A complete summary of the unification of Germany. This follows and covers the CIE syllabus 9489. It contains the political, economic and social factors that contributed to the unification and wars. I used my notes and got an A (90). It contains Metternich's system, the power struggle between Prussi...
What were the causes of the Revolutions in
1848–49?
The impact of Metternich’s System on the States of Germany
● Most of the area that is Germany today was known as the Holy Roman
Empire - the collection of semi-independent states under the Austrian
emperor
● This had collapsed by 1806, as a result of Napoleon's invasion
● He reorganised the west German states into a single organisation, the
confederation of the Rhine
● The French armies brought the Enlightenment ideas with them
● This movement sought to sweep away outdated political and social structures
● E.g.: they replaced the diverse laws and judicial system in various German
states with their own legal systems
● In reaction, many German thinkers began to emphasise the distinctiveness of
their culture
, ● Romantic writers stressed the importance of emotion and imagination and
they encouraged the historical past of the German people
● An influential writer was J.G. Herder, who popularised the concept of
Volksgeist (spirit of the people), the idea that each nation had its own
individual identity based on the shared heritage and language
● These were the first stirrings of a sense of German nationhood
● German people began to understand the importance of uniting against the
French occupation
● After its defeat by Napoleon, Prussia started reorganising the government and
army
● This enabled it to join forces with Russia and Austria to expel the French
forces
● The Battle of Leipzig was a major defeat for Napoleon (1813), Which helped
to develop national pride
● The battle of Leipzig happened when the king of Prussia, Frederick William III,
made an alliance against France with Russia
● Russian and Prussian armies pushed the French back toward France
● In June 1813, Austria also declared war on France and in October, Napoleon
was defeated in the battle of Leipzig
● The allied armies forced Napoleon to abdicate a few months after the
following defeat
● This is called the War of Liberation and it is seen as the first collective action
of the German nation
● However, the French occupation helped to fuel nationalism but it didn’t
become a mass uprising as South Germans looked for Austria’s political
leadership and the Northern states turned to Prussia
The post-war settlement
● September 1814, a congress of European nations met in Vienna to discuss
the problems caused by the wars, and to establish new boundaries on the
continent
● Austria, Prussia, Russia and Britain were the representatives at the meetings
● France was there too, but they had no decision-making powers
● The European leaders faced a challenge from the related ideas of liberalism
and nationalism
Key- Liberalism: a belief that the government should be reformed to allow as much
personal and economic freedom as possible, they favoured the thought of
representative assemblies
Key- Nationalism: a belief that people with a common language, culture or history
should have the right to govern themselves, the boundaries between states should
be based on this idea
● These leaders were political and social conservatives
, ● They wanted to restore the stability before the French Revolution and
Napoleon and recreate the rule of the old royal families who have lost power
during the previous 20 years
● The most significant individual of the Congress was Prince Klemens von
Metternich
● The Austrian Empire had a population of 25 million and extended over 647000
km
● In addition to Austrians and Hungarians, there were many ethnic groups
under their rule: Czechs, Slovaks, Croats, Poles and some Northern Italians
● Most of the population were Roman Catholics, loyal to the Pope
● The Metternich system was designed to maintain the rule of absolute
monarchy in Austria and the continuation of similar political systems in other
European countries
● Metternich didn’t support change and viewed liberty and equality as ‘evil’
designed to mislead the people
● He was aware that the empire was a fragile structure and that nationalism
threatened the rule of its royal family, the Habsburgs
● He was scared that if cultural groups were allowed their own independence,
the monarchy might collapse
● He didn’t place troops in the parts of the empire from which they came, as he
believed that this would reduce the chances of organised nationalists
opposition developing
● His was a negative policy, which relied on repressive methods such as press
censorship
● He created a network of secret agents who spied on political radicals and
intercepted their correspondence
● During the Vienna Settlement German settlement wasn’t proposed, actually, it
was the last thing Austria wanted
● The rivalry between Austria and Prussia created a great division as both
wanted to control the German states
● However, at this point, they were happy to co-exist in peaceful dualism as
they were both the great powers who drew up the peace treaty at the
Congress of Vienna
Austrian gains:
● Austria secured land in Italy, places such as Lombardy and Venetia and the
Habsburgs were restored to the central Italian duchies of Parma, Modena and
Tuscany
Prussian gains:
● Prussia gained Saxony, the Rhineland, Westphalia and Pomerania
● Prussia’s population more than doubled to 10 million
● This led to conflicts as Rhinelanders were Catholics and resented the
occupation of the Protestant Prussians
, ● Rhineland which has been industrialising rapidly had little in common with
rural Prussia and they often viewed them as an alien culture from the east
The German Confederation
● The Metternich System’s solution was to reorganise into a confederation
(bund) of 39 states under the control of Austria
● These vary in size, from kingdoms like Bavaria and Saxony to self-governing
cities such as Hamburg
● It wasn’t a united Germany and the intention was to avoid that
● The Confederation was based on the boundaries of the old Holy Roman
Empire
● It contained some non-Germans like Czechs in Bohemia and
French-speaking people in Luxembourg
● It excluded some German-speaking people including parts of Prussia
● The Diet met in Frankfurt which was a meeting of ambassadors from the
member states regarding this issue
● The Diet controlled the foreign policies of the member states but the individual
rulers continued to manage their own internal affairs
● The Confederation never developed a strong identity of its own, it never had
its own civil service and there was no attempt to develop it as an economic
area
● In 1821, an attempt to create a federal defence force failed as a result of
conflict over who should command such an organisation and how it should be
funded
● The Confederation was designed to maintain Austria’s power over the
German states
● The Diet was always ruled by Austrian representatives
● Austria had a veto over any attempt to change the constitution, and it could
usually count on the support of the main southern states: Bavaria,
Württemberg, Baden and Hesse-Darmstadt in a vote
● These states were close to each other and most of their population were
Catholic
● They were culturally more supportive of Austria than the northern, Protestant
Prussia
● The rulers of these southern states granted their subjects constitutions, with
certain civil rights in place, but retained most of the real power to the
government
● Most of the German princes followed Metternich’s lead in governing in an
authoritarian fashion
● Metternich was the most important influence on the future of the German
states
● He was the Austrian chief minister until 1848
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