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Introduction to Historical Crisis

The history of the people in what is now known as stretches back for thousands of years from the Germanic tribes that defeated the Romans to the incredible

King Frederick I to the many intellectual and artistic achievements of the Northern

Renaissance. However, we need to find a starting point for the committee background and I have chosen the because historians generally say it marks a turning point in Europe both politically and ideologically. The decisions made at the

Congress literally and metaphorically set the stage for a nineteenth century that not only sees the but also Italy, and ultimately ends in the horror of World

War I (or World War II if you’re willing to stretch the definition of “century”). However, in this committee you are charged with unifying Germany and that means more than conquering a certain area of land. It means creating a national sense of self and part of that is creating a national History, a narrative that helps define what a German is. So, although this synopsis will only focus on a 50-ish year span it will be good to have a vague idea of some medieval and ancient German history.

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Historical Background

Congress of Vienna (1814-1815)

In 1789, the French people rebelled against King Louis XVI. The French revolutionaries had radical new ideas, like that all men are born free and have equal rights (French National Constituent Assembly). This belief led to them overthrowing the empowered elite of nobles and King Louis XVI and replacing it with a new government with officials elected by the common man (and I do mean man, women were still largely excluded from civic participation). This new democratically elected government that replaced the old order soon turned to violence when the Committee of Public Safety, headed by Maxime Robespierre, started questioning and executing hundreds of nobles.

Robespierre’s self-described use of terror eventually turned on him and Robespierre was himself executed. Out of all this chaos rose a new, and in the minds of most

Europeans, a far greater terror. In 1799, Bonaparte seized power in France.

His armies swept across Europe conquering almost all of Western Europe until his defeat in 1814.

The specific details of Napoleon’s rise and defeat, while interesting, are not that important to this committee. However, the rise and domination of Napoleon created two fears that would motivate the actions of the Congress of Vienna and many policy makers throughout the course of the nineteenth century. The first fear was that another country could rise to power and dominate all of Europe, like Napoleon’s France. So most of the territorial and diplomatic decisions made by the delegates at the congress were made to create a delicate balance of power in Western Europe. The Kingdom of the Netherlands was created to act as a buffer between the powerful and fearful army of

2 the French and . German speaking was split between the Prussia and the Austro Hungarian Empire. The idea was to unite smaller states to create more powerful states that wouldn’t be steamrolled by the grand powers of France, Prussia,

Austria, and Russia. This kept the great Continental powers in a tense but balanced geopolitical situation

Perhaps the most important new organization that the Congress of Vienna created was the German . The was an association of 39 states, the two biggest being parts of Prussia and . The Confederation had no executive or judiciary body, but it did have a legislature where delegates of the participant states could vote on issues. However, this legislature had little actual authority. The structure of the Confederation was designed so that the member states could cooperate, but not work as one. Being the largest states, Prussia and Austria would dominate the German Confederation. But, after giving up claims to lands in

German speaking areas in order to focus on claims in Northern Italy, Prussia was the most powerful physical presence in the Confederation. The creation of the German

Confederation was largely a political decision made in part by foreign delegates who had little care for notions of uniting the German people, but it was still the first attempt to define Germaness. However, places not in the confederation were considered to be

German and not all of the German Confederation was considered by anybody to be

German. For example, the city of Trent, which is ethnically Italian, was part of the

Confederation. The Confederation, a loose collection of a large number of people and countries, was an important piece of the fragile balance of power created by the

Congress of Vienna.

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The members of the Congress were also afraid of the rise of liberal ideas that caused the chaos of the and the subsequent rise of Napoleon.

Liberalism in the 18th and had a very different meaning than it does today.

In the 19th century liberalism had radical ideas like all men are equal and therefore have the same rights under the law, regardless of religion or class. This idea, which is taken more or less for granted these days, was incredibly threatening to the ruling class of Europe. The way that Europe operated and had operated for a thousand years was that every person at each level of society had rights particular to their social class granted to them by God. For example, a king would have right to any land in his kingdom and be above the law. This attitude was best exemplified by Louis XIV declaration “ l’etat c’est moi’ (I am the state). Liberalism directly challenges that claim and therefore Louis XIV’s (and all subsequent King’s) power.

Liberals believed that the power of the state is derived of the people and that all members of the state are subjected to the same laws and nobody has special privileges. This does not necessarily mean democracy as a constitutional monarchy would still be considered liberal. However, many members of the Congress of Vienna

4 feared that a rise of liberal ideas could result in losing their power and very possibly their lives. The leader of the anti-liberal (or conservative) movement in the Congress was , the architect of the balance of power (Eyck). The creation of strong states, besides serving ass buffer states, could also allow rulers to crush liberal movements wherever they arose, before they could spread to surrounding

Kingdoms.

The new order was quickly put to use. In 1819, after a popular playwright was assassinated by a radical liberal group, Metternich used the fear of liberalism to convince the newly formed German Confederation to pass a confederation wide series of rulings known as the . Liberal and nationalist student groups were arrested. Inquisition bodies were established in order to weed out those with non- conservative values. Newspapers were put under censorship, but the sheer multitude of publications made true censorship impossible. For example, travelling carnivals that would move from town to town were hotbeds of nationalist tendencies with songs and acts that promoted German unity (Blackbourn). Despite the ruling elites best efforts liberalism and was growing.

Industrialization (1800-1848)

In the first half of the 19th century, the German Confederation went under huge economic, demographic and social changes. From 1800 to 1840 the population went from 24 million to 35 million people. This population increase was caused by an estimated doubling in the amount of food produced in that time period (Blackbourn).

More people cultivated land and more animals were raised. But for the most part peasants survived on subsistence farming. The introduction of new crops like the

5 potato, which is calorie dense and will grow pretty much anywhere, made subsistence farming more profitable. This increase of profit allowed peasants to specialize in certain crops to a small degree. For example, in the 1820’s you begin to see the birth of towns with reputations for producing certain products. However, there wasn’t much of a population shift in terms of location. 75% of the population still lived in rural areas while the towns remained small. (Blackbourn) This created a class of vagabonds with no land looking for work. A large landless population is usually a necessary ingredient in industrializing.

In the early 1800’s Germany was undergoing a process known as protoindustrialization. With more people at home and more money from increased crops people were able to make things at home rather than in large factories. By the 1850’s,

Industrialization was in full swing. In Germany most of the industrial work was not getting done in huge factories of hundreds of people but rather it was done in small workshops of less than ten people. These small workshops still had a huge impact. In

Prussia from 1850-1873 (committee starts in 1863) the overall economy grew 2.5%, coal production was up 800%, iron production went up 1400% and steel production went up a remarkable 5400%. These three goods were the drivers of industrialization.

Coal provided the energy, iron the raw material and steel was strong enough to make new things like steel pipes or, more importantly to Prussian conquest, weapons.

Though industrialization was making big changes, half of the population still worked in agriculture. With only half of the population working in agriculture, farmers had to produce more food to feed the half non-agricultural population. To make this increased quantity farmers were forced to specialize in certain goods that made farmers

6 livelihoods more tied to the market of whatever good they specialized in. This was a pretty radical shift from subsistence farming. By the 1860’s. The fate of farmers, which represented 50% of the population, was now directly tied, not just to weather and physical conditions, but also to the overall health of the economy. The specialization of the economy led to increased efficiency in both agriculture and industry, but also made the workers and farmers more subject to the whims of the market.

Perhaps the most important aspect of industrialization (especially toward the nationalist cause) was the development of railroads. The first tracks were laid in 1834.

During the 1840’s track expanded from 600 miles of track to 4,000 miles of track. By

1873 there were 24,000 miles of track(Blackbourn). This huge explosion of building required huge amounts of raw resources namely coal, iron, and steel (what a coincidence) as well as a huge amount of investment capital from rich people. Railroads mark the beginning of investment . In the mid 19th century, investment quadrupled. The funders of this investment were primarily the rich that used investment to transfer their wealth from land holdings to more modern financial instruments. The effects of railroads were more than economic.

Railroads, to put in academic terms, are pretty cool. They connect huge swaths of lands that had previously been disconnected. A journey from to went from a few days to a few hours. Distance itself seemed to lessen. And what this led to was people identifying with people in other areas. Railroads connected someone in with someone in , and all of a sudden people the Municher can see that the

Hamburger also speaks German and that they have a similar culture. The railroads also connected someone from Munich with someone from and they could see that the

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Parisians were much different from them and in comparison the Hamburger felt a lot more similar. The railroads expanded the world for most people, and with the expanded world came an expanded sense of identity that stretched across the German-speaking world.

Industrialization in the mid 19th century, unlike changes in Agriculture in the early

19th century, did lead to a location shift for the population. People were moving into the cities to find jobs and this was increasing the urban dwelling population. For example,

Bochum, a village in the Ruhr valley with a population of only 2,000 in 1800, grew so rapidly that by 1871 over 21,000 people had made the town their home(Blackbourn). As urban centers produced things they started to identify cities with production. This created a sense of local identity, but that local identity was part of a wider "German" identity (Blackbourn). With people moving into urban areas a sense of duty to their fellow man arose and some states, like Prussia, took steps to becoming a welfare state.

For example, under the Prussian Poor Law of 1855, if a person had no permanent home then the he was allowed to stay in any area and take part in whatever local welfare the place had (Blackbourn). These larger industrial cities would have an enormous effect on “Germany”.

Along with location shift, Industrialization began to change the social and class structure of the German Confederation. With more processed products to be sold, like apparel, a bourgeois class of merchants rise to sell those processed products. These people weren't the aristocratic ruling elite but they had more money and therefore influence than the common peasant. They could afford to send their children to school and therefore the bourgeois became an educated group aware of their place in the

8 world. They were not anti-aristocrat and they romanticize peasant life, commending them for their "hard simple life" (Blackbourn). Along with the development of a bourgeois class, the factories brought a new class. are those who work in the factories and are the oppressed class in Marxist thought. These proletariats made a tiny but growing part of the population. Industrialization brought a lot of changes to both the German economy and society, making the Confederation ripe for change.

Revolutions of 1848

The tension caused by the changing society in Germany, and all of Europe, exploded in 1848. Bad harvests as well as an economic slump led to many people starving in the streets while the ruling class did nothing. In January, France broke out in a revolution that led to the fall of their king and the establishment of a (short lived) . This news excited the and in March of 1848 people in all parts of the confederation began to revolt in the streets. They demanded an end to censorship, the right to form local militias, the complete end of feudal privileges (the divine right of the upper class to have certain privileges), and most importantly dissolution of the German

Confederation and the creation of a German National Parliament. Fearful of facing the same fate as the French king, the rulers in the German Confederation almost immediately relented and gave into the Revolutionaries demands.

The newly created National parliament was different from the German

Confederation's legislature, because every independent male (not poor) could vote in these elections. However, the National parliament still failed to strictly define

Germaness, with some non-German speaking areas included and some German

9 speaking areas not included (Blackbourn). This newly elected democratic government did not seize the opportunity that the summer had provided and end up waiting until the end of 1848 to take substantial action. In late 1848, the National Parliament voted to create a greater Germany. This move was opposed by Austria, one of two powerful countries poised to assume control over Germany. This left Prussia as the sole claimant to the throne. The National Parliament drafted a in which the monarch of this new greater Germany would be limited by the National Parliament. A government where the monarch is limited by the laws and a parliament, such as the one created by the National Parliament, is known as a constitutional monarchy. The Parliament, to garner power and support for Greater Germany offered the crown to the King of

Prussia, Kaiser Friedrich Wilhelm I. But, wanting to maintain his independence from a parliament composed of non-Prussians and by the insistence of Bismarck, the Kaiser declined (Eyck). With no real power behind it the Parliament attempted to get local governments to support the new constitution, their pleas were ignored and any pro- revolution demonstrations were bloodily crushed by the local rulers. The Revolution had come and gone, but unlike in France, in Germany the same elite retained their power.

However, the Revolution was not a complete failure. Perhaps most significantly, to appease the Revolutionaries most German kingdoms had adopted a constitution where a parliament must first approve funds that the king then gets to spend. For the most part, though, the aristocratic elite was extremely hostile to any liberal changes and sought to suppress any further movement. This led to the increase in funding and power to the secret police, especially in Prussia. The fear of rebellion meant the elite wanted more protection, which meant the army became more influential in local politics. And,

10 although unable to complete censor the news, local governments rewarded news stories that painted their governments in a favorable light. Though unable to bring significant changes to ruling structures in Germany the showed the ruling elite that the common man was a force to be reckoned with and that there was a huge amount of popular support for the unification of all German people.

After 1848

After 1848, the biggest obstacle to the unification remained the geopolitical rivalry between the Austrian and the Prussian rivalry. As the two largest German states the two states both had legitimate claim to be the unifier of the German people, and often jostled for control. For example, in 1834 Prussia created the German , a free trade union ( a free trade Union basically is an agreement between all the members to have minimal to no taxes on goods that are traded between the members) between most of the members of the German Confederation, but excluded Austria. This fostered the smaller German states dependence on the Prussian economy while distancing them from Austria. After 1848, the rivalry continued. In 1850, when both Austria and Prussia sent troops to help the German state of Hesse with a small uprising, with the support of

Russia, Austria was able to force Prussia to sign the Treaty of Olmutz. The treaty had two major provisions. One, Prussia would agree to reestablish the German

Confederation and, two, Prussia would renounce all claims as the unifier of Germany.

(Punctuation of Olmutz).

This treaty was a great embarrassment to the Prussians and gave Austria the upper hand for a short amount of time. However, the reestablishment of the German

Confederation gave Prussia a platform to reestablish its dominance over Germany.

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Further weakening the was the lack of Austrian engagement in the Crimean war. In 1853, Russia fought an alliance of France, Great Britain, the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Sardinia. Austria abandoned its ally Russia and for the most part, stayed out of the fight. The war ended in 1856, and in 1859 the Kingdom of Sardinia, seeking to unify Italy, provoked Austria into attacking which brought the French into the war. Having abandoned its major ally Russia, Austria was quickly defeated by the allied forces and both France and Sardinia took pieces of Piedmont from Austria. So heading into committee Prussia has the upper hand on Austria in the Confederation.

While Austria experienced a loss of power, the Prussian elite consolidated theirs.

After 1848, Prussia had turned into a constitutional monarchy with a Prussian parliament that had to approve funds before King William I, who had took over as king after his uncle, Kaiser Frederick William IV, had died in 1850, was allowed to use them.

In 1858, Kaiser William I, relaxed the voting requirements for Parliament and allowed almost all men to vote. This led to a huge amount of liberals flooding the Parliament and a weakening of the conservative . At the same time as this shift was happening, the Minister of War, Albrecht Von Roon, proposed a series of military reforms, including a greater enforcement of for the national army, as well as a weakening of local militias. To achieve these aims Roon requested 9 million thalers (Prussian currency) from the Parliament (Eyck). The liberals in Parliament objected to this amount, so the Parliament rejected Roon’s request. To resolve this dispute with the

Parliament, Kaiser William I, asserted his Divine Right to rule Prussia and dissolved the

Parliament, in a major blow to Liberalism in Prussia.

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Schleswig Crisis (1863)

After the Congress of Vienna, controlled Denmark proper, the of

Holstein and the Duchy of Schleswig. The Duchy of Schleswig was German in the

South and Danish in the north and a great deal of nationalists felt that the Schleswig should be part of Germany. Further complicating things, the was in the German Confederation, while the Duchy of Schleswig was not. But, the two were inseparable in the minds of the populace due to an 15th century proclamation that bound the two Duchies together for all time. To make things even more complicated than they already were, the Duchies and the Kingdom of Denmark had two separate rules for succession. The Duchies could not have female rulers while Denmark allowed queens. The current King in the mid-19th Century had no kin so there was a dispute as to who would succeed him. Under the succession rules for Schleswig and Holstein, the next ruler would be the of Augustenburg, rather than the prince of Denmark. In

1848, amidst the Revolution, the German people of Holstein attempted to throw off the

“foreign yoke” of the Dutch (Eyck).

The great Powers of Europe, Britain, France, Russia, Prussia, and Austria, all intervened and forced Denmark to name an heir to both Denmark and the Duchies as well as create a constitution. In return the Duke of Augustenburg dropped all claims to the throne of Schleswig and Holstein. The treaty mandating this was signed in 1852, but progress on the constitution was slow, because the German majority in Holstein and the minority in Schleswig opposed rule by the . So, the constitution was not signed until 1863, but before it could be signed the King of Denmark died, and was succeeded by Prince Christian of Glucksburg. However, the son of the Duke of Augustenburg,

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Prince Frederick of Augustenburg claimed that because he had not ever ceded his rights and was of age when his father ceded his rights, he was still technically the sovereign ruler of the primarily German Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. So this is where committee begins. Your first order of business is to determine whether to support the King of Denmark and gain his alliances, support the Duke of Augustenburg and see a German state freed from foreign oppressors or you must determine how Prussia can annex the two Duchies.

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Structure of the Cabinet

You will act as members of the Cabinet of Kaiser Wilhelm I. However, the cabinet in the committee did not really exist, so rather than Kaiser Wilhelm I doing what he wants, each member will get one vote in determining the actions of the Prussian government.

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Case Studies

The following events occurred after the start of committee and the resolution of the

Schleswig Holstein crisis. There is no guarantee that any of this will in committee.

Franco-Prussian War

Origins:

The Franco-Prussian war was arguably the culmination of many factors that had been brewing for several years. A significant geopolitical cause was the strengthening of the Prussian Empire. Their defeat of Austria in the seven weeks war in 1866 threatened France's position as the strongest power in the region, increasing tensions.

This was furthered by the claim of Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern to the Spanish throne. Supported by Prussian Chancellor, Otto Von Bismark and Spanish De Facto leader after the death of Queen Isabella II, Juan Prim, Prince Leopold sought the throne but was rebuffed after France put diplomatic pressure on Spain as they were greatly alarmed by an allied and bordering Spanish-Prussian alliance. This led to, among other things, the Ems Telegram, a product of Bismarks manipulation that invoked French fury and a declaration of war. This declaration was made at the discretion of Emperor

Napoleon III who was advised by his military council, through national pride and arrogance, that the French army was vastly superior and more technologically advanced than Prussia’s.

The War:

After France declared war, Bismarck was able to unite the Southern German states with Prussia to fight again France by convincing them that the French were their

16 true enemies. Bismarck also had an ulterior motive in that he wanted to unite these

Southern states with Prussia to create a dominant . One distinct advantage Prussia had that played out over the course of the war was the ability of the

German army staff to mobilize large numbers of troops, in contrast the Frances confusion and delay. The beginning of the war was defined by two “wings” of each army that fought each other between France and Germany and led to resound Prussian victories. The French right wing under the command of Marshal Mac-Mahon was pushed back westward after the Battle of Woerth whilst Marshal Bazaine commanding the left wing retreated to Metz after a defeat near Saarbrücken and stayed there indefinitely after another loss. With the left wing incapacitated, the right wing under

Marshal Mac-Mahon and Napoleon III himself attempted a rally at the Battle of Sedan on August 31st, 1870. This proved disastrous after the 23,000 troops were surrounded by a superior and more mobilized German force. A new French government that deposed the emperor and established a “Third Republic” resisted in Paris, coming under siege by the German forces. After failed negotiations, the provisional government gathered new forces in the countryside that engaged but failed to rebuff the Germans.

At this stage, Marshal Bazaine and his forces in Metz surrendered (October, 1870) with

Paris surrendering soon after on January 28, 1871.

Results:

The results of the Franco-Prussian war were many. Paris and effectively France experienced great instability with changes in government including a “Paris commune” and the end result being a republican government. This government was forced to accept the harsh “Treaty of Frankfurt” which gave Germany the and much of the

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Lorraine. France also had to cover Germany's occupation costs in Northern France and pay 5 billion Francs. For Bismark, his goal was accomplished on January 18th, 1871 which was Kaiser Wilhelm become crowned Emperor of Germany in Versailles. As one can predict, the long-term effects of the treaty were significant. Without Napoleon III protection, the Papal States went under Italian control. The German Empire and the

Republic of France were established with Germany becoming the regional Imperial power. Germany's faith in a Prussian militaristic approach strengthened and was a large part of German society until Germany's defeat in the 2nd world war. Most importantly, the Treaty of Frankfurt lead to French attitudes of disdain and hatred towards Germany as the result of the Alsace-'s annexation that carried over to the First and

Second world wars. Both nations were constantly at conflict that led to the First World

War and as a result, the Second.

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Questions to Consider

1. Who is German?

2. Does it matter who is German or is Prussian power all that matters?

3. What do you believe about democracy and universal rights?

4. What place do notions such as honor and respect have in politics?

5. How should Prussia utilize and respond to changes brought on by

Industrialization, in politics, warfare and the economy?

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Works Cited

Blackbourn, David. The Long Nineteenth Century: A , 1780-1918.

New York: Oxford UP, 1998. Print.

Eyck, Erich. Bismarck and the German Empire. London: Allen & Unwin, 1950. Print.

French National Constituent Assembly. "Avalon Project - Declaration of the Rights of

Man - 1789." Avalon Project - Declaration of the Rights of Man - 1789. N.p., n.d.

Web. 09 Sept. 2016.

"Punctation of Olmutz." Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Britannica, n.d.

Web. 09 Sept. 2016.

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