Federal Fleet Plan 1865

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A federal fleet or fleet of the German Confederation was a plan from the time of the German Confederation . In 1865, Prussia and Austria agreed with the Gastein Convention to jointly apply to the Bundestag for naval forces to be set up . The convention also regulated the exercise of joint Austro-Prussian rule in Schleswig-Holstein and the power over the port of Kiel . The German War of 1866, which led to the dissolution of the German Confederation , also ended the fleet plan. Instead of a federal fleet in 1865/1866, the Navy of the North German Confederation finally came into being in 1867 . From this the navy of the empire developed.

The German Confederation had already had a fleet: the Reichsflotte was set up by the revolutionary Reich in 1848/1849 to protect the German coasts during the war against Denmark . In 1852 the restored German Bundestag dissolved the fleet.

prehistory

After the German-Danish War in 1864, the so-called Elbe Duchies of Schleswig , Holstein and Lauenburg were placed under the joint administration of Austria and Prussia. The Prussian Prime Minister Otto von Bismarck used differences of opinion, which mainly related to the Duke of Augustenburg's claims to the throne , in order to come closer to his goal of integrating Schleswig-Holstein into Prussia.

A Prussian cabinet order of March 24, 1865 determined the relocation of the Baltic Sea naval station from Danzig to Kiel and thus the use of this port for the Prussian Navy . These and other measures brought Prussia and Austria to the brink of war in the summer of 1865. With the Gastein Convention, the opponents made a final attempt to avert this.

Naval regulations of the Gastein Convention

Articles 1 and 9 of the Gastein Convention divided the administration of Schleswig-Holstein in such a way that the duchies of Schleswig and Lauenburg were to be administered by Prussia and Holstein by Austria. With regard to the question of the fleet and the use of the port of Kiel, certain Article 2:

“The high contracting parties want to bring the production of a German fleet in the league and designate the port of Kiel as the federal port for it. The warships of both powers use this port until the federal decrees are carried out and the command and the police over it are exercised by Prussia. Prussia is entitled to build the necessary fortifications both to defend the Friedrichsort entrance and to set up the naval establishments on the Holstein shore of the bay for the purpose of the war port. These fortifications and establishments are also under Prussian command, and the Prussian naval troops and men necessary for their occupation and guarding can be billeted in and around Kiel. "

This gave Prussia the opportunity not only to continue using the port of Kiel, but also to exercise command power there, even though it was in Holstein, which was administered by Austria.

With this agreement, after the establishment of the Reichsflotte by the Frankfurt National Assembly from 1848 and its dissolution in 1853, a new attempt was made to build a unified German fleet. After the German War in 1866, however, the German Confederation was dissolved. Prussia brought its naval forces into the Navy of the North German Confederation .

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gastein Convention in Meyers Konversationslexikon from 1885-1892, Volume 4, p. 898 f.
  2. ^ Ernst Rudolf Huber : Documents on German constitutional history . Verlag Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1961, p. 182.
  3. ↑ Guntram Schulze-Wegener : Germany at sea. 150 years of naval history . Hamburg 1998. ISBN 3-8132-0551-7