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East Germany Bismarck and Unification
In 1862 King Wilhelm I of Prussia chose Otto von Bismarck as
his chancellor. Of Junker ancestry, Bismarck championed the
dominance of the aristocracy in matters of state more than he
favored absolutism. He had been elected to the new Prussian
parliament in 1848, and from 1851 he served as Prussian delegate
to the German Confederation's diet. As Prussian chancellor,
Bismarck's main task was to resolve the conflict on the issue of
military reform, which had been announced by Wilhelm I in 1861.
The reform, intended to expand and strengthen the Prussian army,
had led to a bitter conflict between crown and parliament. From
1862 until 1866, the liberal faction within the parliament's
Chamber of Deputies, which consisted of representatives from the
middle class, voted against budget appropriations required for
the military reform. In order to break parliamentary opposition
and reaffirm monarchical authority, Bismarck asserted his famous
Lückentheorie (gap theory), which maintained that in cases
of conflict between crown and parliament the will of the former
must prevail. During the parliamentary struggle of the 1862-66
period, the Lückentheorie enabled the king to expend tax
monies on the military without the approval of parliament. The
enlarged Prussian army then made it possible for Bismarck to
initiate a policy of militarism that was to establish
Hohenzollern hegemony within a German nation-state.
In June 1866, Bismarck defied Austria, protector of the
sovereignty of the German monarchical states, by demanding the
annexation of Schleswig-Holstein, then used Austria's rejection
as a pretext for war. The Seven Weeks' War, which was won by
Prussia, resulted in the dissolution of the German Confederation
and the exclusion of Austria from German politics; in 1867
Hungary consequently became a semiautonomous kingdom, and the
Austro-Hungarian Empire was created. In the same year, the
constitutional North German Confederation, headed by the Prussian
king, was established in Germany. The south German states--Baden,
Württemberg, and Bavaria--remained autonomous but promised
military allegiance to Prussia in time of war. In an attempt to
conciliate parliament, Wilhelm presented the Prussian parliament
with the Indemnity Bill, which admitted past budgetary
impropriety but requested ex post facto approval. Moderate
liberals, impressed by Bismarck's victory over Austria, helped
pass the bill, thus retroactively approving the crown's illegal
military expenditures of 1862 to 1866.
In 1870 Bismarck resumed his Machtpolitik (power
politics) by provoking the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) as the
means to incorporate the particularist south German states within
a constitutional German nation-state. By releasing to the press
the so-called Ems Dispatch--a telegram from Wilhelm in which the
king refused to renounce future Hohenzollern claims to the
Spanish throne--Bismarck succeeded in provoking the French and
eliciting a declaration of war. Baden, Württemberg, and Bavaria
joined enthusiastically in the war against Germany's traditional
foe. The promised annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, formerly part of
the Holy Roman Empire, intensified German nationalist sentiment.
Bismarck's major war aim, the voluntary acceptance of the
Constitution of the North German Confederation by the southern
states, was accomplished by Germany's victory over France. In
January 1871, the Prussian king was proclaimed German emperor.
Data as of July 1987
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