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Nationalism and liberalism were leading factors in bringing revolutions to Germany and Italy in 1848. Neither area was as yet united into a single nation. The largest German states were Austria and Prussia. From May 1848 to June 1849, liberals from all over Germany, without the official authorization of their governments, met in the FRANKFURT ASSEMBLY to try to find a constitutional basis for a united German nation. One of the major problems was to decide whether the ruler of this united state would come from the Austrian Hapsburgs or the Prussian Hohenzollerns. Another concern was what were to be the boundaries of such a state. How much of the multinational Austrian Empire should be included? Or should Austria be completely excluded, and the lead given to the Prussian monarch? Or what about the inclusion of Schleswig, with a mixed German and Danish population but ruled by the Danish monarch? It is not surprising that this body, without any military armies at its disposal, was long on talk and short on effective action. The delegates had to drop the idea of including Austria, when the Austrians made it clear they were opposed to all forms of nationalism—including the German variety. In April 1849, the Prussian King refused the throne of a united German empire, saying he had no wish to pick a crown from the gutter. Most of the delegates simply left, and those who remained were dispersed in June by the Prussian army.
In Prussia itself, demonstrations occurred in Berlin in March 1848. When fighting broke out between the demonstrators and the army, King Frederick William IV (1848-1861) was persuaded to withdraw his troops from Berlin. He remained in the city and felt humiliated by the crowd. In May, an assembly was elected to draw up a constitution for Prussia, but by November Frederick William got up enough courage to call the troops back to Berlin. The constitutional assembly was dissolved in December, and the King issued a constitution on his own. Though the new constitution was fairly liberal, he modified it the following year to give decisive electoral advantage to property holders.
The Revolutions of 1848-49 had failed to create a constitutionally united Germany. The Prussian monarch, Frederick William IV, had refused the crown offered by the Frankfurt Assembly. He did come up with his own scheme for the unification of Germany, which involved the creation of a Prussian Union. Austria was unwilling to accept a united Germany dominated by Prussia. The Austrians forced a meeting at Olmütz in November 1850 at which the Prussians backed down and agreed to give up the Prussian Union. Prussian historians came to see this meeting as the Humiliation of Olmütz. The Prussians were considerably more successful in the operation of the Zollverein, a German customs union established in 1834 to foster freer trade. By 1854 only five German states, including Austria, were not in the Zollverein. Prussia’s economic dominance in Germany was assured. Political dominance was attained for Prussia by Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898), who became minister president of Prussia in 1862. On his father’s side he was from the Prussian nobility, or Junkers. Bismarck was an extreme conservative who had held several diplomatic posts. He became prime minister at a time of constitutional crisis. William I (1861-1888) who had served as regent since 1858, became King of Prussia in 1861 upon his brother’s death. The new king was at odds with the lower house of the legislature over funding for the military. The king wanted to build up his armed forces. For this he needed new taxes. The parliament refused to vote the new taxes. Bismarck decided to collect them anyhow, without parliamentary authorization. A loyal army backed the tax collectors, and the dutiful Prussian citizens paid their taxes. The liberal opposition in parliament was not prepared for an actual attempt at revolt. The king, with Bismarck’s help, got his strengthened army. A strong army was important to Bismarck, who is famed for making a speech in which he said that the great questions of the day would be decided by “blood and iron”rather than by speeches or the votes of majorities. Bismarck consciously rejected liberal constitutionalism as exemplified by the Frankfurt Assembly. Following realist politics, he believed force was the best guarantee of success. He also had occasion to say that “the main thing is to make history, not to write it.”Bismarck was a conservative man of action willing to use force when necessary. He determined that war was the best route to German unification. Through war he would exclude Austria, Prussia’s only serious rival for leadership in a united Germany. He would also use a war against France to arouse German patriotism and gain the support of the smaller German states, especially the Catholic states in the south, who were suspicious of Protestant Prussia.
Schleswig and Holstein were two duchies that were personal possessions of the Danish king, but were not an integral part of Denmark. In fact, Holstein, the southernmost duchy, was actually a part of the German Confederation. The population of the two duchies was a mixture of German and Danish-speaking peoples. German national feeling made the integration of these duchies into Denmark extremely difficult. Indeed an international treaty that specifically forbade their inclusion in Denmark had been signed in 1852. In 1863, the Danes got a new constitution that seemed to anticipate the incorporation of Schleswig as a part of Denmark. This provoked an angry nationalistic response among Germans. There was a demand that the German Confederation go to war to take the two duchies from the Danish king by force. However, Bismarck did not want to act through the German Confederation, which was dominated by Austria. Instead, he persuaded Austria to join Prussia in an ultimatum demanding the rescinding of the Danish constitution. When their demand was not met (as Bismarck had anticipated), the two powers attacked and overwhelmed Denmark. By the Convention of Gastein, signed August 14, 1865, Austria and Prussia agreed to maintain joint sovereignty over the two duchies. Prussia was to administer Schleswig, the northernmost territory, and Austria was to administer Holstein, which was right below it. Since Austria was separated from Holstein by Prussian territory, it would be easy enough, at some future time, for Prussia to make Austria’s role in Holstein untenable.
Bismarck had set Austria up for a future war to determine which country would lead a united Germany. Bismarck took care to isolate Austria diplomatically from the major Continental powers. He had already gained the favor of the Russians in 1863 by supporting them during a Polish revolt. Austria had supported the rebels. In October 1865, Bismarck met with Napoleon III of France. He gained Napoleon’s assurance of neutrality in return for a vague promise of territory along the Rhine. In April 1866, Bismarck concluded an alliance with Italy. If war broke out within three months, Italy was to join Prussia in battle against Austria. As a reward, Italy was promised Venetia. With Austria effectively isolated, Bismarck was ready for war. In June 1866, when Austria sought to reorganize Holstein, Bismarck found his pretext. He declared that Austria had violated the Convention of Gastein and sent Prussian troops into Holstein. Austria persuaded most of the German Confederation to join in a war against Prussia. Everyone had miscalculated the strength of the refurbished Prussian army. With new weapons, breech-loading needle guns (the Austrians were still using muzzle loaders), new tactics, and an effective rail system for the transportation of troops and supplies, victory became a cinch for the Prussians, who won a decisive victory at Sadowa on July 3, 1866. Peace came so quickly that it is often called the Seven Weeks’ War. Bismarck’s terms were relatively lenient. He did not want to jeopardize a future relationship with Austria, or prolong the war so as to give France or Russia the opportunity to intervene. Austria was excluded from Germany. The German states north of the Main River were organized into a North German Confederation, with the King of Prussia as President and represented by a Chancellor (Bismarck). There was to be a two-chamber legislature, with the lower house, or Reichstag, elected by universal male suffrage. Prussia directly annexed the territories of Schleswig, Holstein, Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, Nassau and the city of Frankfurt. The Catholic southern German states were to remain free, but agreed to join militarily with Prussia in the event of a war with France. Italy, which had lost on land and sea against Austria, got Venetia as promised.
France did not get any compensation for Prussian gains in the Austro-Prussian War, as it had hoped. Even France’s request for territories was used by Bismarck to first frighten the southern German states, and later England. A new source of friction between France and Prussia arose in 1868. A revolt had broken out in Spain, and the Spanish throne was offered to Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen (1835-1905), a distant relative of the Prussian king on the Catholic side of the family. The French, not surprisingly, were opposed to Prince Leopold’s candidacy. They did not want to see a Hohenzollern ruler to their south in Spain, while having a Hohenzollern ruler to their east in the expanded Prussia. Bismarck supported the Hohenzollern candidacy for some of the same reasons France opposed it. At the very least, in the event of a Franco-Prussian war, several French regiments would have to be left for security along the Spanish border. Much to Bismarck’s chagrin, it appeared that the French would prevail with the Prussian king, William I. They had appealed to William as head of the family to get Leopold to withdraw for the sake of peace. William agreed and got Leopold’s father to withdraw his son’s candidacy. The French ambassador, Vincent Benedetti (1817-1900), visited the Prussian king at a health spa, Bad Ems, and pushed further. The ambassador asked the king to write what was in effect a letter of apology stating that he would never agree to the renewal of a Hohenzollern candidacy for the throne of Spain. The king refused to write the letter and refused to see Benedetti again. He sent a telegram to Bismarck, who was in Berlin, explaining what had happened. Bismarck edited the telegram to make it appear that there had been a very curt and insulting exchange between the king and the ambassador. He then released the edited version of the EMS DISPATCH to the press. This action had the desired effect. Both German and French national honor was now at stake. A few days later, on July 15, 1870, France declared war on Prussia. Prussia fought an isolated France. Bismarck released to the English press a document showing Napoleon’s desire for Belgium during the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. Austria was still trying to recoup from the same war. Italy saw an opportunity to get Rome, which was still protected by French troops. The southern German states joined Prussia in the attack. Several German armies invaded France. When a French force became trapped at Metz, a second French army moved to relieve it. Instead, the second army was surrounded at Sedan. On September 2, 1870 that army surrendered. Emperor Napoleon III himself was captured. Paris was not taken until January 28, 1871. In contrast with the lenient treatment of the Austrians after the Austro-Prussian War, the French were treated much more harshly. Even before the surrender of Paris, the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, a French national monument, was used on January 18, 1871 as the site for proclaiming a new German Empire, with William I of Prussia as Emperor. The new state included northern Germany and southern Germany, with the notable exception of Austria. At last, Germany had been united on Prussian terms. The constitutional arrangement for the German Empire mirrored those first used in the North German Confederation. There was a parliament with a lower house, or Reichstag, elected by universal male suffrage. The empire’s ministers were responsible to the emperor, rather than the parliament. Since the emperor was the hereditary Prussian king, the constitution assured Prussian dominance in German affairs, and the strength of the new state magnified Prussian influence on a global basis. France had to give up Alsace and Lorraine to Germany, pay an indemnity of five billion francs, and sustain a German army of occupation until the fine was paid.
The unifications of Italy and Germany truly changed the course of history. Both Italy and Germany had political, imperial, and economic ambitions that upset the status quo. France was bitter after the Franco-Prussian War and obsessed with revenge. When Bismarck departed the political scene in 1890, German foreign policy fell into much less capable hands. There developed a pair of rival alliance systems setting the stage for World War I. The balance of both political and economic power in Europe was altered. The two world wars of this century can be tied to the rise of a united Germany. Today, Germany is the most important economic power in Europe and is very likely to be the dominant economic force in a united Europe of the future. There were indirect consequences of unification. The Austrian Empire changed dramatically after Austria’s defeat in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. In 1867, the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary was created. The Hungarians, especially the Magyars, attained control over internal affairs within Hungary. The Germans were dominant within the Austrian part of the empire. Hungary and Austria had a common foreign policy and a common ruler. In France, the monarchists could not agree among themselves on who should replace the discredited Napoleon III. The consequence of this disagreement was the birth of the Third French Republic by default. The Papacy was also deeply affected by these events. The Pope, who had lost Rome and all temporal power, considered himself to be a prisoner in the Vatican (the papal court). It was not until the signing of the Lateran Treaty with Mussolini in 1929 that the Pope regained sovereignty over territory in Italy. The Vatican City State recognized in 1929 was a small enclave in Rome, in contrast to the Papal States, which had their origins in the Donation of King Pepin in the eighth century, and which had eventually extended clear across the central portion of the Italian peninsula. It is an interesting coincidence that in the very year, 1870, that the Pope lost Rome, he reaffirmed his spiritual authority with the declaration of papal infallibility at the First Vatican Council.
The German Empire was guided by Bismarck as Chancellor from 1871 to 1890. The constitution made the emperor and the chancellor, who was responsible to the emperor rather than to the legislature, the driving organs of imperial policy. Nevertheless, Bismarck maneuvered for the support of the lower house of parliament, the Reichstag, which was elected by universal manhood suffrage. In 1871, Bismarck began a series of anti-Catholic measures known as Kulturkampf, or cultural struggle. These measures assumed that Catholics, seen as loyal to a now infallible pope, might not be loyal to the new empire. The Jesuits were expelled, and many Catholic bishops were arrested. By 1878, Bismarck had some second thoughts. Catholics might not be such a danger to the state after all. More importantly, he needed the support of conservative Catholics in the Center Party for new economic and political policies. He adopted a protective tariff, which alienated the Liberals. He outlawed the German Social Democratic Party, a moderate socialist group. As part of his anti-socialist campaign, he initiated extensive social welfare legislation. In the period 1883-1889, workers were given health, accident, and old-age insurance. This was long before laborers in other industrialized nations received comparable benefits. (In the U.S. comprehensive social benefits were only introduced in the 1930’s, with the coming of the New Deal.) In 1888, Emperor William II (1888-1918) came to the throne. He disagreed with Bismarck regarding both the anti-socialist laws and foreign policy. In 1890, William II dismissed Bismarck and, with the help of several less able chancellors, became the chief maker of German public policy. He did try to reach out to the masses, but he was not tolerant of democracy. He stoutly resisted constitutional revisions that would have made the chancellor responsible to the Reichstag. Most importantly, William abandoned Bismarck’s policy of isolating France, while also managing to antagonize Britain with his desire for naval equality. These policies directly contributed to the creation of the hostile international environment that precipitated World War I. |