In taking notes, either use the format, including page references, I've adopted below or develop some workable format of your own. If you compare these notes with the textbook pages, you will see considerable gaps; namely, the parts I've ignored in the in terests of concentrating on the topic of the lecture, in this case German Unification. You will not forget all you read but in the interests of both time and efficient note-taking, try to concentrate only on those passages that seem more relevant to what will be discussed at length in the lectures. For this you can derive help from the Web document already referenced in the syllabus-A Topical Guide to the Lectures. Incidentally, it is best practice to write your notes in sentences and in your own words, a s far as possible.
Topic: German Unification
pp.468-73
(464) Nationalism surfaced where subject ethnic groups lived under the dominance of a different ethnic ruling group or where people of similar ethnicity lived in separate contiguous states, such as for the states in Europe where German was spoken. Nation alism promoted the notion that people who had the same language, history and culture should comprise one political unit, one national state. (470) The Grimm brothers, for example, saw all Germans connected culturally through their common folk tales which they gathered together as Grimms' Fairy Tales. (471) For the historian Ranke, the genius of the German people would be best expressed by their political unification.
pp.514-19
(514) Unification for Germany was hampered by the existence of 39 separate and independent German states. None of the kings or princes ruling them wished to give up the control they exercised as monarchs. Nor did they wish to become subject to either of t he two largest of the German states, Prussia and Austria. And neither Prussia nor Austria would accept the dominance of the other.
(516) In 1848, a year of widespread demands for political gains by liberals, a group of prominent Germans (lawyers, businessmen, intellectuals, etc) from the various states met at Frankfurt in an unofficial capacity in an effort to establish, on their own
initiative, a parliament for a united Germany. They had no political power or standing, nor support from the rulers, but thought they could force through some form of unification by the united decision of their 'pre-parliament' at Frankfurt.
But which Germany was it to be?: one dominated by Prussia or by Austria. But when Austria refused to be associated (518) with these liberal-minded German nationalists, they then offered the crown of a united Germany to the king of Prussia. Thus they had o
pted for the so-called "Little Germany" (Kleindeutsch), i.e., Prussia plus all the other German states though excluding Austria.
he Prussian king, however, had no desire either to be compromised by association with the Frankfurt liberals, who would have attempted to envelop their united Germany with a constitution and representative assembly; that is, put restraints on the monar
ch. Also, the king would probably have faced war with her rival Austria had he accepted the leadership role in Germany the liberals set out for him. He, too, refused the 'crown' of a united Germany. Only the several German states (i.e., the rulers) could
make that offer, he said, not the democratically-minded liberals of Germany.
(519) There was one new development in Prussia, however-the grant of a constitution and parliament by the king. The voting system was very indirect and limited so as to ensure that only the wealthy landowners and urban businessmen would dominate the new p arliament.
pp. 551-59
(552) The 1850s and 1860s were a time of great economic advance in the German states as these regions were becoming more industrialized. After 1834, Prussia and the other states, excepting Austria, became joined in an economic union that greatly facil
itated trade between them while the development of railways and the telegraph across the states also bound them ever closer together. It seemed that political unity would enhance all these advantages. But how was it to a
rrive?
In the early 1860s, the king of Prussia decided that, given a nearly 60 percent increase in the population, it was high time that the army should also be increased in size. This, however, would cost additional revenue which could only be gotten from parl
iament. (553) The newly liberal-dominated parliament refused the budget increase, suspicious as they were of any increase in the size of the military. In the face of this refusal, the king appointed a new prime minister to deal with the problem, namely, B
ismarck.
Bismarck's tactics were to ignore the parliament's refusal and use the normal taxes paid into the government treasury to equip the army. He was roundly abused by the liberals for his high-handed, "unconstitutional" policy in ignoring the parliament. Bisma
rck was neither a liberal or a democrat but a staunch upholder of the authority of the Prussian monarchy. He was the classic practitioner of "Realpolitik" whereby any practical tactic might be pursued as long as it served his ultimate pu
rpose. (554) The big political question of Prussia's destiny would not be solved by speeches, he said, but by "blood and iron."
Bismarck after 1863 involved Prussia in three wars. The first in 1864 was a joint war by Prussia and Austria against Denmark, whose king had sought to annex the partly German territory of Schleswig to the state of Denmark. German nationalists called for a ction and the ensuing victorious war brought two territories under German control: Schleswig was joined to Prussia and Holstein, also conquered Danish territory, was awarded to Austria. Since it was Bismarck's desire to bring both of these northern territories under Prussian rule, he soon provoked a quarrel with Austria over its administration of Holstein. In 1866, after securing the (556) support of most of the other German states, Austria went to war against Prussia. In a seven-weeks war, Prussia inflicted a humiliating military defeat on Austria which thereafter excluded her from the affairs of the German states. Bismarck then annexed the north German states which had supported Austr ia, thus extending further Prussia's control over northern Germany. Thus he was able to create a new federated state of Prussia and the others which he dubbed the North German Confederation. He gave the new state a democratic government but made the minis ters responsible to the king rather than to parliament. Of the former 30-odd states, only the four southern states remained outside as independent territories. Full German unity had not yet been achieved.
(557) Bismarck's third war arose in 1870 over a quarrel with France which had opposed the selection of a German prince, a relation of the king of Prussia, as the new king of Spain. Even though the prince finally refused the offer, the French government, a
larmed that a Prussian prince could have become the Spanish monarch, insisted that the Prussian king, William I, give a pledge that such a circumstance would never again arise. When this was refused, Bismarck next provoked the French government by releasi
ng to the (558) press a report deliberately edited by him to achieve the desired effect, that the French in their negotiations with William I had insulted the king who in turn snubbed the French ambassador. France immediately declared war on Prussia whose
army now included the forces of the states lately joined in the Prussian-dominated Confederation as well as those of the southern German states who rallied to the cause of German unity against the French threat. The rapid defeat of France completed Bisma
rck's crusade for German unification (or rather Prussian expansion) when the southern states, in the flush of victory, joined the Confederation to create the new German Empire under William I with Bismarck as his prime mi
nister.
The French had been dealt a severe blow to their prestige. A huge money indemnity had to be paid to Germany and, worse still, (559) they lost the border territories of Alsace and Lorraine to the new German empire which now had to be recognized as the
strongest military state in Europe and a growing industrialized power in world affairs.
pp.614-16
(614) The new state, though seemingly democratic in its elected representative assembly (Reichstag), lacked parliamentary authority, as was the case with the parliaments of both Prussia and the Confederation. The final authority lay with the emperor. And since Bismarck was appointed by the king, the parliament could not remove him. As chancellor (prime minister), Bismarck faced several domestic problems. One of these was with the Catholic Church in Germany. When the pope announced in 1870 that all Cathol ics had to accept the doctrine of papal infallibility (i.e., the belief that the pope's pronouncements on religious faith and morals were (615) binding on them), Bismarck presumed to believe that this would weaken the loyalty of German Catholics to the state. He, therefore, launched a "Kulturkampf" against the Church-a 'battle' against the pope's attempt to restrict modern progressive development, such as had been promulgated in the 1864 Syllabus of Errors against liberalism and secularism.. He p assed laws to restrict Catholic education in Germany and hamper the work of the clergy. These failed to weaken the Church's hold on the laity who had already established the Catholic Center Party to look after their interests in the Reichstag. Thus the a nti-Catholic campaign was allowed to lapse after 1878 when Bismarck found it more politic to seek the votes of Catholic delegates in the Reichstag.
Another one of his crusades was against the hated socialist movement which had grown along with he increasing industrialization of Germany and drew its recruits from the industrial working class. Using the pretext of an assassination attempt on the life of the emperor, he blamed the socialists (without any proof of their complicity) and passed laws in 1878 that banned socialist meetings and stopped the circulation of their party propaganda. Finally, in a further attempt to weaken the hold of the socialis t movement, he introduced in the 1880s measures of social welfare for the workers that gave them protection against loss of income through sickness and accident insurance. The legislation also provided for pensions to the elderly, a measure that was decad es ahead of similar concern by the British and French governments. These laudable measures, however, failed to wean the workers away from their support of the parliamentary Socialist party, thus rendering his anti-socialist campaign, like the Kulturkampf, a failure. In 1890 Bismarck finally left the political scene when forced to resign by the new emperor William II.
(616) William II completely changed the cautious foreign policy of Bismarck by embarking on an aggressive "New Course" of naval building and colonial acquisitions, thus inviting the concerns of the other great powers, especially Britain. The power and inf luence of the emperor in German affairs continued as before, but William II lacked the sage advice of the departed statesman Bismarck.
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