7.

FOUNDING A NATION STATE (1815-1880)

Before 1871, there was no German national state. There was the empire and several federations and
confederations, but no national state. So how did this national state that unified Germany come into
existence?

Two things happened in 1815. Otto von Bismarck was born; there is a huge debate about Bismarck’s role in
German history and in Germany’s unification. Another thing that happened in 1815 was the Congress of
Vienna and there is no debate on its importance.

The System of Vienna 1815

The Congress of Vienna started in 1814 and finished in 1815. In 1814, Napoleon and the French had been
defeated for the first time and the victors of the war tried to rearrange a new Europe.

The Congress of Vienna started to redraw the map of Europe and they agreed on reordering all of it (known
as the System of Vienna); it is important to keep in mind that it also meant redrawing Germany, which had
been an empire but was not restored as an empire but as a German Confederation; but apart from the
change in name, there weren’t many changes.

 Restoration of German Empire as German Confederation

o Germany was restored as a confederation, but most of its borders stayed quite the same as the
borders of the German Empire before 1789, especially in the East. The only real change was in the
West, what is now Belgium. The borders very much stayed the same in 1815.

o The head of this confederation was the emperor of the Habsburgs. Before 1789, the German
emperor had been the Habsburg emperor, so not very much of a change.

o What was restored was the absolute rule of princes (before 1789, princes had ruled absolutely in
the Belgian territories and that again was restored).

o There were a few changes nevertheless: there were less territories in Germany in 1815 than in
1789, and there were no more ecclesiastical states because of secularisation (bishops no longer
ruled territories).

 Opposition to the absolute of princes. The thing that was most problematic about this was the absolute
rule of princes. There was more opposition coming from the new middle classes who resented that
princes should rule absolutely. There was also opposition coming partly from the old aristocratic elites
because they wanted to have some say in politics as well (with rise of the modern state, they had been
shoved to the background of politics). An example is Bismarck, he resented the absolute rule of princes.

They all wanted a constitution that would grant them certain liberties and security of their
property. The right of free speech was wanted too and the right to form associations and political
parties as means to get representatives to defend their own interests. Also, many others wanted a
German national state, they wanted Germany’s national unity.

 Reasons for nationalism

 o Nation as imagined community. A German unified state and the idea of a nation was popular in
Germany because the nation served as an imagined community and gave a sense of identity and
belonging to a greater community.

o Decline of traditional communities (parish, guild, village and manor). The fact that the imagined
community was attractive and became so important in the early nineteenth century had something
to do with the decline of traditional communities, of real-life communities like parishes, church
communities, that lost importance because of secularisation.

The churches and the local organisations like parishes lost many functions they had had, like
the supervision of schools, and became purely religious organisations. Guilds lost a lot of
importance too and in the middle of the nineteenth century they were prohibited in Germany
and didn’t exist anymore. Village communities were also very important, and lost the
importance because people started to migrate from the village into towns, and villages became
depopulated. The same thing happened with the manors.

All these traditional communities that cared for all sorts of dangers and risks in life actually
declined during the nineteenth century and that made imagined communities more attractive.
The nation as an imagined community became more and more attractive also because the
states developed a system of social security.

o The nation was also bound up with the idea of liberty and security, this liberal idea of people having
natural born rights. This is the reason why this sort of social security system that the traditional
communities gave was not taken up by the prince these days, because they were not interested in
giving liberties (the princes were only interested in ruling absolutely). The nation was a sort of
utopia that could be pictured as something that provided social security on the one hand and
liberties on the other.

There were attempts to make this utopia of a national state that would give social security and liberties a
reality. The first attempt took place in 1848, when people in Germany stood up against the princes and
asked for constitutional liberties.

The Revolution of 1848

What are the reasons that led to the Revolution of 1848?

- Economic “crisis” 1846/47. The first reason has to do with an economic crisis that took place between
1846 and 1847; the food crisis and unemployment went up, so poverty was widespread. This sort of
crisis had happened before without triggering a revolution.

However, 1848 was not such a bad year, the crisis was already over when the revolution started. We
need to take into account that the crisis happened in central Europe because these were the parts of
Europe where traditional communities had been dissolved and had disappeared. In short, revolution
happened everywhere where there was a sort of capitalist transformation of the economy.

- Capitalist transformation. There was no revolution in England because industrialisation had already
happened. There was no revolution in Russia, in the south of Europe and in most of eastern Europe
either because industrialisation had not even started there.
 This capitalist transformation changed the perception of the crisis and most importantly it changed the
ideas of what should be done against it. There was a model on how to behave in these situations, which
was the French revolution of 1789.

- The memory of 1789: Paris revolts. The revolution of 1789 had different roots and causes, but this was
a model; they knew what had happened and they tried to do it again. In February 1848 the people of
Paris revolted again against the French government.

What did they do? They built up barricades and they started to fight against the princes. The princes were
taken by surprise and some of the soldiers actually joined the revolutionaries. At first, the revolutionaries
proved successful in many towns, like Berlin.

National assemblies were convened in Vienna, in Berlin, in Stuttgart… The national assembly of Frankfurt
was the most important. Revolutionaries had actually started as a national movement and one of the aims
was to create a German national state. The assembly finally decided on how this nation state should look
like and the countries that should be part of it. The national assembly of Frankfurt decided that Austria
should not be part of Germany.

Apart from Austria, the biggest power in the German Confederation was Prussia. In 1849, they went to
Berlin and offered the Prussian king to become emperor of Germany, but the Prussian king rejected the
imperial crown because it was the revolutionaries who asked for it and not the prince. The Prussian king
started to supress the revolution.

After the Prussian king rejected the crown, revolutionaries didn’t give up, but this time the armies of the
princes suppressed the revolution in 1849. But then, after that the princes thought that they should offer
something to the population and, instead of simply repressing revolutionaries, Prussia and Austria granted
constitutions. Constitutions and certain liberties had been granted but not a national state.

Reasons of failure of the revolution

- Revolutionaries had many different goals, and they were not unified in what they really wanted. Some
of them wanted a land reform. The middle classes most of all wanted liberties, but they were not willing
to share them with the lower classes (disunity between the middle and lower classes). Aristocrats
wanted liberties too and protection from the absolute power of princes, but they wanted to keep their
own powers in the government.

- Opposition of conservatives. Bismarck opposed the revolution like most aristocrats. They allied with the
king who then built up his army and regained control.
- Opposition of European powers to German nation state including Austria. Most European powers
were actually opposed to the German nation state, especially opposed if that nation state included
Austria because the state would be so big that it would govern Europe.

In 1849 the revolution failed to produce a German nation state, but the idea was still there and a bit more
than two decades later it came into existence.

The Process of Unification

After 1849, the liberal national movement was oppressed at first. Political parties were prohibited,
associations were dissolved, democrats and also liberal were persecuted and many of them went into exile
(mostly to the United States).
During the 1850s that persecution was reduced, and the liberal nationalists reorganized. They had learned
two things in 1848 and 1849:

 First of all, they had learned that they could not force the princes to accept their ideas because the
princes in the end still had the power over the army. If the liberal nationalists could not force the prices,
they had to cooperate with them somehow. They had to find some common ground to work together.

 The second thing that they had learned was that they could not include Austria in the German nation
state. If this German nation state ever came into existence, they had to exclude Austria. As it was only
possible to cooperate with Prussia, they had to convince the Prussian king to cooperate with the liberal
national movement and exclude Austria.

In 1862 Bismarck became Prime Minister of Prussia and offered a compromise to the national liberals. If the
liberal nationalists were willing to accept the monarchy, Bismarck was willing to work with them towards the
national state. They were willing to accept a parliamentary monarchy where the monarch would depend on
the parliament, but that was not what Bismarck offered. For the time being, national liberals accepted, and
the deal was made. One of the steps to achieve this German nation state was the Prussian-Austrian War of
1866 between Austria and Prussia about domination in Germany. The war was won by Prussia, not because
of Bismarck but rather instead of Bismarck.

What happened after that was that in 1867 the North German Confederation was that the German
confederation was dissolved but in 1867 Prussia unified all the north of Germany as the North German
Confederation, which would have remained the German nation state founded in 1867 (it would have been
possible). The liberal nationalists would have wanted to have Austria and the south of Germany included,
but Bismarck was not very keen on including the south of Germany because he didn’t want any more
Catholics in Germany (he thought that there would have been trouble if the Bavarians had joined). In short,
Bismarck was not very keen on enlarging the North German Confederation; but liberal nationalist saw it
differently.

In 1870, Napoleon III, the emperor of France in 1870, provoked the German-French War of 1870/71. The
French in the 1860s became fed up with Napoleon because he lost some wars in America and Asia and the
Prussians became stronger and stronger. Then, an opportunity arose, because a relative of the Prussian king
became a candidate for the throne of Spain and the French were preoccupied because they thought that
they would be encircled by Prussians. This is the reason why Napoleon provoked an incident and asked the
Prussian king to put pressure on his relative so that he would not become the Spanish monarch; after some
pressuring, the Prussian king put this pressure on his relative.

But this was not enough for Napoleon, who in 1870 was facing election and opposition was growing stronger
and stronger. He needed international success, so he demanded from Prussia a promise that never again a
Prussian would become a candidate for the throne of Spain, which was impossible. The Prussian kind
declined politely and for Napoleon that was enough to start the war.

In 1870 and 1871 there was a war between Prussia and France. The south German states made defensive
alliances with Prussia. Prussia won the war, and the German Empire was founded in 1871 with the south
German states becoming a part of the German nation state.
The German Empire was founded in 1871, but who founded it? There is a painting that seems to say that it
was Bismarck who founded the empire, but the first version was completely different. In the first version of
1877, you really have to look for him, he is not the centre of attention and the person that stands out is a
civil soldier. It seems to suggest that the German Empire was founded by the German army. The later picture
was a present for Bismarck, so different ways of seeing things.
In 1871, only the shell of the German nation state was founded. The outside structure was constructed, but
inside the nation state there was not much that was unified yet. The 1870s was the foundational era of this
German nation state.

The Liberal Era and Internal Unification (1867/71-1879)

Let’s have a look at Bismarck’s constitution:

It is the emperor, the Kaiser, who is the central person in this constitution. He is the emperor for life and the
title is hereditary. He commands everybody, including the army, he appoints the government and he
summons the imperial parliament, which consists of two chambers (the Reichstag, which is the popular
parliament selected by men over the age of 25, and the Bundesland, which is made up of state
representatives selected by the princes). It is obvious that the emperor has a central position.

This constitution reaffirms the position of the emperor and has strong states. However, the parliament was
rather weak, it had very limited power, but the people had to accept it. They found a way to help the
parliament gain more power. The liberal majority in parliament unified the currencies, the laws, and so on.
They unified the German nation state from the inside, which took quite a long time.

This process of unification meant that the parliament gained prestige and more power and also meant that
the government took a lot more responsibilities. The liberals made up the majority of the parliament, but
they started to lose parliamentary in the late 1870s to other groups.

In 1880 Bismarck lost his grip on politics. In the 1890s, when the emperor William I had died, his successor
William II wanted to rule on his own and Bismarck was dismissed.