efficiently reorganised the Prussian military that was not to exceed 42,000 troops while under French occupation by nominally keeping the army at this amount, while rapidly sufficiently training completed for separate subsequent contingents, which secretly prepared practically the entire male population for a war of liberation. Recruits underwent military drilling for a month and then sent into the reserves. As a result, the Prussians were able to secretly create a large reserve of 150,000 in a brief time, composed of a territorial army (Landwehr) with a solidly bourgeois officer corps.This Krümper system provided the army for Blücher at Waterloo, while all of the reforms paved the way for the war of liberation that was set off by the Spanish guerilla struggle against Napoleon, and especially the Russian defeat in 1812 from which Napoleon retreated with 40,000 survivors out of the original 600,000 invasion troops, which would ultimately lead to the destruction of Napoleonic France.
A reformed Prussia became the hope for many other Germans who started suffering increasingly under French occupation, which had become increasingly repressive and exploitative, while France drafted large numbers of Germans into its armies and imposed stifling trade regulations in its efforts to block English goods from the continent. The French revolution thus had two major influences on the German states. One outcome was increasing French military power by destroying the earlier division between the authority of the Holy Roman Emperor and the individual German princes that had been established by the Treaty of Westphalia. Another development was the extension of French political influence in the German states by instituting considerable political and social changes. Although the tiny minority of educated Germans welcome the liberal reforms that the French occupation forces introduced, such as introducing careers to talents and orderly and rational government systems, nascent German nationalism had an anti-French character, while the Napoleonic system primarily served French interests. While the German populations did not constitute a political force, German military leaders took action against Napoleonic France to restore the independence of the German states.
Unbeknownst to king Frederick William III of Prussia, General Ludwig Yorck, who had been fighting with Napoleon, acted independently and defected to the Russians on 30 December 1812, and signed the Convention of Tauroggen by which he agreed with Russian general Karl Hans von Diebitsch that the troops under his command would no longer accept orders from the French, and committed Prussian troops who had invaded Russia to neutrality. Yorck thus created an alliance with the Russians on his own responsibility with the underlying belief that the Russian tsar would unite his forces with those of the Prussian monarchy, and gave the Russian armies freedom of activity, which would save East Prussia from Russian attack destruction, and also provide Frederick William III an opportunity to launch a war against France to restore Prussia’s independence. Frederick William III consented to waging war against France, and assembled a military commission in Breslau to discuss an immediate and rapid increase of the Prussian military forces on 3 February, which was followed by mobilising the entire field army in Pomerania and Silesia on 12 February, as new volunteers were called on and rapidly joined them in increasingly greater numbers.
While tsar Alexander I of Russia sought to liberate Europe from France and thereby enhance Russia’s prestige, king Frederick William III eventually also came to terms with Russia under pressure from Prussian generals on 28 February 1813 in the Treaty of Kalisch that committed Prussia to engaging in hostilities against France. This secret treaty called for the restoration of the pre-1806 borders of Prussia, with the exception of Hanover to maintain support from Britain, with some territorial gains for Russia in the Duchy of Warsaw, while Prussia would concede earlier acquisitions in Poland, in exchange for Russian aid. Following pressure from nationalist conspirators, Frederick William III reluctantly authorised the creation of a pseudo guerilla levée en masse, composing mass national conscription to mobilise all able-bodied citizens for taking armed action against the French, as well as a small Freikorps led by Adolf von Lützow that was authorised to wage guerilla warfare to wage guerrilla warfare against the French in the territories west of the Elbe River. A rapid mobilisation of the reserves and new volunteers was then ordered to fight for the common cause of overthrowing French control in a call to arms on 17 March, when a new Landwehr law went into effect that called for every able-bodied man between the ages of seventeen and forty to military service.
A proclamation was issued to the other German states from Kalisch on 25 March that invited all of the German state princes to join the uprising against France to ensure a regeneration of their populations. A Landsturm law issued on 21 April compelled every citizen to take part in a war or national liberation, to be waged by all possible means with any available resources. As Napoleon appeared to be suffering from military weaknesses, in terms of available cavalry, munitions and supplies for troops while facing opposition Prussian troops raised against them. Irregular troops in Free Corps units, such as the Lützow Free Corps volunteer force, which harassed the supply lines of French units communicating with those in the Rhineland and France, just as Spanish guerillas and Portuguese militia had done to undermine French resources, and mainly Landwehr troops besieged French fortress garrisons. The conclusion of the treaty of Töplitz on 9 September 1813 between Russia, Austria, and Prussia that established and reinforced a sixth united coalition further led to Napoleon’s disintegrating influence in the German states as his available forces retreated westward, while the signatories pledged to restore Prussian and Austrian territories that they had held before 1805, and dissolving the German Confederation that Napoleon had established, while guaranteeing their independence. The rulers of the southern and western German states that had hitherto remained faithful vassals functioning under Napoleon’s direction as a result of earlier fear of the coalition states became more fearful of losing their independence subject to the increasing potential influence of Austria and Prussia, and therefore shifted their allegiances in view of the uncertainty leading to shifting political influences. Bavaria immediately turned against supporting Napoleon as a direct result of the treaty of Töplitz, rather than risk hostility from Austria, which was followed by Württemburg due to the underlying hope of securing earlier gains that Napoleon had granted, and sought to maintain its independence in the treaty of Fulda on 2 November in exchange for joining Bavaria in lending support to Austria against Napoleon, and were then joined by Baden, Nassau, the Saxon duchies, and Hesse-Darmstadt.
The combined coalition forces of the Russians, Prussians, Swedes, British, Portuguese and Spanish numbered 860,000 troops by mid-August 1813 in a Sixth Coalition, while Napoleon could muster roughly 700,000 from France and the Rheinbund. By mid-October, the allied coalition pressed Napoleon back to Leipzig, leading to the decisive Battle of Leipzig on 16-19 October 1813, when troops from the separate German states composed a common defensive front against the French occupation. Although the troops of the German Confederation were to be committed to supporting Napoleon, their support wavered in view of the Coalition intentions toward them, and individual troops began deserting before Napoleon lost his earlier advantages. Two Westphalian Hussar regiments later defected to the Coalition during the battle of Leipzig, and the defection of a Saxon division secured the French defeat. The outcome was imposing a crushing defeat on Napoleon, driving the French forces out of the German states. Württemberg joined the allies, and the Rheinbund was dissolved.
Napoleon’s eventual defeat marked by allied troops entering Paris on 31 March 1814, which led to Napoleon’s abdication on 6 April and being taken into British custody, and exiled to the island of Elba. The coalition forces determined in the Treaty of Paris on 30 May to restore the 1792 borders of France, under the rule of king Louis XVIII of the Bourbon dynasty. They would next meet in a congress in Vienna in September to determine postwar conditions in Europe, which were disrupted by Napoleon’s escape from Elba and arriving in France on 1 March 1815, and arriving in Paris on 20 March where he began raising an army. He was determined to divide and defeat the allies in France, only to face another conclusive defeat against the combined forces of Austria, Russia, Prussia, England, and all of the smaller German states, culminating in the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June 1815, and Napoleon’s final exile to the remote island of St. Helena without any further interference in European affairs until his death on 5 May 1821. The future of Europe was thus remained to be determined at the Congress of Vienna that had opened on 1 November 1814 to reverse the effects of the French revolution and the Napoleonic wars, where the representatives strove to restore stability in Europe by creating a new balance of power favourable to the forces of conservatism, based on the broadly interpreted principle of legitimacy. Maintaining peace in Europe entailed organising the German states to be capable of acting as a barrier against future French imperialism, which could not be achieved by restoring the ramshackle and military indefensible Holy Roman Empire. The major territorial reorganisations that had taken place in 1803 were thus largely maintained, with specific advantages granted to Austria and Prussia to constitute bulwarks to contain potential renewed French aggression.
The Grand Duchy of Posen connecting West Prussia and Silesia was granted to Prussia whereas a new Polish state was created on its eastern boundaries, along with the left bank of the Rhine River was granted to Prussia to restore the amount of territory it had possessed in 1805 and defend the German states against France, at the cost of giving up its former Polish territorial possessions, along with Austria likewise containing France on the Po River. The Austrian foreign minister Prince Klemens von Metternich formulated the Federal Act of 8 June 1815 to institute the substitution of the former Holy Roman Empire with a German Confederation to restore the balance of power in central Europe, and to serve as a defensive federation against future French imperialism, as well as a bulwark against revolutionary movements, consisting of thirty-nine sovereign German states, led by Prussia and Austria. There was not any underlying unity among them under any central authority that was represented by a permanent Federal Council (Bundestag) established at Frankfurt, consisting of delegates from the ruling state princes and four free cities under the presidency of Austria to discuss matters of internal security, which in practice meant preserving the interests of the separate independent state rulers who could not compel cooperation, as each held a veto power over new proposals, and was devoid of parliamentary powers to enable political, economic or social coordination.
This loose association of states that functioned as a decentralised federal diplomatic assembly maintained the former divisions of the German states constituted a permanent defensive maintenance of the status quo therein and thereby maintain political stability, without unifying common interests while being devoid of a federal army or a federal court and maintained economic divisions among them, while the interests of Austria that were held to be the interests of Europe as a whole. The various state rulers sided with Austrian supremacy that rested on identifying with not foregoing any substantial part of their independence, while consenting to Austria’s political leadership in this combination of states, rather than allowing for self-governments with a central representative parliament that would unite the entire nation in cooperation with a monarchy. The new constitution that was interpreted through Austrian control for the first thirty years of its existence, and retained several defects of functioning on rigid conservative principles. Each state was to be strictly independent, which ensured the privileges of the local aristocracy in each separate state, while the states were associated for mutual defence against its enemies, and maintaining peace within its borders.
A more specific underlying element was the certainty that any change in the federal constitution could not take place without the consent of Austria as a great power in Europe, and would not allow for changes that would challenge its presidential supremacy in the German states, or substantially alter the balance of power in the German Confederation, or introduce governmental principles that would detrimentally affect the administration of the Austrian territories that were not included within the jurisdiction of the Confederation. As the Hapsburg empire was constituted on a delicately elaborate system of representing various nationalities, including Czechs, Italians, Poles and Hungarians, Slovenes, Serbs and Croats who outnumbered Germans in the former Ostmark, introducing representative institutions or democratic autonomy would generate demands for similar concessions that would trigger various nationalist sentiments that would jeopardise the interests of the central Hapsburg authority based in Vienna, and therefore opposed all forms of nationalism to preserve the integrity of the state. Moreover, foreign monarchs also held possessions in the German Confederation, including the king of Denmark becoming the duke of Holstein with a mixed population of German and Danish residents, and of Lauenburg within Holstein, the king of Holland being granted Luxemburg, and the king of England granted Hanover, who retained control over this state until 1837.
The interests of Austria as the leading state in the German Confederation were thus to be held to be European interests as a whole, and therefore Austrian policy was a defensive maintenance of the post-1815 status quo in perpetuity. Hence, Metternich, as the foreign minister of Austria from 1809 to 1848, and later also chancellor from 1821 prevailed over political life in central Europe from 1815 to 1848 by imposing strong measures of repression to contain any further revolutionary fervour, while attempting to maintain Austrian power. He believed revolution was a type of political disease, and measures of public health demanded international cooperation to cure it. In practical terms, this meant that revolutions and revolts were to be suppressed everywhere, and cooperation meant intervention to maintain what was considered legitimate conservative rule by monarchy and the protection of property, while there could not be any social, economic and political equality. Austrian supremacy in the German states rested on the identity of interest with the princes and the power of their separate governments. There was otherwise not any opportunity for cooperation for creating a unified nation, while the composition of this new confederation completely dismissed the interests of the local populations. The results of the Congress of Vienna thus disappointed German nationalists who had hoped for establishing German unity, in the face of Austrian opposition, while the Prussian monarchy acceded to Austria’s superiority over the German states, and sought to collaborate with Austria over controlling the smaller ones in a central authority. The compromise solution by forming the decentralised German Confederation of thirty-nine German states thus replicated the earlier Confederation of the Rhine of thirty-six German states by which Napoleon had exercised control over them from 1808, excluding Prussia and Austria and their satellite states.
Maintaining the supremacy of Austrian interests by the creation of a new constitution for Germany at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 included making new territorial modifications. This included restoring a large part of the left bank of the Rhineland and the duchy of Westphalia to Prussia, which thus became an increasingly German power, while having to abandon most of its Polish territories to Russia and becoming the guardian of western Germany against France. Metternich created the German Confederation composed of thirty-nine states, which the German state rulers accepted without deliberating its constitution, of different sizes, strength and system of government, that was imposed by the Congress of Vienna. The purpose of this settlement was to establish an organisation of separate states that would combine the preservation of their individual sovereignty, with guarantees for external and internal peace for the Confederation as a whole, under the influence of providing security against past dangers, rather than anticipating containing the evolution of future developments motivated by the principles of the French revolution, consisting primarily of fraternity, liberty and equality became interpreted as the ideals of nationalism, liberalism and socialism.
Each state receiving its own separate assembly at Frankfurt-am-Main, under the presidency of Austria, without election or rotation. The imperial independent princes retained their noble status and the feudal rights of the ancient nobility in general were maintained, with separate administrations for four free cities. A federal diet was formed for the Confederation, which did not have much power since individual states retained their independence, although they were unable to leave this confederation. The presiding diet was effectively a congress of diplomatic representatives, rather than a parliament. There was not any federal executive to execute its decrees, which was a duty assumed by each of the member states, and nor was there any federal military force. Not any alteration in fundamental laws, institutions, individual rights, or religious affairs could be made other than by a unanimous vote, which gave each state a veto to block change. The individual states solely represented the ruling hereditary nobility, which did not directly represent the interests of their populations who were not in a position to voice their concerns regarding decision and policy making.
Austria always presided over the Diet with a total of seventeen votes, while Prussia, Saxony, Bavaria, Hanover and Württemberg had four votes each. The other smaller states had fewer votes, and cities had one vote out of a total of sixty-nine in the plenum of the sixty-nine representatives from each of the sovereign states. The Diet was supposed to frame fundamental laws with regard to external and internal affairs and military matters, although there was no German army, and instead separate armies of the individual states. Any decision was difficult to achieve, since an absolute majority was necessary in the ordinary assembly that proposed laws, and a two-thirds majority was needed to pass them in a general assembly. Hence, there were restrictions to bringing about a fundamental change in the existing laws, along with the fact that the Austrian president could cast a deciding vote in the event of a tie. However, this arrangement did not anticipate the evolution of the German states in the future – representing the growing interests of the German states’ populations for unity and liberalism to complete the reforms that had begun during the Napoleonic occupation. As each state was left independent in its current form, it was apparent that it could lose any little power it could exercise, and therefore did not satisfy popular demands for a form of union more suitable for the demands for emerging demands for liberal ideas and federalism as a new system of government. This Diet merely functioned as a control mechanism for Austria under Metternich to maintain reactionary interests, rather than interpreting German, Austrian or European interests in including educated middle classes in participating in political life.
The Napoleonic period proved how the defunct Holy Roman Empire completely failed to maintain the security and integrity of the German states against foreign aggression, as well as precluding internal conflict, and entering into alliances with foreign powers that were detrimental to their common interests. The composition of the new German Confederation implied the existence of common German interests to be defended, and contribute to maintaining peace in Europe as a whole. The princes repressed the nationalist movement almost everywhere within the German states after 1815, since national unity would require a reform of the traditional monarchic states, by which the princes would have to cede some rights to a central authority to establish a constitutional form of government. Nationalists voiced liberal demands for constitutions and parliamentary government on the English model in a power sharing arrangement, which Hardenburg first introduced in a draft constitution for Prussia on 27 October 1810 that included provisions for a leading state council and the office of a chancellor maintaining supervision over the state ministers, while the monarch would be the head of state functioning as the chairman of the state council, which Frederick William III accepted on 24 November 1808. In practice, the office of chancellor remained in place during Hardenburg’s term of office, and a state council was only instituted in 1817 at the national level of jurisdiction, whereas representative government was introduced in municipal administrations in which city populations were granted the rights of citizenship, rather than being divided into classes and guilds, and were governed under elected representatives forming municipal councils. Economic restrictions that interfered with free trade were removed in 1808, and a new taxation system was established on 27 October 1810.
In spite of the benefits of rationalising governance in different state functions that marshalled the resources of a state through individual efforts, the aristocracy interpreted nationalism as relating to revolution, democratic rule, and popular unrest, which were all matters that the Congress of Vienna aimed to ban as a result of having caused alarm among conservative interests. On the other hand, the desire for national unity among the German states had become a growing movement, as few were satisfied with the weakness of the loose Confederation that left each state practically independent, in contrast to the power and fame of the Holy Roman Empire, and therefore wished for some form of union that would be suited for the contemporary demands. In spite of the potential inspiration of a common opposition to Napoleonic France, these states had not been able to achieve political unity, and any advocates for a unified German state at the Congress of Vienna were thwarted by the opposition of the Austrian chancellor, Prince Metternich, who believed Austrian influence could be more securely maintained in the German states if they were bound in a loose confederation.
The 1815 confederation act advised for constitutions to be set up in the various German states in exchange for the populations’ sacrifices to overthrow Napoleon’s despotic rule, but these wishes were dismissed by state rulers. Constitutions with limited rights for representative bodies, without responsible government, were granted initially in Saxe-Weimar in 1816, followed by in Baden and in Bavaria in 1818, in Württemberg and Hesse-Darmstadt in 1819, among other small states between 1815 and 1830 as a matter of practical political considerations to consolidate local dominions by marshalling public support for state rulers among more articulate citizens, giving them a positive interest in preserving those states. However, there very little change in actual practice throughout the German states. The constitutions of the duchy of Nassau and the grand duchy of Saxe-Weimar remained based on the former estates with certain modifications. The rulers of Brunswick and Hesse-Kassel continued functioning in a tyrannical manner. The constitutions in Württemberg, Bavaria, Baden and Hesse-Darmstadt were far more advanced by being advanced on the French Charter of 1814, which granted the fundamental rights of a free press, freedom of association, religious toleration, and equality before the law. The elected lower houses had the right to approve and reject legislation, but the nominated upper houses invariably dominated by the aristocracy reduced the influences of the lower ones that could not initiate legislation, had limited budgetary control, and were elected on a highly restricted franchise. Prussia and Austria withheld promulgating constitutions, and the governments of the smaller states were inclined to rule autocratically in spite of constitutional guarantees.
King Frederick William III had pledged on 22 May 1815 to grant a representative constitution based on restoring the individual provincial estates, along with their privileges and the creation of a representative parliament to represent the interests of the state as a whole. However, a date was not fixed for establishing Prussia as a constitutional state with an assembly representing the estates of the kingdom, which was postponed indefinitely. Prussian governmental administration was organised on the lines of military and feudal traditions under the authority of a central monarchy, consisting of eight provinces with local estates and decentralised local estates that were governed by a central executive. In practice, landowners remained in control of the regional populations, legislation was enacted in the form of royal ordinances, without any local or national control over taxation and expenditures. The civil service was responsible solely to the monarchy, and thereby served as its executive instrument, while the army and the administration was controlled by the nobility. Frederick William appointed a constitutional commission on 7 July 1817. Hardenburg opened this commission by stating that the old landed estates had imposed limits on the state administrative apparatus, which could be granted a constitution as the monarchy graciously allowed for a reduction of its influence by allowing the presence of a representative assembly to discuss matters relating to the welfare of the state in the interest of maintaining state unity, while also claiming that the king’s ministers, von Alvenstein, von Boyen, and von Klewitz had been dispatched into the provinces to determine clear and detailed information about local interests, and allegedly found that the majority of the population did not demand a representative assembly while stating that the present administration was already satisfactory, and were more concerned with the reorganisation of their economic conditions than political matters.
There were remaining popular liberal demands for representative government among the unprivileged segments of the population that would express their own separate sentiments for the future of the German states. Prior to the wars of liberation from French occupation. An underlying spirit of nationalist aspirations was becoming apparent among the populations of the German states that was first led by students who founded an association, Burschenschaft, on 12 June 1815 in Jena, representing fraternal solidarity among students being motivated by expressing liberal ideals with a vision of a democratic and free national community. The first union of Burschenschaften organised a united demonstration of patriotic sentiment at a festival at the Wartburg in Eisenach on 18 October 1817, on the occasion of the 300th celebration of the Reformation and on the anniversary of the Battle of Leipzig of 1813 in a collective expression of patriotic enthusiasm, which caused a high degree of alarm among reactionaries, although they lacked a uniform political programme.
Several other Burschenschaft branches were founded thereafter on the principle, as was declared in its statutes in Jena in October 1818 “on the relation of German youths with the approaching unity of the German people” at the formation of the General German Students’ Association (Allgemeine Deutsche Burschenschaft) by representatives from fourteen universities. These nationalist student fraternities theoretically constituted the leading movement for constitutional reform. Like other nationalist writers of this time, such as Friedrich Klopstock and Ernst Arndt, Friedrich Ludwig Jahn had founded the first gymnastic society, the Turnverein, in Berlin to train young men for war against France. This notion of training nationalist fighters was followed by Friedrich Friesen, who maintained covert nationalist agitation under the guise of these organisations. Metternich was appalled by the reports of the Wartburg Festival, and considered these Burschenschaften as a serious threat that had to be suppressed, regardless of not having composed a tangible threat to public order in actual practice, and called for universities to be closely monitored for suspected subversive activity. Frederick William III likewise began believing these nationalist sentiments among German youth posed a potential danger to the state.
An additional underlying element among nationalist aspirations was their division between adherence to the competing interests of Austria and Prussia as the largest states in the German Confederation, while the Bundestag, or federal parliament, in Frankfurt-am-Main did not express any intention of reinforcing ties between the separate German states. Whereas Austria with its emperor based in Ostmark emerged from the 1815 settlement being less German, in terms of language and cultural affiliations, in terms of the character of the overall separate populations, and therefore was not suited to lead a revival of German nationalism, Prussia had already initially strengthened its claims to German leadership through its new territorial acquisitions. The easternmost parts of its Polish territories to Russia had been compensated by securing the German territories of the Rhineland and Westphalia that were rich in mineral resources, and would later prove valuable for state industrialisation. However, Prussia’s western territories remained separated from the centre of Prussia in the east, which spurred the impetus to seek their economic integration, which would take place during the course of cultivating the revival of German nationalism among thirty-nine separate sovereign states whose rulers were concerned about preserving their independence and privileges. These privileged segments of society would forcibly impose their claims to retain their interests against those opposed to them.
Karl Sand, a mentally unbalanced theology student and Buschenschaft member murdered August Ferdinand Friedrich von Kotzebue in March 1819, a former Russian state counselor and reactionary conservative dramatist who was especially detested by students for his anti-liberal writings that ridiculed the unity movement. This incident was considered the product of the students at Giessen who included preaching about murder as a means of attaining political results, rather than the crime of a single individual, although the actual number of these Unbedingten, students who urged the destruction of all moral and political institutions, was very small. Frederick William III was particular anxious during these early days of cultivating parliamentary democracy, and ordered strict sanctions against this crime, as well as appointed a commission to investigate university conditions while announcing suspending plans for institutional constitutional reform for Prussia. Metternich used this incident as an ideal pretext to stage a political reaction to supposedly maintain the existence of all German governments by stifling all constitutional ideas in the German states, which he feared would likewise affect the Austrian states, and therefore introduced repressive measures to counter them.
Metternich convened a meeting of the heads of the major German states at Carlsbad in August 1819, who agreed on taking measures designed to put an end to revolutionary agitation in all of the German states. Liberalism was to be suppressed through issuing the Carlsbad decrees in September 1819 to impose despotic controls over liberal propaganda calling for unity in the German states: universities, schools, and the press were subjected to close supervision and censorship. The Burschenschaften patriotic student societies were dissolved, and the universities were placed under close police surveillance, with any professor found expressing views that were deemed to threaten state institutions or the public order was to be dismissed. A central investigation committee of jurists was set up in Mainz to investigate revolutionary activities and report them to the Bundestag, which was forced to accept these resolutions on 20 September 1819. The German Confederation’s primary function virtually became suppressing any radical dissent, but establishing separate German police states was only partially successful. The implementation of the Carlsbad Decrees varied in severity in different states, but they were rigorously enforced in Austria and Prussia. King Frederick William III announced their promulgation in Prussia on October 18, and simultaneously imposed censorship on newspapers and periodicals for five years. The commission of inquiry into the universities merely identified 107 cases of subversive individuals during the span of eight years of its operation. However, the Carlsbad Decrees succeeded in stymying political development in the German states by precluding conceding any new constitutions. Although Frederick William III had rashly promised a constitution for Prussia in 1815, he did not have any intention to fulfill this pledge. A further promise was made in 1820 that the state debt should not be increased without the provincial estates of the kingdom. In practice, the increased efficiency of the Prussian administration in a largely agrarian state did not require borrowing funds, while the king and his ministers ruled despotically in conjunction with the eight provincial governors from 1823 that were to meet once every three years and only possessed advisory powers. These estates were dominated by representatives of the landed aristocracy, and thereby made them unlikely to introduced progressive ideas. They were thus reduced to serving ceremonial purposes as platforms for public speaking that lacked financial decision-making power over the central monarchical authority until they could be called upon for this purpose of raising state revenues, while renewing the alliance between the monarchy and the aristocracy that would maintain opposition against the social and political aspirations of the population.
Metternich considered his ambitions to suppress national and liberal ideas through strict police regulations fulfilled, along with Austria taking precedence over the German states by taking decisive influence over them, but the underlying demand for unity nevertheless continued becoming stronger. The relative peaceful political conditions were then upset by the revolutions in France and Poland in 1830. A subsequent revolution in Brunswick in September led to the duke who had engaged in eccentric violence to flee, and the new ruler later granted a constitution in 1832, while other constitutions were granted in Hesse-Kassel, Saxony and Hanover, which resembled those already in place in southern Germany. Further unrest was partly stimulated by the Hambach Festival political demonstration of May 1832 in the Bavarian Palatinate, the first popular nationalist assembly since 1817, organised by the “Press and Fatherland Association,” where between 20,000 and 30,000 students, artisan and peasants, along with nationalist representatives from France and Poland, who attended spoke for the rule of law, including protecting individual rights, and national unity as the permanence of the restoration values began to falter. Speeches called for a democratic “legal revolution” that were more far-reaching than liberal constitutional reform to guarantee personal freedoms, and made bold statements in favour of a union of the free states of Germany, and even of a confederated republican Europe, as well as women’s emancipation. This was met with further political repression from the state authorities. The German princes were thoroughly alarmed by the radicalism of the Hambach Festival, which was one of the largest political events of the time, led to Metternich securing agreement in the Diet to enacting the Six Articles in June 1832, which greatly extended the control of the Federal Diet over the internal affairs of the German states and pledged the state rulers to not make any concessions to liberal demands, forbade political associations and popular meetings, and condemned “revolutionary agitation” in the popular press. After a failed attempt at revolution in Frankfurt in May 1833, the Diet then set up a new central commission to supervise constitutions in the member states. Metternich succeeded in passing further repressive measures in 1834 that included intensifying press censorship, placing new controls on teachers and students at universities, estates were ordered to accept decisions of the Diet without question and an arbitration tribunal was to be established to adjudicate all disputes arising out of the existing constitutions. However, the new measures did nothing to strengthen either the Diet or the states in respect of existing constitutions. Any reconstruction of the federal constitution of 1815 entailing altering the composition or powers of the German Confederation would influence the European state system as a whole, which thus made the future organization of the German states an international problem. The Vienna settlement asserted the legitimacy and rights of the separate states in the interest of providing stability, which proved to be short-lived, as dismissing the demands of liberals and nationalists that conflicted with conservative restoration could not be maintained permanently.
Talking chips discussion groups.
1. Set up groups and provide poker chips to each group.
2. Each student turns in a chip after presenting an element of contributing a single point concerning different tensions that would lead to the outbreak of the First World War.
3. Wrap up as a class.
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