German Unification: On Whose Terms?
I. The Prussian constitutional crisis of 1862
II. What was Prussia?
III. Economic development and liberal resurgence
IV. The international context
V. Bismarck and the wars of unification
VI. Conclusion: the Sonderweg thesis revisited
Prussian constitutional crisis, 1862-1866
William (Wilhelm) I
von Roon
Army Reform Bill (1860)
Progressive Party
Otto von Bismarck - chancellor 1862-
Notrecht = rule by emergency decree rather than parliamentary vote
Prussia (Brandenburg-Prussia)
Hohenzollern dynasty
Junker = Prussian nobility
large landed estates east of the Elbe river
landless laborers, relatively low-yield agriculture ("rye")
state service in army, upper bureaucracy
Prussian Landtag (lower house of representatives)
universal manhood suffrage/ministers not accountable to Landtag/army outside the consitution except for funding
Prussian 3-class suffrage system
German industrial revolution, 1845-1873
focused in Prussian regions: Ruhr; Saar; Upper Silesia
railroads as leading sector
producer goods: coal; pig iron and steel; mechanical engineering
needed large investments of capital
needed large, centralized industrial plant (Krupp in Essen (Ruhr))
liberal resurgence: National Association (1858-)
a bourgeois elite of liberal notables (businessmen, bureaucrats, professionals, professors)
von Rochau: coins the term Realpolitik (n.b. a liberal author--favored kleindeutsch solution)
Bismarck's "blood and iron" speech
balance of power / Great Powers
political fragmentation in Central Europe, Prussian-Austrian rivalry
in the 1860s, there was a favorable context for unification and restructuring
Otto von Bismarck (a Prussian Junker)
the Bismarck legend: had a master plan for unification; nation led by Prussia was inevitable
a "white revolutionary" (Lothar Gall): conservative interests, but willing to take risks to preserve and advance them
understood need to come to terms with the liberals, co-opt them if possible
'Bismarck: "it is better to make a revolution than to suffer one"
the three wars of unification:
•Danish War (1864) over Schleswig and Holstein
•Austro-Prussian War (1866)
•Franco-Prussian War (1870)
1871: founding of Second Empire (Kaiserreich) as a federation of princes, dominated by Prussia
the Sonderweg debate:
Dietrich Orlow: the liberals were defeated, victory for Prussian authoritarianism
"The new Reich was the work of Bismarck and the princes; the German people had little part in determining the terms of its establishment…In a very real sense, the new Reich represented the ultimate triumph of the Prussian counterrvolution." (A History of Modern Germany, 12)
David Blackbourn: the liberals got the frameworks they wanted for further progress:
"Unification has often been presented as a more or less willing capitulation. But that is one-sided, and ignores those aspects of the process that liberals would welcome…It created a sovereign, territorially-defined nation-state, with a constitution, a parliament, and a chancellor. Nor did liberals simply sacrifice 'liberal' values to the 'national' cause. The new Germany embodied much that was central to contemporary liberal programmes: the rule of law and the legal accountability of ministers, freedom of movement, a liberal commercial code, the harmonizing of currency and patents. These were not trivial matters to liberals, but an institutional foundation on which they hoped to build a genuinely liberal state. They did not choose unity over freedom, but looked to extend freedom through unity." (The Long Nineteenth Century, 258)
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original at http://www.edmaps.com/Germany_1871.gif
