German Confederation

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.

Economic Integration

Meanwhile, Prussia would continue to repress liberalism and continue with reform from above. Further efforts to improve the confederation began in 1834 with the establishment of a customs union, the Zollverein. In 1834 Prussia's regime would stimulate wider trade advantages and industrialism by decree — a logical continuation of the program embarked upon by Stein and Hardenberg less than two decades earlier. Inadvertently, these reforms would spark the unification movement and augment a middle class demanding further political rights, but at the time backwardness and Prussia's fears of its stronger neighbors was the larger threat. The customs union opened up a common market and ended local tariffs between states and standardized weights, measures, and currencies within member states (excluding Austria), forming the basis of a proto-national economy.

Related Topics:
Prussia - Customs union - Zollverein

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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 industrialists, especially the Krupp works established by the Krupp family, would introduce the invention of 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 manufactures also produced heavily for the non-defense sector. No longer would Britain be able to supply half Germany's needs in manufactured goods, as it did beforehand.

Related Topics:
1842 - Krupp

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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.

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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, came to terms with 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.

Related Topics:
Landed upper class - 1848 - 1

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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 would only increase the ranks of the middle class swiftly - the very social base for the nationalism and liberalism that the Prussian state sought to stem.

Related Topics:
1848 - Bourgeois - Zollverein

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The Zollverein represented a move toward economic integration and modern industrial capitalism and the victory of centralism over localism, quickly bringing the era of guilds in the small German princely states to an end. This would take the form of the revolt of the Silesian Weavers in 1844, who witnessed their livelihood destroyed from the floodgates of new manufactures. Unable to compete with industrial efficiency, textile weavers quickly saw their economic base vanish. This base of small artisans, textile weavers, journeymen, guildsmen, and small businessmen would later pose a threat to the Second Reich, dominated by an emerging coalition of the landed upper class and industrialists, posing problems the Second Reich later on. These sharp class conflicts, the weakness of democratic traditions, and the narrow a social base of the landowning and military aristocracy, would be later quelled by authoritarian means of rule under the Second Reich, especially during Bismarck's suppression of Catholics and Socialists.

Related Topics:
1844 - Second Reich - Socialists

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The Zollverein also weakened Austrian domination of the Confederation as economic unity and increased the desire for political unity and nationalism. In the following years, the other German states began to regard Prussia, not Austria, as their leader.

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