North German Confederation

Formation of the North German Confederation

Creation

On 18 August 1866, Prussia and fifteen north and central German states signed the North German Confederation Treaty. It created an "offensive and defensive alliance for the preservation of the independence and integrity, as well as the internal and external security of their states". It was to last for a maximum of one year, although less if a "new federal relationship" was agreed on sooner. The federal relationship was to be defined by a constitution based on the Prussian proposal for a federal state of June 1866. All the states were to send delegates to Berlin to draft the constitution and at the same time to order that elections for representatives to a parliament be held on the basis of the Imperial Election Law of 12 April 1849. That law, drafted by the Frankfurt Parliament, mandated universal, equal and direct manhood suffrage.

Prussia annexed outright four of its former opponents in the war. Hanover, the Electorate of Hesse (Hesse-Kassel), Nassau and Frankfurt, along with the Hesse-Homburg area of the Grand Duchy of Hesse, were combined into the two new Prussian provinces of Hanover and Hesse-Nassau. Four other states that had fought for Austria – the northern part of Hesse, Reuss-Greiz, Saxe-Meiningen and the Kingdom of Saxony – became part of the North German Confederation, but not of Prussia, through individual treaties. Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Mecklenburg-Strelitz also joined by treaty. Schleswig and Holstein became the Prussian Province of Schleswig-Holstein. East Prussia, Posen and West Prussia, which had not been part of the German Confederation even though they were provinces of the Kingdom of Prussia, also became part of the new north German alliance.

The North German Confederation was the earliest continual legal predecessor of the modern German nation-state known today as the Federal Republic of Germany.

Federal constitution

The election for the constituent North German Reichstag took place on 12 February 1867. The 297 seats were divided among more than a dozen parties, with the largest shares going to the National Liberal Party (78 seats), the Conservative Party (63 seats) and the Free Conservative Party (39 seats). The National Liberals were able to form a majority coalition with the Free Conservatives, Old Liberals and a handful of independents. The draft of a constitution that adhered to guidelines set by Otto von Bismarck was waiting for the delegates when they convened on 24 February 1867. In its fundamental form, the draft proposed a federal state led by Prussia. Most delegates were favorable to federalism, although some National Liberals and most of the liberal Progress Party fought unsuccessfully for a unitary state. The constituent Reichstag modified the draft to give the chancellor more power and made the military subject to the budgetary oversight of the legislature. The revised constitution was passed on 16 April 1867 by a vote of 230 to 53. Voting against were the Progress Party, many Catholics, August Bebel – a founder of one of the predecessors to the Social Democratic Party – and the Polish Reichstag members. After the constitution had been approved by the parliaments of the constituent states, it went into effect on 1 July 1867. Two weeks later, King Wilhelm I appointed Bismarck chancellor of the Confederation.

Since Bismarck wanted a loosely organized confederation in which sovereignty rested with the individual states as a whole, the Bundesrat, the body representing the states, constituted the Confederation's sovereign. Its members were chosen by the states' governments. The members of the lower house of parliament, the Reichstag, were elected by universal manhood suffrage. The Reichstag participated on an equal footing with the Bundesrat in legislation. Laws had to pass both houses by a majority vote in order to be adopted. The chancellor, who presided over the Bundesrat, was appointed and dismissed by the king of Prussia and was responsible only to him. The king was head of state and was responsible for executing federal laws passed by the parliament but had no veto right. He was also commander-in-chief of the federal army and navy and could declare war and make peace.

The Confederation was dominated by Prussia. It had four-fifths of the Confederation's territory and population, more than the other 21 members combined. The Prussian king was head of state, and Bismarck, along with being the Confederation's chancellor, was also prime minister and foreign minister of Prussia. In that role he instructed the Prussian votes in the Bundesrat. The constitution gave Prussia just 17 of 43 votes (40%) in the Bundesrat, but it could form a majority by making alliances with the smaller states. Since it took a two-thirds majority (29 votes) to pass a constitutional amendment, Prussia could also block any major changes it did not want.

Life of the nation-state

The constituent Reichstag was replaced by the first (and only) regular Reichstag of the North German Empire following the election of August 1867. The National Liberals again won the most seats (80 of 297), followed by the Conservative Party (66) and the Free Conservatives (36). During the three-and-a-half year life of the North German Confederation, the Reichstag's major legislative activity was driven by the National Liberals and centered around unifying the new nation legally and administratively. Laws were enacted concerning:

• free movement of citizens within the territory of the Confederation (1867)
• a common postal system (1867–1868)
• common passports (1867)
• equal rights for all religious denominations, including Jews (1869)
• unified measures and weights, with the obligatory introduction of the metric system
• unifying the penal code, although the changes came without abolition of the death penalty, which was the National Liberals' main objective in the field (1870)

The Liberals made no immediate progress towards their most important goal, which was the completion of German unification. Bismarck knew that bringing the southern German states into the union would mean war with France, and he felt that the time and circumstances were not right for running the risks of a war.

Restructured Customs Union

Prussia restructured the German Customs Union after the Austro-Prussian War in order to draw the south German states (Bavaria, Württemberg, Baden and Hesse-Darmstadt) into closer ties with the North German Confederation. A new federal council for the Customs Union (the Zollbundesrat) was created from the Confederation's Bundesrat plus representatives of the south German states. The North German Reichstag sat as the Customs Union parliament with the addition of 85 south German members. There was a single election to the Zollparlament in 1868. The south German representatives were for the most part opposed to Bismarck's policies, and when combined with the members of the North German Reichstag, they gave the opposition a majority in the Customs Union Parliament.

Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Mecklenburg-Strelitz and the three Hanseatic cities of Bremen, Hamburg and Lübeck were initially not members of the Customs Union. The Mecklenburgs (1868) and Lübeck (1869) joined soon after the North German Confederation was formed. After heavy Prussian pressure, Hamburg acceded to the Customs Union in 1888; Bremen joined at the same time. All the states participated fully in the federal institutions even while outside the Customs Union and not directly affected by its decisions.

Transition to the German Empire

In mid-1870, Bismarck used France's resistance to putting a member of the Prussian house of Hohenzollern on the throne of Spain to help spark the war that he considered necessary to complete Germany's unification. German patriotism in the face of the French "affront" would, he thought, be sufficient to overcome the south German states' particularism. In addition, secret treaties signed in 1866 bound them in mutual defense pacts with Prussia. The four states fought with the North German Confederation against France in the Franco-Prussian War and in November 1870 signed treaties that brought them into the Confederation. On 8 December 1870, the Bundesrat of the North German Confederation voted in favour of changing the Confederation's name to "German Empire" (Deutsches Reich) and made the king of Prussia the German emperor. An amendment to the constitution accepting the south German states passed the North German Reichstag on 10 December 1870. The 1871 Constitution of the German Confederation became effective on 1 January 1871.

According to a minority among German experts, the North German Confederation and the southern states created a new federal state (the German Empire). Indeed, Bismarck allowed the south German states to save face and therefore used terminology suggesting a new creation. Historian Michael Kotulla emphasizes, however, that legally only accession of the southern states to the North German Confederation was possible; the legal basis for such an accession was Article 79 of the North German federal constitution.

Following the North German Confederation's victory in the war with France, the German princes and senior military commanders formally proclaimed Wilhelm the German Emperor in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles on 18 January 1871. The date was customarily celebrated as the day of the German Empire's foundation, although it had no constitutional meaning. After a new Reichstag was elected on 3 March 1871, the transition from the Confederation to the Empire was completed when the Constitution of the German Empire became effective on 4 May 1871. It was a minimally altered version of the Constitution of the North German Empire. France recognised the Empire on 10 May 1871 in the Treaty of Frankfurt.

Member states

All of the North German Confederation's member states had belonged to the German Confederation of 1815–66. Austria and the south German states Bavaria, Württemberg, Baden and the Grand Duchy of Hesse (Hesse-Darmstadt) remained outside of the Confederation, although Oberhessen, the northern province of the Grand Duchy of Hesse, did join.

In northern, central and eastern Germany, Prussia formed the North German Confederation by:

• uniting a number of allies from the Austro-Prussian War that joined the North German Confederation via the August treaties (Augustverträge) of August 1866;
• annexing four former enemy states (Hanover, Kurhessen, Nassau and Frankfurt) which became parts of Prussia (October 1866);
• including its own territories that had formerly been outside of the Holy Roman Empire and the German Confederation. Those were East Prussia, the cradle of Prussian statehood, and the two largely Polish territories of Posen and West Prussia. Their inclusion formally annexed them to the new Germany;
• bringing the remaining north and central German states (such as Saxony) into the North German Confederation via peace treaties.

The Duchy of Saxe-Lauenburg is sometimes included as one of the member states, but it was not a separate member state enumerated in the constitution of the Confederation. It was one of the three duchies that earlier had belonged to Denmark. Saxe-Lauenburg was ruled in personal union by the Prussian king as its duke until July 1876, when the duchy was incorporated into the Prussian province of Schleswig-Holstein.

List of states

Notes