The future political organisation of Prussia and the separate German states hereafter depended on the strength, unity and rapidity of the liberal elements in the Prussian National Assembly and in the German National Assembly in Frankfurt, which underwent separate developments as their representatives engaged in prolonged constitutional discussions. The nationalist elements in the National Assembly considered the German states to be exposed in a degraded situation, since the German populations in separate states did not have the protection of a national government with its own power. and being able to determine its interests as a whole, in contrast to other European states. The unpopular Diet of the German Confederation had approved the elections of its representatives to provide it with a vestige of legality, and the Diet then dissolved itself after the Assembly met. Meanwhile, the popular widespread discontent in the German states and in the Hapsburg empire challenged Austria’s supremacy in the German states. Contemporary claims for determining the future of statehood thereby took precedence, and could no longer be stemmed by force. However, their debates revealed four different areas of weakness that prevented an agreement on how to unite the German states.
There was first the definition of frontiers. All delegates agreed that the German states had to be united, but there were great difficulties to reach an agreement on the character of the union. A vociferous party demanded establishing a republic, as well as any form of highly centralized state, but there were too many vested interests were involved, especially those of the ruling princes. Some sort of federal empire seemed to be indicated, in which the component parts would retain local autonomy. Moderate and anti-Prussian groups advocated, including the Hapsburg monarchy apart from Hungary. In contrast, there was a “kleindeutsch” argument for excluding the non-German Hapsburg provinces was favoured by radical nationalists, which would give Prussia the paramount influence. The former Confederation Diet was declared abolished on 28 June, a Provisional Central Government was appointed, and the Archduke Johann of Austria was elected “Vicar-General of the Empire,” which was accepted by all of the states, apart from Austria and Prussia. It was finally agreed by 28 October that the latter should be the case, while the Hapsburg monarchy was beset with internal difficulties and was in any position to respond.
There were also divisions over the form of the constitution that would supersede the concept of the monarch ruling by divine right. A draft document was produced in October 1848, and a bill of fundamental rights was agreed on. A system of representative and responsible state governments with a federal government responsible to a nationally elected legislature were proposed. An upper house would represent state interests, and the head of state could not veto decisions. Besides, there was a lack of absence of lower-class support. Although the Assembly advocated the abolition of feudal privileges, it supported compensation to uphold respect for property rights, and in general the Assembly could not attract the popular support.
In addition, there was also the inability to combine liberalism and nationalism, supporting Prussian and Austrian interests in the face of opposition from subject peoples, including the Czechs and Italians in the territories of the Hapsburg monarchy, and the Poles in Prussian Posen, while also supporting the fighting against Denmark to incorporate the duchies Schleswig and Holstein that belonged to the kingdom of Denmark. The Danish annexation of the Duchy of Schleswig on 21 March 1848 provided a pretext for generating enthusiasm for national unity on the strength of demands for Germans to be “freed from denationalisation by Danish tyranny,” following Holstein as a member of the German Confederation being within its jurisdiction.
These two duchies were cooperatively governed by German authorities and the kingdom of Denmark in a “personal union,” which was on the verge of becoming extinct on the basis of legal succession that caused nationalist conflicts. Determining the succession of their future governance led to German nationalists hoping this would cease Danish attempts to assimilate these German territories, which never had the equal status of the other Danish provinces, and were governed as conquered territory. They were to come under the rule of a male descendant, the duke of Augustenburg, while the Danish kingdom would remain under the sovereignty of the king’s daughter according to the Salic law that forbade females to inherit, which did not apply to Denmark, but applied to Schleswig-Holstein. Nevertheless, King Christian VIII had issued an open letter in 1846, which dismissed Schleswig’s indissoluble connection with Holstein by decreeing the complete annexation of Schleswig and the greater part of Holstein by Denmark. When Frederick VII succeeded to the Danish throne in January 1848, he promulgated a new constitution on 28 January that stated that Schleswig and Holstein would be incorporated into the Danish monarchy for taxation and legislation purposes, and Holstein would be detached from the German Confederation.
German nationalists claimed that Schleswig was indisputably German while being closely associated with Holstein, in addition to the presence of German-speakers therein, and ought to be a member of the Confederation. In contrast, Danish nationalists maintained that Schleswig was Danish, and had to become an integral part of the Danish nation. The March 1848 revolution in Copenhagen led to the inclusion of prominent Danish nationalists, known as “Eider Danes” in the national government who demanded the creation of a more firmly defined Danish nation, and the integration of Schleswig to be maintained in the national constitution, while the Danish king would also retain control over Holstein and Lauenburg. They considered the Eider River that separated Schleswig from Holstein, a member of the German Confederation to constitute the historical natural boundary between Denmark and the German states, as well as being militarily necessary for national defence, although southern Schleswig was wholly German. The Danish monarchy then sought to limit their incorporation plans for Schleswig and pledged to promulgate a new constitution for Holstein as a member of the German Confederation. In contrast, the Schleswig-Holstein residents maintained that the duchies were to permanently remain as a single entity according to historical custom since the Treaty of Ribe in 1460, which specified that the two duchies could not be separated, and that their joint connection with Denmark would end in the event that the male line of the Danish royal family would expire. They therefore demanded their entire integration into the German Confederation.
When the Danish army occupied Schleswig-Holstein as the king capitulated to the demands of Danish nationalists, Germans in Schleswig-Holstein reacted to the Danish nationalists by immediately setting up a provisional government in Kiel to defend the duchies, and appealed to the Confederation for assistance to protect their interests in protest against the new Danish king. The Confederation Diet recognised the Kiel government and requested Prussia for intervention assistance on 28 March. The Vorparlament in Frankfurt commissioned Frederick William IV under the influence of the Confederation Federal Diet to send Prussian troops on its behalf to “liberate” their fellow Germans. Frederick William IV of Prussia provided his recognition for both the independence and indivisibility of the duchies, and the principle of the next heir in the male line of succession, Duke Christian August von Augustenburg.
Prussian and federal forces composed of Saxons and Hanoverians led by the Prussian General Wrangel entered Holstein on 4 April, and were joined by the local Schleswig-Holstein army, which marked the outbreak of the First Schleswig War. They drove the Danes out of the duchies and entered Jutland in April and May, pushing as far as Fredericia on 2 May. Prussia then succumbed to pressure from Britain and Russia, due to their concerns about the extension of German power controlling the entrance to the Baltic Sea. The Prussian authorities succumbed to the international pressure rather than face the risk of fighting in a European war in addition to facing the effects of the Danish fleet using its naval supremacy to blockade Prussian ports, and concluded the Malmö armistice on 26 August, leading to the evacuation of the Prussian and German troops, while a new government was established with Danish participation. Fighting later resumed on 13 April 1849.
While German nationalists considered this withdrawal to be a Prussian betrayal of the national cause of German unification that had been sanctioned by the Confederation Diet, the effectively powerless Frankfurt Assembly continued deliberations until 28 March 1849 when it adopted a liberal constitution for a united German constitutional monarchy to be formed from combining the German states that would exclude Austria. Frederick William IV was elected the hereditary emperor of Germany by 290 votes, with 248 abstentions, and opposition from Bavaria, Württemberg, Saxony, Hannover and Austria. The delegates spent a great deal of time discussing the primary question of the relation of Austria to German states, which they wished to form a part of a unified Germany. However, the Austrian government maintained that the Hapsburg empire as a whole to be admitted into the confederation. This led to a powerful party urging shutting out Austria from a future German political union altogether due to its vast non-German territories. This proposal was opposed by the Austrian government, which demanded in March 1849 that the empire should form part of the new confederation, and also the Catholic states that looked to Austria for guidance.
The future of this union therefore depended on the support of Prussia to take a leading role in establishing a national central authority. This constitution called for an emperor with a suspensive veto and a two-house parliament. Twenty-eight states were willing to accept this constitution, if this veto were changed to an absolute veto, open elections were substituted for secret elections, and increased power was given to the upper chamber, thus mainly representing the conservative interests. However, the changes could not be carried out, since several German states, including Saxony, Hanover, Württemberg and Bavaria repudiated this new constitution that the National Assembly had devised.
The Frankfurt parliament voted in favour of offering to create a constitutional monarchy from among the German states, led by Prussia, in March 1849, and invited the king of Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm IV, to become the emperor of Germany, and displacing the influence of Austria. A deputation of thirty-two members representing all of the German states, excluding Austria. led by Eduart Simson, the president of the Frankfurt parliament, and Heinrich von Gagern were appointed to offer the crown of “constitutional emperor” to king Frederick William IV on 3 April. The Prussian ministers and army general staff refused to have any connection with a unified Germany, with prejudice to renewing the conservative partnership with Austria where the counterrevolution was likewise completed by the end of 1848. Friedrich William thus rejected a crown offered to him by commoners, rather than aristocratic rulers, or “from the gutter” as he said privately, which he declared accepting would reduce his status to being a servant of a democratic revolution while being opposed to the liberal notion of parliamentary approval for becoming the emperor of Germany. In addition, accepting this title would entail facing conflict with Austria, which Friedrich William sought to avoid, as well as repudiating his personal belief in the divine right of monarchical rule. Accepting this offer to lead a new German empire could only be acceptable in his view, if it were offered from the German state princes, rather than elected representatives of the state populations.
Although he would accept the precondition of having precedence over the German princes, it had not been offered by these princes who would acknowledge his supremacy, rather than on the basis of a popular assembly that would introduce universal suffrage in this constitution that would entail surrendering his power that he had inherited from his ancestors, in exchange for receiving the approval of sovereignty that would be held in fief from the German population that could be revoked according to their popular will. This would not give him sufficient power to fulfill the duties of an emperor, since this constitution would not be ratified by the separate German states. Whatever powers could be conferred to a new central authority would necessarily entail undermining the powers of the completely sovereign princes of the individual states, and the power to compel them to abandon these rights to accept a new constitution were lacking, while the king of Prussia would not use military force for this purpose. The proposed constitution would therefore have to be drastically amended to fulfill these requirements.
William IV’s rejection of the offer for Prussia to lead the German states dealt a blow to the liberal revolution from which it never recovered. The Austrian government reacted to this deputation to Prussia by immediately withdrawing its members from the National Assembly on 5 April 1849. The Austrians had quelled the rebellion in the Italian provinces and was preoccupied with the Hungarian rebellion during that time. It could have been dangerous for the king of Prussia to have accepted a title that would have brought him into direct conflict with the Emperor of Austria, which could lead to open warfare, as well as with most of the smaller German princes, while also putting him in the position of respecting the will of the representatives of the people in the German states, rather than respecting the will of those state sovereigns. There was also the possibility of opposition to German unification from the Russian authorities who opposed the spread of nationalism, and were likewise opposed, as well as being totally out of sympathy with the goals of the revolution, while remaining faithful to Austrian leadership of the German states. In addition, he personally preferred to settle for the role of German king, while allowing for the Austrian emperor to become the hereditary head of the German nation, and declined to consider the expulsion of Austria from the empire altogether. This refusal was also immediately followed by popular outbreaks Prussian troops likewise quelled isolated outbursts against the counterrevolutionary reactions in Dresden, the Bavarian Palatinate, Hesse-Kassel and Baden. A rump parliament of intransigent radicals shifted to Stuttgart where they set up a five-member imperial regency presiding over approximately hundred remaining representatives, which was dispersed by a contingent of the Württemberg army on 18 June. The national movement for unity for unity that had merely experienced a purely moral authority from below the leading authorities possessing civil administrations and military forces thus broke down, and was altogether suppressed. Fighting continued during June and July in the final acts of armed resistance in Rastatt until 23 July.
Whereas the promulgation of a constitution in Prussia from above was to pacify liberal demands, nationalist demands were to be addressed through formulating a plan for unifying the German states under Prussian leadership with prejudice to Austrian foreign policy. Although Frederick William IV had repudiated the Frankfurt National Assembly’s request from moderate bourgeois revolutionary elements to accept becoming the monarch of the German states, he forwarded a substitute plan. The Prussian adviser to the monarchy Joseph Maria von Radowitz, who was appointed Prussian minister-president on 25 April 1848, proposed a different form of national union of Germany and Prussia from above, by effecting a union with other German states under Prussian leadership in an alliance with Austria. He invited the German princes to discuss the formulation of a German constitution, excluding Austria, on 28 April, which shifted the precedent set by the Frankfurt parliament for national political organization reform, which would include the Prussian king’s absolute veto on legislation, and a college of princes to share power with a Reichstag that would be elected on a three class franchise, as was later introduced in the Prussian constitution in December 1850, rather than universal male suffrage. Heinrich von Gagern remaining hoping for a compromise solution, which proved to be impossible in the face of opposition from both Frederick William IV and the majority of the Frankfurt parliament that started gradually dissolving. Prussia ordered its representatives to withdraw from the Frankfurt parliament on 14 May. Saxony also withdrew their delegates from the National Assembly in May, which was followed by a several of the most active constitutionalists, leaving only the radical left representatives by the end of May. Only radical delegates remained striving for constitutional reform by implementing a revolutionary programme in Germany. They proclaimed that the German constitution was in force, called for radical revolutions in the German states, and decreed holding elections for a German parliament on 15 July that never took place.
The revolution in Prussia failed to consolidate the gains of the 1848 revolution. The landed aristocracy reasserted itself in the army, the civil administration, and restored its police powers. Press censorship was restored, schools were placed under church control, local government was restricted, and the monarchy recovered its former powers. The Prussian National Assembly published a draft constitution on 26 July 1848, which but was unacceptable to both conservatives and socialists in its moderate liberal form. Military personnel pressed Frederick William IV in September to destroy the Prussian constitution, and appointing Field Marshal Friedrich von Wrangel as the commander-in-chief of the general staff was tantamount to act upon this intention. Frederick William appointed an openly reactionary ministry in November and openly broke with the Prussian parliament, beginning with the appointment of General Count Brandenburg on 2 November as prime minister, which was effectively a coup against liberal elements. The minister of the interior, Otto Theodor von Manteuffel, ordered parliament to be prorogued and declared martial law, with a suspension of political rights on 8 November. National Assembly meetings were hereafter suspended until 27 November, prior to reconvening in Brandenburg. When social democratic representatives refused to disperse, troops under General Wrangel entered troops into Berlin on 10 November.
The National Assembly and the citizens’ militia was disbanded, calls to withhold taxes proved singularly unsuccessful, and the force of reaction was completed with the restoration of the authority of the Prussian army and the monarchical prerogative. Although Frederick William IV intended to reverse the political concessions that had been made from 18 March, the new minister-president Count Friedrich Wilhelm Brandenburg persuaded induced him to promulgate a constitution as a pragmatic matter to ease tensions and preclude renewed domestic disorders and restore national unity at a time when he anticipated Prussia would be in conflict with Austria over taking a prevailing international position regarding the German states. The new constitution, based on the Belgian constitution of 1831, was promulgated on 5 December 1848, and went into force on 31 January 1850. Although Prussia hereafter became a constitutional monarchy, it was largely devoid of liberal reforms by repudiating all forms of popular sovereignty while maintaining monarchical authority with loosely defined and sharply delineated powers of the legislature. The monarchy retained an absolute veto over all legislation, the power to impose martial law, and the virtually unlimited authority of issuing emergency decrees.
This Prussian constitution that had initially provided for an upper house elected by provincial and district governments, and guaranteed universal suffrage elections for the lower house became singularly unequal with a plutocratic three class system in May 1849. Eligible voters were divided into the amounts of taxes, high, medium, and low, they paid as the basis for elections to the next Landtag, or lower house assemblyEach of these classes exercised an equal franchise. 4.7 percent of voters chose one third of the electors, whereas the next third were elected by 12.6 percent of eligible voters, and the remaining third by 82.7 percent. The elected Herrenhaus (upper house) was later solely composed of the landowning aristocracy in 1854. The army was excluded from parliamentary control, as it was directly responsible to the monarch, who had the power of veto and maintained the right to rule by decree. Prussia thus became a police state during the forthcoming years of reaction, which was devoid of a free press and liberal leaning civil servants were dismissed under the reactionary Otto von Manteuffel as minister-president. Manteuffel also played an important role in improving state administration by bolstering its economy and improving local conditions for industrialisation, as well as alleviating tensions between the monarchy and the population by loosening controls on the press in the interest of alleviating confrontations between the monarchy and the parliament, and improving working class conditions until his dismissal in October 1858. The budgetary powers of the lower house were maintained in the constitution amended in 1850 since the king’s advisers required the need for a constitutional façade to secure loans to preclude state bankruptcy.
The Prussian monarchy also attempted to unite the German states on the basis of a new confederation under its leadership, at a time when Austria was stymying revolts against Hapsburg rule in Hungary. Agreements were reached between Prussia, Saxony and Hanover to create an Alliance of the Three Kings on 26 May 1850 to create a federal German state, which was more conservative than the Frankfurt constitutional proposals, which was subsequently approved by most of the other German states during the following weeks, whereas Bavaria remained opposed to excluding Austria and Württemberg chose not align itself with a union dominated by Prussia. As Saxony and Hanover had made their agreement contingent on the agreement of all of the other German states, they later withdrew their support. The Prussian authorities nevertheless moved forward with a strictly limited suffrage election in January 1850 for a parliament that met in Erfurt in March, and then passed a constitution on 20 April. However, this new body then closed without establishing the government apparatus that would implement its functions. Hanover and Saxony did not approve of establishing what was to be a German Union that did not include all of the German states, and therefore did not send representatives. Saxony withdrew from the alliance altogether. In addition, the potential probability of success of this national constitutional reform was further undermined by waning support. After Saxony and Hannover had initially joined the Prussian initiative to create a German Confederation excluding Austria, to be formulated at Gotha in a meeting in Berlin, the smaller states then joined, while Saxony and Hannover then withdrew, and allied themselves with Bavaria and Württemberg to form the Alliance of Four Kings in February. Austria then declared on 1 September 1850 the former Confederation Diet to be restored, with twelve states immediately complying.
The Austrian prime minister, Prince Felix zu Schwarzenburg, who had successfully completed the counterrevolution in the Hapsburg dominions in Hungary and Italy, reacted by taking resolute actions to restore Austrian hegemony in the German states. He forwarded a counter-proposal for a greater German union in which Prussia would be subordinate to Austria, and sponsored a congress of the princes of the union in Berlin on 10 May 1850 to restore the German Confederation in Frankfurt, with the support of Bavaria and Württemberg, which was then further supported by Hanover, Saxony, Hesse-Kassel and Hesse-Darmstadt, and various other minor states. Radowitz refused to allow Prussia to participate in this congress. This was a direct challenge to Prussia in the form of a diplomatic attack, with the underlying question of whether the divergence over the future organisation of the German states could lead to open conflict, while Schwarzenburg had the assurance of the Russian tsar that he was opposed to Prussian policy in both Denmark and German affairs. While Prussia remained attempting to preserve the Erfurt Union as a defensive association of German princes under Prussia’s protection to counter Austrian supremacy, Baden and seven other German states abandoned their membership following Schwarzenburg’s declaration to restore the former German Confederation, rather than accept subordination to Prussia, and action was taken to maintain Prussia’s influence by strengthening the frontier garrisons bordering Saxony and in Silesia.
Internal turmoil involving the diet of Hesse-Kassel headed by an ultraconservative ministry under Count Ludwig Hassenpflug in 1849 who was universally mistrusted by the local population for imposing arbitrary measures in terms of a series of unconstitutional and reactionary measures that were proposed by the government, regarding voting for taxation without divulging the details of revenue and expenditure, led to open conflict between Prussia and Austria. The judiciary, most of the civil service, and the officer corps opposed these actions and expelled him from the state, and appealed to the Confederation for assistance on 21 September. Austria and Bavaria offered to dispatch troops to assist both governments, whereas Prussia considered these actions to be a direct threat to its western provinces, and mobilised its army in the interest of having the Elector of Hesse-Kassel to form a ministry that would be acceptable to his subjects. Schwarzenburg maintained support for the Elector, and restoring Hassenpflug to power. Frederick William IV was concerned about antagonising Austria. Rather than conciliating Prussia with a compromise solution during a conference in Warsaw, the Russian tsar Nicholas I imposed pressure for Prussia to comply with Austria’s demands recall Hassenpflug, as well as to restore the German Confederation in Frankfurt, just as Russian support was provided for the suppression of revolutionary elements in Hungary in 1849, which had led to open conflict.
The Elector of Hesse-Kassel called on the reconstituted Confederation Diet in Frankfurt to implement a federal execution in his state. Weeks of tension followed with Prussian and Bavarian troops in support of the Confederation occupying separate parts of Hesse-Kassel, where the state was crossed by three military roads between Berlin and Cologne that Prussia alone had the right to use, which made war appear imminent. Prussia was not prepared to allow federal troops to enter the electorate, and the Erfurt Union gave its consent in early October to support Prussia in the event of an outbreak of hostilities. Austria concluded an alliance with Bavaria and Württemberg on 11 October, which agreed to occupy the electorate in the event of Prussian resistance, which was further reinforced on 16 October by the Confederation that likewise agreed to dispatch troops for this purpose, which the unreformed Prussian army would be unable to oppose.
Frederick William IV dismissed Radowitz, and dispatched Otto von Manteuffel, the new minister-president, to Olmütz on 28 November 1850, expecting Austria to withdraw its troops. Although the Prussian government had mobilised its troops, its political leaders were aware of the Russian tsar supporting Austria in the event of an outbreak of war that would incite renewed revolutionary agitation and endanger the continued existence of the Prussian monarchy, in the event of Prussia waging war against both Austria and Russia. The Prussians capitulated on 29 November by signing a treaty with Austria at Olmütz, in which they agreed to allow federal execution to establish law and order in Holstein and Electoral Hesse, disband the Erfurt Union, the Schleswig-Holstein issue was to be resolved jointly by Austria and Prussia following withdrawing troops from north of the Eider River, and accept the restoration of the German Confederation. The former Confederation Diet was restored on 15 May 1851, with vague pledges that its constitution would be amended, with its sessions resuming on 12 June 1851.
Further incidents precipitated ongoing tensions between Prussia and Austria. Schwarzenburg encouraged the king of Denmark to request the restoration of the Holstein Diet in order to enable the Confederation to impose federal execution, using military force to restore monarchical authority, which Prussia opposed. Prussia’s influence was further undermined in Schleswig-Holstein, where the Danes renounced the Malmö armistice in February. The Danish government thus also required federal assistance against an intransigent and revolutionary local government in Holstein, leading to hostilities resuming between Danish and Confederation troops composed of Prussian, Saxon and Bavarian troops, as Frederick William IV remained more concerned with conciliating Austria and Russia than with German national unity. A peace treaty on 2 July 1850 that left these duchies in Danish control. Schleswig remained in Danish control, while Holstein no longer had support from the German Confederation army, which then led to a resumed Danish offensive until efforts petered out when a peace conference was convened in London in August 1850, in which France, England, Russia, Sweden, Denmark, Prussia and Austria drafted a peace treaty, while the German revolutionaries disbanded their self-proclaimed provisional government in January 1851. The subsequent London Protocol in May 1852 restored the prewar status quo, which favoured Russia’s demand for containing the spread of nationalism and constitutional government, as well as limiting Danish power in the Baltic Sea, while Britain and France were opposed to Prussia acquiring greater influence in the European balance of power. The great European powers, Austria, Prussia, Russia and Great Britain recognised the Danish monarchy and the right of the successor to claim possession of the duchies in a personal union with Denmark, with the Danish king retaining his title of the duke of Schleswig, while Holstein and Lauenburg would remain within the German Confederation, and were granted special rights of self-government through their provincial estates. Augustenburg was not called on to renounce his right to the succession, since the Danish government maintained this right had never existed, and the heir to the Danish throne, Prince Christian of Glücksborg, was nominated to be the successor of both Denmark and the duchies. However, neither the estates of Holstein and Schleswig nor the Frankfurt Confederation accepted the London Protocol, which led an incomplete conclusive settlement and offended the interests of Prussian nationalists.
Nationalist advances were likewise reversed in the German states. The German Confederation was re-established on 16 May 1851 under the forms prescribed by the federal acts of 1815 and 1820, and resumed its sessions on 30 May 1851, while the Dresden Conference from 23 December 1850 to 16 May 1851 failed to create a new federal organisation under Austria’s leadership. The delegates thereafter sought to withdraw the liberal achievements of 1848. The Fundamental Rights of the German People were declared null and void at the instigation of Austria and Prussia, the German princes that had readily conceded constitutional liberties in 1848 were restricted, and the emperor suspended the 1849 constitution. Apart from in Baden where a liberal regime remained in place, constitutional reforms were revoked, and many less liberal new constitutions were promulgated than those that were in effect before 1848. The 1831 constitution in Hesse-Kassel was abolished altogether. A new federal law in 1854 imposed severe restrictions on the freedom of the press and of assembly throughout the German states. Meanwhile, liberals remained committed to striving to establish parliamentary democracy in the interest of ending the predominating influence of the aristocracy and the military imposing absolutist tendencies over the government through a constitution as a guarantor force to maintain law and order and individual freedoms, while also stemming the influences of radical socialists, in view of the experiences of 1848 when it appeared that a revolution from below could descend into Jacobin anarchy.
While cooperation between Austria and Prussia ended in 1848, Otto von Bismarck as Prussia’s delegate to the restored Bundestag of the German Confederation in Frankfurt-am-Main from 1852 was determined to resist Schwarzenburg’s attempts to make the Hapsburg empire the prevailing authority in the Confederation. The Prussian dominated customs union (Zollverein) also served as a powerful counterweight to Austrian influences. Although the failed 1848 revolution was a drawback for the cause of national unification, demand resumed in the late 1850s as a consequence of initial industrial and economic development during an industrial boom from roughly 1850 to 1870.
The first-rate Prussian administration was successful at conducting financial life, and began imitating the British industrial system while bring the greatest coalfields in Europe in the Ruhr valley into production, which in turn led to the development of the local iron and steel industry, which made Prussia an industrial power, rather than solely an agrarian state, with coal production and exports reaching record levels every year, which overtook the industrial output of Austria from the 1850s, which was further facilitated by the creation of new road and rail networks that were constructed to promote trade. The industrial revolution in the German states during this time entered a decisive phase. New factories were built at a dramatic rate, along with soaring textiles and iron production, which facilitated constructing railroad connections with private capital that started connecting many distant regions, including connecting East and West Prussia, increasingly faster. The Prussian general staff also designed strategic railways with the consent of the state that would accelerate mobilisation and troop deployments. The economic advances profited from a high level of education, the result of an advanced school and university system, with Prussia having had the highest literacy rate in Europe and exemplary schools, partly as a consequence of the reforms in response to the Prussian defeat against Napoleon. Industrialization was accompanied by rapid population growth and urbanization, the expansion of the middle classes and of the industrial working class, which began to constitute independent organisations.
Although communist and workers’ associations were ruthlessly suppressed after 1848, liberals began organising workers’ educational associations in an effort to acquire their support in their opposition to the established autocratic interests. Political education efforts found popular resonance among workers, who would adhere to the ideas of Ferdinand Lasalle, the founder of German social democracy, who argued for the forces of labour to cooperate with the state authorities to alleviate economic and social ills, whereas Karl Marx argued for these labour forces to overthrow the state and seize the means of production altogether in a revolution from below. Lasalle was to become the president of the General German Workers’ Association (ADAV), which constituted the first independent national working class political organization, as well as the first modern political party in the German states, which was followed by the formation of several trade unions in the 1860s that staged a series of strikes, marking a radicalization of the working class. August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht later founded the Social Democratic Workers’ Party (SDAP) at a congress in Eisenach in 1869, in opposition to the ADAV, with a largely Marxist programme that appealed to radical workers and trade unionists.
Economic progress was considerably evident in Prussia, and less impressive in Austria. The Vienna peace settlement awarded Prussia areas that proved to be enormously precious for industrialization, including the Ruhr district, the Rhineland, and parts of Saxony that had rich coal deposits. Prussia started economically dominating many of the smaller German states, which adapted their economies to Prussia. Prussia also developed great interest in facilitating trade with other German states. This was to some extent a geographic issue since Prussia remained divided into two major regions: the large lands of traditional Prussia from central Germany to the borders of the Russian Poland, and the smaller, but economically very powerful, area of the Rhineland and Ruhr district in the west. Prussia had lower trade barriers to facilitate trade between its own unconnected parts, and with other German states located in between its territories through the customs union that had led to an inconspicuous economic unification of the German states in 1834.
Primary matters of concern in Prussia remained the question of unifying the German states, and instituting army reforms. Upon becoming regent in 1858, William, Crown Prince of Prussia, later crowned William I on 2 January 1862, was determined to make drastic changes to improve the army for the first time since the Napoleonic era. The Prussian population had risen from 11 to 18 million, while the size of the army remained the same, and therefore far smaller than that of Russia, France and Austria, while the Landwehr had proven to be unreliable in 1848, and had to be better integrated into the regular army. William believed compulsory military service was to be extended from two to three years to turn citizens into soldiers as loyal subjects of the kingdom, and make a clear distinction between civilian and military authorities, as well as instill professionalism into the army.
However, there was considerable disagreement over its social role. Count Albrecht Theodor von Roon, a bitter opponent of constitutional government, was appointed the Minister of War in December 1859 and proposed increasing the length of compulsory military service, while reducing the size and significance of the Landwehr that was to be led by regular, reserve or retired officers with civilian middle class connections who could have liberal sentiments, which would make it cease to exist as an independent force, and thereby reform the army into becoming a conservative stronghold. The Prussian army was also to be equipped with modern weapons. Weaknesses were exposed during Prussian mobilization during the outbreak of war in northern Italy in 1859, and the size of the army was greatly smaller than those of the Austrians and the French, as only twenty-five percent of those eligible for compulsory military conscription in view annual enlistments of the total population were annually as a cost savings measure. The annual intake of 40,000 recruits had remained the same, leaving 23,000 young males not being enlisted for military service. Recruits had hitherto served for three years, or two and half years in practice on financial grounds, followed by two years in front-line reserves, and then seven years with the first Landwehr levy, followed by seven years in the second levy, under the leadership of poorly-trained part-time officers. King William and Roon intended to create a genuinely professional army, proposing an annual intake of 63,000 to be trained for a full three years with the line regiments, and then five years in the line reserves when they would be subjected to rigorous training. There would then be eleven years of Landwehr service. This would double the size of a professional army from 50,000 to 110,000 with highly augmented reserves, which would entail expanding the officer corps and creating thirty-nine new infantry and ten cavalry regiments.
In contrast, the Progressive party liberals who had controlled the Landtag since 1858 criticised Roon’s bill. Although they were not opposed to enlarging the army size, they sharply increased expenditure on military funding that would likely increase taxation by twenty-five percent, and would therefore stymie the modernization of Prussia. They also considered the Landwehr to truly be a citizens’ army that could guarantee liberal freedoms as a territorial army with own units, and its own officers that were mostly not drawn from the nobility, in contrast to the army led by reactionary aristocrats. Liberals intended to reduce the period of service to two years, and make the Landwehr the core of the Prussian army, and expressed concern about how a three-year service would lead to a dangerous militarisation of civil society by strengthening the monarchy and the military, whereas Roon despised the Landwehr as a symbol of pernicious nationalism, and therefore planned to greatly reduce the significance of the Landwehr. In addition, the upper house of parliament expressed concern about instituting national defence against potential hostility from France and Austria.
A more significant underlying element was the liberals demanded to have a voice in military affairs, and subject the army to the constitution, and therefore they refused to give their consent to the proposed administrative reforms and the three-year term of service. The government responded by claiming the parliament did not have the authority to determine the army size and organisation, claiming that these matters were under the jurisdiction of the monarch’s power of command. The Prussian parliament approved the military expenditure in 1861 for a single year, presuming that Roon would postpone institute major army reforms. While ultraconservatives around the head of the military cabinet, Edwin von Manteuffel, looked forward to a coup d’etat to establish a military dictatorship and overthrowing the constitution, which the king endorsed in January 1862. Roon simply claimed the funding for military reforms and introduced reactionary changes, to which the Prussian parliament responded by refusing to approve further increased military expenditures.
While the government was faced with operating without an approved budget, Roon urged the ruthlessly unorthodox Bismarck to come to Berlin to take up the position of Prussian Minister-President, in view of having established a reputation in the German Confederation Diet since his election as a delegate to this body in 1847 for acting with ruthless audacity, and speaking forcefully for the authority of the Prussian monarchy. Friedrich Wilhelm IV then appointed him to serve as the Prussian ambassador to the German Confederation in 1851, and continually learned the strengths and weaknesses of Austria, and was convinced that the German states could be unified under Prussian preponderance by displacing Austrian influences. He had then served as the Prussian ambassador at St. Petersburg from 1859 and Paris in 1862, where he had strengthened Prussia’s position, as well as having had acquired an intimate knowledge of Russian and French foreign policies, and their probably future actions in a European crisis. Although he had initially opposed the unification of the German states, he came to believe that this was a necessary process to establish Prussia as a European power.
There remained the impasse between the Prussian state parliament and the monarchy. The problem of the Landtag having removed military expenditure from the budget shifted the military funding issue into a constitutional crisis, in which the acute question remained whether the monarchy or the Landtag would have the authority to authorise these expenditures, with the underlying declared intention of reducing the monarchy’s authority to a degree akin to the British government pattern, which the Prussian monarchy considered to be revolutionary, and could only be countered with counterrevolution. Wilhelm I thereby appointed Otto von Bismarck to office as the provisional Minister-President on 22 September 1862 to assert the monarchy’s authority, which was later officially ratified on 8 October. Bismarck accepted the necessity of national unification without Austria, and was determined to bring united Germany under the hegemony of the conservative, anti-liberal Prussian monarchy, whereas the Progressive delegates in the Landtag did not recognise the precedence of the importance foreign affairs of Prussia over internal ones.
The deadlock over decision making between the monarchy and the parliament led to the creation of a new Progressive party that called for major constitutional reforms, including demanding itemisation of the budget. The power of the Landtag to maintain control over the state budget constituted the only real source of political power that it possessed that could be applied to exert pressure over the monarchy by blocking governmental expenditures. These elected representatives rejected the three year military service period in March 1862 to prevent funds from being diverted for military purposes, to which the king responded by dissolving the Landtag. The subsequent May election led to a dramatic defeat for the conservatives, with the Progressives holding 133 seats, with only 11 for the conservatives and 47 for the national liberals. Their opposition was maintained on 23 September when the Landtag nullified the funding that that the government spent on army reorganisation by a vote of 311 to 11, and thus refused to grant all further grants for the army. They later won 109 seats in the December 1861 Landtag elections, in contrast to 21 for the Liberals and merely 14 for the conservatives. William I, who succeeded as monarch on 2 January 1861, thereby dissolved the Landtag to keep the army outside of parliamentary control, and appointed a conservative government.
New elections again resulted in a liberal majority, with only 12 returning conservatives. The liberal ministers maintained their demand for two years of compulsory military service, and refused to vote on the military budget to impose control over the autocratic government. William I and the ultraconservative advisers refused to capitulate, and claimed that there was allegedly a “gap” in the constitution, since it did not provide for a situation in which the Landtag and the government were deadlocked, as the cabinet refused to govern without a budget, and the Landtag refused to yield on approving funding for military spending. Bismarck thus argued for a “gap theory” by which since the constitutions did not provide for a procedure that could be followed when the lower house refused to pass a budget, and therefore the monarchy had to resort to his antecedent residuary power in order to maintain governmental functions. Justifications for this theory were also based on the fact that constitution had originated in a free action of the monarchy, as well as the lower chamber’s action was illegal without the concurrence of the upper house that approved the 1862 budget that the lower house had rejected by a vote of 273 to 68 votes on 23 September 1862.
Funding army budget expenditure increases were made possible in defiance of the Prussian parliament’s liberal majority, which considered the army to be the force that could be used against their interests, as was the case in 1849. Bismarck sought to unite Germany militarily, while undermining the political power of the liberals. Bismarck therefore sought an alliance with the masses in order to isolate and undermine the liberals, who had a great deal of power under the restricted, property-based Prussian franchise, but would be outnumbered by the industrial and rural masses supporting the state in a system based on universal suffrage. Bismarck stated his political strategy for the unification of the German states under Prussia’s leadership through forcible means to the Landtag budgetary committee on 30 September 1862, arguing for the urgent need for greater military force, in view of Prussia’s configuration that necessitated a larger proportionate military force than that of the other European nations. He maintained that Prussia’s future security therefore depended on the Prussian military organisation to be extended to the other German states, while Prussia had long had a “suit of armour that was too heavy for a weak body,” and the German looked to Prussia’s military power, rather than its liberalism, and required a larger proportionate military force than other European nations that could be hostile to Prussia’s expansion of power over the German states. The unification of German states would therefore not come about through speeches and declarations but by “iron and blood,” through the Prussian monarchy establishing its authority in the German states, as would be characterised through decidedly shifting Prussian foreign policy to take action against Austrian prevalence in the German Confederation. Prussia was to apply industrial power, which was enabled through acquiring the iron and coal resources in the Vienna settlement of 1815, followed by the subsequent economic development, and waging warfare.
The Landtag remain unmoved by Bismarck attempting to overcome the its opposition to the monarchy that would require additional military resources for this purpose and approving the military budget. Bismack then maintained that financing governmental functions would continue, regardless of the constitutional conditions for voting on a subsequent budget. The Landtag was dissolved thereafter on 13 October. The deadlock continued when it reconvened on 27 January 1863, and Bismarck would continue governing without a new budget for the following year and institute army reforms in uncompromised forms. New taxes were collected without a vote for their approval to finance instituting these reforms, regardless of the presence of the parliament with an elected lower assembly functioning under the imposed constitution in which ministers were solely responsible to the monarchy, with other state revenues collected from publicly owned enterprises, such as the railways. Bismarck also ordered the civil service to disregard the unconstitutionality of raising public revenues without the Landtag’s approval and continue with their normal duties, while threatening to impose sanctions on or dismiss any national, provincial or municipal officials who supported policies that were in opposition to the monarchical authority.
The issues that the Crimean War exposed led to Bismarck consolidating three cardinal and governing considerations – the indispensability of permanently maintaining peace with both Russia as a cornerstone of foreign policy to secure freedom of taking action in central Europe, securing the benevolent neutrality of France as the most important continental power while preventing France and Russia creating an alliance, and the impossibility of permanent cooperation with Austria, which could lead to diplomatic conflict between Austria and Prussia, in the event that Austria would not consider Prussia to be an equal power, rather than a satellite state. It was therefore necessary to radically reform the Confederation Diet through Prussian initiatives to indisputably establish Prussia’s supremacy among the German states as an emerging great power, in contrast to Austria exerting influence over the minor German states to form a permanently hostile majority composing a bloc marshalling political, military and economic resources against Prussian national interests, in addition to Austria maintaining its claims in Italy and Hungary. Bismarck thus envisaged Berlin to be at the centre of a German empire, whereas Vienna would constitute the centre of gravity for an aggregate of separate non-German states as a separate source of national strength.
Bismarck would hereafter seek to manage German unification while imposing the monarchy’s will through diplomatic means supported by military might, which the liberals had needed and failed to secure in 1848 while pursuing German unification through legalistic rather than forcible means. This entailed initially overcoming the domestic conflict with the Prussian liberals as he continuing running the government by raising taxes without the consent of the Landtag, while the liberals who were divided among themselves were opposed to staging a tax boycott. Although the Landtag condemned the illegal expenditure the government incurred and demanded that the 1863 be submitted for approval, the principle of popular government through representative institutions was defeated when the Herrenhaus accepted the condemned budget of 1862 by a vote of 114 to 44 votes on 10 October. The Landtag in turn condemned this action as being “contrary to the clear sense and text of the constitution.”
Parliament was hereby prorogued until 27 January 1863, when the breach between the monarchy and the upper house on one hand, and the elected representatives of the lower house on the other hand was complete. An address was made to the monarchy that accused ministers of having violated the constitution, which was approved with a vote of 255 to 68 votes. The Prussian constitution subjected Bismarck to impeachment, and the Landtag passed a resolution by a vote of 274 to 45 that ministers and their assets were responsible for making unconstitutional expenditures, which would lead to making him personally responsible for illegal spending that would lead to imprisonment and confiscation of personal assets in the event of repayment failure. Bismarck, who argued that British parliamentary government that had evolved over centuries of practical experience could not be adopted within a few years, ignored the Prussian parliament to increase military expenses without necessary parliamentary approval, which remained composed of relatively inexperienced statesmen who did not challenge his bold actions in the early stages of the development of a constitutional monarchy. Bismarck accurately envisaged that renouncing reform through revolution and the right of resistance, and adhering to procedure solely through constitutional methods rendered the elective representatives opposing him to a state of powerlessness, as constitutional provisions lacked strength against applying force, which made their arguments futile. Since the Landtag votes could not drive Bismarck from office, this could only be enabled through a revolution that would lead to a civil war. Bismarck also envisaged that the opposition would be confined to Landtag resolutions, public meetings and the press, and he would not be driven to staging a coup d’état by a refusal to pay illegal taxes or serve in an illegal army. Unlike the prolonged evolution of parliamentary democracy in Britain or the violent clashes leading to establishing democratic rule in France, German liberals lacked the resolve to take action to assert their political authority and preferred to maintain the limited political power that they had been granted, which could have been comparable to the French Chamber of Deputies in the late eighteenth century, having acquired political liberty, but lacked knowledge about how to apply it against the central authority.
Bismarck also welcomed opportunities for waging wars that would justify his defiant domestic policy and mitigate liberal criticism of his virtually dictatorial practices, while acting independently of the elected governmental representatives as well as the monarchy’s conservative advisors in the interest of expediency and pursuing an aggressive foreign policy toward the other German states in the face of opposition from Austria, while preparing for conflict through reinforcing Prussia’s military power that could be established as a result of economic development that had outpaced the military organisation legislation that was set in 1814. Military reform hereafter required three major matters of concern. Firstly, modernising and extending technical and material equipment. Secondly, bringing approximately twenty thousand conscripts who did not enter into the annual training contingents as a result of the population increases. Thirdly, revising the relations between the active army, the reserve, and then Landwehr as the constitutional militia. Military reforms were thus to be broadly aimed at increasing the active army training numbers by creating new regiments, reorganising the reserve and the Landwehr to create a larger initial reserve to bring the peace establishment to be modified for a wartime strength upon mobilisation along with introducing improved training for a second reserve that was more closely incorporated with the first line, and supplementing the annual military budget by nine million thalers, which would require the assent of the Landtag as this additional funding was to be voted into the state budget. The abolition of the former and reorganisation of the new Landwehr involved introducing fundamental changes in national legislation.
The former system allowed for Prussia to field as standing army of 150,000 troops with a wartime establishment footing, without the Landwehr of an additional 230,000 troops. The monarchy proposed imposed three years of military service to establish a wartime establishment of 450,000 troops, and remodelled Landwehr of 756,000 troops. In contrast, the Landtag liberal opposition representatives who constituted a substantial majority proposed two years of service, and reducing the war establishment to approximately 400,000 troops, with a total including the Landwehr composing approximately 600,000 troops in a revised Landwehr scheme, and instituting annual voting for the military expenditure budget, to which Prince William as a professional soldier and ruler was opposed due to his beliefs relating to improving military efficiency, and therefore resented civilian interference.
These technical questions became completely overshadowed by the constitutional controversy concerning discerning between the monarchical prerogative as the commander-in-chief and the duty to perform military service, and the Landtag demanding to voice their conditions for compulsory military service along with the duration of this service, exercising its constitutional right to refuse to approve taxation for military expenditures, as well as the legal right to maintain its jurisdiction on sanctioning taxation for the state as a whole as a principle of ministerial responsibility. Prussia would otherwise cease to be a constitutional state in which the monarchy governed through the legislature, while the monarchy refused to allow the army to be a creation of the Landtag, and legislate the prerogative of the sovereign out of existence while the ministers were to be dependent on the legislature, rather than the legislature governing through the monarchy. The monarchy could thus either surrender to the opposition, or resort to a coup d’état. Bismarck hereafter became the monarch’s leading representative who would bypass the legislature altogether as a matter of temporary expediency while maintaining the claim that he was not appointed by parliament, and therefore the representatives therein could not dismiss him while enjoying the confidence of the monarchy alone, regardless of parliamentary decision making. Taxes would hereby be levied according to the 1861 legislation as an emergency measure, which would only be indemnified in 1866.
Leave a Reply