Germany from the Earliest Period, Volume 4

by Wolfgang Menzel

PART XXIII

THE LATEST TIMES

CCLXIV. The German Confederation

Thus terminated the terrible storms that, not without benefit, had convulsed Europe. Every description of political crime had been fearfully avenged and presumption had been chastised by the unerring hand of Providence. At that solemn period, the sovereigns of Russia, Austria, and Prussia concluded a treaty by which they bound themselves to follow, not the ruinous policy they had hitherto pursued, but the undoubted will of the King of kings, and, as the viceroys of God upon the earth, to maintain peace, to uphold virtue and justice. This Holy Alliance was concluded on the 26th of September, 1815. All the European powers took part in it; England, who excused herself, the pope, and the sultan, whose accession was not demanded, alone excepted.

The new partition of Europe, nevertheless, retained almost all the unnatural conditions introduced by the more ancient and godless policy of Louis XIV. and of Catherine II. Germany, Poland, and Italy remained partitioned among rulers partly foreign. Everywhere were countries exchanged or freshly partitioned and rendered subject to foreign rule. England retained possession of Hanover, which was elevated into a German kingdom, of the Ionian islands, and of Malta in the Mediterranean. Russia received the grandduchy of Warsaw, which was raised to a kingdom of Poland, but was not united with Lithuania, Volhynia, Podolia, and the Ukraine, the ancient provinces of Poland standing beneath the sovereignty of Russia, and Finland, for which Sweden received in exchange Norway, of which Denmark was forcibly dispossessed. Holland was annexed to the old Austrian Netherlands and elevated to a kingdom under William of Orange.[1] Switzerland remained a confederation of twenty-two cantons,[2] externally independent and neutral, internally somewhat aristocratic in tendency, the ancient oligarchy everywhere regaining their power. The Jesuits were reinstated by the pope. In Spain, Portugal, and Naples, the form of government prior to the Revolution was reestablished by the ancient sovereigns on their restoration to their thrones.

Alsace and Lorraine, Switzerland and the new kingdom of the Netherlands, the provinces of Luxemburg excepted, were no longer regarded as forming part of Germany. Austria received Milan and Venice under the title of a Lombardo-Venetian kingdom, the Illyrian provinces also as a kingdom, Venetian Dalmatia, the Tyrol,[3] Vorarlberg, Salzburg, the Inn, and Hausruckviertel, and the part of Galicia ceded by her at an earlier period. The grandduchy of Tuscany and the duchies of Modena, Parma, and Placentia were, moreover, restored to the collateral branches of the house of Habsburg.[4]—Prussia received half of Saxony, the grand-duchy of Posen, Swedish-Pomerania,[5] a great portion of Westphalia, and almost the whole of the Lower Rhine from Mayence as far as Aix-la-Chapelle.[6] Since this period Prussia is that one which, among all the states of Germany, possesses the greatest number of German subjects, Austria, although more considerable in extent, containing a population of which by far the greater proportion is not German. Bavaria, in exchange for the provinces again ceded by her to Austria, received the province of Wurzburg together with Aschaffenburg and the Upper Rhenish Pfalz under the title of Rhenish-Bavaria. Hanover received East Friesland, which had hitherto been dependent upon Prussia. Out of this important province, which opened the North Sea to Prussia, was Hardenberg cajoled by the wily English. The electorates of Hesse, Brunswick, and Oldenburg were restored. Everything else was allowed to subsist as at the time of the Rhenish confederation. All the petty princes and counts, then mediatized, continued to be so.

The ancient empire, instead of being re-established, was, on the 8th of June, 1815, replaced by a German confederation, composed of the thirty-nine German states that had escaped the general ruin; Austria, Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, Hanover, Wurtemberg, Baden, electoral Hesse, Darmstadt, Denmark on account of Holstein,[7] the Netherlands on account of Luxemburg, Brunswick, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Nassau, Saxe-Weimar, Saxe-Gotha (where the reigning dynasty became extinct, and the duchy was partitioned among the other Saxon houses of the Ernestine line), Saxe-Coburg, Saxe-Meiningen, Saxe-Hildburghausen, Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Holstein-Oldenburg, Anhalt-Dessau, Anhalt- Bernburg, Anhalt-Kothen, Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, Schwarzburg- Rudolstadt, Hohenzollern-Hechingen, Lichtenstein, Hohenzollern- Sigmaringen, Waldeck, Reuss the elder, and Reuss the younger branch,[8] Schaumburg-Lippe, Lippe-Detmold, Hesse-Homburg: finally, the free towns, Lubeck, Frankfort on the Maine, Bremen, and Hamburg.[9] At Frankfort on the Maine a permanent diet, consisting of plenipotentiaries from the thirty-nine states, was to hold its session. The votes were, however, so regulated that the eleven states of first rank alone held a full vote, the secondary states merely holding a half or a fourth part of a vote, as, for instance, all the Saxon duchies collectively, one vote; Brunswick and Nassau, one; the two Mecklenburgs, one; Oldenburg, Anhalt, and Schwarzburg, one; the petty princes of Hohenzollern, Lichtenstein, Reuss, Lippe, and Waldeck, one; all the free towns, one; forming altogether in the diet seventeen votes. In constitutional questions relating to regulations of the confederation the plenum was to be allowed, that is, the six states of the highest rank were to have each four votes, the next five states each three, Brunswick, Schwerin, and Nassau, each two, and all the remaining princes without distinction, each one vote.[10]—Austria held the permanent presidency. In all resolutions relating to the fundamental laws, the organic regulations of the confederation, the jura singulorum and matters of religion, unanimity was required. All the members of the confederation bound themselves neither to enter into war nor into any foreign alliance against the confederation or any of its members. The thirteenth article declared, "Each of the confederated states will grant a constitution to the people." The sixteenth placed all Christian sects throughout the German confederation on an equality. The eighteenth granted freedom of settlement within the limits of the confederation, and promised "uniformity of regulation concerning the liberty of the press." The fortresses of Luxemburg, Mayence, and Landau were declared the common property of the confederation and occupied in common by their troops. A fourth fortress was to have been raised on the Upper Rhine with twenty millions of the French contribution money. It has not yet been erected.

This was the new constitution given to Germany. According to the treaty of Paris it could not be otherwise modelled, and it is explained by the foreign influence that then prevailed. The diet assembled at Frankfort on the Maine, and was opened by Count Buol-Schauenstein with a solemn address, which excited no enthusiasm. An orator in the American assembly at that time observed, "The non-development of the seed contained in Germany appears to be the common aim of a resolute policy."

All now united for the complete suppression of the German patriotic party. In the former Rhenish confederated states, it had been treated with open contempt[11] ever since Gentz had given the signal for persecution in Austria. Prussia, however, also drove all those who had most faithfully served her in her hour of need from her bosom. Stein was compelled to withdraw to Kappenberg, his country estate. Gruner was removed from office and sent as ambassador to Switzerland, where he died. The Rhenish Mercury, that had performed such great services to Prussia, was prohibited, and Gorres was threatened with the house of correction.[12] All other papers of a patriotic tendency were also suppressed. In Jena, Oken and Luden, in Weimar, Wieland the younger, alone ventured for some time to give utterance to their liberal opinions, which were finally also reduced to silence.

Patriotic enthusiasm was, however, not so speedily suppressed amid the youthful students in the academies and universities. Jahn's gymnastic schools (Turnschulen), the members of which were distinguished by the German costume, a short black frock coat, a black cap, linen trousers, a bare neck with turned-over shirt-collar, extended far and wide and were in close connection with the Burschenschaften of the universities. The prescribed object of these Turnschulen was the promotion of Christian, moral, German manners, the universal fraternization of all German students, the complete eradication of the provincialism and license inherent in the various associations formed at the universities. They wore Jahn's German costume and always acted publicly, until their suppression, when the remaining members formed secret associations. On the 18th of October, 1817, the students of Jena, Halle, and Leipzig, and those of some of the more distant universities, assembled in order to solemnize the jubilee on the three hundredth anniversary of the Reformation, on the Wartburg, where, in imitation of Luther, they committed a number of servile works, inimical to the German cause, to the flames, as Görres at that time said, "filled with anger that the same reformation required of the church by Luther should be sanctioned, but at the same time refused, by the state." The black, red, and yellow tricolor was hoisted for the first time on this occasion. These were in reality the ancient colors of the empire and were regarded as such by the patriotic students, but were purposely looked upon by the French and their adherents in Germany as an imitation of the tricolored flag of the French republic. The festival solemnized on the Wartburg was speedily succeeded by others. The Turner, more particularly at Berlin and Breslau, rendered themselves conspicuous not only by their dress but by their insolence, boys even of the tenderest years putting themselves forward as reformers of the government and of society, and singing the most bloodthirsty songs of liberty. The Prussian government interfered, and the gymnastic exercises, so well suited to the subjects of a warlike state, were once more prohibited.