The German Confederation (German: Deutscher Bund [ˈdɔʏtʃɐ ˈbʊnt] ) was an association of 39 predominantly German-speaking sovereign states in Central Europe. It was created by the Congress of Vienna in 1815 to replace the Holy Roman Empire, which dissolved in 1806 as a result of the Napoleonic Wars.
The Confederation had only one organ, the Bundesversammlung, or Federal Convention (also Federal Assembly or Confederate Diet). The Convention consisted of the representatives of the member states. The most important issues had to be decided unanimously. The Convention was presided over by the representative of Austria, but this was a formality, as the Confederation had no head of state, since it was not a state.
The Confederation was a strong alliance among its member states because federal law was superior to state law. (The decisions of the Federal Convention were binding for the member states.) Additionally, the Confederation had been established for eternity and was impossible to dissolve (legally), with no member states able to leave it and no new member able to join without universal consent in the Federal Convention. But the Confederation was weakened by its very structure and member states, partly because its most important decisions required unanimity and the purpose of the Confederation was limited to security matters. Moreover, the functioning of the Confederation depended on the cooperation of the two most populous member states, Austria and Prussia, which were often in opposition.
The German revolutions of 1848–1849, motivated by liberal, democratic, socialist, and nationalist sentiments, attempted to transform the Confederation into a unified German federal state with a liberal constitution (usually called the Frankfurt Constitution in English). The Federal Convention dissolved on 12 July 1848 but was reestablished in 1850 after the revolution was crushed by Austria, Prussia, and other states.
The Confederation dissolved after the victory of the Kingdom of Prussia over the Austrian Empire in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. The dispute over which country would dominate the German states ended in Prussia's favour, leading to the creation of the North German Confederation under Prussian leadership in 1867. A number of south German states remained independent until they joined the North German Confederation during the Franco-Prussian War. After the German victory, the Confederation was renamed and proclaimed as the German Empire in 1871. It unified Germany (aside from Austria), with the Prussian king as emperor (Kaiser).
Most historians consider the Confederation to have been weak and ineffective, as well as an obstacle to the creation of a German nation-state. This weakness was part of its design, as the European Great Powers, including Prussia and especially Austria, did not want it to become a nation-state. But the Confederation was not a loose tie between the German states, as it was impossible to leave, and as Confederation law stood above the law of the aligned states. Its constitutional weakness lay in the principle of unanimity in the Diet and the limits of the Confederation's scope: it was essentially a military alliance to defend Germany against external attacks and internal riots. The War of 1866 proved its ineffectiveness, as it was unable to combine the federal troops to fight the Prussian secession.
History
Background
The War of the Third Coalition lasted from about 1803 to 1806. Following defeat at the Battle of Austerlitz by the French under Napoleon in December 1805, Francis II abdicated as Holy Roman Emperor on 6 August 1806, thus dissolving the Empire. In the aftermath of the Treaty of Pressburg Napoleon created the Confederation of the Rhine in July 1806, joining 16 of France's allies among the German states (including Bavaria and Württemberg). After the Battle of Jena–Auerstedt of October 1806 in the War of the Fourth Coalition, various other German states, including Saxony and Westphalia, also joined the Confederation. Only Austria, Prussia, Danish Holstein, Swedish Pomerania, and the French-occupied Principality of Erfurt stayed outside the Confederation of the Rhine. The War of the Sixth Coalition from 1812 to winter 1814 saw Napoleon's defeat and Germany's liberation. In June 1814, the German patriot Heinrich vom Stein created the Central Managing Authority for Germany (Zentralverwaltungsbehörde) in Frankfurt to replace the defunct Confederation of the Rhine, but plenipotentiaries gathered at the Congress of Vienna were determined to create a weaker union of German states than Stein envisaged.
Establishment and member states
The German Confederation was established by the 20-article 9th Act of the Congress of Vienna on 8 June 1815, after being alluded to in Article 6 of the 1814 Treaty of Paris that ended the War of the Sixth Coalition. The Confederation's final organizational structure and procedures were formally set forth by a more extensive second treaty, the 65-article Final Act of the Ministerial Conferences to Complete and Consolidate the Organization of the German Confederation, which was signed by the parties on 15 May 1820 and ratified by the Confederation on 8 June.
Thirty-nine states participated in the Confederation's June 1815 founding, with two additions by September. After 1815, only two additional territories were added. The Landgraviate of Hesse-Homburg joined in 1817. In 1839, as compensation to the Netherlands for the loss of part of its province of Luxemburg to Belgium, the Duchy of Limburg was created and was admitted to the Confederation. Over the course of the Confederation's 51-year existence, the number of member states gradually diminished, due to the extinction of ruling houses resulting in inheritances and consolidation of territories. Thirty-four member states remained at the time of the final dissolution by the Peace of Prague in August 1866.
Summary of membership changes
Federal Convention
The Federal Convention, as described in the basic law of 15 May 1820, was the sole constitutional institution of the Confederation. This was not an elected assembly, rather its members were appointed plenipotentiaries from the member states. The Convention was permanently presided over by the representative of Austria. Plenary sessions where larger states had more votes than smaller ones were only called to discuss important issues such as a declaration of war or ratification of a peace treaty, and required a two-thirds majority (Article XII). Constitutional issues concerning alterations to the fundamental laws, admission of new member states, or religious issues had to be decided unanimously (Article XIII). Consequently, even the smallest states held an effective veto in these areas. Most routine matters were decided by a majority vote of the smaller Engerer Rat, or inner council (Article XI). This comprised 17 votes distributed in the following manner:
The Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia, as the Confederation's largest and most powerful members, each had one vote, even though large parts of both were excluded from the Confederation because they had not been part of the Holy Roman Empire.
Six other major states also had one vote each: the Kingdom of Bavaria, the Kingdom of Saxony, the Kingdom of Württemberg, the Electorate of Hesse, the Grand Duchy of Baden, and the Grand Duchy of Hesse and by Rhine.
Three foreign monarchs ruled in personal union over five member states of the Confederation and each monarch had one vote: the king of Denmark as duke of Holstein and duke of Saxe-Lauenburg; the king of the Netherlands as grand duke of Luxembourg and (from 1839) duke of Limburg; and the king of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (until 1837) as king of Hanover.
The four free cities of Bremen, Frankfurt, Hamburg, and Lübeck shared one vote.
The remaining states shared a total of five votes, with one vote for each of the following groups:
Brunswick and Nassau
Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Mecklenburg-Strelitz
Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, Saxe-Hildburghausen, Saxe-Meiningen and Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach
Anhalt-Bernburg, Anhalt-Dessau, Anhalt-Köthen, Oldenburg, Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt and Schwarzburg-Sondershausen
Hesse-Homberg, Hohenzollern-Hechingen, Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, Liechtenstein, Lippe, Reuss (Elder Branch), Reuss (Younger Branch), Schaumburg-Lippe and Waldeck
Military
Activities
The rules of the Confederation provided for three different types of military interventions:
the federal war (Bundeskrieg) against an external enemy who attacks federal territory,
the federal execution (Bundesexekution) against the government of a member state that violates federal law,
the federal intervention (Bundesintervention) supporting a government that is under pressure of a popular uprising.
Other military conflicts were foreign to the confederation (bundesfremd). An example is Austria's oppression of the uprising in Northern Italy in 1848 and 1849, as these Austrian territories lay outside of the confederation's borders.
During the existence of the Confederation, there was only one federal war: the war against Denmark beginning with the Schleswig-Holstein uprising in 1848 (the First Schleswig War). The conflict became a federal war when the Bundestag demanded that Denmark withdraw its troops from Schleswig (April 12) and recognized the revolution of Schleswig-Holstein (April 22). The confederation transformed into the German Empire of 1848. Prussia was de facto the most important member state conducting the war for Germany.
There are several examples of federal executions and especially federal interventions. In 1863, the Confederation ordered the execution of the duke of Holstein (the Danish king). Federal troops occupied Holstein, which was a member state. After this, Austria and Prussia declared war on Denmark, the Second Schleswig War (or Deutsch-Dänischer Krieg in German). As Schleswig and Denmark were not member states, this war was foreign to the Confederation, which took no part in it.
A federal intervention confronted for example the raid of the revolutionaries in Baden in April 1848.
In June 1866, the Federal Convention took measures against Prussia. This decision was technically not a federal execution for lack of time to observe the actual procedure. Prussia had violated, according to the majority of the convention, federal law by sending its troops to Holstein. The decision led to the Austro-Prussian War in summer 1866 that ended with the dissolution of the confederation.
Armed forces
The German Federal Army (Deutsches Bundesheer) was supposed to collectively defend the German Confederation from external enemies, primarily France. Successive laws passed by the Confederate Diet set the form and function of the army, as well as contribution limits of the member states. The Diet had the power to declare war and was responsible for appointing a supreme commander of the army and commanders of the individual army corps. This made mobilization extremely slow and added a political dimension to the army. In addition, the Diet oversaw the construction and maintenance of several German Federal Fortresses and collected funds annually from the member states for this purpose.
Projections of army strength were published in 1835, but the work of forming the Army Corps did not commence until 1840 as a consequence of the Rhine crisis. Money for the fortresses were determined by an act of the Confederate Diet in that year. By 1846, Luxemburg still had not formed its own contingent, and Prussia was rebuffed for offering to supply 1,450 men to garrison the Luxemburg fortress that should have been supplied by Waldeck and the two Lippes. In that same year, it was decided that a common symbol for the Federal Army should be the old Imperial two-headed eagle, but without crown, scepter, or sword, as any of those devices encroached on the individual sovereignty of the states. King Frederick William IV of Prussia was among those who derided the "disarmed imperial eagle" as a national symbol.
The German Federal Army was divided into ten Army Corps (later expanded to include a Reserve Corps). The Army Corps were not exclusive to the German Confederation but composed of the member states' armies, and did not include all of the armed forces of a state. For example, Prussia's army consisted of nine Army Corps but contributed only three to the German Federal Army.
The strength of the mobilized German Federal Army was projected to total 303,484 men in 1835 and 391,634 men in 1860, with the individual states providing the following figures:
Notes
Historical context
Between 1806 and 1815, Napoleon organized the German states, aside from Prussia and Austria, into the Confederation of the Rhine, but this collapsed after his defeats in 1812 to 1815. The German Confederation had roughly the same boundaries as the Empire at the time of the French Revolution (less what is now Belgium). It also kept intact most of Confederation's reconstituted member states and their boundaries. The member states, drastically reduced to 39 from more than 300 (see Kleinstaaterei) under the Holy Roman Empire, were recognized as fully sovereign. The members pledged themselves to mutual defense, and joint maintenance of the fortresses at Mainz, the city of Luxembourg, Rastatt, Ulm, and Landau.
The only organ of the Confederation was the Federal Assembly (officially Bundesversammlung, often called Bundestag), which consisted of the delegates of the states' governments. There was no head of state, but the Austrian delegate presided over the Assembly (according to the Bundesakte). Austria did not have extra powers, but consequently the Austrian delegate was called Präsidialgesandther and Austria the Präsidialmacht (presiding power). The Assembly met in Frankfurt.
The Confederation was enabled to accept and deploy ambassadors. It allowed ambassadors of the European powers to the Assembly, but rarely deployed ambassadors itself.
During the revolution of 1848/49 the Federal Assembly was inactive. It transferred its powers to the Provisorische Zentralgewalt, the revolutionary German Central Government of the Frankfurt National Assembly. After crushing the revolution and illegally disbanding the National Assembly, the Prussian King failed to create a German nation state by himself. The Federal Assembly was revived in 1850 on Austrian initiative, but only fully reinstalled in the summer of 1851.
Rivalry between Prussia and Austria grew, especially after 1859. The Confederation dissolved in 1866 after the Austro-Prussian War, and was succeeded in 1866 by the Prussian-dominated North German Confederation. Unlike the German Confederation, the North German Confederation was a true state. Its territory comprised the parts of the German Confederation north of the river Main, plus Prussia's eastern territories and the Duchy of Schleswig, but excluded Austria and the other southern German states.
Prussia's influence was widened by the Franco-Prussian War resulting in the proclamation of the German Empire at Versailles on 18 January 1871, which united the North German Federation with the southern German states. All the constituent states of the former German Confederation became part of the Kaiserreich in 1871, except Austria, Luxembourg, the Duchy of Limburg, and Liechtenstein.
Impact of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic invasions
The late 18th century was a period of political, economic, intellectual, and cultural reforms—the Enlightenment (represented by figures such as Locke, Rousseau, Voltaire, and Adam Smith), but also early Romanticism, climaxing with the French Revolution, where freedom of the individual and nation was asserted against privilege and custom. Representing a great variety of types and theories, they were largely a response to the disintegration of previous cultural patterns, coupled with new patterns of production, specifically the rise of industrial capitalism.
But Napoleon's defeat enabled conservative and reactionary regimes such as those of the Kingdom of Prussia, the Austrian Empire, and Tsarist Russia to survive, laying the groundwork for the Congress of Vienna and the alliance that strove to oppose radical demands for change ushered in by the French Revolution. With Austria's position on the continent now intact and ostensibly secure under its reactionary premier Klemens von Metternich, the Habsburg empire was a barrier to contain the emergence of Italian and German nation-states as well, in addition to containing France. But this reactionary balance of power, aimed at blocking German and Italian nationalism on the continent, was precarious.
After Napoleon's final defeat in 1815, the surviving member states of the defunct Holy Roman Empire joined to form the German Confederation (Deutscher Bund)—a rather loose organization, especially because the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia each feared domination by the other.
In Prussia the Hohenzollern rulers forged a centralized state. By the time of the Napoleonic Wars, Prussia, grounded in the virtues of its established military aristocracy (the Junkers) and stratified by rigid hierarchical lines, had been surpassed militarily and economically by France. After 1807, Prussia's defeats by Napoleonic France highlighted the need for administrative, economic, and social reforms to improve the efficiency of the bureaucracy and encourage practical merit-based education. Inspired by the Napoleonic organization of German and Italian principalities, the Prussian Reform Movement led by Karl August von Hardenberg and Count Stein was conservative, enacted to preserve aristocratic privilege while modernizing institutions.
Outside Prussia, industrialization progressed slowly, hampered by political disunity, conflicts of interest between the nobility and merchants, and the continued existence of the guild system, which discouraged competition and innovation. While this kept the middle class at bay, affording the old order a measure of stability not seen in France, Prussia's vulnerability to Napoleon's military proved to many among the old order that a fragile, divided, and traditionalist Germany would be easy prey for its cohesive and industrializing neighbor.
The reforms laid the foundation for Prussia's future military might by professionalizing the military and decreeing universal military conscription. To industrialize Prussia within the framework of the old aristocratic institutions, land reforms were enacted to break the monopoly of the Junkers on land ownership, thereby also abolishing, among other things, the feudal practice of serfdom.
Romanticism, nationalism, and liberalism in the Vormärz era
Although the forces the French Revolution unleashed were seemingly under control after the Vienna Congress, the conflict between conservative forces and liberal nationalists was only deferred. The era until the failed 1848 revolution, in which these tensions grew, is commonly called Vormärz ("pre-March"), in reference to the outbreak of riots in March 1848.
This conflict pitted the forces of the old order against those inspired by the French Revolution and the Rights of Man. The breakdown of the competition was, roughly, the emerging capitalist bourgeoisie and petit-bourgeoisie (engaged mostly in commerce, trade, and industry), and the growing (and increasingly radicalized) industrial working class; and the other side associated with landowning aristocracy or military aristocracy (the Junkers) in Prussia, the Habsburg monarchy in Austria, and the conservative notables of Germany's small princely states and city-states.
Meanwhile, demands for change from below had been fomenting due to the influence of the French Revolution. Throughout the German Confederation, Austrian influence was paramount, drawing the ire of the nationalist movements. Metternich considered nationalism, especially the nationalist youth movement, the most pressing danger: German nationalism might not only repudiate Austrian dominance of the Confederation, but also stimulate nationalist sentiment within the Austrian Empire itself. In a multi-national polyglot state in which Slavs and Magyars outnumbered the Germans, the prospects of Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Polish, Serb, or Croatian sentiment along with middle class liberalism was certainly horrifying to the monarchist landed aristocracy.