Splintered Unity II: Minds and Money

     With the dissemination of the Holy Roman emperor's power to localized tribal princes and the polarizing of Reformed and Catholic factions during the Reformation, the lands of Germany were segmented into isolating parcels that impeded trade and political unity. It was these factors of the fractured power structure in the leading German families that initially decimated the German countryside in the Thirty-Years War, but primed the German people with a longing for shared greatness through their lands. Napoleon's invasion of the Germanic states in the early nineteenth century seeded the the concept of nationalist ideals that anchored Germans into a popular movement that cried out for peace among brethren, for it was better to have one, mighty Germany than hundreds of castle with thousands of guards.
     As German unity became more prominent both to the subjects of the duchies and to the politicians in various assemblies across the region, two powers strove to be the catalyst of unification. Austria, the prominent empire, ruled much of southern and eastern Europe, held considerable influence within the German parliaments, and had a significant German population; its size was one of its detraction since Austira's composition also included many other peoples and cultures that weakened the appeal of a Greater Germany under Austria's divided interests. The second contender was a powerful German state that had received recognition for its military prowess during the wars of Austrian succession in the eighteenth century and for its part in the coalition that defeated Napoleon. Prussia did not have the political weight or monetary resources of Austria, but under Bismarck and Wilhelm I, Prussia used its tenacity and efficient military to become the adhesive of German unification.
     One of Prussia's weapons against Austria during the decades-long maneuverings of German unification was the tariff-free trade agreement between Prussia and an increasing number of lesser states. The Zollverein acted to secure Prussian interests by expanding its sphere of influence within the Germanic people and excluding Austria from the economic ties. As the benefits of the Zollverein  became apparent within member states, Prussian political gains garnered attention across Europe. In the quest for a Greater Germany, the three leading minds of Prussia, Bismarck, Moltke, and Wilhelm, sought to gain the support of other German provinces through trade, propaganda, political manipulations in the parliaments, and, most famously, through war.
     The pivotal points in Austrio-Prussian relations occurred in the early to mid 1860s. Moltke’s promotion to Chief of Staff in 1857, Wilhelm I’s assumption of the throne in 1861, and Bismarck’s appointment to First Chancellor in 1862 set the stage for the establishment of the Second Reich. Prussia offered new, expanding strength amidst the political indecision of the political diets and shifting Austrian interests. In regards to a united Germany, Julius Frobel, a German writer, said, “The German nation is sick of principles and doctrines, of literacy greatness and of theoretical existence. What it wants is power, power, power! And whoever gives it power, to him it will give honor, more honor than he can [imagine.]”

     The reversal of fortune in Prussia also timely occurred in Austria. Bismarck’s visit to Vienna in 1862 caused him to express “an almost superstitious dislike to being entangled with the fortunes of Austria” since its wide ethnic basis seemed too dissimilar to the interests of the Saxon populations of Prussia. Bismarck claimed that Austrian desires did not align with the larger portion of the German population. Bismarck sought to associate German nationalism with Prussia to help exclude Austria's mixed ethnic populations. Considering these issues, Bismarck began to overthrow Austrian influence in the Frankfurt Diet and the minor German states by 1863.

     Political maneuvering, Bismarck’s strength, remained the largest barrier against an Austrio-Prussian war because of increasing tensions in the German parliaments, the increasing strength of the Zollverein, and disputes over certain German areas. Austria petitioned Prussia for entrance into the Zollverein in 1865 but was rejected, creating further economic and political tension. War with Denmark in 1864 had drained Prussian coffers, but Austria also functioned through financial troubles in 1864-1866 and hoped membership in the Zollverein would alleviate some of the trouble. Countering this, Bismarck attempted to raise funds for the Prussian army through the Frankfurt Diet from the Germanic states while denying any funds to Austria.

     Although Bismarck and leading Prussian officials had a desire for war with Austria to consolidate their power over the German states, large numbers of Germans remained indecisive. Prussia noticed that “While the masses remained by and large loyal to the established system of particularism, the sympathies of the materially and intellectually decisive classes of society were increasingly attracted to Prussia. The great military victories of the Hohenzollern armies in 1866 consummated a process of coalescence in trade and manufacture which had been going on for a generation.” Berlin became the leading city of the Zollverein and a legitimate contender for unification, especially in northern and western Germany while southern Germans looked to Vienna and the federal parliament.
     With the long history of contested control between Austria and Prussia over German states after the Vienna Treaties in 1815,  Prussia decisively eliminated Austria from its Germanic allies as soon as politically possible in 1866. Isolation of Austria had been attempted throughout the 1850s,  but many Germanic states constantly switched support to the weaker of the two dominant German states to retain the balance of power for as long as possible and so preserve their own sovereignty.

     By 1866 Bismarck felt political maneuvering had been sufficiently exhausted. At the risk of all the prestige gained through the Zollverein and popular German sentiment, Prussia sought to determinedly eliminate the threat of Austrian power on the escalating issue of German unification. Thus, the diplomatic, political Otto von Bismarck transitioned Prussia from political negotiations to war

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Agatha Tyche

Splintered Unity I: Zollverein

     Depending on the perspective of analysis, the size of the relevant parameters adjust appropriately. To study the social relations within a family, family hierarchy, culture, individual personalities need to be considered. For analysis of the trade relations between two cities, location, resources, production, population, trade routes, and political alliances are added to the small scale structure of personal interaction between leaders and diplomats and the history of the cities' relations. To once again expand investigations into the working of a nation, analysis must incorporate as many known variables as possible to accurately understand the processes of interaction. The largest stage in our world is the interaction between nation-states. For most of history, the only restrictions on a nation-state was the threat of destruction for its actions by more powerful states or by internal divisions. Not until the twentieth century did large-scale cooperation between countries seek to define the legality of international actions. That international union of nations came about as a method of limiting the destructive capabilities of Europe, specifically Germany.

     Despite its recent reputation as the incredible war machine of World War I, the harbinger of World War II, and the center of tensions for the Cold War, Germany has a long history of unity and bringing together interaction.

     After the strength had leaked out of the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and the Reformation of the Catholic Church splintered German communities between Lutheran and Catholic religious doctrines, the German region of the Holy Roman Empire splintered into thousands of small domains. The next several centuries saw wars waged both to create more fractures and to reunite the disparate fringes.

     After the Napoleonic invasions in the early nineteenth century seeded nationalism, the Germanic states sought unification. Two empires held significant swathes of German land and people: the western, small Prussia and the large, diverse, historic Austria-Hungary. In the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Prussia desired a dualist organization of German states through which Austria and Prussia could share influence equally but the governmental organization favored Austria. The Prussians began incorporating industrial technology and railroad mobilization into military applications in the 1830s. These adaptations gave Prussia new political strength and aided in the establishment of a tariff-free trade union between member German states. With suggestions of Prussia’s potential to match Austria and unification in sight, many Germans enthusiastically supported Prussia and encouraged the consolidation of German states to form around the Prussian-German national identity.

     While Austria’s political and military might surpassed Prussia’s for the first half of the century, the German unification process, completed in 1871, represented the rise of Prussia at the expense of Austria’s German influence. German nationalism found a father in the purity of Prussia, not the mixed cultures of the Austrian Empire. The Zollverein, the trade union between Prussia and other German states, aided in this exclusion with the creation of Prussian-German trade routes that left Austria out of economic relations as the German industrial revolution took hold. To avoid disassembly by the other European powers for rapidly expanding, Prussia excluded Austria from the new Germany. A unified Germany with both Prussia and Austria would incite a European war to maintain the balance of power similar to the Crimean War.

     Bismarck’s political maneuvering prior to the Austrio-Prussian War aimed at unifying Germany. After the war, Prussia sought to maintain Germany as a single nation, but Austria’s inclusion in this nation would risk Germany’s internal stability with political and economic division and externally with the threat of an encompassing European war for power. 

     The rise of Prussia and unification of Germany required a weakened Austria. Political, economic, and military complications provided the destabilizing forces that Prussia used eliminated Austria’s influence.

     Political revolution in 1848 accompanied by and prompting the resignation of Metternich, who had orchestrated the Congress of Vienna, saw the beginning of Austria’s decline. The revolutions discredited the Austrian-influenced Germanic Confederation’s ability to govern the Germanic states, but Prussia’s maintenance of power during 1848 led to a favorable shift in German confederate government. The 1850 remodeling of the German constitution placed German unification hopes in Prussia and Austria, not on a German federation of balanced powers.

     The economic depression of the 1850s stirred up political agitation that encouraged German unification through confederate diets. Military force alone could not effect German unity; national federations and councils attempted unification with religion, social reform, and common law. With the example of Italian unification in 1859, several German states intensified their calls for a united Germany. Despite the increasing pro-Prussian sentiments, Austria used old German allies to form the Confederate Diet amidst the tension over the Electorate of Hesse-Kassel in the later 1850s. The residing president of the diet, an Austrian, countered the increasing economic power of the Prussians in the middle Germanic states. However this dualist arrangement threatened war, and the two dominant powers reworked the diet as “coequals.”

     The Crimean War further escalated tensions. Prussia remained uncommitted during the war which allowed it to continue advancing its military technologies, learn from the techniques of other major powers, and avoid any negligible entanglements that war would bring. The Crimean War gave Prussia a final boost in its modernization that allowed it to draw militarily equal with the other major European powers. By the 1860s, European powers realized that “the most permanent result of the Crimean War was the disruption of the Concert of Europe. Forty years of peace were now followed by four [Prussian] wars that revolutionized the power structure of the Continent.” Austria did not consider Prussia a reckonable power in 1854 at the beginning of the Crimean War because Prussia had not yet placed herself into a strong position to gain influence in Europe and upset the balance of power. With the wars end, Austria shifted focused to limiting Prussian political influence within the German states. Austria also began testing Prussia’s new strength and resolve as early as 1857 with the construction of defensive forts in Holstein and some of their other major Germanic state allies.

     As the tension between the two great German powers mounted, independent German states realized that the balance between Austria and Prussia was the only force granting sovereignty to lesser governments. One of the two Greater Powers would have to succumb in order to unite Germany. The controlling force of this balance, the Frankfurt Diet, acted slowly, and with support from Prussian propaganda, most voters saw the diet as retrogressive. Instead, the populace concluded that new social structure and relations could not be accommodated into the outdated views of independent German states. The confederation parliaments of Germany slowed unification because of split alliances between Prussian and Austrian spheres of influence.

     Attempting to overcome the limitations of confederate political control, Prussia sought economic unification to aid in its political influence throughout Germany. Austrian inclusion in this economic state would eliminate its unifying capabilities because the two great powers would remain equals and prolong the stalemate.

     While Prussia sought material economic success through commercial liberalism, Austria attempted to reunite Germany with cultural customs. Bismarck, chancellor, did not trust Austria. In 1862 he said, “I cannot keep myself from suspicion. I am convinced that [Austria] is proceeding in no straightforward fashion towards us. She will use us as she needs, without giving anything in return, and then cast us aside.” Despite the previous irresolution of the dualist approach, the middle German states did not desire sole control by either power since independent sovereignty would dethrone families in power.

    

      The Zollverein, the German Customs Union, formed in pre-war Germany and included most German territory outside Austria. Economic influence became Prussia’s strength against Austria in the German parliaments. Its strength grew continuously. The Congress of German Economics, begun by Prussia in Berlin in 1858, played a key role in the Zollverein’s effectiveness. It economically united Germany and eased the transition to political unity. By ostracizing Austrian economic involvement by refusing to allow its participation in the Zollverein, Prussia dominated German trade. Because of Austria’s powerful influence on the European political world, Prussia used the Zollverein to undercut Austrian influence in Germany. Austria feared that the Zollverein would create a de facto Prussian state through economic ties. That fear was realized.

     In 1862 Austria’s response to the Zollverein in the German states nearest the Austrian border was complete compensation for any trade loss of quitting the economic pact with Prussia. Some sentiments in the southern states, however, favored Prussia. “Prussophiles” combined German nationalism with policies of unrestricted trade.

     The financial freedom espoused by the Zollverein eliminated all trade restrictions and created an economic boom in Prussia by the end of the 1850s. German states aligned with Prussia agreed to the tariff-free Zollverein for economic gain while being drawn into Prussian influence and economic ties. As a newspaper editor mentioned, “Berlin proved adept at combining friendly appeals to enlightened self-interest with arm-twisting and naked blackmail. Small adjacent states that refused to enter the Prussian-Hessian union were subjected to hard-hitting counter measures . . . in which new transport routes were used to suck the flow of trade away from target territories.” 

     The Zollverein gave Prussia the lead on German unification at the cost of Austria’s entire economy.

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Agatha Tyche