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Community Under Anarchy: Transnational Identity and the Evolution of Cooperation
Bruce Cronin
1998
5. Constructing a Pan-Germanic Community
In the last chapter I examined the conditions under which specific forms of interaction among independent states can lead to a symbiotic relationship that diminishes the conceptual boundaries dividing them. In this chapter I will shift the emphasis from external interactions to the internal dynamics within the interacting states. This will enable us to more closely examine the role of domestic politics in changing the way political elites construct boundaries between societies.
Germany Integration as a Historical Anomaly
Like the integration of Italy, the creation of Germany was neither natural nor inevitable. For a millennium the Germanic regions of Europe had been a collection of medieval fiefdoms, Holy Roman electorates, petty principalities, and dynastic houses. While the idea of a Germanic culture had existed since the Middle Ages, the concept of Germany as a political community encompassing multiple principalities did not emerge until the 1840s. 1 In fact, from the time that the idea of a German Reich was conceived in the tenth century, political authorities had expended far more energy maintaining the principalities and ecclesiastical territories independent of the Reich than developing the Reich itself. 2
Moreover, history did not even leave a definitive geographical legacy upon which to build a German territorial state. The settlements of the Germanic peoples fluctuated considerably in the thousand years prior to integration. There were no clear landmarks or boundaries that marked German territory. 3 Instead, the political organization of central Europe can be traced to the Holy Roman Empire, an ecclesiastical conglomeration of electorates, principalities, and dynastic houses. Created in the tenth century by Otto I (a Saxon king), the empire included the former Roman parts of central Europe and much of Charlemagne’s Carolinginan Empire.
In 1438 Albrecht II of the House of Hapsburg succeeded to the throne of the empire and, with the exception of a three-year interlude, the Hapsburgs held the emperorship until it was dissolved by Napoleon in 1806. The Hapsburgs slowly expanded the empire well beyond what could be considered the Germanic regions into the areas now known as Hungary, Bohemia, and Italy. While this was partly accomplished through war, the primary mechanism for territorial expansion was dynastic marriage. 4 This is the origin of Austria’s multiethnic empire. Until the rise of the national state there was nothing paradoxical about the Hapsburgs ruling over both German and non-German lands. The political and social foundation of the Holy Roman Empire was not ethnic or cultural community but Christian universalism. The empire was considered the guardian of Christian civilization and inherited what the Roman Church had preserved of classical antiquity. Although it was referred to as the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, German-speaking people were a minority.
The Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century caused a major split in the unity of the empire. This laid the foundation for what would become two central European political traditions, Catholic and Protestant, ultimately represented by Austria and Prussia. The main beneficiary of the split was the House of Hohenzollern, which ruled the Holy Roman electorate of Brandenburg. Brandenberg had been a small weak electorate, heavily populated by the eastern Slavs. 5 This changed when the Hohenzollerns joined the central European revolt against the Papacy by siding with the Lutherans. Its role as a leader in the Protestant movement elevated its power and status throughout Protestant central Europe. It soon expanded through the acquisition of three small territories in the western part of what is now known as Germany. The new entity become known as Brandenberg-Prussia, a dynastic state headed by the House of Hohenzollern. With the Treaty of Augsburg in 1555, a stable balance of power system grew within central Europe.
Why, then, was a German nation-state created in the late nineteenth century, and why did it take the form that it did? More important, what made the rulers, revolutionaries, and political classes think of themselves as Germans rather than Prussians, Badans, and Bavarians? While some authors attribute this to the power of German nationalism, most modern historians reject the romantic nationalist explanation. 6 Instead, most political scientists and historians tend to view German integration as the result of a hegemonic struggle between Austria and Prussia for control of central Europe. 7 As such, the focus is largely on the person of Otto von Bismarck, master of realpolitik and symbol of Prussian power. 8 As in the case of the Italian Cavour, Bismarck is seen to represent a generation of European political leaders who sought to expand state power through bureaucratic efficiency and the manipulation of nationalist movements.
This explanation is powerful but highly insufficient for several reasons. First, although Bismarck certainly played a key role in the creation of Germany, the process that led to German integration began well before to his appointment as minister-president in 1862. Moreover, while Bismarck’s policies were based primarily on Prussian interests, these interests expanded considerably during his tenure. As historian Louis Snyder argues, the transformation of Bismarck from narrow Prussian to broader German nationalism is one of the most important factors in the history of nineteenth-century Europe. 9 A Bismarck-centric explanation would have to account for this change.
Second, the power-and-interests approach would have to take into account the divisions among the ruling elites. Bismarck was influential, but he was still only one of a number of political actors within Prussia. Most Prussian officials, including Bismarck himself, opposed the creation of a German state, and the king was averse to ceding Hohenzollern rule to a national state. There were at least three political forces within Prussia, each with a different vision for the future of their country: the Hohenzollern monarchy, the Prussian bureaucratic state, and the German cultural nation. Explanations based on raison d’état do not account for how these competing interests were reconciled. Even within the German principalities there was an ongoing conflict between particularism and pan-nationalism, making it difficult speak in terms of a single state interest.
Finally, realist explanations assume that Austria and Prussia were struggling for similar ends, to dominate central Europe through territorial expansion. However, the raisons d’état of Austria and Prussia depended less upon some abstract notion of state power and more on the type of state each wished to become. During the period under investigation Prussia, Austria, and the German principalities were each undergoing profound internal changes brought about by the revolutions of 1848. Their interests ultimately depended upon how they resolved this question of state identity. While Austria wished to remain a multinational empire, Prussia was internally divided over whether it wished to be a national or dynastic state. Both of their preferred outcomes depended upon the resolution of these issues.
Consequently, this chapter argues that neither the romantic nationalist nor the power-and-interests explanations are sufficient. While German nationalism did help to cultivate a transnational German identity among the political actors in Prussia and the German principalities, the creation of Germany was ultimately a political process involving competing definitions of the German nation. It required a prior construction of an amalgamated security community in central Europe, an arrangement that equated the security of the principalities with that of the German nation.
Developing a Common Relationship
The political foundation for a German state that would eventually encompass a disparate group of independent kingdoms and principalities was not based on primordial ties of ethnicity, culture, or even language. While the common characteristic of language did eventually provide the material foundation for a common German identity, this attribute was not considered salient by the rulers until the reorganization of central Europe during the Napoleonic and post-Vienna periods created a special relationship among them. Like the discourse on the “Italian question,” the external treatment of central Europe as part of a “German question” helped to nurture this idea.
When Napoleon’s armies swept through central Europe, they confronted a complex set of overlapping institutions that resembled both medievalism and the ancien régime. Napoleon rationalized the hodgepodge of fiefdoms, ecclesiastical territories, and electorates that comprised the Holy Roman Empire by consolidating the territories into principalities and creating the Confederation of the Rhine. For the first time the German principalities achieved sovereign statehood independent of the Holy Roman Empire. 10
After the defeat of France in 1814 the Congress of Vienna maintained most of Napoleon’s reforms. Thirty-nine sovereign German states were loosely associated through the German Confederation. The confederation consisted of small Lutheran states in the south and Catholic provinces of Austria in the north. In the southwest there was a bloc of several relatively large kingdoms and principalities. The confederation was based on the concept of dualism, that is, joint management between Austria, which held the presidency, and Prussia, which assumed the vice presidency. Before 1848 neither Austria nor Prussia were interested in either altering the structure or in challenging the other. Austria made no effort to increase the powers of the presidency and Prussia accepted its secondary role. 11
Like Napoleon, the great powers neither intended nor wished to create a German state. Rather, both saw administrative benefit in linking the German principalities and kingdoms together through a loose confederation under great power management. For the congress, this was vital to the concept of a strong independent European center. 12 However, as an unintended consequence, the organization of central Europe also created a special relationship among states that previously had little in common. In the first place, the confederation gave the hodgepodge of German states a unique collective identity. This was reinforced by the creation of institutional structures within the confederation that were exclusively “German” in membership. For the first time there was a concept of collective defense and security interdependence among historic rivals. Catholic and Protestant states became allies under the banner of the confederation.
Moreover, as in the case of Italy, the congress isolated the region from European politics by placing it exclusively within the sphere of the two German great powers. By treating the thirty-seven principalities and kingdoms as a political problem to be managed, the congress reinforced their unique relationship. The region later came to be known as the Third Germany. Finally, the congress had made Prussia more “German” by taking away its traditional Polish territories and allowing it to expand into the Rhineland. As a result, the Prussian kingdom’s center of gravity shifted from Poland (its traditional political base) to the Germanic territories. 13
The legacy of Vienna was therefore a concept of three Germanys: Hapsburg Germany, Hohenzollern Germany, and a Germany of small independent principalities. This would have an important impact on the future of central Europe.
1848 and the Changing Conceptions of Central Europe
The permissive condition that allowed for a redefinition of identities within central Europe was the undermining of existing authorities. Beginning with a liberal revolt in Baden in February 1848, uprisings spread to most of the other central European states. The fragility of the governments was evident by the speed at which the kings and princes capitulated to liberal demands; rebels gained power in almost every state, changing the complexion of the Federal Diet. 14 By March the revolution triumphed in Berlin (the capital of Prussia) and by October Vienna fell to the rebels. 15 The revolutions in Vienna and Hungary badly damaged the image of Austria as a German power by highlighting its multiethnic character and undermining its dynastic tradition. On the other hand, the Berlin revolution forced Prussia to grapple with its internal identity for the first time since 1701, when it became an independent state. The challenge to the Hohenzollern monarchy, which had been intricately identified with Prussia, raised the question of what Prussia was.
Out of this disorder and redefinition of authority, several alternative ideas for organizing central Europe emerged. There were essentially four proposed forms: a Kleindeutsch (Little Germany), a Grossdeutsch (Great Germany), a “triad” of Prussia, Austria, and a federated Germany comprised of the principalities, and a bipolar division of the region between Austria in the south and Prussia in the north. These forms were debated among German rulers, revolutionaries, and intellectuals throughout the 1848–1866 period, beginning with the Frankfort Parliament of 1848–1849. The Frankfort Parliament, also called the German Constituent National Assembly, was established in the midst of the German-wide revolutions by newly empowered liberal members of the various German diets. Its members were elected from all German states, including Prussia and Austria, for the purpose of developing a constitution for a united German state. The debate over the type of security arrangement that would replace the one imposed by the great powers at Vienna highlighted the disagreement over where conceptual boundaries should be drawn.
The Kleindeutsch solution foresaw a unified national state that would include all parts of the old German confederation except for Austria. This was based on the belief that the Austrian Empire was primarily non-German in composition and that since Austria was unwilling break up its empire it could not be part of a German national state. It was generally accepted that a Kleindeutsch state would be created by Prussia, the true heir to the German nation. 16 According to one German scholar, Prussia had a mission to create a united independent Germany under Hohenzollern leadership. “The time of powers, of dynastic issues is past; the principle of states, of citizenship in states, takes their place.” 17 In this sense, Prussia (like Piedmont) was viewed by some as a positive referent society that embodied the transnational German identity.
The Kleindeutsch scenario saw the Prussian king as assuming the crown of Germany, although the early advocates of this solution also foresaw a national parliament and ministerial responsibility. 18 This approach was proposed by the president of the Frankfort Parliament, Heinrich von Gagern, and generally supported by the Protestant states from north and central Germany. Gagern argued against including non-German territories in the new state, saying the Parliament must
recognize that Austria, for the time being, cannot enter the narrow federal state which the rest of Germany desires... because the majority of Austrians do not accept the conditions of entry into the narrower federal sense, namely the constitutional separation of the German provinces from the non-German ones. 19
While 80 percent of Prussians were German, only eight million of the thirty-six million Austrians were Germanic; sixteen million were Slavs, five million were Hungarians, five were million Italians, and two million were Romanians. 20 A member of the Prussian Lower House of Parliament emphasized this point in a debate over the Austrian alliance in Germany: “If the Minister of the Interior... is regrettably going to repeat the phrase ‘cooperation with Austria,’ then I must reiterate: Austria is not German... to go hand in hand with Austria is to cooperate with twenty-eight million Slavs and others.” 21
Paul Pfizer, a Swabian minister from Baden, argued that a united Germany was not possible so long as two great powers were members of the German Confederation. He suggested that Austria must be excluded, since its far-flung interests in the Danube region and Italy would prevent it from fully identifying with the German nation. 22 A Kleindeutsch solution would destroy the system that the great powers had imposed on Europe by creating a national state that was independent from external forces.
A second alternative was the Grossdeutsch solution: a Germany of seventy million people including the territories of Prussia, Austria, and Bohemia but excluding the rest of the Hapsburg domains. In other words, it would be a state whose borders would coincide with those of the post-1815 German Confederation. This was supported primarily by the southern German states, all of which had Catholic majorities. 23 Even at the Frankfort Parliament, where most delegates sympathized with Prussia, there was great admiration for Austria’s traditions and a strong desire to maintain links with the Hapsburgs. 24 Ex-Austrian revolutionary Julius Fröbel, for example, proposed a new German Empire with a central diet comprised of two houses. The house of princes would be led by a Prussian president and the emperorship would be hereditary in the Hapsburg dynasty. 25 This mirrored the organization of the German Confederation.
The Grossdeutsch approach was more complex—and thus less popular among the lesser German states—than the Kleindeutsch. While there was little doubt about the Germanic nature of Prussia—even among those states that distrusted her—it was unclear whether the Austrian Empire was a union of two states, one German, the other Magyar, or whether it was a single empire in which no nationality predominated. 26 This issue was crucial. If it was the former, then a Grossdeutsch state would be consistent with the national principle. Thus, the German and Bohemian territories of the empire could become part of the new state. On the other hand, if it was the latter, any entrance of Austria into Germany would automatically make it a multinational entity.
The three Germanys approach proposed the creation of a triad consisting of Prussia, Austria, and a federation of the German kingdoms and lesser German states. The Third Germany would be a federation rather than a unitary state, allowing each of the secondary powers to retain their independence but enabling them to act collectively as a coherent power. In a sense, it would be like the German Confederation without the domination of either Austria or Prussia. “Germany” would become a pluralistic security community. This concept of a triad was proposed at various times by the four German kingdoms: Baden, Württemberg, Bavaria, and Saxony. The idea of a separate identity for the secondary states could be traced to Napoleon’s Confederation of the Rhine and to the common relationship these states had to the other great powers.
This concept of a “rump Germany” was further developed during the Frankfurt Parliament in 1848, when the initiative for German unity was shifted from the great powers to the secondary states. While Austria and Prussia were both Germanic in varying degrees, they were also members of the club of great powers, and in this sense were seen by many to have less in common with the other German states. Moreover, all the secondary states were at various times suspicious and fearful of Prussia and Austria. One version of the triad envisioned a third Germany that would be built under the leadership of Bavaria, as a counterpoise to Austria and Prussia. 27 This would have created a classic balance of power system in central Europe. Another version, offered by Badenese foreign minister Franz von Roggenbach, proposed a United States of Germany that would have excluded Austria but allowed Prussia representation. This would have given maximum power and independence to the states within the Third Germany. Von Roggenbach argued that
the federal unity to be established should not be exclusive and unconditional, but that it should be one within which the independence and sovereignty of the several existing federal states should continue undisturbed over the whole area of domestic legislation and administration. 28
Freidrich von Buest from Saxony suggested creating a federal diet that would meet in the north under a Prussian presidency and in the south under an Austrian one. There would also be a parliament of delegates from the German states that would compose the institutions of a united Germany. Opposing a German federal state, Buest argued that a “league of states, to which Germany owes its finest flowering of her cultural life” is the best solution. 29 What each of these proposals had in common was a desire to create a separate identity for the secondary German states, avoiding domination by either great power but also falling short of creating a German state. It would be a clear rejection of pan-Germanism, and parochial identities would trump transnational ones. The most ambitious effort to put this idea into practice was the creation of the Four Kings Alliance by Saxony, Hanover, Württemberg, and Bavaria in 1850, an attempt that ultimately failed.
The Third Germany approach was rejected for reasons both internal and external to the German states. Externally, it would have meant excluding two historic German great powers, Prussia and Austria. This would have been difficult unless it was accompanied by successful revolution in either Prussia and Austria, since both powers would have likely objected to the creation of a new great power in central Europe. For Austria, it would have meant severing its ties with the German states; for Prussia, it would call into question its very existence as a German state. While revolutions were initially successful in these countries, they were soon suppressed. Internally, there was little unity among the princes and the politically active population. For example, the Frankfurt Parliament was born out of revolution and thus did not represent the princes but rather those actors recently empowered by the revolutions. So long as the liberals and radicals were in control of the German diets, the deputies to the parliament could speak for their states. However, once the revolutions were defeated, the Frankfurt Parliament became irrelevant.
At the same time, none of the four kingdoms seriously tried to lead a German revolution or challenge Austria or Prussia when the great powers were vulnerable. As a result, there was no positive referent society around which the Third Germany could coalesce.
Support within the German Confederation vacillated between these alternatives, and even within Prussia and Austria opinion was divided. While it might seem obvious that Prussia would support Kleindeutsch and Austria Grossdeutsch, this was not obvious during the 1848&-;1866 period. Here is a clear case in which interests followed the definition of the situation. For example, if it was Prussia’s natural interest to dominate central Europe, why didn’t it attempt to unify Germany under its leadership in 1849 rather than 1866? The distribution of power clearly favored Prussia far more in 1848–1849 than in 1866–1870. 30 Austria was occupied with internal revolts and military conflicts in Hungary and Italy, and Vienna itself was undergoing widespread unrest. Russia was preoccupied with the revolts in Poland, the Danube, and Hungary. Internally, France was in disarray resulting from its own revolution. Not only did the international situation favor a Prussian-led Germany, but Prussia’s internal position would have been greatly improved by such a move; domestically, the monarchy was under strong pressure to pursue liberal and national policies, including the unification of Germany.
The Prussians did not view the situation within this framework, however. King Frederick William IV revered what he saw as the centuries-old tradition of the Holy Roman Empire. The idea of a new Germany that would sweep away the Holy Roman heritage, the rights of the princes, and their royal institutions was totally alien to him. 31 He did not favor a Little German approach, arguing that “Germany without the Tyrol, Trieste and the Archduchy (Austria) would be worse than a nose without a face.” 32 Thus, while Prussia may have benefited geopolitically from a Kleindeutsch state, this was not its preferred outcome until the 1864–1866 period. Up to that point, Prussia remained faithful to the alliance of central European great powers.
This point was made most blatantly when Prussian king Frederick William rejected the crown of Germany that was offered to him by the Frankfurt Parliament in 1849. His reasons for the rejection were twofold, both related to his transnational identities as a European monarch and leader of a European great power. First, he would not accept a “crown from the gutter” (the people), insisting that he could only accept such an offer if it came from the legitimate German princes. 33 Moreover, he did not want to extinguish Prussia’s identity, saying, “The colors black, red, and gold (the flag of the German nation) shall not supplant my cockade, the honored colors of black and white (the symbol of the House of Hohenzollern).” 34 Second, his image of a German Reich was not based on Prussian aggrandizement, but on a Christian Germany ruled by the House of Hapsburg with himself as second in command in charge of the federal army. 35 He was thus looking toward an imperial central European alliance between Little Germany and the whole of the Hapsburg domains.
From the Austrian perspective there was no obvious state interest apart from the interests of the dominant political actors within the empire. The 1815–1848 period had been characterized by a close transnational political alliance among the German aristocracies that cut across political boundaries. 36 Austria’s conservative aristocracy had a deep admiration for Prussia and hoped for a renewal of the old class coalition with the Prussian aristocracy as late as 1860. 37 Class solidarity, not state power, was their primary focus.
Austria’s unwillingness to give up its multinational empire ultimately made the Grossdeutsch approach impossible. This was not lost on the German states, for while Prussia was considered a decidedly German power, Austria was viewed more as a European one. 38 Although this was an advantage under the Vienna system, after 1848 it became a liability. However, for Austria, the conflict was between the national principle and the imperial ideal, and there was never any question as to which the Austrian monarch would choose, even if it meant sacrificing Austria’s position in central Europe. In fact, Emperor Francis Joseph enacted policies that he knew would likely weaken his influence with the German principalities in the interest of facilitating greater internal coherence within the empire. In March 1849 he promulgated a new constitution that subjected all parts of the Austrian Empire to control from Vienna. This created a single united empire, and that automatically precluded an Austrian-led German state, since none of the proposals envisioned including the Hungarian lands in the German nation. 39
This consolidation of the Hapsburg empire led to the weakening of ties between the Austrian state and the German nation. 40 Faced with a choice between remaining a central European multinational empire and expanding into a new central European nation-state, Austria opted for its parochial loyalties. While Prussia eventually adopted a Little German policy, the Hapsburgs never showed a willingness to trade their Hungarian territories for rule over central Europe. This made it impossible for Austria to become a positive reference group embodying the German ideal.
In fact, like Prussia, Austria passed over several opportunities to create a German state with Vienna as its head. Between 1815 and the 1860s Austria had the sympathy of many of the smaller German states, particularly those in the Catholic south. 41 Yet while the Hapsburgs made several more bids for German leadership (the final one being the Congress of German Princes in 1863), unlike Prussia they never tried to organize an Austrian-led German state. Thus, even up until its dissolution, the Austrian empire chose to maintain its Hapsburg heritage. This, rather than an abstract notion of raison état, can explain its behavior during the 1849–1866 period.
The Prussian Dilemma
Prussia’s evolution from an electorate within the Holy Roman Empire to an independent modern state was facilitated by the development of its bureaucratic structure, which flourished under both ministerial and absolute kings. With the growth of a strong administrative apparatus in the eighteenth century the state came to be regarded as something apart from the monarch. 42 The development of the state as a political force independent of the monarchy was precipitated by the rise of the Junkers. The Junkers were an aristocratic ruling class that became active in government, and, over time, they came to dominate the state bureaucracy. Frederick the Great had brought crown and state together by forging a close alliance between the monarchy and the Junker nobility, announcing, “I am the first servant of the state.” 43 From this political arrangement three political forces developed within Prussia: the Hohenzollern dynasty, the bureaucratic state, and the German cultural nation. 44
During the 1848 revolutions the spread of liberal ideas and the rise of the middle class challenged both the dominance of the Junker nobility (and thereby the state itself) and the idea of dynastic lineage as a justification for rule. 45 The speed at which the king and military capitulated to the rebellion in Berlin undermined the image of the state as all powerful. Coupled with the European-wide rebellion against the Vienna system, the ruling classes of the German states lost their authority. These multiple challenges greatly weakened the entire concept of great power security management and monarchic solidarity in central Europe. Yet, while the authority of the monarchy was challenged, the liberals never succeeded in making Prussia into a constitutional state, and public opinion remained divided. 46 As a result, the country emerged from the 1848 period at a political stalemate.
The first casualty was the alliance between the Prussian state and the Hohenzollern monarchy. The leaders of both institutions were uncertain about where their loyalties would ultimately lie. As long as the Prussian state, the Hohenzollern crown, and the Junker class were united (as it had been during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries) Prussia’s position as a European dynastic state was stable. While the French revolution and the Napoleonic wars challenged the legitimacy of both the dynasty and the state, the Vienna system created a new role for Prussia as a central European great power. The German revolutions and the Frankfurt Parliament brought the questions of German nationality and parliamentary government to the forefront. Both these forces challenged Prussia’s identity as a German, dynastic Junker and bureaucratic state. This led to a division among the dominant institutions of Prussian society as to what Prussia was and what its role should be in central Europe.
Given the intensity of these domestic conflicts and the competing identities, it is difficult to identify a “Prussian interest” during the 1849–1966 period. Rather, there were competing interests among groups promoting different visions of Prussia’s future. Security considerations would follow the resolution of this dilemma. Consequently, in order to understand Prussia’s role in the creation of a German national state, one must take into account how different identities, both parochial and transnational, led to different conceptions of interest.
Prussia’s internal division began during the Berlin revolution. In May of 1848 the king agreed to establish a representative Prussian National Assembly. The assembly immediately began to discuss the creation of a constitutional state, though not necessarily a national one. 47 As in the case of Italy, the main focus was not national unity but rather constitutionalism and representative government. In reaction to this development, the Junkers organized their own assembly, popularly dubbed the “Junker Parliament.” These processes occurred simultaneously with the opening of the transnational (that is, pan-Germanic) Frankfurt Parliament.
By the fall, however, the army regained control of Berlin and closed the assembly. At the same time, the king agreed to adopt a moderately liberal constitution modeled after the Belgian charter of 1830. 48 While the Prussian army and conservative ministers wanted to defeat the nationalist movement and assert Prussian influence in Germany, Frederick William was neither a Prussian patriot nor a Junker king. Prussia’s bureaucracy had to reconcile its position with the king’s new romantic vision of Germany. 49 Thus developed the first serious division between the state and the crown.
Further complicating the domestic situation was the recovery of Austria after the defeat of the revolutions in Vienna, Hungary, and its Slavic territories. Emperor Frederick William had tried to reassert Austrian leadership by creating an “Erfurt Union” of the German kingdoms and secondary states. He was temporarily successful, bringing twenty-four German states into the union by early 1850. 50 Austria’s success resulted in Prussia’s isolation and ultimately its humiliation at Olmütz, ending any possibility of a new cooperative relationship between the central European powers. 51 This humiliation further undermined the prestige and power of the Prussian state, particularly the bureaucracy and army. The relegitimation of Prussia was now a necessity.
The Hohenzollern monarchy hoped to rebuild its dynastic authority in Prussia. During the 1815–1848 period Prussia’s dual role as a European great power and legitimate dynastic house allowed for a fusion of parochial and transnational loyalties. It could continue to promote its dynastic interests within the context of Prussian state power, which was supported by its participation in the European concert and Holy Alliance. However, with the breakdown in solidarity among European monarchies—especially the split between the two German great powers—Prussian power and dynastic interests were no longer necessarily the same. In particular, the definitions of Germany and the means toward creating a German state diverged.
King Frederick William had been willing to subordinate Prussian ambitions to Austrian supremacy for the benefit of German unity, at least until the early 1850s. 52 Both he and his brother William were legitimists, believing in the rights of monarchs over the ambitions of states. When the king became incapacitated in 1858 and William assumed the throne, the crown declared its commitment to kingship through divine right. 53 Moreover, upon his accession, William expressed his hope for a “moral conquest” of Germany, arguing that “in Germany Prussia must make moral conquests by wise legislation of its own, by elevating all moral elements, and by adopting elements of unification.... The world must know that Prussia is ready everywhere to protect right.” 54
As a Hohenzollern, William wanted to absorb some of the smaller German states into Prussia by giving the princes a privileged place in governmental assemblies and by having them serve in the Hohenzollern army and bureaucracy. The crown valued its ties to the Hapsburgs and their shared history within the Holy Roman Empire. 55 This, however, soon brought the Hohenzollern monarchy into conflict with both the statist Bismarck and with the German nationalists inside Prussia.
During the 1850s conservative monarchists were more interested in maintaining monarchical government than in guaranteeing territorial sovereignty. 56 While the crown sought German unity through moral conquest, however, the Prussian state, as represented by the Junker-dominated bureaucracy and army, was primarily interested in increasing Prussian power. As a class, the Junkers were opposed to a German Empire; they considered themselves Prussians, not Germans, and felt a loyalty to their own state. 57 Their class interests were more important than any national feeling that could develop, and thus to some degree their fortunes were tied to the existence of an independent Prussia, historically the guarantor of these interests.
Bismarck, a Junker who came to represent the Prussian state after his appointment as president-minister in 1862, was particularly opposed to having Prussia submerged into a German national state. 58 The Junkers clearly favored parochialism over transnationalism. As Bismarck told Italian General Govone, “I am much less a German than a Prussian”; 59 he was initially opposed to a united Germany, even under Prussian leadership. “We are satisfied with the name Prussia,” he stated, “and are proud of the name Prussia.... Prussian we are and Prussian we wish to remain.” 60 Prussian patriotism, not pan-German nationalism, was his focus of loyalty. The state bureaucracy identified most with the legacy of Frederick the Great, who had built Prussia into a great power through a policy of conquest. The Prussian ministers and state officials were particularly incensed over the humiliation suffered at Olmütz. To the extent that Austria had begun to treat Prussia as an object rather than as a partner, Prussian state officials no longer saw any bonds between them as German great powers. Austria became a negative reference other.
This conflict brought Bismarck and the other conservative ministers into conflict with King William. In the face of widespread social unrest in the mid-nineteenth century, the survival of the monarchy required more than an assertion of state power vis-à-vis other states. It demanded domestic support and legitimation from a restless population. Thus, when Bismarck made his well-known statement, “The great questions of the day will not be decided by speeches and resolutions of majorities... but by iron and blood,” 61 King William was so appalled that he planned to immediately dismiss Bismarck from the ministry. 62 While he was later talked out of making this move by his advisers, it is a good indication of the tension that existed between crown and state.
The third political force to enter Prussian society after 1848 was transnationalism. The 1848 revolutions not only legitimized the idea of a pan-German nationalism, it also empowered the German nationalists. Before the German (and European) revolutions the population had no independent political existence apart from either state or monarch. This is why the Congress of Vienna could so easily redraw state boundaries without considering the populations that lived within them. After 1848, however, virtually all German princes were forced to grant constitutions to their people, thereby explicitly recognizing their political status. The people (at least the aristocracy) became citizens rather than subjects. The constitutional institutions remained even after absolutism was revived in Prussia and Austria in the early 1850s. Thus, the interests of the politically active segments of the population became an important political force.
The nationalists’ loyalties were directed not to the monarch or the state but to the German nation, which cut across state borders. This was well articulated by the members of Prussia’s German Progressive Party:
The existence and greatness of Prussia depends upon a firm unification of Germany....
We work for no one dynasty in Germany, neither for the Hohenzollern nor for the Hapsburg, when we wish to establish German unity. We work for ourselves, the German people....
This majority recognizes no other than German interests, and that if in some way the so-called Prussian interests should conflict with the German interests, we prefer the German interests. 63
While the nationalist and liberal movements receded after the restoration of state and monarchic authority in 1850, they regained their strength in 1859, after the Italian war of liberation sparked national enthusiasm for liberation in Germany. The political expression of this sentiment was manifested through the formation of the Nationalverein (National Society), modeled after the organization that helped facilitate Italian integration.
Legitimation and the Prussian Constitutional Crisis
The tensions described above led to the crises of 1860–1864. For the next four years Prussia was locked in an internal conflict over different types of reform: constitutional, tax, military, social, political, and parliamentary. Prussia could neither play a major role in international affairs nor assert itself as a state until its internal political struggle between liberals and conservatives, parliament and crown was resolved. 64 In the 1861 elections the Progressive Party swept the Lower House of the Lantag (Prussian Parliament), prompting the king to dissolve the parliament and call for new elections. The new election brought in an even larger liberal majority.
The conflict between crown and parliament culminated in the battle over military reform. Both the army (the state) and the king (the monarchy) wanted to change the length of service and method of financing for the Prussia army. While the issue may have been divisive on its own merits, it raised a more fundamental question, “Who rules Prussia?” or, more specifically, “Who is Prussia?” King William argued that those opposing military reform were “seeking to limit the highest attribute of royalty, the war command.” 65 Thus the king was defending the rule of the Hohenzollern monarchy.
At the same time, the army and bureaucracy were defending the power of the state against encroachments from civil society, represented by the parliament. After the Lantag voted down the budget, the Prussian government was paralyzed. Despondent over his inability to run the government, King William considered resigning. On the verge of abdication, he appointed Bismarck as minister-president, “who assumed the role of a feudal vassal come to learn his lord’s will.” 66 Thus, Bismarck was not brought into the Prussian government either to unify Germany or to increase Prussian power but rather to resolve the constitutional crisis.
Transnational Identity as a Unifying Force
The crisis forced the political actors within Prussia to address the questions of Prussia’s identity and its role in the European system. Unlike Austria, which was comfortable with its position as a multinational empire under the Hapsburg monarchy, Prussia was a divided society. Its behavior from 1863–1871—the period of integration—reflects this division. At this point, questions of domestic politics and transnational identities intersected. The revival of “the German question” occurred over the dispensation of the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein.
Under the Vienna treaties of 1815 Schleswig and Holstein were tied to the Danish monarchy through a personal union. Holstein, however, was Germanic and had been part of the Holy Roman Empire; in 1815 it joined the German Confederation. Schleswig had been a Danish province since the ninth century; however, it had a majority Germanic population. Despite the common monarch, the duchies were covered by royal succession laws that were different from those of Denmark.
This had led to a crisis in 1848, when Frederick VII assumed the throne of Denmark. One of his first acts was to sign a document declaring the Danish monarchy to be indivisible through a complete territorial and constitutional union between Denmark and Schleswig and the subjection of both duchies to the Danish crown law. 67 This led to a revolt in the duchies, and a resurgence in national feeling within Germany. 68 Under strong pressure from nationalists throughout the German principalities, Prussia invaded and occupied the duchies. The war was ended in part through pressure from the great powers but also because King Frederick William was disturbed that he had supported a revolt against a legitimate monarch. 69
This issue once again emerged in 1863, while Prussia was in the middle of its constitutional crisis. The Danish parliament passed a new constitution that incorporated Schleswig into the Danish kingdom, effectively separating the two duchies. This was not only a violation of the London Treaty of 1852, which ended the first war, but it was perceived by the German public to be an attack on German nationality. Once again, this excited nationalist sentiment within the German states. For the first time, the German states proposed building an alliance based solely on their transnational ties. National parliaments throughout the German Confederation called for a war of liberation to install Frederick of Augustenberg as duke of Schleswig-Holstein. The Prussian parliament voiced its support for war in national terms: “The honor and the interests of Germany require that the German states as a whole should recognize the Hereditary Prince Frederick as Duke of Schleswig-Holstein and should render him effective assistance in the assertion of his rights. 70 With the support of the German Confederation the German armies forced the Danish out of the duchies; in the peace agreement that ended the war, Denmark ceded them to Prussia and Austria jointly.
This was the first time that all the German states fought together as Germans. The continued interest of the German and Danish people in Schleswig-Holstein from 1846–1866 was due not to its strategic importance but to the fierce clash between German and Danish nationalism in the area between the Eider and Kongea rivers. 71 At the same time, the issue of what to do with the duchies raised broader questions concerning the relationships between Austria, Prussia, and the German states. German nationalists favored the installation of the German prince of Augustenberg as head of an independent German duchy. This would have placed the Germanic peoples of the duchies under a German monarch.
Monarchic solidarity favored the prince on legitimist grounds, but dynastic interests would not be served by the creation of yet another small independent German state. The Prussian state interest encouraged annexation to Prussia. Austria’s interest as an empire was to include the duchies in the German confederation under the duelist administration of the two German great powers. Thus, Schleswig-Holstein was a microcosm for the German question in general. This is why the conflicts that erupted over these minor duchies inevitably led to conflict over the future of Germany.
The conflict over the duchies represented the competing understandings of what constituted Germany. The addition of a newly independent German principality to the existing German confederation would represent a victory for the Third Germany approach. That is, the emphasis would have been placed on the duchies’ particularlism and their loose affiliation with other German states. Annexation to Prussia would have lent support to the idea of a kleindeutsch Germany, since the emphasis would have been on the duchies’ German nationality rather than on their particularlist affiliations with the house of Augustenberg. With annexation to Prussia, its supremacy as a German state would have been strengthened. The incorporation of the new duchies into the duelist German confederation would have maintained the unity of a grossdeutsch Germany without creating a unified state. It would have emphasized a Germany that included Austria without requiring Austria to give up its non-German lands.
Thus Austria regarded the German Confederation from the perspective of its role as a central European empire. From this standpoint German unity was never a serious consideration. The Austrian Germans identified with the Hapsburg dynasty more than with their German brethren in the principalities. Their loyalty was to their great empire and they did not want to see that empire destroyed in the name of German nationalism. 72 Moreover, as Austria began to shift the focus of its empire from Vienna to Budapest, it became less tied to the interests of the German principalities. Austria’s priority of maintaining its empire was be made clear in 1866; in the midst of its war against Prussia over the future of Germany, Austria sent 130,000 soldiers to fight Italy over control of Venice at a time when they were badly needed at the Prussian front. 73
Prussia, on the other hand, was divided over its role in Germany, and, moreover, it was still gripped in an internal crisis over its identity as a state. These differences, both domestic and international, were played out over the Schleswig-Holstein question and the war against Austria. While Bismarck favored annexation of the duchies to Prussia, both the king and the crown prince were horrified at this suggested violation of the legitimist principle. 74 Nationalist opinion rested squarely with the duke of Augustenberg as the legitimate German ruler. Bismarck’s interests were tied to those of the Prussian state. Aside from territorial considerations, he was interested in the possibility of Prussia gaining a naval harbor, which would enhance the prestige and power of the state. 75 Moreover, he wished to exclude Austria from German affairs, partly to repay them for the humiliation at Omültz. He thus sought to provoke a war with Austria to settle the German question once and for all. 76
The crown, on the other hand, saw the issue as a German rather than a Prussian one and favored recognizing Prince Frederick of Augustenberg as the legitimate ruler. 77 King William argued that Prussia had no moral claim to the duchies. 78 While Bismarck saw Prussian concerns as the priority, the crown held German and monarchic interests to be dominant. When Bismarck argued that Prussia’s goal should be to force Denmark to recognize the Treaty of London (granting governing rights to Denmark), King William exclaimed to him, “Aren’t you a German at all?” 79 Bismarck, of course, was a German, but he was also a Prussian, and as a representative of the Prussian state this was his priority.
Almost until the war with Austria began, the crown favored maintaining Prussia’s alliance with Austria. As late as 1865, for example, King William spoke of the German great power alliance’s “firm and enduring foundation in My German patriotism and that of My ally.” 80 He reflected, “What misfortune we should create and what offense we should give to the world if we two, the son of Frederick William III and the grandson of the Emperor Francis, were to turn from being friends and allies into enemies?” 81 This view was shared by legitimist minister Ludwig von Gerlack who argued that
the dualism is the vital basis, the real foundation, of the German Constitution. Germany ceases to the Germany without Prussia or without Austria. Prussia’s honor and power are therefore the pride of Germany and Austria’s honor and power are the pride of Prussia. To injure Prussia is to injure Austria, and to injure Austria is to injure Prussia. 82
When Bismarck argued for war during a council of ministers meeting in February of 1866, the crown prince argued that such an act would be “fratricide and a crime against German nationality.” 83 He said he would attend no more meetings until Bismarck resigned.
The German nationalists both within and outside Prussia favored integration at almost any cost. While many of the German princes supported Austria before and during the war of 1866, the interests of their parliaments and political organizations coincided with those of Prussia. 84 Within the German states public and elite opinion was divided over their relationship with Prussia. While many of the kings of the larger states were wary of Prussian power, liberals in the parliaments gave priority to German integration. 85
A Common Experience: Standing Together as Germans
The war of 1866 came about despite the reservations of the Prussian crown, partly because of Bismarck’s provocations but also because Austria had tried to use the German Confederation as a tool to isolate and humiliate Prussia. 86 Contemporaries, both pro- and anti-Prussian, referred to this war as the German Revolution or the German Civil War rather than as a hegemonic war between two great powers. 87 The Prussian victory ended Austria’s role in Germany and led to the construction of the first amalgamated security community in central Europe: the North German Confederation under Prussian leadership. This security community was created as an all-German association based on a unique relationship among its members.
Prussia’s policy after the war reflected the tension between its parochial and transnational identities. Bismarck wanted to annex Hanover, Hesse-Kassel, and Nassau to Prussia in order to undo the forced separation of the eastern and western half of Prussia. This separation had been created by the Congress of Vienna when Prussia was induced to trade its Polish territories for lands on the Rhineland. It had since become a state objective to extend its influence over the territories separating the old mark of Brandenberg from the Rhineland. 88
King William, on the other hand, was strongly opposed to the dethronement of legitimate princely dynasties as being incompatible with monarchical principles. 89 This view was shared by the feudalist Conservative Party (to which Bismarck was nominally a member). William, however, finally agreed to the annexations not only for reasons of Prussian aggrandizement but in fact to punish the princes who had treasonously taken up arms against him. 90
The Prussian victory and the creation of a security community increased transnational pressure on the central European leaders. The victory sparked an impassioned outburst of national feeling throughout Germany, even within states that had supported Austria. 91 Prussia’s status was elevated as the symbol of pan-German unity. In the three months following the Prussian victory over Austria, Bismarck accepted the necessity of placing German interests alongside Prussian ambitions. 92 While he had strongly opposed German integration throughout the 1848–1866 period, after the war he realized that only German nationalism could legitimize authority within the North German Confederation and, more specifically, within Prussia. The constitutional conflict and the rebellions within the principalities had demonstrated that the population identified more with their German heritage than with either the Hohenzollern dynasty or the Prussian state.
Upon becoming the federal chancellor of the newly formed North German Federation, Bismarck remarked that it was his duty to “develop the power of Germany and not that of a greater Prussia.” 93 Whether Bismarck the individual was simply responding to political pressure rather than expressing changing sentiments is irrelevant. In his role as executive of an amalgamated security community he had to redefine Prussia’s interest in transnational (that is, pan-Germanic) terms. Thus, while he had not given up his policy of realpolitik, his interests were no longer Prussian, but German. This change was not only in name but would have an effect on the course of history.
During the late 1860s the economic and social habits of the newly annexed western territories began to transform the character of the old Prussian state. With the integration of different Germanic cultures they began to take on a new “German,” rather than a traditional “Prussian” character. The constitution of the North German Confederation was a synthesis between Hohenzollern monarchism, Prussian statism, and German nationalism. The will of the nation was satisfied through the creation of a common German citizenship for all independent states. The franchise for the Parliament was universal (male) suffrage and it recognized both the German people and the princes. The interests of the states were protected through the Bundestrat, the executive body comprised of representatives from state governments. The king of Prussia maintained his dynastic tie by assuming the leadership of the Reich.
Thus, it would be simplistic to view the creation of the confederation as simply a Prussianization of the north. 94 The sharp divisions within Prussia make it clear that power considerations were only one element in determining the type of security arrangements they would construct. Moreover, the integration of the new provinces into Prussia progressed rapidly after 1866 because the national sentiments of the population became stronger than their local loyalties. 95 The North German Confederation began to change the outlook of the smaller and medium-size German states; by participating in the security community, their leaders began to think and act like Germans. Reflecting and assisting this transformation was the replacement of the Prussian flag with a new German banner.
While the North German Confederation continued to develop a uniquely German identity, the question of the south German kingdoms remained. By 1866 Bismarck realized that the construction of a pan-German state required that the south be won over, not conquered. Unity depended on the voluntary cooperation of the princely dynasties. 96 He thus recognized that German unity would have no permanence in the absence of a transnational German identity among the major political forces in central Europe. Moreover, he understood that the biggest impediment to the creation of a united German state was the particularism of the princely dynasties in both the north and south.
Unlike a dynastic state, a national state depends upon the will of the nation for its legitimation. Understanding this, Bismarck promoted the idea of a national representative parliament as a key part of the central government. This was necessary not only for establishing a unifying force among the divergent states but also as a counterbalance to “the diverging tendencies of dynastic special policies.” 97 To this end, Bismarck concluded alliance agreements with the four south German kingdoms.
In the end, however, it took one more war—this one against France—to truly unify Germany. As Otto Pflanze perceptively argues, “the cult of the nation requires devils as well as gods. If Bismarck was the ‘George’ Washington of the German revolution, ‘Louis’ Napoleon was its ‘King’ George III.” 98 Prussia became a positive reference group in sharp distinction from a negative one, France. Thus, the German Empire was the outcome of a war in which all the German states fought together as a transnational community against a common enemy. While the war began over an obscure dynastic issue, the shared battles, shared victories, and occasional losses turned it into a transnational crusade. 99 The psychological bond established between the German states during the war diminished the particularistic sentiments, dynastic loyalties, and local customs that had previously divided them.
It had been generally accepted within the principalities that the conflict with France was truly a German, not a Prussian, quarrel, 100 this despite the fact that France declared war on Prussia alone and not against the south German states. However, through its bellicose rhetoric, France had turned a dynastic issue into a German national one. 101 This helped lead to a shift in public and elite sentiment from parochialism to transnationalism, particularly within the south German states. Their interests were defined in German rather than parochial terms. Whether or not Bismarck conspired to provoke the war remains a historical controversy. 102 What is important for our purposes is the role of this common experience in strengthening the states’ transnational identities.
The final stage in the integration of Germany required all the parties to give up at least some of their particularlist loyalties. After the war of 1870 the southern kingdoms entered into agreements with the North German Confederation to create a single unified German state. The Prussian state was transformed through the resurrection of the title of Kaiser and the concept of the Reich, both of which had historical roots in the German nation. King Louis of Bavaria, for example, bid King William to “re-establish the German Reich and the German imperial dignity.” 103 The newly established German constitution decreed one common nationality and guaranteed that “every person belonging to any one of the confederated states should be treated in every other of those states as a born native with equal rights.” 104 Thus, it was not a process of Prussification but one rather of Germanification that united the central European states.
The process that led to the integration of Germany demonstrates how the evolution of transnational identities can help to diminish the conceptual boundaries that separate societies. The creation of Germany became possible when the revolutions of 1848 undermined domestic authority and changed the balance of power in central Europe. It became likely, however, when the rulers and populations of Prussia and the German principalities placed their transnational identities as Germans ahead of their own particularistic identities. While these revolutions undermined the legitimacy of the monarchies and the Vienna system in general, no political group emerged dominant, and thus domestic conflicts paralyzed much of Prussia and the German states. Identification with the German nation, strengthened through wars against Denmark and France, proved to be the single force that could unite the rulers and active populations across class and ideological lines.
These conflicts ultimately led to the creation of an amalgamated security community in the north and ultimately to full political integration. Within Austria the Hapsburg rulers and the Magyar (Hungarian) nationalists ultimately chose to defend the position as a multiethnic empire, effectively ending any possibility of a grossdeutsch solution. In Prussia transnationalism helped to harmonize what had become competing institutions within the state: the Hohenzollern crown, the Prussian bureaucracy, the Junker aristocracy, and the German constitutionalists. This enabled Prussia to emerge as a positive reference group for the smaller German principalities embodying the German ideal. While history tends to focus on Bismarck’s statist policies as the force that brought about German integration, this chapter has demonstrated that the raison of Prussia depended upon the type of état it would become. Despite different conceptions of Prussian and German identities, Bismarck and the liberal nationalists ultimately agreed on their fundamental understanding of Germany; they each needed the other.
The conflict between Austria and Prussia cannot be reduced to a hegemonic clash between two great powers seeking to increase their relative power. While it was a power struggle, the fundamental conflict was as much over what each state was and would become than it was one over control of central Europe. These differences cannot be accounted for by a simple notion of raison d’état. I have argued that the key tension in the integration process was between parochialism and transnationalism. This helped to define state interests. From late 1848 Austria had several opportunities to build a unified German state under its leadership, particularly when Prussia was weak. Yet this would have meant abandoning its Hapsburg Empire legacy, something few Austrians were willing to do. Austria’s unwillingness to undergo the changes necessary to evolve from a multinational empire to a national state made it ultimately impossible for it to lead the German nation. Prussia, on the other hand, was strengthened by its transnational ties, and it was ultimately German nationalism that enabled the Prussian state to recover from its internal turmoil. The price was the cession of sovereignty to create a new political community.
Endnotes
Note 1: Joseph Strayer, On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), chapter 6. Back.
Note 2: A. J. P. Taylor, The Course of German History: A Survey of the Development of Germany Since 1815 (New York: Coward-McCann, 1946), p. 13. Back.
Note 3: Hajo Holborn, A History of Modern Germany: The Reformation, 3 vols., vol. 1 (New York: Knopf, 1959), p. 12. Back.
Note 4: Taylor, The Course of German History, p. 17. Back.
Note 5: An electorate was an ecclesiastical or secular principality invested with the power of electing the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire (after confirmation by the pope). Its authority was derived solely from the empire and not from either dynastic lineage or divine right, as were the European monarchies. Thus, an electorate was not considered to be a sovereign state. Back.
Note 6: Otto Pflanze represents this basic consensus: “The common view of German nationalism as an irresistible current sweeping down the decades to fulfillment in 1870 is a fiction of nationalistic historians.” Otto Pflanze, Bismarck and the Development of Germany: The Period of Unification, 1815–1871 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), p. 13. Back.
Note 7: This position is either explicitly stated or implied in a number of works, including William Carr, The Origins of the Wars of German Unification (New York: Longman, 1991); W. E. Mosse, The European Powers and the German Question, 1848–1871 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958); A. J. P. Taylor, The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, 1848–1918 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954), introduction and chapters 2–9; Pflanze Bismarck and the Development of Germany. Back.
Note 8: Again, Pflanze well represents the traditional view, arguing that “Bismarck’s motives were those of raison d’état and arrondissement typical of eighteenth-century statecraft. His aim was not to unify the German cultural nation, but to expand the Prussian state within the limits of the European balance of power.” Pflanze, Bismarck and the Development of Germany, p. 9. Back.
Note 9: Louis L. Snyder, Roots of German Nationalism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), p. 73. Back.
Note 10: William Harbutt Dawson, The German Empire and the Unity Movement, 1867–1914 (Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1966), p. 12. While the Treaty of Augsberg allowed the princes to determine their own religious affiliations within their realms, the authority of most electorates and principalities was still derived from the Holy Roman Empire. Back.
Note 11: Pflanze, Bismarck and the Development of Germany, p. 82. Back.
Note 12: See Paul Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics, 1763–1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). Back.
Note 13: William Carr, A History of Germany, 1815–1990 (London: Edward Arnold, 1991), p. 7. Back.
Note 14: The Federal Diet was the representative body of the German Confederation established by the Congress of Vienna. As a political entity, it had few powers save that of mobilizing federal forces in time of war. Its members were not elected from the population but rather came from the ruling princely houses. Back.
Note 15: Eyck, The Revolutions of 1948–49, introduction. Back.
Note 16: Carr, A History of Germany, p. 48. Back.
Note 17: Quoted in Bolton King, A History of Italian Unity, vol. 2 (New York: Russell and Russell, 1924 ‘1899’), pp. 57–58. Back.
Note 18: See Helmut Böhme, ed., The Foundation of the German Empire: Select Documents (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), part 2. Back.
Note 19: Speech by Heinrich von Gagern on October 26, 1848, in Eyck, The Revolutions of 1849–49, document IV.1.G, pp. 118–19. Back.
Note 20: Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Vintage, 1989), pp. 164–5. Back.
Note 21: Quoted in A. J. P. Taylor, Bismarck: The Man and Statesman (New York: Knopf, 1955), p. 99. Back.
Note 22: Hajo Holborn, A History of Modern Germany, 1840–1945, vol. 3 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), p. 42. Back.
Note 23: Pflanze, Bismarck and the Development of Germany, p. 129. The distribution of support between an Austrian-led and a Prussian-led Germany suggests that religious identities had not entirely disappeared as a political force in Central Europe. Back.
Note 24: Carr, The Origins of the Wars of German Unification, p. 92. Back.
Note 25: Dawson, The German Empire and the Unity Movement, p. 146. Back.
Note 26: Taylor, The Course of German History, pp. 83–84. Back.
Note 27: Dawson, The German Empire and the Unity Movement, pp. 28–9. Back.
Note 28: Roggenback’s memorandum on Federal Reform, January 28, 1862 in Böhme, The Foundation of the German Empire, part 2, document 53, p. 98. Back.
Note 29: Buest’s memorandum on Federal Reform, October 15, 1861 in Helmut Böhme, ed., The Foundation of the German Empire, Document 52, p. 96. Back.
Note 30: Mosse, The European Powers and the German Question, p. 31. Back.
Note 31: J. A. S. Grenville, Europe Reshaped; 1848–1878 (Sussex: Harvester, 1976), p. 70. Back.
Note 32: Quoted in Carr, A History of Germany, p. 52. Back.
Note 33: Alan Sked, The Decline and Fall of the Hapsburg Empire: 1815–1918 (New York: Longman, 1989), p. 150. See also David Ward, 1848: the Fall of Metternich and the Year of Revolution (New York: Weybright and Talley, 1970), p. 229. Back.
Note 34: M. S. Anderson, Ascendancy of Europe, 1815–1914 (London and New York: Longman, 1985), p. 102. It should be noted that Frederick William did proclaim in March of 1848 that “Prussia merges into Germany” (Taylor, The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, p. 7). However, this statement was made three days after Berlin fell to the revolution. His subsequent statements and behavior strongly indicate that this statement was made primarily out of fear. Back.
Note 35: Carr, The Origins of the Wars of German Unification, p. 94; and Dawson, The German Empire and the Unity Movement, p. 54. Back.
Note 36: Peter Katzenstein, Disjoined Partners: Austria and Germany Since 1815 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), p. 30. Back.
Note 38: Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, p. 161. Back.
Note 39: Carr, A History of Germany, p. 49. Back.
Note 40: Katzenstein, Disjoined Partners, p. 44. Back.
Note 41: Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, p. 161. Back.
Note 42: Pflanze, Bismarck and the Development of Germany, p. 20 Back.
Note 44: Pflanze, Bismarck and the Development of Germany, p. 297. Back.
Note 45: Rudolph Stadelmann, Social and Political History of the German 1848 Revolution (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1975), p. 30. Back.
Note 47: Holborn, A History of Modern Germany, vol. 3, p. 73. Back.
Note 49: Sked, The Decline and Fall of the Hapsburg Empire, p. 152; Taylor, The Course of German History, p. 90. Back.
Note 50: Carr, The Origins of the Wars of German Unification, p. 96. Back.
Note 51: The conference at Olmütz ended a minor conflict between Austria and Prussia over the Electorate of Hesse. At the conference Prussia was forced to abandon the Erfurt Union and agree to a revival of the German Confederation under Austrian domination. See “The Olmütz Declaration,” in Frank Eyck, ed., The Revolutions of 1848–49, document VI.1.A, p. 173. Back.
Note 52: Holborn, A History of Modern Germany, vol. 3, p. 31. Back.
Note 53: Eugene N. Anderson, The Social and Political Conflict in Prussia: 1858–1864 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1954), p. 177. Back.
Note 55: Holborn, A History of Modern Germany, vol. 3, p. 31. Back.
Note 56: Carsten Halbraad, The Concert of Europe: A Study in German and British International Theory, 1815–1914 (New York: Longman, 1970), p. 42. Back.
Note 57: Robert Enders, “Austria in 1848,” in François Fejtö, ed., The Opening of an Era: An Historical Symposium (New York: Howard Fertig, 1948), p. 279. Back.
Note 58: Holborn, A History of Modern Germany, vol. 3, p. 151. Back.
Note 59: Heinrich Friedjung, The Struggle for Supremacy in Germany (London: Macmillan, 1935). Back.
Note 60: Pflanze, Bismarck and the Development of Germany, p. 74. Back.
Note 61: Taylor, Bismarck, p. 56. Back.
Note 63: All quoted in Anderson, The Social and Political Conflict in Prussia, pp. 127 and 128. Back.
Note 64: Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, p. 162. Back.
Note 65: Anderson, The Social and Political Conflict in Prussia, p. 103. Back.
Note 66: Pflanze, Bismarck and the Development of Germany, p. 168. Back.
Note 67: Dawson, The German Empire and the Unity Movement, p. 163. Back.
Note 68: Heinrich von Sybel, The Founding of the German Empire, vol. 3 (New York: Greenwood, 1968 ‘1891’), p. 39. I am using von Sybel sparingly, since he is generally regarded by historians as an apologist for Prussia. Von Sybel was a historian, but he was also a participant in the struggles of 1861–1871. His work is still used because most of it comes from the Prussian archives and thus includes information that was unavailable to other historians of his time. I am therefore limiting my use of his work to noncontroversial topics. Back.
Note 69: Holborn, A History of Modern Germany, vol. 3, p. 206. Back.
Note 70: Von Sybel, The Founding of the German Empire, vol. 3, p. 206. Back.
Note 71: Carr, The Origins of the Wars of German Unification, p. 34. Back.
Note 72: Friedjung, The Struggle for Supremacy in Germany, pp. xi and xiii. Back.
Note 74: Carr, A History of Germany, p. 92. Back.
Note 75: Dawson, The German Empire and the Unity Movement, pp. 179 and 190. Back.
Note 76: Friedjung, The Struggle for Supremacy in Germany, p. 69. Back.
Note 77: Dawson, The German Empire and the Unity Movement, p. 179. Back.
Note 78: Taylor, Bismarck, p. 78. Back.
Note 79: Friedjung, The Struggle for Supremacy in Germany, p. 49. Back.
Note 81: Dawson, The German Empire and the Unity Movement, p. 179. Back.
Note 82: Friedjung, The Struggle for Supremacy in Germany, p. 123. Back.
Note 83: Dawson, The German Empire and the Unity Movement, p. 194. Back.
Note 84: Pflanze, Bismarck and the Development of Germany, p. 123. Back.
Note 85: Carr, The Origins of the Wars of German Unification, p. 171. Back.
Note 86: F. R. Bridge and Roger Bullen, The Great Powers and the European States System, 1815–1914 (New York: Longman, 1980), p. 104. Back.
Note 87: Carr, The Origins of the Wars of German Unification, p. 138. Back.
Note 88: Carr, A History of Germany, p. 7. Back.
Note 89: Holborn, A History of Modern Germany, vol. 3, p. 187. Back.
Note 90: Taylor, The Course of German History, p. 109. Back.
Note 91: Carr, The Origins of the Wars of German Unification, p. 139. Back.
Note 92: Holborn, A History of Modern Germany, vol. 3, p. 200. Back.
Note 93: Taylor, Bismarck, p. 99. Back.
Note 94: This view is symbolized by Taylor’s flippant comment describing German integration: “Prussia changed her name to Germany.” See The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, p. xxiii. Back.
Note 95: Holborn, A History of Modern Germany, vol. 3, p. 204. Back.
Note 96: Pflanze, Bismarck and the Development of Germany, p. 486. Back.
Note 97: Taylor, Bismarck, p. 141. Back.
Note 98: Pflanze, Bismarck and the Development of Germany, p. 372. Back.
Note 99: Grenville, Europe Reshaped, p. 341. Back.
Note 100: Dawson, The German Empire and the Unity Movement, p. 343. Back.
Note 101: F. R. Bridge, The Hapsburg Monarch Among the Great Powers, 1815–1918 (New York: St. Martin’s, 1990), p. 97. Back.
Note 102: The war began over the succession to the Spanish throne and was fraught with misperceptions fed by dueling nationalisms. As one historian puts it, France “blundered into a war which was not unwelcome to them and Bismarck, though taken by surprise, turned their blunder into his advantage.” See Pflanze, Bismarck and the Development of Germany, p. 122. Back.
Note 103: Ibid., p. 492. Back.
Note 104: See article 3 of the constitution in Sir Augustus Oakes and R. B. Mowat, eds., The Great European Treaties of the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon, 1930), p. 289. Back.
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