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German Confederation
please note:
- the content below is remote from Wikipedia
- it has been imported raw for GetWiki
{{Short description|19th-century association of German states}}{{Use dmy dates|date=January 2022}}- the content below is remote from Wikipedia
- it has been imported raw for GetWiki
| factoids |
|---|
- 1815–1848
- (interrupted by the German Empire)
- 1850–1866{edih}| year_start = 1813| year_end = 1866| event_pre = Dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire| date_pre = 6 August 1806
- German
- Italian
- Low German
- Czech
- Slovene
- Polish
- Limburgish and others
- (to 1857)
- (to 1857)
- (from 1857)
History
Background
{{Details|Napoleonic Wars}}The War of the Third Coalition lasted from about 1803 to 1806. Following defeat at the Battle of by the French under Napoleon in December 1805, Holy Roman Emperor Francis II abdicated, and the Empire was dissolved on 6 August 1806. The resulting Treaty of established the Confederation of the Rhine in July 1806, joining sixteen of France’s allies among the German states (including Bavaria and ). After the Battle of of October 1806 in the War of the Fourth Coalition, various other German states, including Saxony and Westphalia, also joined the Confederation. Only Austria, Prussia, Danish , Swedish Pomerania, and the French-occupied Principality of Erfurt stayed outside the Confederation of the Rhine. The War of the Sixth Coalition from 1812 to winter 1814 saw the defeat of Napoleon and the liberation of Germany. In June 1814, the famous German patriot Heinrich vom Stein created the Central Managing Authority for Germany (Zentralverwaltungsbehörde) in Frankfurt to replace the defunct Confederation of the Rhine. However, plenipotentiaries gathered at the Congress of Vienna were determined to create a weaker union of German states than envisaged by Stein.Establishment
{{See also|States of the German Confederation}}The German Confederation was created by the (wikisource:Final Act of the Congress of Vienna/Act IX|9th Act) of the Congress of Vienna on 8 June 1815 after being alluded to in (wikisource:Treaty of Paris (1814)#ART.VI|Article 6) of the 1814 Treaty of Paris, ending the War of the Sixth Coalition.{{Citation |last=Heeren |first=Arnold Hermann Ludwig |title=A Manual of the History of the Political System of Europe and its Colonies |date=1873 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Vc88AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA480 |pages=480–481 |editor-last=Talboys |editor-first=David Alphonso |place=London |publisher=H. G. Bohn |editor-link=David Alphonso Talboys}}The Confederation was formally created by a second treaty, the Final Act of the Ministerial Conference to Complete and Consolidate the Organization of the German Confederation. This treaty was not concluded and signed by the parties until 15 May 1820. States joined the German Confederation by becoming parties to the second treaty. The states designated for inclusion in the Confederation were:{| class=“wikitable sortable“! class=“unsortable” | Flag! Member State! class=“unsortable” | Notes- Saxe-Weimar, Saxe-Meiningen, Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld and Saxe-Hildburghausen (5 states)
- Brunswick and Nassau (2 states)
- Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Mecklenburg-Strelitz (2 states)
- Oldenburg, Anhalt-Dessau, Anhalt-Bernburg, Anhalt-Köthen, Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt and Schwarzburg-Sondershausen (6 states)
- Hohenzollern-Hechingen, Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, Liechtenstein, Reuss (Elder Branch), Reuss (Younger Branch), Schaumburg-Lippe, Lippe and Waldeck (8 states)
Military
{{History of Germany sidebar}}Activities
The rules of the Confederation provided for three different types of military interventions:Following Ernst Rudolf Huber: Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte seit 1789. vol. I: Reform und Restauration 1789 bis 1830. 2nd ed., W. Kohlhammer: Stuttgart et al., 1967, pp. 607–609.- the federal war (Bundeskrieg) against an external enemy who attacks federal territory,
- the federal execution (Bundesexekution) against the government of a member state that violates federal law,
- the federal intervention (Bundesintervention) supporting a government that is under pressure of a popular uprising.
Armed forces
The German Federal Army (Deutsches Bundesheer) was supposed to collectively defend the German Confederation from external enemies, primarily France. Successive laws passed by the Confederate Diet set the form and function of the army, as well as contribution limits of the member states. The Diet had the power to declare war and was responsible for appointing a supreme commander of the army and commanders of the individual army corps. This made mobilization extremely slow and added a political dimension to the army. In addition, the Diet oversaw the construction and maintenance of several German Federal Fortresses and collected funds annually from the member states for this purpose.Projections of army strength were published in 1835, but the work of forming the Army Corps did not commence until 1840 as a consequence of the Rhine Crisis. Money for the fortresses were determined by an act of the Confederate Diet in that year. By 1846, Luxemburg still had not formed its own contingent, and Prussia was rebuffed for offering to supply 1,450 men to garrison the Luxemburg fortress that should have been supplied by Waldeck and the two Lippes. In that same year, it was decided that a common symbol for the Federal Army should be the old Imperial two-headed eagle, but without crown, scepter, or sword, as any of those devices encroached on the individual sovereignty of the states. King Frederick William IV of Prussia was among those who derided the “disarmed imperial eagle” as a national symbol.Treitschke, Heinrich. History of Germany in the Nineteenth Century. Jarrold & Sons, London, 1919. Vol. VII, p. 519.The German Federal Army was divided into ten Army Corps (later expanded to include a Reserve Corps). However, the Army Corps were not exclusive to the German Confederation but composed from the national armies of the member states, and did not include all of the armed forces of a state. For example, Prussia’s army consisted of nine Army Corps but contributed only three to the German Federal Army.The strength of the mobilized German Federal Army was projected to total 303,484 men in 1835 and 391,634 men in 1860, with the individual states providing the following figures:Beilage zum Militaer-Wochenblatt fuer das deutsche Bundesheer. No. 3, 1860.{|class=“wikitable sortable” style="text-align:right”Impact of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic invasions
{{POV section|date=January 2016}}(File:Prince Metternich by Lawrence.jpeg|thumb|Austrian chancellor and foreign minister dominated the German Confederation from 1815 until 1848.)The late 18th century was a period of political, economic, intellectual, and cultural reforms, the Enlightenment (represented by figures such as Locke, , , and Adam Smith), but also involving early Romanticism, and climaxing with the French Revolution, where freedom of the individual and nation was asserted against privilege and custom. Representing a great variety of types and theories, they were largely a response to the disintegration of previous cultural patterns, coupled with new patterns of production, specifically the rise of industrial capitalism.However, the defeat of Napoleon enabled conservative and reactionary regimes such as those of the Kingdom of Prussia, the Austrian Empire, and Tsarist Russia to survive, laying the groundwork for the Congress of Vienna and the alliance that strove to oppose radical demands for change ushered in by the French Revolution. With Austria’s position on the continent now intact and ostensibly secure under its reactionary premier , the Habsburg empire would serve as a barrier to contain the emergence of Italian and German nation-states as well, in addition to containing France. But this reactionary balance of power, aimed at blocking German and Italian nationalism on the continent, was precarious.After Napoleon’s final defeat in 1815, the surviving member states of the defunct Holy Roman Empire joined to form the German Confederation (){{Snd}}a rather loose organization, especially because the two great rivals, the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia, each feared domination by the other.In Prussia the rulers forged a centralized state. By the time of the Napoleonic Wars, Prussia, grounded in the virtues of its established military aristocracy (the ) and stratified by rigid hierarchical lines, had been surpassed militarily and economically by France. After 1807, Prussia’s defeats by Napoleonic France highlighted the need for administrative, economic, and social reforms to improve the efficiency of the bureaucracy and encourage practical merit-based education. Inspired by the Napoleonic organization of German and Italian principalities, the Prussian Reform Movement led by and Count was conservative, enacted to preserve aristocratic privilege while modernizing institutions.Outside Prussia, industrialization progressed slowly, and was held back because of political disunity, conflicts of interest between the nobility and merchants, and the continued existence of the guild system, which discouraged competition and innovation. While this kept the middle class at bay, affording the old order a measure of stability not seen in France, Prussia’s vulnerability to Napoleon’s military proved to many among the old order that a fragile, divided, and traditionalist Germany would be easy prey for its cohesive and industrializing neighbor.The reforms laid the foundation for Prussia’s future military might by professionalizing the military and decreeing universal military conscription. In order to industrialize Prussia, working within the framework provided by the old aristocratic institutions, land reforms were enacted to break the monopoly of the s on land ownership, thereby also abolishing, among other things, the feudal practice of serfdom.Romanticism, nationalism, and liberalism in the era
Although the forces unleashed by the French Revolution were seemingly under control after the Vienna Congress, the conflict between conservative forces and liberal nationalists was only deferred at best. The era until the failed 1848 revolution, in which these tensions built up, is commonly referred to as (“pre-March“), in reference to the outbreak of riots in March 1848.This conflict pitted the forces of the old order against those inspired by the French Revolution and the Rights of Man. The breakdown of the competition was, roughly, the emerging capitalist bourgeoisie and petit-bourgeoisie (engaged mostly in commerce, trade, and industry), and the growing (and increasingly radicalized) industrial working class; and the other side associated with landowning aristocracy or military aristocracy (the s) in Prussia, the Habsburg monarchy in Austria, and the conservative notables of the small princely states and city-states in Germany.Meanwhile, demands for change from below had been fomenting due to the influence of the French Revolution. Throughout the German Confederation, Austrian influence was paramount, drawing the ire of the nationalist movements. considered nationalism, especially the nationalist youth movement, the most pressing danger: German nationalism might not only repudiate Austrian dominance of the Confederation, but also stimulate nationalist sentiment within the Austrian Empire itself. In a multi-national polyglot state in which Slavs and Magyars outnumbered the Germans, the prospects of Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Polish, Serb, or Croatian sentiment along with middle class liberalism was certainly horrifying to the monarchist landed aristocracy.Figures like , , , , , , and rose in the era. Father ‘s gymnastic associations exposed middle class German youth to nationalist and democratic ideas, which took the form of the nationalistic and liberal democratic college fraternities known as the . The Wartburg Festival in 1817 celebrated Martin Luther as a proto-German nationalist, linking Lutheranism to German nationalism, and helping arouse religious sentiments for the cause of German nationhood. The festival culminated in the burning of several books and other items that symbolized reactionary attitudes. One item was a book by . In 1819, was accused of spying for Russia, and then murdered by a theological student, , who was executed for the crime. Sand belonged to a militant nationalist faction of the . used the murder as a pretext to issue the Carlsbad Decrees of 1819, which dissolved the , cracked down on the liberal press, and seriously restricted academic freedom.JOURNAL, Williamson, George S., 2000, What Killed August von Kotzebue? The Temptations of Virtue and the Political Theology of German Nationalism, 1789–1819, Journal of Modern History, 72, 4, 890–943, 10.1086/318549, 318549, 144652797,High culture
(File:Berlin Universitaet um 1850.jpg|thumb|280px|The University of Berlin in 1850)German artists and intellectuals, heavily influenced by the French Revolution, turned to Romanticism. At the universities, high-powered professors developed international reputations, especially in the humanities led by history and philology, which brought a new historical perspective to the study of political history, theology, philosophy, language, and literature. With (1770–1831) in philosophy, (1768–1834) in theology and (1795–1886) in history, the University of Berlin, founded in 1810, became the world’s leading university. , for example, professionalized history and set the world standard for historiography. By the 1830s, mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology had emerged with world class science, led by (1769–1859) in natural science and (1777–1855) in mathematics. Young intellectuals often turned to politics, but their support for the failed Revolution of 1848 forced many into exile.BOOK, Sheehan, James J.,archive.org/details/germanhistory17700shee/page/324, German History: 1770–1866, 1989, Oxford University Press, 0-1982-2120-7, New York, 324–371, 802–820, registration,Population
Demographic transition
The population of the German Confederation (excluding Austria) grew 60% from 1815 to 1865, from 21,000,000 to 34,000,000.{{Sfn|Nipperdey|1996|page=86}} The era saw the demographic transition take place in Germany. It was a transition from high birth rates and high death rates to low birth and death rates{{Citation needed|date=June 2019}} as the country developed from a pre-industrial to a modernized agriculture and supported a fast-growing industrialized urban economic system. In previous centuries, the shortage of land meant that not everyone could marry, and marriages took place after age 25. The high birthrate was offset by a very high rate of infant mortality, plus periodic epidemics and harvest failures. After 1815, increased agricultural productivity meant a larger food supply, and a decline in famines, epidemics, and malnutrition. This allowed couples to marry earlier, and have more children. Arranged marriages became uncommon as young people were now allowed to choose their own marriage partners, subject to a veto by the parents. The upper and middle classes began to practice birth control, and a little later so too did the peasants.{{Sfn|Nipperdey|1996|pp=87–92, 99}} The population in 1800 was heavily rural,BOOK, Clapham, J. H.,archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.89837, The Economic Development of France and Germany: 1815–1914, 1936, Cambridge University Press, 6–28, with only 8% of the people living in communities of 5,000 to 100,000 and another 2% living in cities of more than 100,000.Nobility
In a heavily agrarian society, land ownership played a central role. Germany’s nobles, especially those in the East called , dominated not only the localities, but also the Prussian court, and especially the Prussian army. Increasingly after 1815, a centralized Prussian government based in Berlin took over the powers of the nobles, which in terms of control over the peasantry had been almost absolute. They retained control of the judicial system on their estates until 1848, as well as control of hunting and game laws. They paid no land tax until 1861 and kept their police authority until 1872, and controlled church affairs into the early 20th century. To help the nobility avoid indebtedness, Berlin set up a credit institution to provide capital loans in 1809, and extended the loan network to peasants in 1849. When the German Empire was established in 1871, the nobility controlled the army and the Navy, the bureaucracy, and the royal court; they generally set governmental policies.BOOK, Weber, Eugen,archive.org/details/modernhistoryofe0000webe, A Modern History of Europe, 1971, Norton, 0-3930-9981-4, New York, 586, registration, {{Harvnb|Sagarra|1977|pp=37–55, 183–202}}Peasantry
Peasants continued to center their lives in the village, where they were members of a corporate body and helped manage community resources and monitor community life. In the East, they were serfs who were bound prominently to parcels of land. In most of Germany, farming was handled by tenant farmers who paid rents and obligatory services to the landlord, who was typically a nobleman.{{Efn|The monasteries of Bavaria, which controlled 56% of the land, were broken up by the government, and sold off around 1803.{{Sfn|Nipperdey|1996|p=59}}}} Peasant leaders supervised the fields and ditches and grazing rights, maintained public order and morals, and supported a village court which handled minor offenses. Inside the family, the patriarch made all the decisions and tried to arrange advantageous marriages for his children. Much of the villages’ communal life centered around church services and holy days. In Prussia, the peasants drew lots to choose conscripts required by the army. The noblemen handled external relationships and politics for the villages under their control, and were not typically involved in daily activities or decisions.{{Harvnb|Sagarra|1977|pp=140–154}}{{efn|For details on the life of a representative peasant farmer who migrated in 1710 to Pennsylvania, see JOURNAL, Kratz, Bernd, 2008, Hans Stauffer: A Farmer in Germany Before his Emigration to Pennsylvania, Genealogist, 22, 2, 131–169, }}Rapidly growing cities
After 1815, the urban population grew rapidly, due primarily to the influx of young people from the rural areas. Berlin grew from 172,000 people in 1800 to 826,000 in 1870; Hamburg grew from 130,000 to 290,000; Munich from 40,000 to 269,000; (now ) from 60,000 to 208,000; Dresden from 60,000 to 177,000; (now Kaliningrad) from 55,000 to 112,000. Offsetting this growth, there was extensive emigration, especially to the United States. Emigration totaled 480,000 in the 1840s, 1,200,000 in the 1850s, and 780,000 in the 1860s.Nipperdey, Germany from Napoleon to Bismarck: 1800–1866 pp. 96–97Ethnic minorities
Despite its name and intention, the German Confederation was not entirely populated by Germans; many people of other ethnic groups lived within its borders:- French-speaking Walloons lived in western Luxembourg prior to its division in 1839;
- the Duchy of Limburg (a member between 1839 and 1866) had an entirely Dutch population;
- Italians and Slovenians lived in south and southeast Austria;
- Bohemia and Moravia, of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown were inhabited by a majority of Czechs;
- Silesia had also a Polish and Czech inhabitants, while Sorbs were present in the parts of Saxony and the Prussian province of Brandenburg known as Lusatia
- Prussian part of the partitions of Poland was inhabited by a majority of Poles.
: economic integration
(File:German unified 1815 1871.svg|thumb|300px| and German unification)Further efforts to improve the confederation began in 1834 with the establishment of a customs union, the . In 1834, the Prussian regime sought to stimulate wider trade advantages and industrialism by decree{{Snd}}a logical continuation of the program of and less than two decades earlier. Historians have seen three Prussian goals: as a political tool to eliminate Austrian influence in Germany; as a way to improve the economies; and to strengthen Germany against potential French aggression while reducing the economic independence of smaller states.JOURNAL, Murphy, David T., 1991, Prussian aims for the Zollverein, 1828–1833, Historian (journal), Historian, 53, 2, 285–302, 10.1111/j.1540-6563.1991.tb00808.x, Inadvertently, these reforms sparked the unification movement and augmented a middle class demanding further political rights, but at the time backwardness and Prussia’s fears of its stronger neighbors were greater concerns. The customs union opened up a common market, ended tariffs between states, and standardized weights, measures, and currencies within member states (excluding Austria), forming the basis of a proto-national economy.W. O. Henderson, The Zollverein (1959) is the standard history in EnglishBy 1842 the included most German states. Within the next twenty years, the output of German furnaces increased fourfold. Coal production grew rapidly as well. In turn, German industry (especially the works established by the family) introduced the steel gun, cast-steel axle, and a breech-loading rifle, exemplifying Germany’s successful application of technology to weaponry. Germany’s security was greatly enhanced, leaving the Prussian state and the landowning aristocracy secure from outside threat. German manufacturers also produced heavily for the civilian sector. No longer would Britain supply half of Germany’s needs for manufactured goods, as it did beforehand.William Manchester, The Arms of Krupp, 1587–1968 (1968) However, by developing a strong industrial base, the Prussian state strengthened the middle class and thus the nationalist movement. Economic integration, especially increased national consciousness among the German states, made political unity a far likelier scenario. Germany finally began exhibiting all the features of a proto-nation.The crucial factor enabling Prussia’s conservative regime to survive the era was a rough coalition between leading sectors of the landed upper class and the emerging commercial and manufacturing interests. Even if the commercial and industrial element is weak, it must be strong enough (or soon become strong enough) to become worthy of co-optation, and the French Revolution terrified enough perceptive elements of Prussia’s s for the state to be sufficiently accommodating.While relative stability was maintained until 1848, with enough bourgeois elements still content to exchange the “right to rule for the right to make money”, the landed upper class found its economic base sinking. While the brought economic progress and helped to keep the bourgeoisie at bay for a while, it increased the ranks of the middle class swiftly{{Snd}}the very social base for the nationalism and liberalism that the Prussian state sought to stem.The was a move toward economic integration, modern industrial capitalism, and the victory of centralism over localism, quickly bringing to an end the era of guilds in the small German princely states. This led to the 1844 revolt of the Silesian Weavers, who saw their livelihood destroyed by the flood of new manufactures.The also weakened Austrian domination of the Confederation as economic unity increased the desire for political unity and nationalism.Revolutions of 1848
(File:Flag of the German Confederation (war).svg|thumb|right|180px|War ensign of the )(File:Naval Jack of the German Confederation.svg|thumb|right|180px|Naval jack of the )News of the 1848 Revolution in Paris quickly reached discontented bourgeois liberals, republicans and more radical working-men. The first revolutionary uprisings in Germany began in the state of in March 1848. Within a few days, there were revolutionary uprisings in other states including Austria, and finally in Prussia. On 15 March 1848, the subjects of of Prussia vented their long-repressed political aspirations in violent rioting in Berlin, while barricades were erected in the streets of Paris. King of France fled to Great Britain. gave in to the popular fury, and promised a constitution, a parliament, and support for German unification, safeguarding his own rule and regime.James J. Sheehan, German History, 1770–1866 (1993), pp. 656–710JOURNAL, Mattheisen, Donald J., 1983, History as Current Events: Recent Works on the German Revolution of 1848, American Historical Review, 88, 5, 1219–1237, 10.2307/1904890, 1904890, On 18 May, the Frankfurt Parliament (Frankfurt Assembly) opened its first session, with delegates from various German states. It was immediately divided between those favoring a (small German) or (greater German) solution. The former favored offering the imperial crown to Prussia. The latter favored the Habsburg crown in Vienna, which would integrate Austria proper and Bohemia (but not Hungary) into the new Germany.In May to August, the Assembly installed a provisional German Central Government, while conservatives swiftly moved against the reformers. As in Austria and Russia, this middle-class assertion increased authoritarian and reactionary sentiments among the landed upper class, whose economic position was declining. They turned to political levers to preserve their rule. As the Prussian army proved loyal, and the peasants were uninterested, regained his confidence. The Assembly belatedly issued its Declaration of the Rights of the German People; a constitution was drawn up (excluding Austria, which openly rejected the Assembly), and the leadership of the was offered to , who refused to “pick up a crown from the gutter”. As the monarchist forces marched their armies to crush rebellions in cities and towns throughout Austria and Germany the Frankfurt Assembly was forced to flee, first to Stuttgart and then to Württemberg, where, reduced to so few deputies that it could no longer form a quorum, its final meeting was forcibly dispersed on 18 June 1849 by the Württemberg army. With the complete triumph of monarchist reaction rampaging across all of Europe, thousands of German middle class liberals and “red” Forty-eighters were forced to flee into exile (primarily to the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia).In 1849, proposed his own constitution. His document concentrated real power in the hands of the King and the upper classes, and called for a confederation of North German states{{Snd}}the Erfurt Union. Austria and Russia, fearing a strong, Prussian-dominated Germany, responded by pressuring Saxony and Hanover to withdraw, and forced Prussia to abandon the scheme in a treaty dubbed the “humiliation of ”.Dissolution of the Confederation
Rise of Bismarck
A new generation of statesmen responded to popular demands for national unity for their own ends, continuing Prussia’s tradition of autocracy and reform from above. Germany found an able leader to accomplish the seemingly paradoxical task of conservative modernization. In 1851, Bismarck was appointed by King Wilhelm I of Prussia (the future Kaiser Wilhelm I) to circumvent the liberals in the Landtag of Prussia, who resisted Wilhelm’s autocratic militarism. Bismarck told the Diet, “The great questions of the day are not decided by speeches and majority votes ... but by blood and iron” – that is, by warfare and industrial might.BOOK, Kitchen, Martin, A History of Modern Germany, 1800–2000, 2006, 105, Prussia already had a great army; it was now augmented by rapid growth of economic power.Gradually, Bismarck subdued the more restive elements of the middle class with a combination of threats and reforms, reacting to the revolutionary sentiments expressed in 1848 by providing them with the economic opportunities for which the urban middle sectors had been fighting.Otto Pflanze, Bismarck and the Development of Germany, Vol. 1: The Period of Unification, 1815–1871 (1971)Seven Weeks’ War
The German Confederation ended as a result of the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 between the Austrian Empire and its allies on one side and the Kingdom of Prussia and its allies on the other. The Confederation had 33 members immediately before its dissolution. In the Prague peace treaty, on 23 August 1866, Austria had to accept that the Confederation was dissolved.Ernst Rudolf Huber: Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte seit 1789. Vol. III: Bismarck und das Reich. 3rd ed., Kohlhammer Verlag, Stuttgart 1988, pp. 571, 576. The following day, the remaining member states confirmed the dissolution. The treaty allowed Prussia to create a new (a new kind of federation) in the North of Germany. The South German states were allowed to create a South German Confederation but this did not come into existence.North German Confederation
Prussia created the North German Confederation in 1867, a federal state combining all German states north of the river Main and also the Hohenzollern territories in Swabia. Besides Austria, the South German states Bavaria, , , and Hesse- remained separate from the rest of Germany. However, due to the successful prosecution of the Franco-Prussian War, the four southern states joined the North German Confederation by treaties in November 1870.{{Sfn|Case|1902|page=139}}German Empire
As the Franco-Prussian War drew to a close, King Ludwig II of Bavaria was persuaded to ask King Wilhelm to assume the crown of the new German Empire. On 1 January 1871, the Empire was declared by the presiding princes and generals in the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles, near Paris. The Diet of the North German Confederation moved to rename the North German Confederation as the German Empire and gave the title of German Emperor to the King of Prussia.{{Sfn|Case|1902|pp=139–140}} The new constitution of the state, the Constitution of the German Confederation, effectively transformed the Diet of the Confederation into the German Parliament (Reichstag).Ernst Rudolf Huber: Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte seit 1789. Vol. III: Bismarck und das Reich. 3rd ed., W. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart [u. a.] 1988, p. 747.Legacy
(File:2008 ffm paulskirche marine.jpg|thumb|In Frankfurt at the Paulskirche, June 14, 2008: The German navy commemorates the 160th anniversary of the decision of the Frankfurt Parliament to create the Reichsflotte.)The modern German nation state known as the Federal Republic is the continuation of the North German Confederation of 1867. This North German Confederation, a federal state, was a totally new creation: the law of the German Confederation ended, and new law came into existence. The German Confederation was, according to historian Kotulla, an association of states (Staatenbund) with some elements of a federal state (Bundesstaat), and the North German Confederation was a federal state with some elements of an association of states.Michael Kotulla: Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte. Vom Alten Reich bis Weimar (1495–1934). Springer, Berlin 2008, p. 505.Still, the discussions and ideas of the period 1815–66 had a huge influence on the constitution of the North German Confederation. Most notably may be the Federal Council, the organ representing the member states. It is a certain copy of the 1815 Federal Convention of the German Confederation. The successor of that Federal Council of 1867 is the modern Bundesrat of the Federal Republic.Hans Boldt: Erfurter Unionsverfassung. In: Gunther Mai (ed.): Die Erfurter Union und das Erfurter Unionsparlament 1850. Böhlau: Köln [et al.] 2000, pp. 417–431, here pp. 429/430. The German Confederation does not play a very prominent role in German historiography and national culture. It is mainly seen negatively as an instrument to oppress the liberal, democratic and national movements of the period. On the contrary, the March revolution (1849/49) with its events and institutions attract much more attention and partially devotion. The most important memorial sites are the Paulskirche in Frankfurt, which is now a cultural hall of national importance, and the Rastatt castle with the Erinnerungsstätte für die Freiheitsbewegungen in der deutschen Geschichte (a museum and memorial site for the freedom movements in the German history, not only the March revolution).The remnants of the federal fortifications are certain tourists attractions at least regionally or for people interested in military history.Territorial legacy
The current countries whose territory were partly or entirely located inside the boundaries of the German Confederation 1815–1866 are:- Germany (all states except Southern in the north of )
- Austria (all states except )
- Luxembourg (entire territory)
- Liechtenstein (entire territory)
- Netherlands (Duchy of Limburg, was a member of the Confederation from 1839 until 1866)
- Czech Republic (entire territory)
- Slovenia (except for and the municipalities of , and )
- Poland (West Pomeranian Voivodship, Voivodship, Lower Silesian Voivodship, Voivodship, part of Silesia – overwhelmingly German speaking at the time; East Prussia, West Prussia, and much of the Grand Duchy of Posen were admitted into the Confederation on 11 April 1848,Heinrich Sybel, The Founding of the German Empire by William I. 1890. Vol. 1, p. 182. but the terms of the restored Confederate Diet removed these territories on 30 May 1851)Charles Eugene Little, Cyclopedia of Classified Dates: With an Exhaustive Index, 1900, p. 819.
- Belgium (nine of the eleven cantons of Eupen-Malmedy, Liège Province); the larger province of Luxembourg had left the Confederation at its accession to Belgium in 1839
- Italy (autonomous region of /, the Province of Trieste, most of the Province of Gorizia except the enclave, and the municipalities of , , , , , and in the Province of Udine)
- Croatia (the territory in Istria county and the coastal strip between and in the Liburnia region)
See also
- States of the German Confederation
- History of Germany
- German Empire
- North German Confederation
- Former countries in Europe after 1815
- Federal Convention
- Frankfurt Parliament
Notes
{{Notelist}}References
{{Reflist|30em}}Works cited
- BOOK, Case, Nelson, European Constitutional History, 1902, Jennings & Pye, Cincinnati, 608806061, 6918961M,
- BOOK, Sagarra, Eda, A Social History of Germany: 1648–1914, 1977, Holmes & Meier, 0-8419-0332-8, 37–55, 183–202, 21299230M,
- BOOK, Nipperdey, Thomas, Germany from Napoleon to Bismarck, 1996, Princeton University Press, 0-6910-2636-X, Princeton,
Further reading
{{Commons category}}{{Wikisource|Final Act of the Congress of Vienna/Act IX|Federative Constitution of Germany, of the 8th June 1815.}}- BOOK, Blackbourn, David, The Long Nineteenth Century: A History of Germany, 1780–1918, 1998, Oxford University Press, 978-0-1950-7671-4,
- BOOK, Blackbourn, David, The Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Society and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Germany, Eley, Geoff, 1984,
- BOOK, Brose, Eric Dorn, German History, 1789–1871: From the Holy Roman Empire to the Bismarckian Reich, 1997,
- BOOK, The German Peasantry: Conflict and Community from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Centuries, 1986, Evans, Richard J., Lee, W. R.,
- BOOK, Moore, Barrington Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, 1993, Penguin Books, 978-0-1405-5086-3, 1966,
- BOOK, Pflanze, Otto, Bismarck and the Development of Germany, 1971, 1: The Period of Unification, 1815–1871,
- BOOK, Ramm, Agatha, Germany, 1789–1919, 1967,
- BOOK, Sagarra, Eda, Introduction to Nineteenth Century Germany, 1980,
- BOOK, Sheehan, James J, German History, 1770–1866, 1993,
- MAP, Stier, Hans-Erich, , 1976, Westermann, (in German, detailed maps)
- BOOK, Werner, George S, Bavaria in the German Confederation 1820–1848, 1977,
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