Death of a Nation

by Stephen R A'Barrow

  THINKING ABOUT GERMANY

  Ernst Moritz Arndt, when posing the question ‘What is Germany?’ wrote the poetic verse, ‘… as far as the German language rings and God in heaven songs sings, that’s what it must become.’ Heinrich Heine on the other hand wrote that thinking about what the future held for Germany robbed him of his sleep. Whether Germany had a future as a unified centralised modern state, or whether German Europe would remain a fractured puzzle divided into Prussia, Austria and a weak and vulnerable German confederation was anyone’s guess in the middle of the nineteenth century.

  It is interesting to note that Hoffmann von Fallersleben’s iconic verse Deutschland, Deutschland über alles, (‘Germany, Germany above all else’) which was written in 1841, and is now banned, did not start with Austria, Austria über alles or even Prussia, Prussia über alles. Those calling for German unity expected both Austria and Prussia to dissolve into a future Greater Germany, something the arch Prussians were not ready to accept. Prussian leadership of German states in the German Confederation was one thing, but putting themselves on a par with the little states, such as Hesse-Kassel, was quite another. As for Austria, the very idea of a united Germany under her auspices was impractical if not downright suicidal. It would have made Germans within her multinational empire not only the most powerful, but also, by a very considerable margin, the most numerous grouping within the empire. This could only further inflame the passions of her other key constituent minorities, such as the Hungarians and Czechs, for greater autonomy if not outright secession. The idea of a united Germany in any form was potentially disastrous for Austria’s continued existence. Therefore, Austrian interests were from the outset very different to those of Prussia; she wanted to maintain a loose federal and pliable German Confederation at the heart of Europe, while Prussia began to have other ideas.

  In 1815, Prussia did not set out on a linear course to unite Germany. After initially raising expectations of Prussia taking a lead role in closer unity with Germany she dampened down expectations. Once Napoleon had been overcome, fears returned of the perils of further upheavals from below, fuelled by nationalist sentiments and French style revolution. In 1823, Prussia made it clear that it had no intention of establishing a national parliament or a formal written constitution. For all the progress Prussia had made during the eighteenth century, in the first half of the nineteenth century she remained a pre-parliamentary state. Nevertheless, as we have seen, the reformers did manage to set up regional provincial diets (local assemblies) with an expanded property-based franchise, which later became a focal point for the national debate and the evolution of more democratic ideals.(26)

  It took the coronation of Friedrich Wilhelm IV in 1840 to set a new course towards greater engagement with German nationalism and liberalism. Friedrich Wilhelm IV was an unimposing figure, podgy and bald; not the ramrod straight image of a Prussian head of state let alone that of a Prussian officer. He always looked rather shabby, even in the best tailor-made uniform, something he chose to wear far less than many of his predecessors.(27) Friedrich was not fearful of German aspirations for unity, indeed he came to embrace them. On the one hand, he is held up as a shrewd leader who saved Prussia and Germany from a French-style revolution; a man who laid the foundation for a quasi-constitutional monarchy, but he is also remembered as the architect of a fatally flawed Prusso-German revolution from above.

  Friedrich Wilhelm IV was patriarchal and deeply religious in his outlook; he was one of the last monarchs in Europe to hold on to the belief that he held a throne given to him by divine right. One of his first acts as king was to found the Anglo-Prussian bishopric of Jerusalem, to evangelise to the Jews of the Holy Land and form closer links to Eastern Christianity, with alternating clergy between the Church of England and the Prussian Union. He was a great Anglophile, an admirer of the British parliamentary system and of Smithian economic liberalism. Friedrich also possessed a modern gift, which was becoming more important with the increase in literacy (especially the case in Prussia with its excellent school system) — he was a good communicator and understood the importance of a newly emerging medium — the media. He ruled in a complicated age, the Age of Nationalism, with peoples across the Continent, from Greece to Poland and Italy to Bohemia, wanting ever-greater national autonomy and ultimately independence. It was also the age of rapid industrialisation, with all the social changes this brought, including the migration from the countryside to the cities. In certain industrial sectors, over-supply and growing international competition led to decreases in both wages and working conditions, and crushing poverty for many workers. In Silesia this hit the textile weavers particularly hard, leading to strikes and open rebellion in 1844.

  In terms of Prussia’s foreign policy the key concern remained the fear of France. Austria and Prussia coordinated their response to the strategic threat France posed when she began constructing railway junctions right up against her eastern frontier with the German Confederation (France was the first power to use railways to mobilise her troops for war). Between 1840–41 fear of a renewed French invasion reached fever pitch after a French minister’s remarks in the French parliament advocated further annexations in the Rhineland, which were received with cheers and rapturous applause.(28) The issue of railways also set off Hardenberg’s constitutional time bomb. Friedrich Wilhelm IV recognised the strategic threat of France’s technological edge in the form of its advanced railway network. He was a great railway enthusiast whose dream was to build the Ostbahn — a cherished project to construct a rail link from the Rhineland through Berlin in Brandenburg and on to Königsberg in East Prussia. However, he needed more money than the state coffers could provide to achieve this and under the terms of Hardenberg’s law he had no choice but to call together the provisional diets for the first meeting of a United Diet in February 1847. Friedrich’s aim was purely to focus the discussion on the railway loan. He may have feared, but not fully realised, the extent of the Pandora’s box he was about to open.

  The first meeting took place on 11th April 1847 in Berlin and was packed with liberal and nationalist voices from all over Germany. Up to that point, all their networking had been focused almost entirely upon their own regions so it was an incredible opportunity for them to meet other liberals and like-minded people from across Prussia’s disparate territories. Friedrich had unwittingly created the largest-ever networking opportunity for those who sought German unification and/or greater democratic political representation — and that in the heart of Berlin. There was no chance that he would be able to restrict their interest and discussions to the narrow subject of railways. The United Diet refused his request for the loan, unless it received concessions. Its debates and discussions were published all over Germany. The scene was set for a confrontation. At this precise juncture another revolution in France in 1848 was reaching its apex and spreading like a virus from its borders, infecting Switzerland, Italy, Austria, the German Confederation and Prussia. The Prussian king did all that he could to save both his kingdom and his dynasty from the chaos of revolution from below. Friedrich was now quick to make concessions to the assembled members of the United Diet, giving way on an end to censorship and promising to introduce a constitution in Prussia.civ His Prime Minister announced that the king favoured a liberal constitution to encompass all German lands.

  The crowds in Berlin flocked to the royal palace to show their enthusiasm, but things quickly got out of hand when troops were seen emerging ready to disperse the crowd. Shots were fired; soon after the barricades went up around the city and the revolution began in earnest. The hawks in the administration, including the king’s younger brother Wilhelm (who would succeed him as king Wilhelm I in 1861), were ready and willing to use the army to ruthlessly crush the uprisings, but the king held his own wiser council and instead wrote an address to, ‘My dear Berliners’, which he had published in all the papers, declaring that he had recalled the troops and confined them to barracks. He thus put his fate in the hands of
his people.cv The king defused a dispute that could have ruptured into all out civil war. Why? Because he supported at least some of the ideals of the revolution at heart. He was certainly an enthusiast for a united Germany with Prussia at its head. On 21st March 1848 the king rode out of his palace carrying the black, red and gold German tricolour, proclaiming he was for an all-German parliament, stopping along the way to make impromptu speeches, including the statement, ‘From this day forward Prussia will dissolve in to Germany.’ His words were carried across Germany by all the papers.

  When the Second United Diet was called, it immediately passed the law that elections be held to a Prussian National Assembly, and the May 1848 elections subsequently elected a liberal-left majority. The revolution was, however, gaining a new momentum; driven by the radical left it soon began to polarise opinion and dissolve the unity of purpose that had been displayed in the early days of the revolution. The left wanted unfettered constitutional rights, over and above the power of the king, and the monarch refused to budge on his divine rights, or on his control of the army. As the violence and instability spread and one Prussian prime minister after another resigned, with the new parliament paralysed by infighting, opinion began to shift toward the desire to re-establish order.

  On 11th November 1848 the king declared martial law, and on 5th December he dissolved the Assembly and shrewdly published his own constitution. When troops closed down the parliament, the focal point for unrest was gone. This was not the last time that the failure of the liberals and the left to unite in Germany was to have far-reaching consequences. Their inability to agree on lists of candidates, their constant infighting and the increased lawlessness and chaos on the streets strengthened the cause of the conservatives, who up until that point had been very fragmented. It was the conservatives who benefited by gaining the support of the frightened middle class, the peasants, the veterans and of course of the army. Their cause was strengthened even further when the radical left and the Marxists started a second revolution in July 1849 with a wave of insurrections from the Rhineland to Saxony, and the southern German states. This time they were met and suppressed with extreme force.

  Once Pandora’s box had been opened it would prove immeasurably more difficult to close, both in terms of the growing demands for German unity and greater representation for the masses. Friedrich Wilhelm IV had been the only king from a German state to wrap himself in the German flag and to fly it from his palace throughout this period of turmoil. And he was definitely the first Brandenburg-Prussian Hohenzollern monarch who thoroughly and unashamedly regarded himself as a champion of the cause of German unity.

  THE 1848 REVOLUTIONS IN GERMANY, PRUSSIA AND AUSTRIA

  Frankfurt on the river Main, the city that had been home to the election of Holy Roman Emperors and the successor parliament for the German Confederation, became the focal point for those seeking out fellow German patriots when a national assembly was proclaimed there in March 1848, which turned it into the cauldron for what was going on in all of German-speaking Europe. Frankfurt’s course ran parallel to that of the Prussian Landtag in Berlin, but the deputies in Frankfurt made even shriller calls for the unity of the Fatherland. What they feared most was that the Landtag in Berlin, led by the liberals, would continue to put Prussia’s particular interests first, namely for their own reform process to be completed and for this then to be crowned with a Prussian constitution and an independent Prussian parliament. The nationalists at the Assembly in Frankfurt feared that if this happened it would only entrench Prussian particularism, and make it harder for Prussia to dissolve itself into a union with the other German states, which the King of Prussia himself had said was his preferred intention.

  On the same day that Friedrich Wilhelm IV was riding around Berlin proclaiming his devotion to Germany, the delegates in Frankfurt thought they had been gifted the perfect opportunity to harness national sentiment across the Germanies. The Schleswig Holstein question blew up in the form of a succession crisis, when the new Danish King declared his unilateral right of annexation of these largely German-speaking areas. This enraged German nationalists, and the Frankfurt Assembly voted to make Schleswig a member of the German Confederation. Holstein was already a member. The Assembly also requested that Prussia assemble a force to invade the province and protect the German community there. Prussia answered the call, and invaded on 23rd April 1848 securing a swift victory against the Danish forces. However, this was entirely contrary to the way states were supposed to conduct themselves in the spirit of the Concert of Europe. Consequently, the Concert powers swiftly closed ranks to ensure Prussia gained no benefit and that the balance of power in Europe remained unaltered. International powers were no more willing to see the emergence of a unified, strong German centre dominated by either Prussia or Austria in 1848 than they had been in 1648. Russia intervened, angry at Berlin’s ‘humouring’ of the revolutionaries in Berlin and Frankfurt. Britain’s long-term strategic interests were supposedly threatened by Prussia potentially extending its control over the Baltic if it were to overrun the whole of Denmark and control the straits. Austria, Sweden and France joined the chorus of protest and Prussian troops withdrew. The Frankfurt Assembly delegates had been humiliated, given a rude awakening and discovered a new-found sense of impotence. What could they do if they had no force of their own?

  Friedrich Wilhelm IV, however, had not given up on playing with the idea of closer German union. His Foreign Minister continued to support the idea of a Prussian-led narrow union or Klein Deutschland, linked by a broader but looser union with Austria. But the Austrians were having none of it. Prussian motives appeared to them to be more geared towards the establishment of a Greater Prussia than supporting greater German unity. Furthermore, the Austrians liked the fragmented, unthreatening and malleable German Confederation just as it was. What became clear was that a major realignment, not short of the disintegration of the Concert of Europe, would need to take place for any form of closer German Union to become possible.

  The Frankfurt Assembly turned to Austria in October 1848 in the misguided hope that if offered, she could not resist the leadership role in forging greater German unity. They wanted a Groß Deutschland solution — one Greater Germany. This would include Austria, Bohemia and northern Italy within the borders of the old Holy Roman Empire, with the rest of Austria’s dominions separated off and ruled from Vienna in a personal union. The latter idea, of a sub-empire of Bosnians, Croats, Hungarians, Italians, Poles, Romanians, Slovaks and Slovenians being run from Vienna (not to mention the Czechs from Frankfurt) was an ill-conceived one; it was flatly rejected by the Austrian Chief Minister, Prince Felix zu Schwarzenberg. This was to be the last time Austria would have a serious chance of playing the leading role in the German unification. By the time war between Austria and Prussia inevitably started, less than twenty years later, a majority of the smaller German states still turned out to support Austria, but the Habsburg’s 400-year dominion of German Europe had faltered on the multinational nature of their imperial mission. The Austrian Empire increasingly looked out of place. It harked back to an age of lavish patriarchal multinational dynasties, which appeared anachronistic in an age characterised by the rise of centralised nationalist states. The Frankfurt Assembly had to think again. The majority of its delegates had favoured a Groß Deutschland, a German state including all German speakers in Europe, but which Vienna now emphatically rejected.

  In March 1849, the Frankfurt delegates, having given up all hope of Austrian leadership in the German question, voted for a monarchical constitution, and for a new small German Klein Deutsch solution that excluded Austria. The Prussian monarch, Friedrich Wilhelm IV, was now expected to accept the title of German Emperor. The Frankfurt parliament was in for a rude shock and a second humiliation that was ultimately crushing. Friedrich refused. Not only because he found a crown offered him by the masses demeaning, but also because he felt it to be an insult to the divine. Only God appointed kings and therefore being
offered a crown by the mob was utterly worthless. His deeply rooted belief that his crown had been divinely invested meant that he would only be prepared to receive an earthly crown if it was offered to him by the other German princes with Austria’s blessing — a gift awarded by other divinely inspired monarchs. His vision of a resolution to the German question was a remodelling of the old Holy Roman Empire, but this time under Prussian leadership.

  The Frankfurt Assembly had been humiliated and was shown to be totally impotent, firstly over its calls for the occupation and incorporation of Schleswig into the German Confederation, secondly in its overall efforts to unite Germany — efforts that had been rejected by both Austria and Prussia. Apparently it could not even give Germany away.

  Having expressed the desire for the German Confederation to remain unchanged, Austria spent most of 1848–1850 distracted, having to quash nationalist uprisings across its disparate dominions, from Hungary to Italy. On the other hand, Friedrich Wilhelm IV continued to toy with his German project, this time by getting his Foreign Minister to push for a northern German federal union of princes. Initially this was not met with any opposition from Austria, however by the time she re-emerged from having quenched the fires of nationalism within her own territories, she sought to re-establish her influence over the German Confederation and put an end to Prussia’s pretensions to leadership. The Austrian Minister of State regarded Friedrich Wilhelm as having played up to German nationalists, and as such creating the potential for further instability, not only close to home, but also across the whole of Europe.