German Confederation

A league of thirty-nine states designed to keep Germany weak, which worked for half a century and then failed completely. The Congress of Vienna created it in 1815 to replace the Holy Roman Empire, and the design brief was explicit: something strong enough to defend central Europe against France, loose enough never to become a great power, and arranged so that Austria and Prussia balanced each other. It had no head of state, no common army, no citizenship and no flag, only a permanent diet of ambassadors at Frankfurt where Austria presided. Its practical function was repression. After student nationalists made themselves conspicuous, Metternich pushed through the Carlsbad Decrees in 1819, which censored the press, put university teaching under supervision and created a commission to investigate subversion across all member states. The revolutions of 1848 produced a freely elected parliament at Frankfurt which drafted a liberal constitution and offered the imperial crown to the king of Prussia; he refused to accept a crown from commoners, and the attempt collapsed. That failure settled that unification would come from above and by force. The confederation was dissolved after Prussia defeated Austria in 1866. Its one durable achievement was economic and came from outside its structures: the Zollverein, a Prussian-led customs union that excluded Austria and created a German market before a German state. Its territory held around 30 million people. Frankfurt remained a financial centre afterwards. The confederation existed from 1815 to 1866 and contained 39 member states. Its diet met at Frankfurt. Austria and Prussia were its two largest members and both held territory outside it.

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