German Confederation

German Confederation 1815-66, union of German states provided for at the Congress of Vienna to replace the old Holy Roman Empire, which had been destroyed during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. It comprised 39 states in all, 35 monarchies and 4 free cities. Its purpose was to guarantee the external and internal peace of Germany and the independence of the member states. In case of attack the members pledged mutual aid. Certain princes, however, were exempt from this provision. These were the king of England, as king of Hanover; the king of the Netherlands, as duke of Luxembourg; and the King of Denmark, as duke of Holstein and Lauenburg. As it was constituted, the confederation was little more than a loose union for mutual defense. Its main organ, a central diet that met at Frankfurt under the presidency of Austria, functioned as a diplomatic conference. Unanimity or a two-thirds majority was required for most decisions, and, in voting, the delegates were bound to instructions from their respective governments. The diet thus was ineffective. The strong reactionary influence of the Austrian statesman Metternich , backed by Prussia, dominated the confederation until 1848, when the liberal revolutions that swept Germany resulted in the creation of the Frankfurt Parliament . The diet was resumed in 1850. By the treaty agreed upon at Olmütz ( Olomouc ), Austrian leadership was temporarily restored, but the Austro-Prussian War (1866) led to the dissolution of the confederation and the establishment of the North German Confederation under Prussian leadership.

German Confederation (1815–66) An alliance of German sovereign states. At the Congress of VIENNA (1815) the 38 German states formed a loose grouping to protect themselves against French ambitions. Austria and Prussia lay partly within and partly outside the Confederation. The Austrian chancellor METTERNICH was the architect of the Confederation and exercised a dominant influence in it through the Federal Diet at Frankfurt, whose members were instructed delegates of state governments. As the rival power to Austria in Germany, Prussia tried to increase its influence over other states by founding a federal customs union or ZOLLVEREIN. In the REVOLUTIONS OF 1848 a new constituent assembly was elected to Frankfurt, and tried to establish a constitutional German monarchy, but in 1849 the Austrian emperor refused the crown of a united Germany because it would loosen his authority in Hungary, while the Prussian king, FREDERICK WILLIAM IV, refused it because the constitution was too liberal. The pre-1848 Confederation was restored, with BISMARCK as one of Prussia's delegates. In 1866 Bismarck proposed that the German Confederation be reorganized to exclude Austria. When Austria opposed this, Bismarck declared the Confederation dissolved and went to war against Austria. In 1867, after Prussia's victory over Austria in the AUSTRO-PRUSSIAN WAR (1866), the 21 secondary governments above the River Main federated into the North German Confederation (Norddeutscher Bund), with its capital in Berlin and its leadership vested in Prussia. Executive authority rested in a presidency in accordance with the hereditary rights of the rulers of Prussia. The federation's constitution was a model for that of the GERMAN SECOND EMPIRE, which replaced it after the defeat of France in the FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR (1871).