Music scholars have also argued that the sustained E-flat not only represents the depths of Rhine River, but because Wagner was a Social Darwinist, the note represents creation itself; the music "evolves" from one simple note, and therefore Wagner's intention was that Germany itself, in spite of its newness, was an organic entity, existing in spirit, long before it was created politically. Supporters of Grossdeutsch, or Greater Germany, insisted that Prussians and Austrians with a common language naturally should be part of one nation. The Prussian war cabinet understood that its only supporters among the German states against the Habsburgs were two small principalities bordering on Brandenburg that had little military strength or political clout: the Grand Duchies of Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Brunswick joined the Zollverein Customs Union in 1842, while Hanover and Oldenburg finally joined in 1854[32] After the Austro-Prussian war of 1866, Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg were annexed by Prussia and thus annexed also to the Customs Union, while the two Mecklenburg states and the city states of Hamburg and Bremen joined late because they were reliant on international trade. Learn about the unification of Germany, a summary, and timeline in European history. [84] Austria's influence over the German states may have been broken, but the war also splintered the spirit of pan-German unity, as many German states resented Prussian power politics. [72], Three episodes proved fundamental to the unification of Germany. [70] To get the German states to unify, Bismarck needed a single, outside enemy that would declare war on one of the German states first, thus providing a casus belli to rally all Germans behind. Through military victory, Prussia under Bismarck's influence had overcome Austria's active resistance to the idea of a unified Germany. Analyze the factors that prevented the development of a unified German state in the 16th and 17th centuries (2007) Both political and religious factors prevented the development of a unified German state in the 16th and 17th centuries. [] His intention was nothing less than to overturn the European settlement agreed [to] in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna, which had reestablished an oppressive hegemony of a few great powers and blocked the emergence of smaller nations. Although seemingly minor events, the Erfurt Union proposal and the Punctation of Olmtz brought the problems of influence in the German states into sharp focus. In 1806, after a successful invasion of Prussia and the defeat of Prussia at the joint battles of Jena-Auerstedt 1806 during the War of the Third Coalition, Napoleon dictated the Treaty of Pressburg which included the formal dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire and the abdication of Emperor Francis II from the nominal reign over it. A complete overview of the AP European History exam. Celebrants gathered in the town below and marched to the ruins of Hambach Castle on the heights above the small town of Hambach, in the Palatinate province of Bavaria. Catholic populations along the Rhineespecially in such cosmopolitan regions as Cologne and in the heavily populated Ruhr Valleycontinued to support Austria. [19], Despite considerable conservative reaction, ideas of unity joined with notions of popular sovereignty in German-speaking lands. [17] In this context, one can detect its roots in the experience of Germans in the Napoleonic period. All parties in France rejected the terms, insisting that any armistice be forged on the basis of territorial integrity. France, in other words, would pay reparations for starting the war, but would, in Jules Favre's famous phrase, cede neither a clod of our earth nor a stone of our fortresses". [108], The 1866 North German Constitution became (with some semantic adjustments) the 1871 Constitution of the German Empire. Their pressure resulted in a variety of elections, based on different voting qualifications, such as the Prussian three-class franchise, which granted to some electoral groupschiefly the wealthier, landed onesgreater representative power. The southern states became officially incorporated into a unified Germany at the Treaty of Versailles of 1871 (signed 26 February 1871; later ratified in the Treaty of Frankfurt of 10 May 1871), which formally ended the war. Document A Historian R. R. Palmer, on German unification, 2002 Gradually, as we have seen, the Germans became dissatisfied with their position. The Mecklenburgs joined in 1867, while Bremen and Hamburg joined in 1888. There was no readily applicable definition for who the German people would be or how far the borders of a German nation would stretch. As a result, Germany after unification was forced to modify and adapt its political situation to accommodate dissenting political opinions and national and religious minorities. Germany only unified as recently as 1871, when Wilhelm I became the leader of the German Empire following the Franco-Prussian War. Due in part to the shared experience, albeit under French dominance, various justifications emerged to identify "Germany" as a potential future single state. The Burschenschaft student organizations and popular demonstrations, such as those held at Wartburg Castle in October 1817, contributed to a growing sense of unity among German speakers of Central Europe. Kaplan, in particular, pp. [116] The May Laws of 1873 brought the appointment of priests, and their education, under the control of the state, resulting in the closure of many seminaries, and a shortage of priests. Many of their ideas and programs were later incorporated into Bismarck's social programs (e.g., social insurance, education programs, and wider definitions of suffrage). p.302. Its former leading state, the Austrian Empire, was along with the majority of its allies excluded from the ensuing North German Confederation Treaty sponsored by Prussia which directly annexed Hanover, Hesse-Kassel, Nassau, and the city of Frankfurt, while Hesse Darmstadt lost some territory but kept its statehood. This seemed to be the most logical course since Prussia was the strongest of the German states, as well as the largest in geographic size. The overall content of the speeches suggested a fundamental difference between the German nationalism of the 1830s and the French nationalism of the July Revolution: the focus of German nationalism lay in the education of the people; once the populace was educated as to what was needed, they would accomplish it. Their governance varied: they included free imperial cities, also of different sizes, such as the powerful Augsburg and the minuscule Weil der Stadt; ecclesiastical territories, also of varying sizes and influence, such as the wealthy Abbey of Reichenau and the powerful Archbishopric of Cologne; and dynastic states such as Wrttemberg. [104] Although Bismarck had led the transformation of Germany from a loose confederation into a federal nation state, he had not done it alone. Napoleon established instead a German client state of France known as the Confederation of the Rhine which, inter alia, provided for the mediatization of over a hundred petty princes and counts and the absorption of their territories, as well as those of hundreds of imperial knights, by the Confederation's member-states. German politicians also targeted Jews as disloyal outsiders, although most of Germany's Jewish population voted for mainstream liberal or conservative politicians preferring assimilation into the political system rather than organizing into a separate political party. [36] Historians of the German Empire later regarded the railways as the first indicator of a unified state; the patriotic novelist, Wilhelm Raabe, wrote: "The German empire was founded with the construction of the first railway"[37] Not everyone greeted the iron monster with enthusiasm. Although an arch-conservative, Bismarck. The Brothers Grimm, who compiled a massive dictionary known as The Grimm, also assembled a compendium of folk tales and fables, which highlighted the story-telling parallels between different regions. Those who speak the same language are joined to each other by a multitude of invisible bonds by nature herself, long before any human art begins; they understand each other and have the power of continuing to make themselves understood more and more clearly; they belong together and are by nature one and an inseparable whole. Slowly, the music builds on the E-flat as the lights are slowly turned up on the setting, which shows the three Rhine Maidens swimming in the river. The Spanish, looking for a suitable Catholic successor, had offered the post to three European princes, each of whom was rejected by Napoleon III, who served as regional power-broker. [48] Failure to achieve unification in 1848, this argument holds, resulted in the late formation of the nation-state in 1871, which in turn delayed the development of positive national values. Afrikaans; ; Asturianu; Azrbaycanca; Bn-lm-g; ; ; Bosanski; Catal; etina; Dansk; Deutsch; Eesti . Napoleon's Continental System nearly ruined the Central European economy. Since the 15th century, with few exceptions, the Empire's Prince-electors had chosen successive heads of the House of Habsburg from the Duchy of Austria to hold the title of Holy Roman Emperor. The Prussian cavalry pursued the defeated French in the evening of 18 June, sealing the allied victory. The Unification of Italy and Germany Nationalism and Enlightenment ideas energized people in Europe to push for more democratic forms of government in the 1800's. In Latin America and the Caribbean, it inspired people to revolt against European rule and seek to create their own nations. If you are using assistive technology and need help accessing these PDFs in another format, contact Services for Students with Disabilities at 212-713-8333 or by email at ssd@info.collegeboard.org. Sch?nhausen, Duke von Lauenburg--was a Prussian statesman who in 1871 founded the German . How were they to be organized? In particular, it involved a struggle over language, education, and religion. [34], As important as these improvements were, they could not compete with the impact of the railway. [24] As he had done in 1819, after the Kotzebue assassination, Metternich used the popular demonstration at Hambach to push conservative social policy. Although many Catholics sympathized with conservative politics, Bismarck viewed Roman Catholicism, with its purported loyalty to a Roman pontiff, as a potential weakness to the German state. This limited union under Prussia would have almost eliminated Austrian influence on the other German states. By late spring, most important states opposed Berlin's effort to reorganize the German states by force. This essay, and the others in this collection, focuses on Saxony, demonstrating how multiple groups of non-German ethnicities interacted in the era of unification. Giuseppe Mazzini and his leading pupil, Giuseppe Garibaldi, failed in their attempt to create an Italy united by democracy. Austria's sphere expanded throughout much of the Central European territories formerly held by the Holy Roman Empire. [13] Ever since the Prince-Elector of Brandenburg had made himself King in Prussia at the beginning of that century, their domains had steadily increased through inheritance and war. Bismarck was also confronted with problems from religious minorities in Germany, especially from Catholics and Jews. '", Kocka, Jrgen and Mitchell, Allan. The "Witch. Finally, Francefearing Hohenzollern encirclementdeclared war on Prussia in 1870, resulting in the Franco-Prussian War. On 15 November 1863, Christian IX became king of Denmark and duke of Schleswig, Holstein, and Lauenburg, which the Danish king held in personal union. His guides also included distances, roads to avoid, and hiking paths to follow. The first part, Das Rheingold, opens with three Rhine Maidens guarding the Rhine Gold, and the last part, Gtterdammerung, concludes with the same Rhine Maidens. Ukrainian forces repelled numerous Russian attacks in Bakhmut over the past 24 hours, Kyiv said on March 4, despite claims by Moscow's mercenaries that the eastern city that has been the focal . There was also uncertainty as to who would best lead and defend "Germany", however it was defined. [7], The debacle in Russia loosened the French grip on the German princes. [22], Crucially, both the Wartburg rally in 1817 and the Hambach Festival in 1832 had lacked any clear-cut program of unification. If a European state declared war on one of their members, then they all would come to the defense of the attacked state. SEOUL, South Korea . From the German perspective, the actions of Blcher's troops at Waterloo, and the combined efforts at Leipzig, offered a rallying point of pride and enthusiasm. Following the defeat of the Austrian Empire in 1866, the German states allied with Prussia, with the notable exception of Catholic Bavaria, forming the North German Confederation. Beyond the salons, Jews continued a process of Germanization in which they intentionally adopted German modes of dress and speech, working to insert themselves into the emerging 19th-century German public sphere. Thus Wagner emphasizes that German identity is tied with geographical boundaries, in this case, the Rhine River. During the Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras, many of the previously strong barriers between Jews and Christians broke down. [59], Other nationalists had high hopes for the German unification movement, and the frustration with lasting German unification after 1850 seemed to set the national movement back. Examples of this argument appear in: Ralf Dahrendorf. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2001. Lacking a geographically central organizing feature (such as a national capital), the rails were laid in webs, linking towns and markets within regions, regions within larger regions, and so on. [97] "In the days after Sedan, Prussian envoys met with the French and demanded a large cash indemnity as well as the cession of Alsace and Lorraine. Members of the Upper House of the parliament, the Bundesrat, were appointed by the princes of the individual German states and were therefore beholden to the monarchs. Publicly, he replied that he could not accept a crown without the consent of the actual states, by which he meant the princes. Despite the legal, administrative, and political disruption caused by the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, the German-speaking people of the old Empire had a common linguistic, cultural, and legal tradition. German and Italian reunification has similarities and differences. [29], Formation of the Zollverein, an institution key to unifying the German states economically, helped to create a larger sense of economic unification. At the same time, the original East Prussian craddle of the Prussian statehood as well as the Prussian-held Polish- or Kashubian-speaking territories of Province of Posen and West Prussia were formally annexed into the North German Confederation, thus Germany.