A History of Modern Germany

1800 to the Present

Martin Kitchen

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781444396898
• Edition: 2
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: German History
• Index: History

Featuring revised and extended coverage, the second edition of A History of Modern Germany offers an accessible and engagingly written account of German history from 1800 to the present.

• Provides readers with a long view of modern German history, revealing its continuities and changes
• Features updated and extended coverage of German social change and modernization, class, religion, and gender
• Includes more in depth coverage of the German Democratic Republic
• Examines Germany's social, political, and economic history
• Covers the unification of Germany, the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, post-war division, the collapse of Communism, and developments since re-unification
• Addresses regional history rather than focusing on the dominant role of Prussia

CHAPTER ONE

GERMANY UNDER NAPOLEON

CHAPTER CONTENTS

The Continental System

Resistance to Napoleon

The Prussian Reform Movement

Prussian Military Reforms

Educational Reform

The Confederation of the Rhine

Germany and the Defeat of Napoleon

The Congress of Vienna

Writing at the turn of the eighteenth to the nineteenth century the whimsical German writer Jean Paul commented that providence had given the French the empire of the land, the English that of the sea and the Germans that of the air. He would have been at a loss to define what exactly he meant by the “Germans” and most likely would have found the question pointless. It could hardly have been confined to those who lived in the territory of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, for that would have excluded a large number of German speakers, including the Prussians. Nor would he have included all those areas where German was spoken. The German empire indeed existed in the air. It was a threadbare patchwork of innumerable political entities, from the European states of Austria and Prussia to the fiefdoms of the imperial knights, imperial monasteries, independent towns, and even villages.

All this was to change under the impact of the French revolutionary wars and above all of Napoleon. The French seized the territory on the left bank of the Rhine and in 1803 the map of Germany was redrawn as a result of the lengthy deliberations of an Imperial Deputation which did little more than add its seal of approval to a plan presented by the French and Russians. The deputation’s Conclusions (Reichsdeputationshauptschluss) of February 25, 1803, resulted in the secularization of the territorial possessions of the Catholic Church including those of the Prince Bishops of Mainz, Cologne, and Trier. Archbishop Dalberg of Mainz, a crafty politician, retained his princely estates and his electoral title, was made grand duke of Frankfurt and continued in office as chancellor of an empire that was soon to vanish. A host of smaller units were annexed (mediatized) and absorbed by the larger states under the guise of compensation for territory lost to the west of the Rhine. The remains of once influential states such as the Electoral Palatinate vanished overnight. More than 3 million Germans were given new identities, and most of the “petty sultanates” that had been the butt of Jean Paul’s mordant wit disappeared.

The southern and southwestern states profited the most from these changes. Bavaria, Baden, and Württemberg were greatly strengthened as a counterweight to Prussia and Austria, but such power as they had resulted from their dependence on France. Clearly the empire was now doomed, and Dalberg’s efforts at reform proved to no avail.

Shortly after the publication of the Conclusions, France and England once again went to war. The French promptly occupied Hanover, which was in personal union with England and now directly threatened Prussia, in spite of the provisions of the Treaty of Basel of April 1795 that guaranteed the neutrality of northern Germany. The southern German states, determined opponents of the empire that constrained their sovereignty, joined in with their French masters in an attack on Austria in 1805. On October 17 Napoleon scored a great victory over the Austrians at Ulm, but four days later Nelson destroyed the French fleet at Trafalgar in the most decisive naval victory in history. Britain now had absolute command of the seas, leaving Napoleon no alternative to a land war on the Continent.

The southern German states were rewarded with spoils from the Habsburg empire. Bavaria and Württemberg became kingdoms, Baden and Hesse-Darmstadt grand duchies. Napoleon’s adopted daughter, Stephanie Beauharnais, was married off to the odious Karl, grand duke of Baden. The Holy Roman Empire was formally dissolved in 1806, and in July of that year the south German states were reorganized in the Confederation of the Rhine, a military alliance with the Emperor Napoleon in the self-appointed role of protector. The majority of the tiny states, which had remained independent after the Conclusions, were now absorbed by their larger neighbors.

Brandenburg-Prussia remained quixotically defiant in its isolation, its army a pathetic shadow of Frederick the Great’s, its leadership decrepit and incompetent. The French made short shrift of them at the twin battles of Jena and Auerstedt in October. The once powerful Prussian state collapsed, Berlin’s chief of police announcing that: “The king has lost a bataille and it is the responsibility of all citizens to remain calm.” The phrase “Ruhe ist die erste Bürgerpflicht” (a citizen’s prime responsibility is to remain calm) and the clear distinction made between the king and his subjects were classic expressions of the spirit of Brandenburg-Prussia.

After an indecisive battle against the Russians at Preussisch-Eylau in early 1807, Napoleon smashed the tsar’s army at Friedland in June and peace was concluded at Tilsit. Prussia nearly vanished from the map of Europe. It only survived because of the intervention of the tsar and Napoleon’s calculation that a buffer state between France and Russia might be desirable. Prussia lost all its territory west of the river Elbe, much of which went to make up the kingdom of Westphalia for Napoleon’s worthless brother Jérôme. The smaller duchy of Berg was awarded to his brother-in-law Murat. Prussia was stripped of its recent acquisitions of Polish territory. They became part of the new Grand Duchy of Warsaw. It was obliged to pay horrendous reparations and was subjected to French occupation until such a time as they were paid in full.

The map of Germany had thus been radically redrawn and Prussia reduced to insignificance. In 1802 Hegel wrote:

All component parts would benefit from Germany becoming a state, but such will never come about as a result of deliberations, but only of force that is in tune with the general level of education and combined with a deeply and clearly felt desire for the need for unification. The common mass of the German people along with the estates, who only know of the separation of the various regions and who think of unification as something quite foreign to them, must be brought together by a conqueror’s power. They must be coerced into regarding themselves as belonging to Germany.

Napoleon, Hegel’s “world spirit on horseback,” destroyed the old empire and inaugurated a new period in German history. Small wonder that Hegel stood in awe of the French emperor, as did so many of his contemporaries, but his admiration remained on a lofty philosophical plane. There were only a few opportunists and disgruntled ideologues who came to terms with the sordid reality of French domination.

The empire was a ramshackle affair, but it had many virtues. Most found it far more congenial than revolutionary France. Benjamin Franklin admired its federal structure and argued that it should be used as a model for the constitution of the United States. The old empire was destroyed by blood and iron, just as some seventy years later the new empire was to be created by the use of force. Germany was subjected to Napoleon’s will, and his empire was now greater than that of Charlemagne. Only an uneasy Austria remained semi-independent.

The Continental System

The German economy was seriously disrupted by Napoleon’s continental blockade that in 1806 banned imports from and exports to Britain. It also applied to neutral countries, thus representing a fateful step towards a total war in which there was no distinction between combatants and non-combatants. The blockade proved hard to enforce. It was tightened in 1807, but it was still far from effective. German smugglers were so successful that the French felt obliged to occupy Holland and the German coast as far as Lübeck in 1810; but British goods still found their way in. The French took draconian measures against those found in possession of such contraband. This only served to fuel resistance to the occupiers, thus strengthening national self-consciousness. The situation was further exacerbated by the “Continental System” that subordinated the German economy to French needs. German goods could not be exported to French-controlled Europe, while French goods could be freely imported into Germany.

The traditional export of wood, wool, grain, and linen to England was now rendered virtually impossible, but some manufacturers seized the opportunities afforded by the exclusion of British competition. They were ruined after 1815 when British goods once again flooded the German market. All Germans were affected by sharply rising prices, by heavy taxes, and by frequent controls by the French authorities.

By 1808 the Confederation of the Rhine was forced to provide Napoleon with 119,000 soldiers, thus placing a further burden on the unfortunate Germans. French officials supervised the minutest details of each state’s administration, a rigorous censorship was applied, and the nationalist opposition hunted down. In such circumstances it is hardly surprising that attempts to give the Confederation of the Rhine a federal constitution failed. The southern German states, on whom the obligation to provide troops fell hardest, jealously guarded what remained of their sovereignty. The French did not wish to risk further alienating their German vassals for fear that they might emulate the Spanish by rising up against a despotism that proclaimed itself to be a harbinger of liberty, equality, and fraternity.

Resistance to Napoleon

The uprising in Spain was an inspiration to many Germans, particularly in Prussia, which although it had not been forced to become a member of the Confederation of the Rhine was suffering terribly under the burden of reparations. It had been confidently assumed that the French would not demand more than a grand total of 20 million francs. The final bill was for 154 million. The end of the occupation, the staggering cost of which the Prussians were obliged to pay, was thus postponed indefinitely. The first minister, Baron vom Stein, at first had argued in favor of trying to meet the French demands, but once he heard of events in Spain he argued in favor of a popular revolt against French rule. He was a singularly poor conspirator; the French got wind of his schemes and secured his instant dismissal. Stein’s property was seized, but he managed to escape to Bohemia having been tipped off by a friendly French official. Henceforth he was a major figure in the European struggle against Napoleon. Leading military reformers such as Scharnhorst and Gneisenau also discussed a comprehensive reform plan to be coupled with a revolt against French rule.

Although the Prussian government would not entertain such schemes, Napoleon felt obliged to make some concessions to ease this mounting tension. In the Treaty of Paris of September 1808 reparations were somewhat reduced and the occupation was ended, but some 10,000 French troops remained to guard military roads and to man the fortresses on the Oder. The costs were borne by Prussia. They were more than the state could bear. Prussia’s finances were in a parlous condition and not even Hardenberg, who was appointed chancellor in June 1810, was able to improve the situation significantly, for all his considerable administrative talents. Frederick William III, never the most decisive of monarchs, relapsed into a torpor on the death of his resourceful and immensely popular queen, Luise, in 1810. She was to become the object of a romantic cult, with poets such as Novalis as its priests. She was transformed into an idealized daughter, wife, and mother and Gottfried Schadow’s erotically charged statue of the young Luise with her sister Friederike was withheld from public view until the revolution of 1848 heralded the beginning of a less prudish age. This masterpiece of German classicism suggests that there was much more to Luise than a prototypical bourgeois Hausfrau.

The poetic notion that the people would arise and a storm would be unleashed was hopelessly unrealistic. The regular army was no match for Napoleon’s, the new Territorial Army (Landwehr) was militarily worthless. This fact was somewhat obscured when the Austrians defeated Napoleon at Aspern in May 1809 as he attempted to cross the Danube. Jubilation at this surprising victory was premature. Support from the other German states was minimal. Some adventurers, such as the Prussian Major Schill, joined the fray. Frederick William III closed his ears to entreaties from the military reformers to do the same. There was a poorly organized peasants’ revolt in Westphalia, but most Germans remained passive bystanders. Napoleon crossed the Danube at night, exploited the division between the two Austrian armies, and confronted the Archduke Charles’ army at Wagram on June 5. Charles fought well, and the first day was indecisive, but on the second Napoleon’s brilliant use of artillery resulted in a crushing defeat. Shortly afterwards Napoleon entered Vienna.

The only successful revolt was in the Tyrol, which had been annexed by Bavaria in 1805. Andreas Hofer, supported by the Archduke John, lead a brilliant guerrilla campaign in the mountains, defeating the French and Bavarian forces in a rapid series of engagements. But this was a traditional, Catholic, and regional movement at odds with the spirit of the age. Hofer was eventually captured and executed in Mantua. Major Schill and the patriotic publisher Palm shared a similar fate, to become the first three martyrs of the German cause, whose memory was recalled in the 22-year-old Ludwig Uhland’s “Ich hatt’ einen Kamaraden” (“I had a comrade”) which became an immensely popular patriotic anthem later to be appropriated by the nationalist and militaristic right.

In the Peace of Schönbrunn Austria ceded further territories and was obliged to pay crippling reparations. Most of Europe was under Napoleon’s sway. Only Spain offered fierce resistance to the French in a guerrilla war, the ferocity and brutality of which were immortalized in Goya’s shattering etchings. Austria sought to appease and accommodate Napoleon, who became the emperor’s son-in-law, having been rebuffed by the tsar, whose sister he had hoped to marry. Metternich, who always put security above legitimacy, encouraged Napoleon’s social climbing in the hope that the marriage would spare Austria from further depravation.

Russia was always an uneasy partner for Napoleon. There were so many points of conflict between the two states that conflict seemed increasingly likely. Austria and Prussia now had to choose between the two sides. Metternich, assuming that Russia was unlikely to be able to withstand an invasion, proposed giving France limited support so as to come out on the winning side. In Prussia Gneisenau pleaded for an alliance with Russia combined with a popular uprising. The king dismissed such romantic notions as “mere poetry.” Napoleon demanded the right to march his forces across Prussia and insisted that 20,000 men from the Prussian army, which had been reduced to a mere 42,000, should take part in the campaign. Hardenberg saw no alternative but to accept these humiliating conditions. The reaction among the patriots was instant. About one-quarter of the officer corps resigned their commissions, among them Clausewitz and Boyen, both of whom went to Russia. The chief of police offered his services to the tsar. Frederick William III thus no longer enjoyed the loyalty of many of his most prominent officials, who now saw themselves as serving the nation and the people rather than the monarch. Such was the force of revolutionary ideas that they affected even those who were the most ardent opponents of their Bonapartist manifestation.

The Prussian Reform Movement

Although outwardly Prussia seemed weak and feeble, its government aimless, the period from 1806 to 1811 was one of astonishing and rapid reform. Drastic changes were needed were the state ever to free itself from French domination. But it was not simply a matter of power politics. The French Revolution had swept aside the old aristocratic society based on the estates and replaced it with the bourgeois concepts of freedom and equality. These were notions fraught with contradictions, as critics never tired of pointing out, but there was a general recognition that a state could only survive if the people identified with it to some degree. Subjects had to become citizens were the gulf between the state and society to be bridged.

These were revolutionary ideas, as conservative reformers like Hardenberg knew full well. For this reason they were determined that it should be a revolution from above, controlled and channeled by the bureaucracy, so that the state could be immunized against a revolution from below. It was to be a revolution based on the rule of law, the application of logical reasoning, and concern for the good of the state. A monarchical government was to be given a degree of popular legitimacy in order to avoid the horrors of revolutionary democracy and a reign of terror.

Although there had been some efforts at reform before 1806, it was the virtual collapse of the Prussian state in that fateful year that convinced all but the most purblind of conservatives that drastic changes were needed. The Prussia of Frederick the Great had been an exemplary absolutist state, an example to the rest of Germany, a European power of consequence. But by 1806 Prussia was lagging behind the southern German states, its sclerotic social order hopelessly out of tune with the times. For years reformers had been calling for major changes, but they had been blocked by an aristocracy determined to defend its privileges and by a reluctant monarchy. Now they seized their opportunity.

The reformers were inspired by Kant’s lofty concept of individual rights, obligations, and reasoned self-interest that was taken up by such influential figures as Fichte and Pestalozzi. The individual citizen was to come of age, be self-actualizing, free from the restraints of a hierarchical society, free to develop his own talents and abilities, free to contribute to the common good. The enlightened absolutism of the old regime was to be replaced by the enlightened absolutism of the self, which lay at the heart of the liberal humanism of the bourgeois epoch. Obligations were emphasized at the expense of rights. For many this vision of the new man was exciting, but for others it was terrifying. When combined with the economic theories of Adam Smith it was to condemn the old order to extinction. Since the motive force behind the reforms was to free Prussia from the French, the reforms aimed to strengthen patriotic and nationalistic sentiments, thus further subordinating individual liberties to a common cause.

It was an ambitious program aimed at a thorough overhaul of the state. The administration was to be rationalized and careers open to the talents. The economy was to be released from the shackles of the past, and Manchesterismus was to be its guiding principle. The army was to be reformed, with promotions based on talent rather than on social status. Society was to be freed from the restrictions and inequalities of the old order. There was to be full equality before the law. The creative power of the people was to be devoted to a common cause.

So much for the lofty ideals – the reality was somewhat different. There was considerable resistance to reform in some quarters, particularly at court and among conservative aristocrats. There were also many differences between the reformers themselves. Baron vom Stein, who was principal minister from 1807 until his dismissal at Napoleon’s command in the following year, was the initiator of the reform movement. As an imperial knight with an impeccable aristocratic lineage he detested the absolutist state and urged the devolution of power, thereby strengthening traditional rights and privileges. He was also suspicious of economic liberalism, which he felt would lead to the sacrifice of individual rights to the exigencies of the market.

By contrast Hardenberg, who became chancellor in 1810 and remained in office until his death in 1822, believed in the centralization of state power and a liberal economic policy. Less troubled by moral and philosophical concerns, he argued that, with the guarantee of property rights, equality before the law, and fair taxation, the individual should be able to fend for himself, while recognizing the need for the firm guiding hand of an autocratic state.

The first priority was the reorganization of the administration. The late absolutist state was a shambolic affair with no identifiable areas of competence, a myriad of conflicting int...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Illustrations
• Maps
• Introduction
• CHAPTER ONE GERMANY UNDER NAPOLEON
• CHAPTER TWO GERMAN SOCIETY IN TRANSITION
• CHAPTER THREE RESTORATION AND REFORM 1815–1840
• CHAPTER FOUR THE REVOLUTIONS OF 1848
• CHAPTER FIVE THE STRUGGLE FOR MASTERY 1850–1866
• CHAPTER SIX THE UNIFICATION OF GERMANY 1866–1871
• CHAPTER SEVEN BISMARCK’S GERMANY
• CHAPTER EIGHT GERMANY AND EUROPE 1871–1890
• CHAPTER NINE WILHELMINE GERMANY 1890–1914
• CHAPTER TEN THE FIRST WORLD WAR
• CHAPTER ELEVEN THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC 1919–1933
• CHAPTER TWELVE THE NAZI DICTATORSHIP
• CHAPTER THIRTEEN NAZI GERMANY 1933–1945
• CHAPTER FOURTEEN THE ADENAUER ERA 1945–1963
• CHAPTER FIFTEEN THE GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC
• CHAPTER SIXTEEN THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC 1963–1982
• CHAPTER SEVENTEEN THE REUNIFICATION OF GERMANY
• Bibliography
• Index