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The German Confederation (German Deutscher Bund) was a loose association of Central European states created by the Congress of Vienna in 1815 to organize the surviving states of the Holy Roman Empire, which had been abolished in 1806.
The Confederation had roughly the same boundaries as the Empire at the time of the French Revolution (less what is now Belgium). The member states, drastically reduced to about three dozen from more than 200 under the Empire, were recognized as fully sovereign. The members pledged themselves to mutual defence, and jointly maintained the fortresses at Mainz, Luxemburg, Rastatt, Ulm, and Landau. A federal diet under Austrian presidency met at Frankfurt.
The Confederation was dissolved in 1866 after the Austro-Prussian War, and was succeded by Prussia's North German ConfederationThe North German Confederation (German Norddeutscher Bund , a transitional grouping which existed ( 1867 1871) between the dissolution of the German Confederation and the founding of the German Empire, cemented Prussian control over the 22 states of North. All the constituent states of the German Confederation became part of the German EmpireThe term German Empire (the translation from German of Deutsches Reich commonly refers to Germany, from its consolidation as a unified nation-state in January 1871, until the abdication of Kaiser ( Emperor) Wilhelm II in November 1918. Germans, when refer in 1871, except Austria1867 and of the Austrian part of Austria-Hungary until 1918. The Austrian Empire was founded in 1804 as a reaction to the creation of the First French Empire under Napoleon I. The first Emperor of Austria was Francis I, at this time holding also the title, Luxemburg, LimburgLimburg is the southern-most of the twelve provinces of the Netherlands, located in the south-east of the country. It is bordered by Belgium in the west, Germany in the east, and the province of North Brabant in the north. Limburg Province of the Netherla, and LiechtensteinThe Principality of Liechtenstein (pronounced "LEEKH-ten-shtine" ( IPA: ['lik. tan]; SAMPA: ["lik. StaIn]) is a small, doubly landlocked country in central Europe, bordered by Switzerland to its west and by Austria to its east. Being mountainous, it is a.
right Heinrich Friedrich Karl, baron von und zum SteinHeinrich Friedrich Karl, baron von und zum Stein ( October 26, 1757 June 29, 1831), German statesman, was born at the family estate near Nassau. He was the ninth child of Karl Philipp, Freiherr vom Stein; the maiden name of his mother was von Simmern. right Karl August von HardenbergPrince Karl August von Hardenberg ( May 31, 1750 November 26, 1822), was a Prussian statesman. Biography He was born at Essenroda in Hanover. After studying at Leipzig and Gottingen he entered the Hanoverian civil service in 1770 as councillor of the boar
The late 18th century was a period of political, economic, intellectual, and cultural reform, the Enlightenment (represented by figures such as Locke, Rousseau, Voltaire, and Adam Smith), but also involving early Romanticism, climaxed in the French Revolution, where freedom of the individual and nation was asserted against privilege and custom. Composed of a great variety of types and theories, they largely respond to the disintegration of previous cultural patters, coupled with new patterns of production, specifically the rise of industrial capitalism.
However, the defeat of Napoleon, enabled reactionary states such as the Kingdom of Prussia and Austrian Empire to survive, laying the groundwork for the Congress of Vienna, 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 a barrier 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, aside from 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 member states of defunct Holy Roman Empire joined to form the German Confederation (Deutscher Bund) - a rather loose organisation, especially because the two great rivals, the Austrian Empire and the Prussian kingdom, each feared domination by the other.
To contemporary observers, a post-Napoleon revolutionary upheaval in Prussia, however, would seem unlikely. Later to emerge as the dominant German state, the political base of a united Germany, and a power that would vie for global preeminence toward the end of the nineteenth century, Prussia was seemingly backward. Under Prussia, manorial reaction dates back to fall of the Teutonic Knights. Although agricultural structures has been very decentralized in form under the Teutonic Order, the Prussian nobility would later expand their holdings at the expense of the peasantry under territories once held by the Teutonic Order, reducing them to quiescent serfdom. Under Prussia, the rise of urban burgers was also greatly impeded. The Junkers sought to reduce the towns to dependence by short-circuiting them with their exports, leaving little revolutionary potential for free labor - urban and rural - from feudal obligation. In England and France, which proved far more hospitable to Western democracy from the Enlightenment to Germany's defeat in World War II, the decline of feudal obligations had been connected development of the urban burgers in The Hohenzollerns instead would forge a centralized state, explaining the weak development of parliamentary government under Prussia. By the time of the Napoleonic Wars, Prussia was a backward state, grounded in the virtues of its established military-aristocracy stratified by rigid hierarchical lines.
Apart from Prussia, Germany as a whole - or more precisely the many Germanies - political disunity, conflicts of interests between nobles and merchants, and the guild system, which discouraged competition and innovation, retarded the progress of industrialism in Germany. 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 perceptive reactionaries among the old order that a weak, divided, and backward Germany could very well have been prey to its united and industrializing neighbor.
After 1815, Prussia's initial 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 ostensibly liberal reforms of Karl August von Hardenberg and Count Stein were thoroughly conservative, enacted to preserve aristocratic privilege and institutions during an era of reform, reaction, and revolution opened up by the French Revolution by forging a competent national army.
The reforms laid the foundation for Prussia's future military might by professionalizing the military, decreeing universal military conscription. To industrialize within the framework of Prussian aristocratic institutions, land reforms ended the monopoly of the Junkers on landownership, thereby abolishing serfdom and many other feudal practices.
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