Room 7a

THE PATH TO MODERNITY - THE CREATION OF A GREATER PRUSSIA

On 18 August 1866 Prussia and fifteen lesser north German states signed a pact based on proposals for reforming the German Confederation as forwarded by Prussia on 10 June. The definitive establishment of a federal constitution was to be achieved "in cooperation with a jointly appointed parliament." The allied governments promised to hold elections as laid down in the German Confederation's electoral law of 12 April 1849. By 21 October 1866 all states north of the Main River had joined the alliance created on 18 August. At France's urging, the peace preliminaries of Nikolsburg had already determined the Main as the border for a confederation of north German states. For Hesse-Darmstadt, this meant that only her province north of the Main Upper Hesse - could enter the Confederation. The last state to join the North German Confederation was the Kingdom of Saxony, whose territorial integrity had been preserved in the peace treaty only through special intercession by the Austrian emperor, Francis Joseph I.

After annexing Hanover, the Electorate of Hesse, Nassau, Frankfurt, and Schleswig-Holstein, Prussia was the dominant state in northern Germany. Of thirty million northern Germans, twenty-five million were Prussian citizens. Bismarck attempted to forge a constitutional link between Prussia's hegemonic pretensions and elements of a federal state. Formulated in the fall of 1866 in Putbus on the island of Rügen, his ideas became the basis for the draft constitution. The presiding power of the Confederation, which was the Prussian Crown in hereditary perpetuity, exercised control over the foreign policy of the Confederation, with the right to make treaties and alliances and to declare war and conclude peace. It also had supreme command of the military forces of all the states in the Confederation. The Federal Council (Bundesrat), which was chaired by Prussia, was composed of ministers who were charged with carrying out instructions from their respective states and who had both executive and legislative duties. The Confederation was responsible especially for matters of transportation, coinage, weights and measures, and the postal and telegraph system. The number of votes possessed by each state in the North German Confederation was based on the relative strength that had prevailed in the Federal Council of the former German Confederation. True, Prussia had only 17 of the 43 votes but could thereby block proposals to change the constitution, which required a two-thirds majority to pass. The Reichstag was elected by universal, equal, and direct manhood suffrage. It was supposed to be the Federal Council's equally warranted legislative partner and a counterbalance to the allied governments. Bismarck hoped that a strong parliament would be an ally in checking the prerogatives of the princes. The affairs of the North German Confederation were to be managed by the Prussian minister in the Federal Council, the Federal Chancellor.

When Bismarck submitted the draft constitution to the constituent Reichstag on 4 March 1867, he expected that the deputies, most of whom were liberals, would propose substantial changes. He persuaded some of the various governments to join Prussia in promulgating the constitutional draft by decree if necessary. As early as 16 April 1867, however, a revised draft of the constitution was passed by the constituent Reichstag by a vote of 230 to 53 and was published in the first issue of the Federal Law Gazette of the North German Confederation (Bundes-Gesetzlblatt des Norddeutschen Bundes) on 26 July 1867 after it had been ratified by the diets of the allied states.

Many of the revisions made in the draft constitution widened the powers of the Confederation. For example, the scope of federal tax legislation subsequently included direct taxes, and federal jurisdiction in procedural law pertaining to trade, international exchange, bankruptcy, and civil cases was extended to criminal proceedings as well. These changes made it possible to pass a uniform criminal code for the Confederation as a whole in 1870.

An initiative by a number of deputies of the constituent Reichstag brought about the most important change in the draft constitution. "Directives and decrees" of the Confederation's presiding power had to be countersigned by the Federal Chancellor. Admittedly, this adjustment partially met the demand of the Progressive Party and the National Liberal Party for ministerial responsibility at the federal level, but the most important thing was that the Federal Chancellor henceforth had the possibility of building a federal government independent of the Federal Council. Presumably, Carl von Saenger, the deputy who made the crucial motion, had been influenced by Bismarck, whom King WilliamI appointed as Federal Chancellor on 14 July 1867.

Bismarck appointed the director of the Prussian Ministry of Trade, Rudolf Delbrück, as president of the Federal Chancellor's Office. Under Delbrück, this office became the Confederation's pivotal point for trade and commercial affairs, the courts, the finance system, and communications. It was the Federal Chancellor's Office that spearheaded the reorganization of the postal system in the North German Confederation. The Thurn and Taxis postal system was taken over after compensation, and the North German Federal Post Office was founded. It operated essentially by Prussia's postal laws of 1852 and cooperated with the south German states.

Reorganization of the Customs Union made it possible to tie Bavaria, Württemberg, Hesse-Darmstadt, and Baden more closely to the North German Confederation. The Customs Union was provided with a bicameral legislature paralleling the North German Confederation. On matters of tariff legislation, commercial and navigational negotiation, and the regulation of certain kinds of indirect taxes and excises, the Federal Council was henceforth expanded into a Customs Council (Zollbundesrat) that included the south German ministers but that still remained under Prussian leadership. Similarly, the Reichstag was expanded into a Customs Parliament (Zollparlament) to which south German deputies belonged. The elections to the Zollparlament in the spring of 1868 disappointed Bismarck in his hope for endorsement of Prussia's policy favoring a united Germany without Austria. The parties favoring a Greater Germany won a clear majority in Bavaria and Württemberg.

The military pacts that Hesse and Baden signed with Prussia in 1867 also failed to meet with much favor among large sections of the southern German population. After all, introduction of the Prussian military system entailed the imposition of universal military service. Statistics reflected a rise in the number of not very poor southern German men wanting to leave the country. Emigration increased in 1867 as the Polish population left West Prussia. In April 1867 Bremen registered the highest number of émigrés since 1854.

The resolute stance of the liberal parties had the result that additional elements of the parliamentary system, such as parliamentary immunity, were adopted in the constitution. The establishment of parliamentary control over the budget was also fundamental. Against Bismarck's wishes, the federal budget had to be approved by the Reichstag each year. Initially, however, this right did not extend to the army and navy budgets.

After the experience of the Prussian constitutional conflict, the discussions about the royal power of command and the power over the budget were awaited with particular suspense because the draft constitution contained provisions for removing "warfare" from parliamentary influence as much as possible. It was agreed to place the army and navy under the legislative jurisdiction of the North German Confederation, with the presiding power of the Confederation retaining a veto. Bismarck showed little willingness to compromise in specifying the peace-time strength of the army and setting the budget. The draft constitution put the strength of the federal army at 1 % of the population of 1867 and limited the government's annual expenditures to 225 talers per soldier, levels that would have put the financing of the army beyond the Reichstag's control over the budget. Tough negotiations between Bismarck, the National Liberal Party, and the Progressive Party led to an agreement by which the military's peace-time strength and proportionate levies were to be set for four years on the understanding that these arrangements would initially continue to apply if there were no valid federal law regulating the matter by 31 December 1871. This agreement gave the Reichstag a say in army institutions in the future and made it possible for the presiding power, Prussia, to proceed with the organization of the federal army. The troops of the individual states were quickly unified into a powerful army modeled along Prussian lines, and a law pertaining to active military service was introduced for all north German states in 1867. The German public was not alone in following the organization of the army and navy with interest. At the 1867 World's Fair in Paris, the world public could see modern Prussian arms technology for itself.

Heidemarie Anderlik