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Roughly from 1850 to 1870 the Unification of Germany took place. After the unification, Germany rose as a dominant power in Europe until World War 2. The process of the unification was mainly spread over three wars. But to a great extent, the unification was due Herr Otto Von Bismarck's diplomacy. However, to a small extent, it was due to other factors such as the formation of the Zollverein, revolutions, nationalism and assemblies and congresses held in the past. From the 1790 s to 1814 French troops successively conquered and occupied the area that later constituted the German Empire.
French domination helped to modernize and consolidate Germany by introducing reforms in economy, society and government. Finally, towards the end, sparked the first upsurge of German nationalism. Nationalist ideas began to form among the intellectuals in Germany. Therefore, to a small extent, in different ways, unintentionally, the French emperor Napoleon I helped German unification. It was also important that he encouraged many of the middle-sized German states to absorb huge numbers of small independent territories, mostly bishoprics, church lands, and local principalities. The more powerful German princes, often in alliance with France, seized this chance to enlarge their territories and refused to restore the annexed units to independence after Napoleon's defeat.
The number of independent and semi-independent German states had been around one thousand in 1792 but twenty-five years later, only about thirty remained. The Congress of Vienna in 1814 - 15 dissolved the Confederation of the Rhine and created the German Confederation under Austrian and Prussian hegemony. The German Confederation consisted of 39 independent and individual states and almost everywhere, the original monarch rulers repressed the nationalist movement, which was mainly composed of students and professors after 1815. Although, there was a parliament with representatives from every state, this diet was weak and powerless and it could only deal with common affairs of the Confederation. An Austrian always led this diet. Later, the German princes realized that nationalism required a reform or even destruction of the traditional monarchic states.
After several decades of repression, a strong desire for reforms, constitutions and parliaments had developed among the educated and wealthy bourgeoisie, while the peasants resented the still present feudal dues. These liberal demands from the nationalists alarmed the foreign princes and their aristocratic supporters. Unemployment among small artisans made them join the revolutionary cause in hopes of secure jobs and economic improvement. These problems within each state led to the revolutions of the 1848. Inspired by an uprising in France, German liberals and peasants started to push for their claims with violence in March 1848. The princes, frightened and poorly prepared for revolution, granted constitutions and parliamentary assemblies and appointed liberal ministries all over Germany.
They also pacified the peasants by canceling the remaining feudal dues. German nationalists called a National Assembly in Frankfurt to prepare the unification of Germany as a liberal, constitutional state. Liberal hopes for German unification were not met during the politically turbulent 1848 - 49 period. A Prussian plan for a smaller union was dropped in late 1850 after Austria threatened Prussia with war. Despite this setback, desire for some kind of German unity, either with or without Austria, grew during the 1850 s and 1860 s. It was no longer a notion cherished by a few, but had proponents in all social classes.
An indication of this wider range of support was the change of mind about German nationalism experienced by an obscure Prussian diplomat, Otto von Bismarck. He had been an adamant opponent of German nationalism in the late 1840 s. During the 1850 s, however, Bismarck had concluded that Prussia would have to harness German nationalism for its own purposes if it were to thrive. He believed too that Prussia's well-being depended on wresting primacy in Germany from its traditional enemy, Austria.
In 1862 King William I of Prussia chose Bismarck to serve as his minister president. Descended from the Junker, Prussia's aristocratic landowning class, Bismarck hated parliamentary democracy and championed the dominance of the monarchy and aristocracy. However, gifted at judging political forces and sizing up a situation, Bismarck contended that conservatives would have to come to terms with other social groups if they were to continue to direct Prussian affairs. The king had summoned Bismarck to direct Prussia's government in the face of the Prussian parliament's refusal to pass a budget because it disagreed with army reforms desired by the king and his military advisers. Although he could not secure parliament's consent to the government's budget, Bismarck was a tactician skilled and ruthless enough to govern without parliament's consent from 1862 to 1866. Under Bismarck, the economy grew rapidly and soon, Prussia became the most powerful and dominant in economy.
Through the Vienna peace settlement Prussia had received areas that turned out to be enormously precious for industrialization (the Ruhr district, the Rhineland, and parts of Saxony - all with rich coal deposits). Prussia now started to dominate many of the smaller German states economically, and the smaller states, often hesitantly, adapted their economies to Prussia. Decisive for this inconspicuous economic unification of Germany was the expansion of a customs union, Zollverein, which was set up in 1818 but in 1834, central and south German states joined in. This customs union excluded Austria and Bohemia.
Railroad building followed the lines of trade after 1837. To put it in a nutshell, Germany -- roughly in the borders of the later Second Empire -- was economically and, to a lesser degree, culturally united before 1871. The Zollverein. This allowed the Prussians to have huge free trade zone in the middle of central Europe.
The Prussian-controlled German Confederation now had a monopoly on trade in the most desirable trade zone on the continent. Although designed to remove tariff barriers and facilitate trade within the German confederation, the Zollverein also had a political effect in isolating Austria. The Austrians were committed to trade tariffs to protect their agriculture and industry; thus their inability to join the Zollverein served to increase Prussian power in the confederation. This economic unity also brought to social and political unity in the disunited German states. By blood and iron. Bismarck used this phrase to describe the method by which a unified German state would be created.
The Frankfurt Assembly of 1848, which attempted to unify Germany through constitutional means, had been crushed. Bismarck knew that the chances of peaceful revolution were nonexistent: Germany could be created only through war. Bismarck was the architect of a policy that came to be known as realpolitik, which means "practical politics. " He was determined to strengthen Prussia by any means necessary. Alliances were merely convenient and could be dissolved to exploit an opportunity. Bismarck supported democracy to gain internal support, but had no true interest in liberal reform.
He watched international events closely, waiting for the proper moments to advance his agenda. After 1850, the industrial revolution in Germany entered its decisive phase. New factories were built at a breath-taking rate, the production of textiles and iron soared, railroads grew and started to connect many distant regions, and coal production and export reached record levels every year. These advances profited from a high level of education, the result...
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Research essay sample on Otto Von Bismarck Unification Of Germany
