Unification of Germany

Portent of World Strife

The great land-mass of Central Europe from the Baltic to the Alps, and the Rhine to the Vistula, had, from the earliest times, been inhabited, by groups of people who, though often bound by a common language, governed their own affairs, as tribes in ancient times, as kingdoms, principalities and duchies in later times, each with its own headman or ruler.

Throughout history they had waged war upon one another, made alliances with one another and resisted every attempt to form them into one cohesive nation under one leader. In the latter half of the eighth century a.d., however, there appeared upon the scene a Frankish king known as Charlemagne.

When their father died in a.d. 768, Charlemagne and his brother Carloman both became kings of the Franks. The difficult situation to which this arrangement gave rise resolved itself when the death of Carloman left Charlemagne in control of the whole kingdom.

In a reign of forty years, most of which Charlemagne devoted to warlike action, he conquered the Kingdom of Lombardy in Italy and brought much of that country under his rule; he passed over the Pyrenees and drove back the Moors behind the Ebro; and over the course of years he brought the Bavarians and the Avars, the Danes and the Saxons under his rule.

By A.D. 800 he was the most powerful ruler in Europe. In this year, in answer to an appeal from the Pope, he visited Rome, and while there, on Christmas Day, he was crowned emperor of what was to become known as the Holy Roman Empire.

This new Empire was, in a sense, the successor of the older Empire of Rome, and Charlemagne regarded himself in a large measure as the inheritor of the titles and rights of the earlier Roman emperors, despite the fact that the empire governed from Byzantium was still in existence.

From this time, until the Empire was abandoned in 1806, one of the German princes was recognized as having supremacy over the rest. There was no hereditary right of succession, but the dependants of a powerful emperor usually retained the succession for generations. The emperor, therefore, achieved his status by a mixture of descent and election.

The fact that there was an emperor in no way unified the many kingdoms and principalities over which he held sway. Indeed his authority over the individual states was extremely limited. In another aspect, however, the Holy Roman Empire did represent a unifying influence in Christendom. Beside it stood the Papacy, actually dominating the entire ecclesiastical organization of Western Christendom, and claiming for the Pope a spiritual authority overriding that of the emperor as the temporal head of Christendom. Nevertheless, the struggle for imperial status was a constant one among the more powerful princely rulers.

By the end of the thirteenth century the medieval European system had begun to break up largely as the result of this struggle for the imperial crown which entailed endless war, and in an attempt to prevent this situation from continuing an electoral system was brought into operation. Certain of the more important states were designated in the persons of their rulers, members of an electoral college, whose majority vote bestowed the imperial crown. Though this system reduced the physical struggle, it could not completely eliminate attempts to win votes of the Electors by persuasion or coercion.

In time, though the electoral system continued to exist, it developed into a mere matter of form, and functioned only properly when there was more than one claimant to the imperial crown. In 1437, Albert of Hapsburg became emperor, and from this time until 1806, with one exception, Charles of Bavaria, a Hapsburg wore the imperial crown.

In 1519, Charles V succeeded his grandfather Maximilian I as emperor, while the hereditary Austrian and other German possessions of the Hapsburgs were transferred to his brother Ferdinand. Charles attempted to establish the personal supremacy of the emperor throughout Germany, but failed. The German princes, both great and small, refused to surrender any part of their almost complete independence.

By the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) Ferdinand II tried to bring the Protestant princes into subjection, while Wallenstein, his outstanding general and favourite, worked tirelessly, but in vain, to bring about a Germany united under the absolute power of the emperor, but enjoying religious toleration.

After the Thirty Years War, the independence of the greater German princes was an established fact, while the still nominal imperial authority was little more than a fiction. The struggle of the next hundred years between the Bourbons of France and the Hapsburgs was not a struggle between France and the Empire, but between France and the Hapsburgs.

Yet another attempt to establish imperial ascendancy by the consolidation of the Hapsburg dominions in Germany failed on account of the formation of the League of Princes by Frederick of Prussia to maintain the constitutional rights of the German princes; in other words, their freedom from imperial control.

When in 1792 the French Republic went to war, it was not against the Empire, but against Austria, despite the fact that the Austrian ruler was the Holy Roman Emperor; and it was Austria, not the Empire, which Napoleon finally brought into submission at Austerlitz in 1805. By this time Napoleon had proclaimed himself emperor, and as there was no longer any plausibility in maintaining the pretence that there was one imperial head of Christendom, in 1806 the Emperor Francis dropped the title and the Holy Roman Empire ceased to exist.

Germany was now in theory what she had long been in practice, a geographical expression; while her master was Bonaparte, who could carve her into pieces as the whim took him. In 1806 the Prussians were defeated at Jena, and in the following years a new spirit arose in that country, and to some extent in other parts of Germany, which resulted in a war of liberation against Napoleon, culminating in Waterloo.

In 1806 Napoleon had formed a Confederation of German states. This was dissolved in 1814, but immediately replaced by a more lasting one, which sealed and stamped a territorial revolution of the first magnitude. The Germany of the Middle Ages had disappeared; most of its 300 states had vanished; only 39 remained; and these formed the new German Federation or Bund. Austria and Prussia were its chief members; among others were the Kings of Bavaria, Hanover, Saxony and Wurtemburg.

The history of the next fifty years is mainly a struggle for constitutional liberty. Several of the states had a States Assembly consisting of nobles and prelates, but there was nothing in the way of representative institutions nor had any of the rulers any idea of their responsibilities towards their peoples in the modern sense. This movement, however, was too strong to be crushed, and eventually, with Saxe-Weimar leading the way, several rulers granted constitutions to their peoples.

Another movement of the time was towards uniformity in commercial matters. Trade could never flourish in a country where import duties varied with each state, and where every few miles there was a boundary with its inevitable customs house. After several attempts, at last, in 1834, one trade area was formed.

Only Austria elected to stand outside this common market; an error which, by making it easier for Prussia to achieve dominance, indirectly led to her own undoing.

The popular passion for union now led to a powerful agitation which compelled the Bundestag, the assembly of the Federation, to agree to a meeting of a national Parliament in Frankfurt. The members, elected on a wide franchise, met together to draw up a constitution for a united Germany. Having decided to have an emperor, they offered the honour to the King of Prussia, who declined it; and as far as immediate results went, the Frankfurt Parliament was a failure.

The duel between Prussia and Austria for the leadership of Germany was now entering the final phase. In 1849 Prussia managed to form a union, but trouble in Hesse led to the calling in of Prussian and Austrian troops by the conflicting sides. But just as war seemed inevitable, Prussia gave way, and the union was dissolved.

By this time the question of Schleswig-Holstein was dominating German politics. The war against Denmark, though waged nominally by the Confederation, was in reality waged by Prussia with the help of a few other states. The conflict was suspended for diplomatic negotiations, but when no agreement had been reached by 1863, Saxony and Hanover reopened the war. Though Prussia and Austria disapproved of their action, fearing for their prestige, both announced they would act as independent states, marched against the Danes, and annexed Schleswig and Holstein.

From this event, Prussia was able to draw the excuse she was wanting for making war on Austria. The latter wished the Bundestag to decide the future of Schleswig and Holstein. Prussia suggested a drastic reform of the Bund from which Austria, who had chosen to remain out of the trade organization, should be excluded. Both presented their suggestions to the Bundestag, which accepted Austria’s. Prussia at once declared war on Austria, and on 3 July, 1866, after a campaign of seven days, totally crushed her at Sadowa.

Since the majority of the other German states had supported Austria, all shared in the humiliation. The war ended the connexion of Austria with the other states of Germany, and led to other changes, which increased both Prussia’s power and her size.

A new union was set up, the North German Confederation. It included all the states north of the Main; its head was the King of Prussia.

This King of Prussia was Frederick William IV, who had appointed as his Chancellor, or chief minister, one of the most remarkable men this part of Europe has ever produced, Prince Otto von Bismarck.

Bismarck had first entered upon the political scene in the various Parliamentary assemblies which, in 1848, ended in the granting of a constitution to Prussia, of which he was ever a fierce opponent. A Royalist to the core, it was he who had prompted the king to decline the offer of the imperial crown by the Frankfurt Parliament in 1849, on the grounds that its tender was based on a popular will and not on the concurrent assent of the German sovereigns.

As Prussian representative in the Bund from 1851, he had been quick to see that German unification could never be achieved so long as reactionary Austria blocked the way with her claims to the position of leader of a united Germany, a leadership which he was determined should pass to Prussia.

In 1862 he had so impressed the king with his abilities and his ideas that he was appointed Chancellor, a post which automatically gave him the opportunity for implementing his plans for securing Prussian supremacy.

On his appointment he proclaimed: “It is not by speechifying and majorities that the great questions of the day will be decided, but by blood and iron.” From that moment he began to plot with cunning and ruthlessness unmatched, the policy by which he was determined to achieve his ambition.

As we have seen, within four years he had eliminated Austria, and formed a union of the northern states under Prussian leadership. All he needed now was to prove beyond doubt to the German states remaining outside the Northern Confederation that Prussia was undisputed master of them all. This he hoped to achieve by provoking a war with France from which Prussia would emerge the victor.

Over the next four years he continuously goaded France, whose own ruler, Napoleon III, appeared to go out of his way to aid Bismarck in his schemes by announcing a desire to push the frontier of France to the Rhine. For all his talk, however, Napoleon appeared loth to take action to forward his ambition, until eventually Bismarck decided that he must be forced to it.

Once again the Iron Chancellor was favoured by fortune. The Spanish throne fell vacant and there was no hereditary successor.

Among the candidates put forward was a prince of Frederick William’s own house, Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern. Napoleon, fearing Prussian encirclement if Leopold were elected, somehow persuaded the prince to withdraw, and instead of leaving well alone he sent his ambassador to William requesting a promise that Leopold’s candidature would not be renewed. The king refused, and later in the day declined to reopen discussions.

From Ems, where he was staying, he sent a telegram to Bismarck in Berlin acquainting him of what had taken place. Bismarck thereupon published the telegram, but with certain alterations which read: “His Majesty refused to receive the ambassador, sending word that he had nothing more to communicate,” which made it appear that instead of a courteous refusal to give his promise which had really happened, the king had dismissed the ambassador.

This version reached Napoleon before his ambassador’s report, and without waiting for the latter, in his indignation, he im­mediately declared war on Prussia to avenge the insult.

This was exactly what Bismarck wanted. His armies were ready; his spies had penetrated French military secrets; he knew Prussia’s strength; and he knew Napoleon’s weaknesses better than Napoleon knew them. With all the German states at Prussia’s side, for Bismarck had made secret treaties with the southern states to come to her aid should she be attacked, she marched.

Within two months the Prussian armies were at the gates of Paris; within six months it was all over.

With the brilliance of the campaign and the certain knowledge of victory to support him, Bismarck proposed a new union to the princes, this time of all the German states. All saw, or were per­suaded to see, the advantages of such a union, since all would share in the fruits of Prussian successes.

So, on 18 January, 1871, the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Prussian state, and six days before peace negotiations were opened with the French, amid scenes of great splendour in the Palace of Versailles, Bismarck read to all the assembled German princes the proclamation of the new German Empire, or Reich, with William its first Kaiser.

For the first time in the history of Europe, Germany was united into one nation, under one supreme head. Had any contemporary statesman outside Germany been able to foresee what this unification portended in blood and lives less than half a century later, and again from 1939 to 1945, perhaps he might have been tempted to intervene.