The German Confederation (German German (Deutsch, [ˈdɔʏtʃ] ) is a West Germanic language, thus related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. It is one of the world's major languages and the most widely spoken first language in the European Union. Globally, German is spoken by approximately 120 million native speakers and also by about 80 million non-native speakers: Deutscher Bund) was the association of Central European Central Europe is the region lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe. The term and widespread interest in the region itself came back into fashion after the end of the Cold War, which, along with the Iron Curtain, had divided Europe politically into East and West, splitting Central Europe in half states created by the Congress of Vienna The Congress of Vienna was a conference of ambassadors of European states chaired by Austrian statesman Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, and held in Vienna from September, 1814 to June, 1815. Its objective was to settle the many issues arising from the French Revolutionary Wars, the Napoleonic Wars, and the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire. This in 1815 to serve as the successor to the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation The Holy Roman Empire (HRE; German: Heiliges Römisches Reich , Latin: Imperium Romanum Sacrum (IRS), Italian: Sacro Romano Impero (SRI)) was for about a millennium a realm in Central Europe under a Holy Roman Emperor. Its character changed during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, when the power of the emperor gradually weakened in, which had been abolished in 1806. In 1848, revolutions The 1848 Revolutions were a series of loosely coordinated protests and rebellions in the German Confederation which sought to challenge the status quo. The revolutions, which stressed pan-Germanism, emphasised popular discontent with the traditional, largely autocratic political structure of the thirty-nine independent states of the Confederation by liberals Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equality. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but most liberals support such fundamental ideas as constitutions, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights, capitalism, free trade, and the separation of church and state and nationalists Nationalism involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. Often, it is the belief that an ethnic group has a right to statehood, or that citizenship in a state should be limited to one ethnic group, or that multinationality in a single state should necessarily comprise occurred in an attempt to establish a unified German state. Talks between the German states failed in 1848, and the confederation briefly dissolved but was re-established in 1850.

The dispute between the two dominant member states of the confederation, Austria The Austrian Empire was a modern era successor empire founded on a remnant of the Holy Roman Empire centered on what is today's Austria that officially lasted from 1804 to 1867. It was followed by the Empire of Austria–Hungary, which was proclaimed after declaring the Emperor of Austria also King of Hungary, a diplomatic move that elevated and Prussia The Kingdom of Prussia was a German kingdom from 1701 to 1918. Until the defeat of Germany in World War I, it comprised almost two-thirds of the area of the German Empire. It took its name from the territory of Prussia, although its power base was Brandenburg (German dualism The term German dualism describes the long conflict between the two largest German states Austria and Prussia from 1740 to 1866 when Austria finally left the German Confederation. It was, in effect, a battle to control the German-speaking peoples. It is largely held to have begun when Frederick the Great of Prussia launched an invasion of Austrian-), over which of the two had the inherent right to rule German lands ended in favour of Prussia after the Austro-Prussian War The Austro-Prussian War (in Germany known as Deutscher Krieg ; or Seven Weeks War, the Unification War or the German Civil War or Bruderkrieg, German for "fraternal war") was a war fought in 1866 between the German Confederation under the leadership of the Austrian Empire and its German allies on one side and the Kingdom of Prussia with in 1866, and the collapse of the confederation. This resulted in the creation of the North German Confederation The North German Confederation , came into existence in August 1866 as a military alliance of 22 states of northern Germany with the Kingdom of Prussia as the leading state. In July 1867 it was transformed into a federal state. It provided the country with a constitution and was the building block of the German Empire, which adopted most parts of, with a number of south German states remaining independent, although allied first with Austria (until 1867) and subsequently with Prussia (until 1871), after which they became a part of the new nation of Germany The German Empire refers to Germany from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871 to 1918, when it became a federal republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of Wilhelm II (28 November 1918). Deutsches Reich remained the official name of Germany throughout the Weimar period and.

Contents

Members of the German Confederation

The German Confederation or German Union was a loose confederation A confederation is an association of sovereign member states, that by treaty have delegated certain of their competences to common institutions, in order to coordinate their policies in a number of areas, without constituting a new state on top of the member states. Under international law a confederation respects the sovereignty of its members of 39 states. The Federal Assembly in Frankfurt represented the sovereigns, not the people of those states. All member states essentially continued to act as independent countries. For example, during the wars against Denmark (the First (1848–1851) and Second The Second Schleswig War was the second military conflict as a result of the Schleswig-Holstein Question. It began on February 1, 1864, when Prussian forces crossed the border into Schleswig (1864) Schleswig wars), the Austrians and Prussians did not fight under the banner of the German Confederation.

The size and influence of the individual states varied greatly:

The monarchs of the member states of the German Confederation meet at Frankfurt in 1863.

Situation in space and time

Between 1806 and 1815, Napoleon Napoleon Bonaparte , was a military and political leader of France and Emperor of the French as Napoleon I, whose actions shaped European politics in the early 19th century organized the German states into the Confederation of the Rhine The Confederation of the Rhine or Rhine Confederation was a confederation of client states of the First French Empire. It was formed initially from 16 German states by Napoleon after he defeated Austria's Francis II and Russia's Alexander I in the Battle of Austerlitz. The Treaty of Pressburg, in effect, led to the creation of the Confederation of, but this collapsed after his defeats in 1812 to 1815. The German Confederation had roughly the same boundaries as the Empire at the time of the French Revolution The French Revolution was a period of radical social and political upheaval in French and European history. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years. French society underwent an epic transformation as feudal, aristocratic, and religious privileges evaporated under a sustained assault from liberal political (less what is now Belgium). The member states The States of the German Confederation were those member states that from June 20, 1815 were part of the German Confederation, which lasted, with some changes in the member states, until August 24, 1866, under the presidency of the Austrian imperial House of Habsburg, which was represented by an Austrian presidential envoy to the Federal diet in, drastically reduced to 39 from more than 300 (see Kleinstaaterei) under the Holy Roman Empire The Holy Roman Empire (HRE; German: Heiliges Römisches Reich , Latin: Imperium Romanum Sacrum (IRS), Italian: Sacro Romano Impero (SRI)) was for about a millennium a realm in Central Europe under a Holy Roman Emperor. Its character changed during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, when the power of the emperor gradually weakened in, were recognized as fully sovereign. The members pledged themselves to mutual defense, and jointly maintained the fortresses at Mainz, the city of Luxembourg The city of Luxembourg , also known as Luxembourg City (Luxembourgish: Stad Lëtzebuerg, French: Ville de Luxembourg, German: Luxemburg Stadt), is a commune with city status, and the capital of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. It is located at the confluence of the Alzette and Pétrusse Rivers in southern Luxembourg. The city contains the historic, Rastatt Rastatt is a city in the District of Rastatt, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is located on the Murg river, 6 km above its junction with the Rhine and has a population of over 47,000 (2003). The town is twinned with Woking, England, Ulm Ulm is a city in the German Bundesland of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the River Danube. The city, whose population is estimated at 120,000 (2006), forms an urban district of its own (German: Stadtkreis) and is the administrative seat of the Alb-Donau district. Ulm, founded around 850, is rich in history and traditions as a former Free Imperial, and Landau Landau or Landau in der Pfalz is an autonomous (kreisfrei) city surrounded by the Südliche Weinstraße ("Southern Wine Route") district of southern Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is a university town (since 1990), a long-standing cultural centre, and a market and shopping town, surrounded by vineyards and wine-growing villages of the.

A Federal Assembly under Austrian presidency met in Frankfurt Frankfurt am Main (German pronunciation: [ˈfʁaŋkfʊɐt am ˈmaɪn] , English: /ˈfræŋkfərt/), commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2009 population of 667,330. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,295,000 in 2010. The city is at the centre (the Habsburg The House of Habsburg, often Anglicised as Hapsburg and sometimes referred to as the House of Austria, was one of the most important royal houses of Europe and is best known for being an origin of all of the formally elected Holy Roman Emperors between 1438 and 1740, as well as rulers of the Austrian and Spanish Empires and several other countries Emperor and the King of the United Kingdom and Hanover Hanover or Hannover[nb 1] (German: Hannover , [haˈnoːfɐ]), on the river Leine, is the capital of the federal state of Lower Saxony (Niedersachsen), Germany and was once by personal union the family seat of the Hanoverian Kings of Great Britain, in their dignities as the dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg (which title was later called the Elector of were represented by 'envoy').

During the revolution of 1848/49 the German Confederation was inactive. It was revived in 1850 under Austrian presidency, but rivalry between Prussia and Austria grew more and more.

The Confederation was dissolved in 1866 after the Austro-Prussian War The Austro-Prussian War (in Germany known as Deutscher Krieg ; or Seven Weeks War, the Unification War or the German Civil War or Bruderkrieg, German for "fraternal war") was a war fought in 1866 between the German Confederation under the leadership of the Austrian Empire and its German allies on one side and the Kingdom of Prussia with, and was 'succeeded' in 1866 by the Prussian-dominated North German Confederation The North German Confederation , came into existence in August 1866 as a military alliance of 22 states of northern Germany with the Kingdom of Prussia as the leading state. In July 1867 it was transformed into a federal state. It provided the country with a constitution and was the building block of the German Empire, which adopted most parts of. Unlike the German Confederation, the North German Confederation was in fact a true state. Its territory comprised the parts of the German Confederation north of the river Main The Main is a river in Germany, 524 km (329 miles) long (including the White Main, 574 km (357 mi)), and it is one of the more significant tributaries of the Rhine. The Main flows through the German states of Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg (forming the border with Bavaria for some distance) and Hesse. Its watershed competes with the Danube for water;, plus Prussia's eastern territories and the Duchy of Schleswig Schleswig or South Jutland is a region covering the area about 60 km north and 70 km south of the border between Germany and Denmark; the territory has been divided between the two countries since 1920, with Northern Schleswig in Denmark and Southern Schleswig in Germany. The region is also known archaically in English as Sleswick, but excluded Austria and the southern German states.

Prussia's influence was widened by the Franco-Prussian War The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the 1870 War was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia. Prussia was aided by the North German Confederation, of which it was a member, and the South German states of Baden, Württemberg and Bavaria. The complete Prussian and German victory resulting in the proclamation of the German Empire The German Empire refers to Germany from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871 to 1918, when it became a federal republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of Wilhelm II (28 November 1918). Deutsches Reich remained the official name of Germany throughout the Weimar period and at Versailles Versailles , a city renowned for its château, the Palace of Versailles, was the de facto capital of the kingdom of France for over a century, from 1682 to 1789. It is now a wealthy suburb of Paris and remains an important administrative and judicial centre. Located in the western suburbs of the French capital, 17.1 km (10.6 mi) from the center of on 18 January 1871, which united the North German Federation with the southern German states. All the constituent states of the former German Confederation became part of the Kaiserreich in 1871, except Austria, Luxembourg Luxembourg (pronounced /ˈlʌksəmbɜrɡ/ LUKS-əm-berg), officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg (Luxembourgish: Groussherzogtum Lëtzebuerg, French: Grand-Duché de Luxembourg, German: Großherzogtum Luxemburg), is a landlocked country in western Europe, bordered by Belgium, France, and Germany. Luxembourg has a population of over half a, and Liechtenstein The Principality of Liechtenstein (pronounced /ˈlɪktənstaɪn/ LIK-tən-styen; German: Fürstentum Liechtenstein, [ˈfʏɐstəntuːm ˈliːçtənʃtaɪn] (help·info)) is a doubly landlocked alpine microstate in Western Europe, bordered by Switzerland to the west and south and by Austria to the east. Its area is just over 160 km² (about 61.7.

Impact of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic invasions

Austrian chancellor Klemens Wenzel von Metternich Klemens Wenzel, Prince von Metternich (15 May 1773 – 11 June 1859) was a German-Austrian politician and statesman. He was one of the most important diplomats of his era. He was a major figure in the negotiations before and during the Congress of Vienna and is considered both a paradigm of foreign-policy management and a major figure in the dominated the German Confederation from 1815 until 1848

The late 18th century was a period of political, economic, intellectual, and cultural reforms, the Enlightenment The Age of Enlightenment is the era in Western philosophy and intellectual, scientific and cultural life, centered upon the eighteenth century, in which reason was advocated as the primary source and legitimacy for authority (represented by figures such as Locke John Locke , widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered the first of the British empiricists, he is equally important to social contract theory. His work had a great impact upon the development of epistemology and political, Rousseau, Voltaire, and Adam Smith), but also involving early Romanticism, and climaxing with the French Revolution, where freedom of the individual and nation was asserted against privilege and custom. Representing a great variety of types and theories, they were largely a response to the disintegration of previous cultural patterns, coupled with new patterns of production, specifically the rise of industrial capitalism.

However, the defeat of Napoleon enabled conservative and reactionary regimes such as those of the Kingdom of Prussia, the Austrian Empire and Tsarist Russia to survive, laying the groundwork for the Congress of Vienna and the alliance that strove to oppose radical demands for change ushered in by the French Revolution. The Great Powers at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 aimed to restore Europe (as far as possible) to its pre-war conditions by combating both liberalism and nationalism and by creating barriers around France. With Austria's position on the continent now intact and ostensibly secure under its reactionary premier Klemens von Metternich, the Habsburg empire would serve as a barrier to contain the emergence of Italian and German nation-states as well, in addition to containing France. But this reactionary balance of power, aimed at blocking German and Italian nationalism on the continent, was precarious.

After Napoleon's final defeat at Waterloo in 1815, the surviving member states of the defunct Holy Roman Empire joined to form the German Confederation (Deutscher Bund) — a rather loose organization, especially because the two great rivals, the Austrian Empire and the Prussian kingdom, each feared domination by the other.

In Prussia the Hohenzollern rulers forged a centralized state. By the time of the Napoleonic Wars, Prussia was a socially and institutionally backward state, grounded in the virtues of its established military aristocracy (the Junkers), stratified by rigid hierarchical lines. After 1815, Prussia's defeats by Napoleonic France highlighted the need for administrative, economic, and social reforms to improve the efficiency of the bureaucracy and encourage practical merit-based education. Inspired by the Napoleonic organization of German and Italian principalities, the reforms of Karl August von Hardenberg and Count Stein were conservative, enacted to preserve aristocratic privilege while modernizing institutions.

Outside Prussia, industrialization progressed slowly, and was held back because of political disunity, conflicts of interest between the nobility and merchants, and the continued existence of the guild system, which discouraged competition and innovation. While this kept the middle class small, affording the old order a measure of stability not seen in France, Prussia's vulnerability to Napoleon's military proved to many among the old order that a fragile, divided, and backward Germany would be easy prey for its cohesive and industrializing neighbor.

The reforms laid the foundation for Prussia's future military might by professionalizing the military and decreeing universal military conscription. In order to industrialize Prussia, working within the framework provided by the old aristocratic institutions, land reforms were enacted to break the monopoly of the Junkers on landownership, thereby also abolishing, among other things, the feudal practice of serfdom.

Romanticism, nationalism, and liberalism in the Vormärz era

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Although the forces unleashed by the French Revolution were seemingly under control after the Vienna Congress, the conflict between conservative forces and liberal nationalists was only deferred at best. The era until the failed 1848 revolution, in which these tensions built up, is commonly referred to as Vormärz ("pre-March"), in reference to the outbreak of riots in March 1848.

This conflict pitted the forces of the old order against those inspired by the French Revolution and the Rights of Man. The sociological breakdown of the competition was, roughly, one side engaged mostly in commerce, trade and industry, and the other side associated with landowning aristocracy or military aristocracy (the Junker) in Prussia, the Habsburg monarchy in Austria, and the conservative notables of the small princely states and city-states in Germany.

Meanwhile, demands for change from below had been fermenting since the influence of the French Revolution. Throughout the German Confederation, Austrian influence was paramount, drawing the ire of the nationalist movements. Metternich considered nationalism, especially the nationalist youth movement, the most pressing danger: German nationalism might not only repudiate Austrian dominance of the Confederation, but also stimulate nationalist sentiment within the Austrian Empire itself. In a multi-national polyglot state in which Slavs and Magyars outnumbered the Germans, the prospects of Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Polish, Serb, or Croatian sentiment along with middle class liberalism was certainly horrifying.

The Vormärz era saw the rise of figures like August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben, Ludwig Uhland, Georg Herwegh, Heinrich Heine, Georg Büchner, Ludwig Börne and Bettina von Arnim. Father Friedrich Jahn's gymnastic associations exposed middle class German youth to nationalist and democratic ideas, which took the form of the nationalistic and liberal democratic college fraternities known as the Burschenschaften. The Wartburg Festival in 1817 celebrated Martin Luther as a proto-German nationalist, linking Lutheranism to German nationalism, and helping arouse religious sentiments for the cause of German nationhood. The festival culminated in the burning of several books and other items that symbolized reactionary attitudes. One item was a book by August von Kotzebue. In 1819, Kotzebue was accused of spying for Russia, and then murdered by a theological student, Karl Ludwig Sand, who was executed for the crime. Sand belonged to a militant nationalist faction of the Burschenschaften. Metternich used the murder as a pretext to issue the Carlsbad Decrees of 1819, which dissolved the Burschenschaften, cracked down on the liberal press, and seriously restricted academic freedom.

Economic integration

During this period, Prussia continued to repress liberalism and enact reform from above. Further efforts to improve the confederation began in 1834 with the establishment of a customs union, the Zollverein. In 1834, the Prussian regime sought to stimulate wider trade advantages and industrialism by decree — a logical continuation of the program of Stein and Hardenberg less than two decades earlier. Inadvertently, these reforms sparked the unification movement and augmented a middle class demanding further political rights, but at the time backwardness and Prussia's fears of its stronger neighbors were greater concerns. The customs union opened up a common market, ended tariffs between states, and standardized weights, measures, and currencies within member states (excluding Austria), forming the basis of a proto-national economy.

By 1842 the Zollverein included most German states. Within the next twenty years the output of German furnaces increased fourfold. Coal production grew rapidly as well. In turn, German industry (especially the works established by the Krupp family) introduced the steel gun, cast-steel axles, and a breech loading rifle, exemplifying Germany's successful application of technology to weaponry. Germany's security was greatly enhanced, leaving the Prussian state and the landowning aristocracy secure from outside threat. German manufacturers also produced heavily for the civilian sector. No longer would Britain supply half of Germany's needs for manufactured goods, as it did beforehand.

However, by developing a strong industrial base, the Prussian state strengthened the middle class and thus the nationalist movement. Economic integration, especially increased national consciousness among the German states, made political unity a far likelier scenario. Germany finally began exhibiting all the features of a proto-nation.

The crucial factor enabling Prussia's conservative regime to survive the Vormärz era was a rough coalition between leading sectors of the landed upper class and the emerging commercial and manufacturing interests. Marx and Engels, in their analysis of the abortive 1848 Revolutions, defined such a coalition: "a commercial and industrial class which is too weak and dependent to take power and rule in its own right and which therefore throws itself into the arms of the landed aristocracy and the royal bureaucracy, exchanging the right to rule for the right to make money." 1 It is necessary to add that, even if the commercial and industrial element is weak, it must be strong enough (or soon become strong enough) to become worthy of co-optation, and the French Revolution terrified enough perceptive elements of Prussia's Junkers for the state to be sufficiently accommodating.

While relative stability was maintained until 1848, with enough bourgeois elements still content to exchange the "right to rule for the right to make money", the landed upper class found its economic base sinking. While the Zollverein brought economic progress and helped to keep the bourgeoisie at bay for a while, it increased the ranks of the middle class swiftly - the very social base for the nationalism and liberalism that the Prussian state sought to stem.

The Zollverein was a move toward economic integration, modern industrial capitalism, and the victory of centralism over localism, quickly bringing to an end the era of guilds in the small German princely states. This led to the 1844 revolt of the Silesian Weavers, who saw their livelihood destroyed by the flood of new manufactures.

The Zollverein also weakened Austrian domination of the Confederation as economic unity increased the desire for political unity and nationalism.

The Revolutions of 1848

Main article: The Revolutions of 1848 in the German states

News of the 1848 Revolution in Paris quickly reached discontented bourgeois liberals, republicans and more radical workingmen.

The first revolutionary uprisings in Germany began in the state of Baden in March 1848. Within a few days, there were revolutionary uprisings in other states including Austria, and finally in Prussia.

On 15 March 1848, the subjects of Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia vented their long-repressed political aspirations in violent rioting in Berlin, while barricades were erected in the streets of Paris. King Louis-Philippe of France fled to Great Britain. Friedrich Wilhelm gave in to the popular fury, and promised a constitution, a parliament, and support for German unification. But at least his regime was still standing.

On 18 May the Frankfurt Parliament opened its first session, with delegates from various German states. It was immediately divided between those favoring a kleindeutsche (small German) or grossdeutsche (greater German) solution. The former favored offering the imperial crown to Prussia. The latter favored the Habsburg crown in Vienna, which would integrate Austria proper and Bohemia (but not Hungary) into the new Germany.

From May to December, the Assembly eloquently debated academic topics while conservatives swiftly moved against the reformers. As in Austria and Russia, this middle-class assertion increased authoritarian and reactionary sentiments among the landed upper class, whose economic position was declining. They turned to political levers to preserve their rule. As the Prussian army proved loyal, and the peasants were uninterested, Friedrich Wilhelm regained his confidence. The Assembly issued its Declaration of the Rights of the German people, a constitution was drawn up (excluding Austria which openly rejected the Assembly), and the leadership of the Reich was offered to Friedrich Wilhelm, who refused to "pick up a crown from the gutter". Thousands of middle class liberals fled abroad, especially to the United States.

In 1849, Friedrich Wilhelm proposed his own constitution. His document concentrated real power in the hands of the King and the upper classes, and called for a confederation of North German states (the Erfurt Union). Austria and Russia, fearing a strong, Prussian-dominated Germany, responded by pressuring Saxony and Hanover to withdraw, and forced Prussia to abandon the scheme in a treaty dubbed the "humiliation of Olmütz".

Bismarck and the Wars of Unification

Shortly after the "humiliation of Olmütz", a new generation of statesmen responded to popular demands for national unity for their own ends, continuing Prussia's tradition of autocracy and reform from above. It takes very able leadership to drag along the less perceptive reactionary elements, and Germany found it to accomplish the seemingly paradoxical task of conservative modernization. Bismarck, in fact, was appointed by Wilhelm IV of Prussia (the future Kaiser Wilhelm I) to circumvent the liberals in the Landtag who resisted Wilhelm's autocratic militarism. Gradually Bismarck won over the middle class, reacting to the revolutionary sentiments expressed in 1848 by providing them with the economic opportunities for which the urban middle sectors had been fighting.

Territorial legacy

Map of the German Confederation

The current countries whose territory were partly or entirely located inside the boundaries of German Confederation 1815–1866 are:

See also

Germany portal

Notes

1 See Karl Marx, Selected Works, II., "Germany: Revolution and Counter-Revolution", written mainly by Engels.

References

This article includes a list of references or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (April 2009)

Sources

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: German Confederation
States of the German Confederation (1815–66)
Empires Austria
Kingdoms Prussia · Bavaria · Saxony · Hanover · Württemberg
Electorates Hesse
Grand Duchies Baden · Hesse · Luxembourg · Mecklenburg (Schwerin · Strelitz) · Oldenburg · Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach
Duchies Anhalt (Bernburg1 · Dessau1 · Köthen2) · Brunswick · Holstein · Limburg3 · Nassau · Saxony (Altenburg4 · Coburg-Saalfeld5 · Coburg-Gotha4 · Gotha-Altenburg5 · Hildburghausen5 · Lauenburg · Meiningen)
Principalities Hesse-Homburg · Hohenzollern (Hechingen6 · Sigmaringen6) · Liechtenstein · Lippe · Reuss (Elder · Junior) · Schaumburg-Lippe · Schwarzburg (Rudolstadt · Sondershausen) · Waldeck and Pyrmont
City-states Bremen · Frankfurt · Hamburg · Lübeck
1 Merged with Anhalt from 1863. 2 until 1847. 3 from 1839. 4 from 1826. 5 until 1826. 6 until 1850.
Unification of Germany
German states Austrian Empire (later Austria-Hungary) · Kingdom of Bavaria · Kingdom of Hanover · Kingdom of Prussia · Kingdom of Saxony · Kingdom of Württemberg · et al.
Unions German Confederation · Zollverein · Erfurt Union · North German Confederation (constitution) · German Empire (constitution)
Events Congress of Vienna (1814–1815) · Vormärz · Carlsbad Decrees (1819) · Hambach Festival (1832) · Frankfurter Wachensturm (1833) · Revolutions of 1848 · Frankfurt Parliament (1848–1849) · Punctation of Olmütz (1850) · Blood and Iron (speech) (1862) · Second Schleswig War (1864) · Austro-Prussian War & Peace of Prague (1866) · Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871) · Treaty of Versailles (1871)
People Baron von Stein · Charles I of Württemberg · Christian IX of Denmark · Eduard von Simson · Franz I of Austria · Franz Joseph I of Austria · Frederick William III of Prussia · Frederick William IV of Prussia · Friedrich Daniel Bassermann · Heinrich von Gagern · Johann Gottlieb Fichte · Johann Gustav Droysen · Archduke John of Austria · John of Saxony · Karl August von Hardenberg · Klemens Wenzel, Prince von Metternich · Ludwig II of Bavaria · Napoleon III of France · Otto von Bismarck · Robert Blum · Wilhelm von Humboldt · Wilhelm I, German Emperor
Other Alsace-Lorraine · Burschenschaft · Das Lied der Deutschen · Die Wacht am Rhein · Flag of Germany (Lützow Free Corps) · German nationalism · Kleindeutschland & Großdeutschland · Paulskirchenverfassung · Schleswig-Holstein Question · Sonderweg
Portal: Germany

Coordinates: 50°06′29″N 8°40′30″E / 50.108°N 8.675°E

Categories: Former countries in Europe | Former confederations | States and territories established in 1815 | 1866 disestablishments | 19th century in Germany | 19th century in Austria

 

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