Blood and Iron E-Book

Katja Hoyer

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 339

Beschreibung

Before 1871, Germany was not yet a nation but simply an idea. Otto von Bismarck had a formidable task at hand. How would he bring thirty-nine individual states under the yoke of a single Kaiser? Once united, could the young European nation wield enough power to rival the empires of Britain and France – all without destroying itself in the process? In a unique study of five decades that changed the course of modern history, Katja Hoyer tells the story of the German Empire from its violent beginnings to its calamitous defeat in the First World War. This often-startling narrative is a dramatic tale of national self-discovery, social upheaval and realpolitik that ended, as it started, in Blood and Iron.

Leseprobe

About the Author

Katja Hoyer is an Anglo-German historian. She was born in East Germany and read history at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena. She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London. Her essays have featured in History Today and BBC History Extra. Katja comments on current affairs in Germany and Europe as a Washington Post columnist and also writes regularly for other newspapers such as the Spectator, the Daily Telegraph, UnHerd and Die Welt. She is based in Sussex, England.

Praise for Blood and Iron

‘Katja Hoyer’s well-researched and well-written book is the best biography of the Second Reich in years. She cogently argues that what started in Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors need not have ended in the disaster of the Great War, and rightly rescues Bismarck from the ignominy of being a forerunner of Hitler. It will undoubtedly become the essential account of this vitally important part of European history.’

Andrew Roberts, author of Churchill: Walking with Destiny

‘Splendidly lucid and readable: Katja Hoyer has managed to compress fifty years of great complexity into a compelling and comprehensible narrative – and it is a story that every European needs to know and to understand.’

Neil MacGregor, author of Germany: Memories of a Nation

‘Brisk, thoughtful and thoroughly engaging.’

Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times

‘Excellent ... Fluently written and convincingly argued, Blood and Iron is a brilliant account of an important period of history, and one that marks the arrival of a major new talent ... Hoyer provides a nuanced and thoughtful discussion of the causes of conflict in 1914.’

Saul David, Daily Telegraph

‘Bismarck created a Germany, says Hoyer, “whose only binding experience was conflict against external enemies”. Fearful that its 39 individual states would drift apart again, Bismarck kept Germany on “a constant diet of conflict” – whipping up hostility to internal enemies, like Catholics, socialists and ethnic minorities. Hoyer’s nuanced study shows the long run-up to war in 1914.’

Daily Telegraph Summer Books 2021

‘An elegant new book on the period … Hoyer has mastered an intimidating jungle of material and written a balanced and hugely accessible introduction to the age when Germany became Germany ... Hoyer renders a vivid account of Wilhelm’s overweening ineptitude. The Kaiser was so gaffe-prone that his ministers frequently had to issue the press with hastily rewritten transcripts of his improvised speeches.’

Oliver Moody, The Times

‘The themes of political fragility, social cleavages and pervasive militarism give an impressive depth and coherence to Hoyer’s tightly written narrative.’

Tony Barber, Financial Times Summer Books 2021

‘An important and complex subject told with clarity and verve.’

Catrine Clay, author of The Good Germans

‘Hoyer brings this dense period of German history to life with a lightness of touch that complements her impressive scholarship. A deeply satisfying read, highly recommended.’

Julia Boyd, author of Travellers in the Third Reich

‘Hoyer has written an excellent book on the rise and fall of the German Empire from 1871 to 1918 that is packed with detail and illuminating insights. She shows very effectively the changes in German foreign policy after Bismarck’s fall from power, and the more provocative stance of Kaiser Wilhelm’s world policy that contributed to the outbreak of the First World War.’

Frank McDonough, author of The Hitler Years

‘Concise and incisive, this sparkling examination of the rise and fall of the Second Reich is an excellent introduction to a crucial period of German history.’

Tim Blanning, author of Frederick the Great

‘We ought all to know more about the rise of the Second German Reich, founded with blood and iron in Otto von Bismarck’s words, because the great catastrophes of the 20th century flow from it. In entertaining prose, Katja Hoyer makes that history highly accessible, and paints lively portraits of the political genius Bismarck and the naive egotist Kaiser Wilhelm II.’

Michael Portillo, author of Portillo’s Hidden History of Britain

‘Engaging and enlightening in equal measure, Blood and Iron is a brilliant synthesis of a complex history which will be welcomed by students and general readers alike.’

Roger Moorhouse, author of First to Fight

‘Anyone, student or general “history buff”, in search of a readable but authoritative guide to how modern Germany came into being need look no further than Katja Hoyer’s Blood and Iron. The familiar political and military battlefields are all compellingly described. Bismarck and Co. have their due. However, the author also explores many fascinating and less well-known aspects of German culture and public life during that period – equally important factors in the epic story of how this vibrant, often turbulent, society on the move propelled itself in just a few decades from an underpowered feudal patchwork of semi-connected states to become the cultural, economic and military titan that was Germany in 1914. Hoyer’s account of Germany between the Napoleonic Era and the Great War stands as an admirable achievement of both narrative and analytical history. Highly recommended.’

Frederick Taylor, author of 1939

‘The German Empire born in 1871 has all too often been seen as the troubled precursor of the terrible Nazi successor. Katja Hoyer helps us to see that the empire held out other possibilities which only the catastrophe of the Great War undermined. Brief and accessible, this should become a standard text for those who want to understand the origins of Germany today.’

Richard Overy, author of The Bombing War

‘Outstanding, authoritative and gripping.’

Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of Written in History

Cover illustration © Bridgeman

First published 2021

This paperback edition first published 2022

The History Press

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© Katja Hoyer, 2021, 2022

The right of Katja Hoyer to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

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CONTENTS

Introduction

1   Rise 1815–71

2   Bismarck’s Reich 1871–88

3   Three Emperors and a Chancellor 1888–90

4   Wilhelm’s Reich 1890–1914

5   Catastrophe 1914–18

Conclusions: The End?

Bibliography

INTRODUCTION

On the bright, cold winter morning of 17 January 1871, Wilhelm I, King of Prussia, had a moment of crisis. Eventually, the old man lost what self-control he still had and began to sob, ‘Tomorrow will be the unhappiest day of my life! We are going to witness the burial of the Prussian monarchy and this, Count Bismarck, is all your fault!’ The 73-year-old king was an unlikely candidate to assume the mantle of the mystical Kaiser who would arise one day to unite all Germans. Yet this was precisely what was now expected of him. The next day, on 18 January 1871, around noon, several hundred Prussian officers, members of the nobility and representatives of all the German regiments that had fought in the Franco-Prussian War gathered in the Hall of Mirrors of the Palace of Versailles. The sound of marching bands drifted into the magnificent room through the tall windows and mingled with the excited chatter of the waiting crowds. Then the large double-doors at the end of the dazzling hall opened, and Wilhelm I, Crown Prince Friedrich and the representatives of the German states entered in a ceremonial procession. A strained, expectant silence fell. There was a sense that those present were witnessing a historical moment, one of mythical proportions.

Wilhelm had managed to pull himself together and stiffly accepted the title that was offered to him formally by the German princes during the ceremony. And yet there was already a sense that the journey ahead would not be easy for the newly formed nation. At its helm would be a monarch who had refused the title ‘German Kaiser’ and only reluctantly accepted the more neutral ‘Kaiser Wilhelm’. He would forever remain a Prussian king first, second and third. Otto von Bismarck, the architect of the fledgling state and its first chancellor, was also not a nationalist. To him Germany was an extension of Prussian power and influence. He had even chosen the date for the proclamation of the German Empire to coincide with Prussia’s national day. Together, king and chancellor were now trying to reign over a political construct whose more reluctant southern member states had only joined to protect fellow Germans from the perceived threat of French invasion that Bismarck had so cleverly engineered. This made for a somewhat fragile and potentially short-lived bond that the Iron Chancellor had to fight hard to maintain. He had not even dared to hold the ceremony for the proclamation of the German Reich in any of the German states. Instead, it took place at the Royal Palace of Versailles, the heart of the defeated nation France. A fitting symbol for the centrality of the notions of struggle and war to the new Germany.

On the one hand, Bismarck could work with centuries’ worth of myth-making to build a nation out of the patchwork of individual states. In its first years and decades, the German Empire busied itself to build monuments to ancient legends that were supposed to give meaning and collective memory to the newly formed Germany. Wilhelm I was even declared to be the reincarnation of the medieval king Friedrich Barbarossa. In a German version of the Arthurian legend, Barbarossa was said to be asleep under the Kyffhäuser mountains in Thuringia, destined to return one day and restore Germany to its greatness. A vast monument to this effect was erected in the 1890s. This sense of a shared mythology was added to by many great German thinkers – among them the Brothers Grimm – who had long argued that German culture, language and historical tradition form a stronger bond than local particularism. Furthermore, the irresistible economic currents of the industrial revolution that had swept through Western Europe for over a century demanded greater coordination of resources, manpower and policy if the German states did not want to fall further behind their French and British neighbours. The rising middle classes saw the immense potential of the natural resources, favourable geography and work traditions of the German-speaking lands. If only they could be unlocked through unification.

On the other hand, cultural, economic and political ties were not enough. As Bismarck himself pointed out in his famous 1862 speech, it would take war to unify the German people. That proved as accurate before 1871 as it did after. When Bismarck decided to forge a brand-new nation state in the fires of war against Denmark, Austria and France, he created a Germany whose only binding experience was conflict against external enemies. Holding the conglomerate of what had been thirty-nine individual states together under one federal government proved difficult, and cracks began to appear before the ink on the new constitution had dried. He understood that the nation had not been moulded into one smooth whole over centuries but was really closer to a mosaic, hastily glued together with the blood of its enemies. Bismarck therefore sought to perpetuate the struggle in order to preserve his new Germany.

This was a risky strategy. The Iron Chancellor was an astute politician, perhaps one of the greatest statesmen of all time, and he understood how fragile the so-called Concert of Europe was in 1871. To introduce a new major power into the very heart of it was akin to placing a child with a trumpet into the midst of a world-class symphony orchestra. He knew the newcomer had to be quiet for some time until she had learned her craft and earned the respect of the established players. Bismarck could therefore not seek external conflict again anytime soon. Instead, he focused on internal enemies against whom he could unite the majority of the German population. The new state now encompassed many ethnic minorities such as Polish, Danish and French communities, against which Bismarck could create the contrast of German citizenship. When compared to a Frenchman, Germans would see themselves as Germans rather than Bavarians or Prussians. In addition, religion seemed another useful battleground. Two-thirds of the population within the German Empire were Protestant and one third Catholic. By secularising German society, Bismarck sought to replace religion with national sentiment, thereby creating new identity references and reducing differences between Germans. Lastly, the internationalism of the socialist movement seemed a dangerous counter-current to national identity. Bismarck declared socialists enemies of the state and so could use this too to keep the struggle of all Germans against common enemies alive.

When Wilhelm II took to the throne in 1888, the tumultuous Year of the Three Emperors, he quickly clashed with Bismarck over the issue of German unity. He recognised the same problem – economic and cultural common ground would not be enough to hold the Second Reich together – but found Bismarck’s solution of Germans battling each other abhorrent. Wilhelm wanted to be the Kaiser of all Germans, beloved by his subjects. If his grandfather Wilhelm I refused to be the incarnation of Friedrich Barbarossa, it would fall to him to lead his people back to greatness. Instead of looking for enemies within the Reich, he argued, Germany must fight for its place among the great nations externally. This would forge a bond of blood and iron so strong that it could never be destroyed again. The idea that Germany’s external struggle for ‘a place in the sun’, an empire on a par with those of Britain and France, would lead to internal unity was, of course, flawed and ultimately fatal for the Second Reich. However, at 27, the hot-headed young Kaiser lacked the political acumen of the Iron Chancellor. The latter resigned from political office as a bitter and resentful man in 1890 and left Wilhelm to take the reins of an unstable nation. There had never been a Germany without Bismarck, and when the experienced and brilliant old statesman resigned, an uncertain future dawned.

Wilhelm quickly found out that the perpetual dividing factors of religion, class, geography, culture and ethnicity – to name but a few – could not just be erased by the sheer force of personality and royal charisma he undoubtedly thought he possessed. Socialists kept on striking, Catholics still looked at the Prussian king with suspicion, and Polish separatists continued to demand their own state. Perhaps they could all be convinced that Germany was everything if they had an empire of which to be proud. Wilhelm’s blunderous quest for ‘a place in the sun’ would eventually lead the young nation into a struggle that brought it to the brink of destruction.

When the First World War broke out in 1914, Kaiser Wilhelm was initially shocked. The Balkan war he had hoped for had suddenly turned into a large-scale European conflict. Nonetheless, he still saw an opportunity to finally bring all Germans together. On 1 August 1914, he declared, ‘today we are all German brothers and only German brothers’. While recent research has dispelled the myth of widespread euphoria at the outbreak of war, there was nonetheless a feeling that the ‘fatherland’ had to be defended. In the end, however, the First World War proved to be too much blood and iron for the young state. In November 1918 the German nation lay defeated, its crown knocked off its head, its shield and sword cracked and its spirit broken. The arch enemy France stood ready to destroy and dismantle it, arguing that nothing but further bloodshed would ever come from a state whose national identity was built on war. The Second Reich would be destroyed where it was first proclaimed – in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles.

But Britain and the USA saw another Germany in the smouldering ashes of the Second Reich. The seeds of democracy and economic prosperity that had been sown by Bismarck had led to the slow and tender growth of a different national vision for Germany, one that would find its identity and its place amongst the nations of the world through trade, stability and democracy. They were right, but it would take another conflict that even overshadowed the horrors of the First World War for Germany to shake off its violent and militaristic beginnings.

The German Empire was perpetually plagued by the conflicts inherent in the process of its creation. On the one hand, Bismarck acknowledged liberal traditions by introducing universal male suffrage, which allowed for the evolution of a genuinely pluralistic multi-party system, but on the other hand, this system came under constant strain from the Prussian authoritarianism at the top. The indefatigable struggle of conflicting identities that rivalled and sometimes overshadowed national identity led to Bismarck and Wilhelm II both deliberately perpetuating conflict in order to create a platform against which unity could be created. Neither established a prosperous and united state in their own times but (willingly or not) they both helped sow the seeds for the economic and democratic powerhouse Germany was to become eventually.

1

RISE 1815–71

‘Not through speeches and majority decisions will the great questions of the day be decided … but by iron and blood.’

Otto von Bismarck

1815: Germans Make a Stand

‘To My People’1 was the title of the dramatic and passionate plea of the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm III in 1813 to all his subjects to help liberate the German lands from French occupation. As to who his people were, even the monarch himself did not seem to be entirely sure. The first section of his appeal is addressed to ‘Brandenburgers, Prussians, Silesians, Pomeranians, Lithuanians’, but as his tone becomes more emotional, he switches to ‘Prussians’ and finally ‘Germans’ when he asks for the nation to rally together in the face of a ‘foreign’ enemy. Friedrich Wilhelm seemed conscious of the fact that his subjects had layers of national identity. Strong regional loyalties stood in the way of national sentiment during peacetime but would fade into the background when Germans were pitted against a hostile external force. The almost compulsive pattern of Germany’s battle for nationhood was set for the century to come.

Fittingly, the year that Napoleon was finally beaten conclusively at Waterloo was also the year Otto von Bismarck was born: 1815. His childhood, just like that of most Germans growing up at the time, was heavily coloured by stories of the struggle against the French. When Napoleon’s army inflicted a humiliating defeat on Prussia in the twin battles of Jena and Auerstedt in 1806, it subjugated all Prussians to French overlordship. Even worse than the military failure in the eyes of many was the Peace of Tilsit in 1807, in which the Prussian king ceded about half of his territory and people to France, giving up all lands west of the River Elbe. This was a humiliating concession, and Friedrich Wilhelm came under immense pressure to act. He was already perceived as a meek and indecisive leader who had hesitated far too long in the face of French aggression. The contrast to his legendary Prussian forebear Friedrich the Great could not have been clearer. The ‘Old Fritz’ had earned his affectionate nickname in a series of successive military victories (including against France in 1757), often leading his men into battle in person, putting himself in such danger that several horses were shot from under him. By contrast, Friedrich Wilhelm’s only saving grace was his beautiful and popular wife, Louise. An intelligent, strong-willed and charming woman, it was she who famously tried to stand up to Napoleon at Tilsit and negotiate better terms for Prussia. Unsuccessful as this was, it made her a figure of great public standing. But it also made her husband look even weaker. Having fled Berlin to the very edge of his realm in East Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm had lost his battles, his capital, his dignity and the support of his people. A real low point for Prussia, it nevertheless unified many German people in their outrage. A collective sense of humiliation and shame may not be the stuff of national folklore, but it did create a defensive bond between Germans that could be called upon by future leaders.

Otto von Bismarck’s parents were newlyweds when the French army occupied their home town of Schönhausen, just a few miles east of the River Elbe, behaving appallingly and plundering the village in the process. When Friedrich Wilhelm’s call to arms finally came in 1813, it seemed a liberating and uplifting moment to Karl and Wilhelmine as it did for most people in the occupied German territories. No sacrifice would be too great to restore national dignity and honour. This was something worth fighting and even dying for. Ironically, it was at least in part the Prussian king’s weakness that led to an ever-strengthening feeling of national resistance. When Queen Louise tragically died in 1810 at the young age of 34, she became the icon of a German patriotic movement that would pressurise successive Prussian governments to rally all Germans behind a common cause. The image of the young Louise standing up for Prussia and Germany, not afraid to confront the mighty Napoleon, provided a powerful morale boost to her grieving husband. When Napoleon’s armies at last suffered a major defeat in the winter of 1812 in the Russian campaign, Friedrich Wilhelm finally found the resolve to act. His powerful speech in the spring of 1813 rallied the Prussian people behind their king and a solidifying notion of ‘fatherland’. Regardless of class, creed, gender, age or region, many ordinary people responded to his call. They joined voluntary army units, donated ‘Gold for Iron’, founded charitable clubs and societies and helped look after the wounded.

However, it was far from easy to remove Napoleon’s troops from the German lands. In a series of long, drawn-out confrontations, 290,000 Germans would be called upon to fight. The spectacular climax of this was the Battle of Leipzig in October 1813 where 500,000 people fought on all sides – the largest land battle in Europe before the twentieth century. Later dubbed the Battle of the Nations, it went down in German history as a milestone on the path to nationhood. The German people, so the narrative goes, rose against their French oppressors and thus liberated themselves from the yoke of foreign dominion. As early as 1814, people were campaigning for a memorial to be built at the site of the battle, and philosophers such as Ernst Moritz Arndt amplified such demands. The monument that was eventually commissioned in 1898 would stand 299ft tall – a landmark that can be seen for miles, as imposing now as it was then. Interestingly, it was primarily funded by people’s donations and the city of Leipzig rather than the federal government or the Kaiser. Over 100,000 people attended the inauguration in 1913, showing just how popular the myths and legends of Germany’s creation had become.

Bismarck and his contemporaries thus grew up in a world full of stories about the heroic effort and beautiful spirit of the Wars of Liberation, as they became known. The volunteers that the Prussian king had called up in his 1813 appeal were called Landwehr units, and they made up 120,565 of the 290,000 men in the land army. They were further supported by various Freikorps units and additional volunteers from Prussia and the other German states. What made this the stuff of legend was not only the fact that these men provided such a large proportion of the fighting effort and therefore made the expulsion of the French possible. More importantly, they did not swear their oath of loyalty to Prussia like the regular army. Their allegiance lay with the German fatherland. The colours of the famous Lützow volunteer corps, which eventually accounted for 12.5 per cent of Prussia’s fighting force, would ultimately inspire a patriotic movement with a long-lasting legacy – they wore black cloth, red trim, and gold-coloured brass buttons. The German tricolour was born.

Interestingly, the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June 1815 never reached the same central status in the German national psyche as it has done in British or French collective memory. Yes, Napoleon was defeated for good, and yes, Prussia and Austria were taken seriously at the negotiations over the future of Europe due to their contributions to the anti-French alliance. Still, German history was made at Leipzig as far as German patriots were concerned. The Battle of the Nations, in the very heart of the German lands, had far greater appeal as the climax of a heroic struggle for nationhood than a Prussian contribution to a battle fought on Dutch soil. Nonetheless, 1815 was as much of a watershed moment for Germany as it was for the rest of Europe. It was the beginning of a new balance of power and a chance for the German states to carve out a place for themselves within it.

Negotiations at the Congress of Vienna (1814–15) proved awkward and frustrating for Prussia. It felt it deserved a say in the redistribution of land and sought to acquire the Kingdom of Saxony in order to extend its domination further into central Germany. The British Foreign Minister, Lord Castlereagh, supported the Prussian plan. He wished for a unified and reliable German state to take charge of central Europe and act as a barrier to any future aggression from France. However, it was met with stiff resistance from the host of the conference, Austrian Foreign Minister Count Klemens von Metternich. Austria was still economically and politically the more mature and powerful German state. A compromise had to be found, and Saxony ended up being partitioned with Prussia receiving about 40 per cent of the territory. Interestingly, the Prussians insisted that this include the town of Wittenberg, where Martin Luther had nailed his ninety-five theses to the door of the cathedral almost 300 years earlier, kick-starting the Reformation. This piece of German history had already become a central element of the unification movement. Students and intellectuals held massive political rallies at the Wartburg where Luther hid out for 300 days after he had been declared a heretic by the Church, and crucially it was where he translated the Bible into German. He was celebrated not only for his unifying linguistic influence but also because Protestant patriots saw strong parallels between the Reformation and the Liberation Wars against the French centuries later. Germany would always throw off the yoke of foreign oppression through the sheer force and willpower of its people – be that against Napoleon or the Pope in Rome – so the narrative ran. The Prussian representatives simply could not afford to leave Vienna without the prize of Wittenberg. This was no skin off Catholic Austria’s nose, and so the compromise was agreed.

The change at Vienna that had the most momentous consequences for the future formation of the German Reich was the allocation of a large block of territory along the River Rhine to Prussia. Britain wanted to ensure that there was a secure and reliable German bulwark in central Europe to keep potential French aggression at bay and to fill the power vacuum that the Habsburg retreat from Belgium had created. Austria had got tired of the thankless task of managing the vexatious Belgians and was all too happy to pass this responsibility on to Prussia. This suited all sides and was agreed upon readily. Prussian influence – more by accident than design – now spanned the entire northern half of Germany. The only fly in the ointment was that the new territories were separated from the Prussian heartlands to the east by the smaller states of Hanover, Brunswick and Hesse-Kassel. Nonetheless, it was a vast expansion of power, resources and people that would add weight to Prussian dominance in the decades to come.

The year 1815 thus marked a momentous turning point in the history of the emergent German Empire. While nationalism had existed as a strong cultural undercurrent to other developments in the German lands before the Napoleonic invasion, it took this existential foreign threat to galvanise the masses behind a common aim. The passionate support for the fatherland that was seen in the Landwehr and Freikorps units whose volunteers made a game-changing contribution to the Liberation Wars was matched by the relentless efforts of the ‘Gold for Iron’ campaigns and other civil movements. Thus every man, woman and child in the German territories had felt the same unnerving threat to their culture, their language and their budding nationhood, and many had made considerable sacrifices to defend this. This collective experience had tremendous psychological binding power. As historian Neil MacGregor has shown in his epic account of German cultural history, the experience of the Napoleonic Wars was matched in unifying power only by the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War 200 years earlier. A spirit of defensive nationalism had taken hold that would lead to both the creation and the destruction of the German Empire.

1815–40: Two German Rivals

The Congress of Vienna was also watched with apprehension by many German nationalists who hoped that the redrawing of the European map would bring about a more unified Germany. They would be bitterly disappointed as Austria actively sought to contain a Prussian-led move towards further German unification. Prussia still acknowledged Austrian superiority and was aiming for a system that would allow both German powers to work together to control the smaller states in some form of union. For this to be possible, they argued, there needed to be a meaningful central government through which political, economic and social policy could be determined and enforced. Austria, on the other hand, feared that this would mean levelling up with Prussia, and it sought to preserve its status as the senior power. So Austrian Foreign Minister Klemens von Metternich argued for a looser confederation of German states that would be led by Austria. As both of the two leading nations at Vienna, Britain and Austria, agreed on this point, a decision was made against the Prussian model. A German Confederation, the Deutscher Bund, was set up.

The Bund as a form of German unification was hugely disappointing not only for the Prussian elites but also for many ordinary people who had just fought tooth and nail for their fatherland and wanted to see a tangible outcome for their heroic struggle. On the plus side, the Bund did not seek a return to the multitude of states and principalities of the Holy Roman Empire. Napoleon had needed to be able to control the German lands he had conquered and thus cajoled, threatened, bribed and beat the smaller German states into the so-called Confederation of the Rhine, which consisted of thirty-six states in 1808 and excluded only Austria, Prussia and their vassal states. The Bund replicated this loosely and encompassed thirty-nine German states in its finalised form. This seemed a step forward from the hundreds of administrative units of the crumbling Holy Roman Empire, but the problem was that it had almost as little centralisation of power. Its only federal organ, the Bundesversammlung, was in effect a regular congress of diplomats rather than a parliament with legislative power over the states. No meaningful economic, political or social coordination was possible under such a system. To add insult to injury, the chairmanship of the Bund was permanently given to Austria without rotation or election. Recently, historians have begun to question the idea that this constituted a loose bond as none of the states was allowed to leave it and confederation law stood above state law in principle. Both of these assertions are true, but in reality, the Bund never imposed federal decisions on the entirety of its member states beyond an obligation for mutual defence in case of a foreign attack. The confederation was a step towards unification when compared to the Holy Roman Empire, with the key differences being that it had a more manageable number of member states and that these states could be compelled to fight (by contrast, the Holy Roman Emperor had to rely on fragile, negotiated alliances). Ultimately, however, the Bund amounted to little more than a defensive agreement.

This solution caused huge frustration among the ranks of the patriotic idealists who were hoping for a more substantial answer to the German Question than that which the Austrian-led Bund had to offer. Their dream of a German nation state was as much out of reach as it had ever been. In the nationalist afterglow of the Liberation Wars, many vehicles for such sentiment were found. One example was the creation of Burschenschaften, nationalist student fraternities at German universities. The University of Jena was (and still is) the spiritual home of these societies. The Urburschenschaft, Germany’s first such organisation, was founded there in 1815 and adopted the black-red-gold banner as their colours. These fervent young intellectuals were angry when their nationalist dreams came to nothing at Vienna, and they began to organise rallies and demonstrations that would ultimately contribute to the revolution of 1848. Events such as the Wartburg Festival of 1817 or the student march on Hambach Castle in 1832 provided a heady cocktail of ideas, combining the call for unification with demands for more democracy, individual rights and liberalism.

They were supported by other intellectual figures such as the philosophers Fichte and Hegel (who both had ties to Jena). Recent research has shown that their branding as ‘German nationalists’ is not entirely correct and must be seen in the context of later nineteenth-century sentiments. Kaiserreich scholars in the 1880s and ’90s were looking for ideological founding fathers and created a somewhat simplistic reputation for both men that would last for a long time. Nonetheless, there is no denying that as influential thinkers they had a sizable impact and helped shape the direction of the liberal–nationalist movement of the first half of the nineteenth century. Nationalist writers like Ernst Moritz Arndt also became central to the unification movement. His song, ‘Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland?’, practically acted as a national anthem.

On a more popular level, the Brothers Grimm played their part in the cultural unification that followed the Napoleonic Wars. Published in 1812 and 1815, their collection of German fairy tales provided nothing new in content. Stories about big bad wolves, girls locked up in towers and witches in forests had scared German-speaking children for centuries, but the Grimms’ contribution lay in standardising these oral folktales into one written form. They intentionally set out to create a shared cultural good for all German speakers, unify the way they spoke, the morals they believed in and their childhood experiences, so that over generations a cultural bond would form. Obedience is a theme of many of the tales, and children often end up suffering terrible fates after they fail to listen to their elders. Little Red Riding Hood is one such example. Sending her off through the dark forest with cake and wine to see her ill grandmother, her mother had explicitly told the young girl not to stray from the path. The Grimms added this parental warning, which does not appear in Charles Perrault’s French version. Of course, Little Red Riding Hood is easily tempted off the path by the false charms of the big bad wolf. As a result of this diversion, the beast is able to get to granny’s house first. He devours the old lady and later, in cunning disguise, her granddaughter, too. The dangers of filial disobedience were thus vividly reinforced in every German child’s mind. The forest is a recurring setting in the tales. It is always a dangerous and dark place, in contrast to the safety and tranquillity of the village. In this context, the hunter, a courageous man who dares brave such dangers, often emerges as the hero. And so a common set of imagery and morals was created. It is tempting to dismiss this as trivial, but the psychological role of shared cultural childhood experiences can hardly be underestimated. Combined with the powerful bond created by the sacrifices of the Liberation Wars, the Grimms’ linguistic and cultural influence added to a growing sense of Volk – the idea of a German people.

Since the end of the Second World War, the word ‘nationalism’ has become so associated with right-wing politics that it is worth reminding ourselves that the form it took in nineteenth-century Europe was heavily coloured by liberal and romantic ideals. Like the Brothers Grimm, many believed there was beauty in national culture, identity and language. Romantic artists such as Caspar David Friedrich enjoyed immense popularity. His paintings often featured pensive figures overlooking iconic German landscapes, emphasising the almost mythical connection between people and land. His 1818 painting, The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, is the best known example. It was later followed by heroic depictions of Germania, a female personification of national identity, who is usually shown strong, broad-shouldered and battle-ready. By contrast, the French Marianne tends to be painted in a more feminine form that emphasises liberty and beauty rather than defiance and bravery. Romanticism, liberalism and nationalism went hand in hand.

The conservative elites throughout Europe were still fighting to suppress the shockwaves of the French Revolution in the aftermath of the Vienna Congress. Meanwhile, German nationalists demanded a centralised state in the hope that this would allow for the setting up of a meaningful parliament while weakening the influence of arbitrary monarchical rule. They were bitterly disappointed when they saw that the major European powers had conspired to preserve the existing political order rather than reform it. But the wheels of liberalism had been set in motion and were now hard to contain. Friedrich Wilhelm had felt it necessary to make concessions to his people in the context of his appeal for volunteers in 1813, and to take these rights back now created nothing but outrage. Though still small in scale, attempted uprisings became more and more frequent throughout the 1830s. In April 1833 students even tried to disrupt a meeting of the Bundesversammlung in Frankfurt. This was deemed so dangerous that both Prussia and Austria sent troops to pacify the city. Despite the intense rivalry between the two German powers, they could both agree that all attempts towards radical political reform must be suppressed. Together they led a conservative backlash against the liberal ideals that took hold in the German lands, introducing censorship and tight controls over the political activity of the German people. However, this only meant that anger kept simmering under the lid of oppression until it finally boiled over in 1848.

Economically Prussia made huge gains in the lands it had been given in 1815 along the River Rhine. The Ruhr coalfield alone is one of the largest in the world, and there were further coal reserves near Aachen and in the Saar region. In addition, large amounts of iron ore could be sourced from deposits near Koblenz, and other vital resources were also in plentiful supply such as lead, zinc, copper and slate. By far the most important item was coal. As a largely agrarian nation and with central Europe still in its industrial infancy, Austria did not foresee the powerful economic hand this acquisition dealt Prussia. The Rhineland has rightly been described as the ‘richest jewel in the crown of Prussia’.2

The only problem now was that Prussia could not use the German Confederation to make the most of its new resources in the west. With its territory split down the middle, it was forced to negotiate with individual states over everything from setting up transport links to customs regulations. The resources in the Rhineland enabled and encouraged a boom in railway building. From the modest beginnings of the first line from Berlin to Potsdam in 1838, Prussia had a lot of work to do to catch up with the speed of the industrial revolution in other Western European countries, especially Britain. Economic coordination was not just desirable but essential. As help from Austria could not be expected, Prussia pressed ahead independently and set up a customs union, the Zollverein, in 1834. Prince Metternich was not impressed, and Austria never joined the organisation. The Zollverein finally made it possible to coordinate infrastructure, resources and people to develop Germany’s full industrial potential. Unforeseen by the great powers at Vienna in 1815, they had given Prussia the means to unify Germany economically. By 1866 a map of the Zollverein looked remarkably similar to a map of the German Empire that would emerge in 1871. Historian William Carr was right to call it the ‘mighty lever of German unification’.