The North German Confederation () was a confederated state that united the region of Germany north of the Main river from July 1867 to December 1870. It was a milestone of German Unification that put the Kingdom of Prussia at the head of the emerging nation and led to the exclusion of Austria from the eventual united Germany.
The Confederation was formed following the victory of Prussia and its allies over the Austrian Empire in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. The North German Confederation's constitution established a semi-presidential, semi-constitutional monarchy with the Prussian king as head of state. Its two-chamber parliament consisted of an appointed Federal Council () representing the states and a popular assembly, the Reichstag, elected under universal manhood suffrage. During the three-and-a-half year life of the Confederation, it took important steps to unify the nation legally and administratively.
The states of the North German Confederation became the core of the German Empire when it was founded on 18 January 1871 after the German victory over France in the Franco-Prussian War.
Prelude German Confederation (1815–1866) The German Confederation, the main predecessor state of the North German Confederation, was created in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna, the gathering of major powers that reconfigured the political map of Europe after the Napoleonic Wars. The Confederation consisted of 39 states in a loose, largely defense-oriented federation dominated by the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia. There was no attempt to create a unified German nation-state, as many Germans who had fought in the Wars of Liberation against Napoleon had hoped.
German Customs Union Prussia established the German Customs Union () in 1834 in order to modernize and strengthen its economy. Over time it came to include almost all of the states of the German Confederation except Austria. It did not join in part because it wanted the protections provided by high tariffs. The commercial union that the created was independent of any political union. Although it strengthened Prussia's position in non-Austrian Germany, it did little to resolve the German question as to whether an eventual unified Germany would or would not include Austria.
Revolution of 1848
A wave of revolutionary unrest spread across Europe in 1848. Among the calls for economic, social and political reform that were part of the revolutions of 1848, there were also demands for unification in the states of the German Confederation. In May 1848 the Frankfurt National Assembly gathered to draw up a constitution for the proposed new nation-state of Germany. One of the main issues that divided the delegates was whether unification should exclude Austria (a Lesser Germany) or include it (Greater Germany). It opted for the Lesser Germany path after Austria proclaimed a new constitution which stated that either all of the Empire or none of it must become part of the new Germany. After Prussia rejected the Frankfurt Constitution, the Parliament, lacking the support of both of the major German nations, broke up in failure, as did the revolution as a whole in the months afterwards.
Austro-Prussian War (1866)
In 1866, the long-running tensions between Austria and Prussia broke out into the open hostilities of the Austro-Prussian War. The immediate cause was disagreement over the administration of the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. The majority of the largest states of the German Confederation – the kingdoms of Bavaria, Saxony and Württemberg among others – sided with Austria in the war, while Prussia's allies were mostly smaller north German states.
When Austria and its supporters decided to mobilize, Minister President Otto von Bismarck of Prussia withdrew the Kingdom from the German Confederation and declared it dissolved. The fighting lasted barely over a month and ended in a Prussian victory. In the Peace of Prague, Prussia annexed Schleswig, Holstein and the north German states that had fought on Austria's side. Austria agreed to step back from taking any part in German affairs and to accept the creation of a North German Confederation under Prussia's leadership. That left Prussia without competition as the dominant power in Germany. The supporters of a Greater Germany had lost to the Lesser Germany solution.
Formation of the North German Confederation Creation On 18 August 1866, Prussia and fifteen north and central German states signed the North German Confederation Treaty. It created an "offensive and defensive alliance for the preservation of the independence and integrity, as well as the internal and external security of their states". It was to last for a maximum of one year, although less if a "new federal relationship" was agreed on sooner. The federal relationship was to be defined by a constitution based on the Prussian proposal for a federal state of June 1866. All the states were to send delegates to Berlin to draft the constitution and at the same time to order that elections for representatives to a parliament be held on the basis of the Imperial Election Law of 12 April 1849. That law, drafted by the Frankfurt Parliament, mandated universal, equal and direct manhood suffrage.
Prussia annexed outright four of its former opponents in the war. Hanover, the Electorate of Hesse (Hesse-Kassel), Nassau and Frankfurt, along with the Hesse-Homburg area of the Grand Duchy of Hesse, were combined into the two new Prussian provinces of Hanover and Hesse-Nassau. Four other states that had fought for Austria – the northern part of Hesse, Reuss-Greiz, Saxe-Meiningen and the Kingdom of Saxony – became part of the North German Confederation, but not of Prussia, through individual treaties. Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Mecklenburg-Strelitz also joined by treaty. Schleswig and Holstein became the Prussian Province of Schleswig-Holstein.Ernst Rudolf Huber: Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte seit 1789. Vol. III: Bismarck und das Reich. 3rd edition, W. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart [et al.] 1988, pp. 580–583. East Prussia, Posen and West Prussia, which had not been part of the German Confederation even though they were provinces of the Kingdom of Prussia, also became part of the new north German alliance.
The North German Confederation was the earliest continual legal predecessor of the modern German nation-state known today as the Federal Republic of Germany.
Federal constitution
The election for the constituent North German Reichstag took place on 12 February 1867. The 297 seats were divided among more than a dozen parties, with the largest shares going to the National Liberal Party (78 seats), the Conservative Party (63 seats) and the Free Conservative Party (39 seats). The National Liberals were able to form a majority coalition with the Free Conservatives, Old Liberals and a handful of independents. The draft of a constitution that adhered to guidelines set by Otto von Bismarck was waiting for the delegates when they convened on 24 February 1867. In its fundamental form, the draft proposed a federal state led by Prussia. Most delegates were favorable to federalism, although some National Liberals and most of the liberal Progress Party fought unsuccessfully for a unitary state. The constituent Reichstag modified the draft to give the chancellor more power and made the military subject to the budgetary oversight of the legislature. The revised constitution was passed on 16 April 1867 by a vote of 230 to 53. Voting against were the Progress Party, many Catholics, August Bebel – a founder of one of the predecessors to the Social Democratic Party – and the Polish Reichstag members. After the constitution had been approved by the parliaments of the constituent states, it went into effect on 1 July 1867. Two weeks later, King Wilhelm I appointed Bismarck chancellor of the Confederation.
Since Bismarck wanted a loosely organized confederation in which sovereignty rested with the individual states as a whole, the Bundesrat, the body representing the states, constituted the Confederation's sovereign. Its members were chosen by the states' governments. The members of the lower house of parliament, the Reichstag, were elected by universal manhood suffrage. The Reichstag participated on an equal footing with the Bundesrat in legislation. Laws had to pass both houses by a majority vote in order to be adopted. The chancellor, who presided over the Bundesrat, was appointed and dismissed by the king of Prussia and was responsible only to him. The king was head of state and was responsible for executing federal laws passed by the parliament but had no veto right. He was also commander-in-chief of the federal army and navy and could declare war and make peace.
The Confederation was dominated by Prussia. It had four-fifths of the Confederation's territory and population, more than the other 21 members combined. The Prussian king was head of state, and Bismarck, along with being the Confederation's chancellor, was also prime minister and foreign minister of Prussia. In that role he instructed the Prussian votes in the Bundesrat. The constitution gave Prussia just 17 of 43 votes (40%) in the Bundesrat, but it could form a majority by making alliances with the smaller states. Since it took a two-thirds majority (29 votes) to pass a constitutional amendment, Prussia could also block any major changes it did not want.
Life of the nation-state
The constituent Reichstag was replaced by the first (and only) regular Reichstag of the North German Empire following the election of August 1867. The National Liberals again won the most seats (80 of 297), followed by the Conservative Party (66) and the Free Conservatives (36). During the three-and-a-half year life of the North German Confederation, the Reichstag's major legislative activity was driven by the National Liberals and centered around unifying the new nation legally and administratively. Laws were enacted concerning: free movement of citizens within the territory of the Confederation (1867) a common postal system (1867–1868) common passports (1867) equal rights for all religious denominations, including Jews (1869) unified measures and weights, with the obligatory introduction of the metric system unifying the penal code, although the changes came without abolition of the death penalty, which was the National Liberals' main objective in the field (1870)
The Liberals made no immediate progress towards their most important goal, which was the completion of German unification. Bismarck knew that bringing the southern German states into the union would mean war with France, and he felt that the time and circumstances were not right for running the risks of a war.
Restructured Customs Union Prussia restructured the German Customs Union after the Austro-Prussian War in order to draw the south German states (Bavaria, Württemberg, Baden and Hesse-Darmstadt) into closer ties with the North German Confederation. A new federal council for the Customs Union (the ) was created from the Confederation's Bundesrat plus representatives of the south German states. The North German Reichstag sat as the Customs Union parliament with the addition of 85 south German members. There was a single election to the in 1868. The south German representatives were for the most part opposed to Bismarck's policies, and when combined with the members of the North German Reichstag, they gave the opposition a majority in the Customs Union Parliament.