Germany in modern times

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article deals with the history of Germany in modern times . It covers the period from around 1500 to 1918.

Early modern times: rule of Maximilian I and Charles V

Reforms in the Empire

Maximilian I became co-regent under his father Friedrich III in 1486 . and after his death in 1493 sole ruler. He began to reform the empire . At the Reichstag in Worms in 1495 , for the first time, no one-off monetary payments were required, but the introduction of an imperial tax, the common pfennig . The introduction of a standing committee consisting of the electors, the Reichsregiment , which was supposed to manage the business of government instead of the cumbersome and only sporadically meeting Reichstag, failed. The Eternal Peace of Nations ended the medieval feudal law , on the other hand the highest court of justice of the empire was created with the Reich Chamber of Commerce. The empire was to be better administered through the establishment of first six, then ten imperial circles . Overall, however, the reforms had no noticeable impact. The Swiss towns refused to pay the first Reich tax. The Swabian War that ensued was won by the Confederates in 1499; the Switzerland was independent from that point on de facto.

Maximilian rendered outstanding services to the advancement of the intellectual life in his empire; he advocated humanism and advanced the arts. After Maximilian's death in 1519, his grandson Karl V managed to ascend the German throne. During the election, numerous bribes from the Fugger family flowed into the elector's coffers .

Wars against France and the Ottomans

In 1494 the French King Charles VIII invaded Italy, and the decades-long Italian Wars began between the Holy Roman Empire and France . The following year, the French troops were driven out again by the Venetian League. In 1499 another attempt was made to take Italy, this time with the help of the rulers of Naples and Aragon. After both powers failed in 1502, France had to withdraw again, but kept the north around Milan. Meanwhile, Pope Julius II recognized the Venetians as a greater danger. The papacy, France, Spain and the empire allied and successfully fought the Venetians in 1508/09. The following year, the Pope reached an agreement with Venice and saw France as an enemy. In 1513 the troops of the French King Louis XII. expelled, and in 1515 his successor Francis I recaptured Milan.

Charles V moved to Italy in 1525 to end French rule. After the battle of Pavia , Francis I was arrested and forced to make concessions in Italy (which he later considered null and void because they were made under duress). Pope Clement VII was concerned about the new power of the empire in Italy and allied with France. Thereupon Charles moved again to Italy and in 1527 plundered Rome ( Sacco di Roma ). In 1529, the Peace of Cambrai (France) and the Peace of Barcelona (Pope) confirmed Charles V as Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and his possession of lands in Italy. But it was not until 1559 that the disputes were finally settled in the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis .

After the fall of Constantinople in 1453 , the Ottoman Empire advanced more and more into Europe. Under the Sultan Suleyman I , the Ottoman Empire expanded to the west and north. In 1526 the Kingdom of Hungary perished in the Battle of Mohács , and in 1529 the Turks besieged Vienna for the first time , but were defeated. The fights under the name of the 1st Austrian Turkish War or the 4th Venetian Turkish War , because the Republic of Venice bore the brunt of the Holy Roman Empire , lasted until 1555. In the end, Hungary was divided into three parts, and the German Emperor had to give the Ottoman Empire a large sum numbers.

Both theaters of war bound Charles V and prevented him from dealing more intensively with questions within Germany such as the Reformation and the Peasants' War. Because he was dependent on the military support of the German sovereigns, he repeatedly made compromises on the religious issue.

Luther's 95 theses and the Worms Reichstag

The deep religiosity of the people in the late Middle Ages was in contrast to that in many places, especially in the way of life of many bishops, many abbots and the popes, which had sunk into the purely secular Catholic Church . Power struggles for the papal chair were common. Attempts to reform the Church have remained unsuccessful. In 1506 Pope Leo X began building St. Peter's Basilica , which is why he was constantly in debt, also because of his lavish lifestyle. In order to settle the debt, he intensified the indulgence trade . With the purchase of letters of indulgence , believers were supposedly able to pay off their sins, shorten their time in purgatory and even save the dead from purgatory. At that time there was an advertising slogan: "When the coin rings in the box, the soul jumps out of purgatory."

Martin Luther , an Augustinian monk and theologian at the newly founded University of Wittenberg in the Electorate of Saxony , postulated after long self-doubts that only faith ( sola fide ) and not a letter of indulgence or other things were necessary for salvation. He summarized his discussion of the church's indulgence trade in the famous 95 theses that he sent to Cardinal Albrecht . Since there was no reaction, he distributed copies to acquaintances who published them without his knowledge and which were quickly spread through the printing press.

Cardinal Albrecht reported Luther to the Pope in Rome. After long disputes and since Luther refused to withdraw, he was expelled from the Catholic Church and banned. Luther responded to the Pope with the text On the Freedom of a Christian . Luther's criticism of the Catholic Church led to the spread of the Protestant faith in Germany.

Age of Reformation and Counter-Reformation

In 1519 the Habsburg Charles V became king. Charles V ruled a vast empire that included Spain, Austria, Bohemia, the Netherlands, southern Italy and the Spanish colonies in America . In terms of foreign policy, he was involved in constant wars in defense of the Ottomans as well as against France and the Pope. As a result, his position in the empire itself was weak, and because of his absence due to the war he could not prevent the spread of the Reformation .

In 1521 Luther was banned by the Pope . The Diet of Worms ended with the imposition of the imperial ban on Luther in the Worms Edict . Luther then found refuge with the Saxon Elector Friedrich the Wise on the Wartburg . Luther's translation of the New Testament into German makes an important contribution to the development of a uniform German written language.

Between 1522 and 1526, Luther's teaching was introduced in a number of countries and cities in the empire. The Reformation was thus carried out by the sovereign, who also became the regional bishop . This meant that the ruler's possessions were also under the control of the church. The states built their own church administrations.

After the failure of the Marburg Religious Discussion between Luther and Zwingli in 1529, a split in the Reformation movement into Lutherans and Reformed people emerged . The Anabaptists developed as a further subsidiary movement . The radical attempt by the Baptist Johann Bockelson to establish a kind of god state with the Anabaptist Empire of Münster was ended in 1536 with a bloody end.

In the Reichstag in Speyer, in the absence of the emperor in 1526 , it was decided in an imperial farewell to tolerate the new denomination for the time being until the religious question was settled in a council . In a second Reichstag in Speyer, the Emperor's brother Ferdinand demanded that the toleration be lifted in 1529. The Protestant rulers protested against this. The supporters of the new creed have also been called Protestants since this protest in Speyer .

The Protestant princes and cities united under the leadership of Hesse and Electoral Saxony in 1531 to form the Schmalkaldic League . While the Protestants laid down the basic ideas of their teaching in the Augsburg Confession , the Catholic side formulated their rejection of Luther's teaching in the Confutatio pontificia . In the Schmalkaldic War of 1546/47, Catholics under the leadership of the Emperor battled Protestants for the first time. The emperor won the war, but was ultimately unable to enforce the restoration of the Catholic positions decreed in the Augsburg Interim due to resistance from princes, cities and the population.

When the princes rose against him across religious borders, Charles V renounced Spain and the Netherlands in favor of his son Philip II and made his brother Ferdinand his successor in the empire. The new King Ferdinand finally negotiated the Augsburg imperial and religious peace at the Diet of Augsburg in 1555 . As a result, both denominations were given equal rights in the empire, with the respective sovereign determining the religion of his subjects (" cuius regio, eius religio ").

Peasants' War

The worsening situation of the peasants had already led to regional uprisings of the peasants in the 15th century, as in the Bundschuh and Armen Konrad , during the Reformation, however, with reference to the teachings of Luther from 1524–1526, a peasant war broke out , especially in southwest Germany, Thuringia and Franconia . The causes were, among other things, the increasing services and taxes of the farmers, the restriction of their rights and the reduction in common property.

There had already been isolated local uprisings against the oppression of the peasants before, but now, thanks to the spirit of the Reformation, they felt they had the right to break the tyranny of the feudal lords. 1524/25, local uprisings in southern Germany and Switzerland widened to a large parts of southern and central Germany extensive uprising from. In March 1525, three Upper Swabian farmers summarized their demands in the Twelve Articles against the Swabian Federation in Memmingen , which, however, did not tolerate negotiations, but went against the farmers with the help of the Augsburg merchant family Fugger and the military leader Georg Truchsess von Waldburg-Zeil (Bauernjörg) in front. In 1525 a peasant army led by Thomas Müntzer was destroyed near Frankenhausen . When the peasant uprisings were put down, up to 100,000 peasants lost their lives. Luther himself, who rejected a right of resistance against secular authorities, condemned the peasant uprising.

Under the influence of the Reformation, the Catholic Church started an internal reform. In 1545 the Council of Trent was convened, which met in three periods until 1563. On the one hand, the council dealt with Luther's teaching and, on the other hand, brought numerous innovations such as the establishment of seminaries with it.

In addition, the Counter Reformation set in . This consisted on the one hand in the persecution of all who deviated from the official Catholic teaching by the Inquisition , for whose implementation Pope Paul III. created a central congregation . Likewise, new orders emerged , of which the Jesuits took a leading role in re-Catholicization.

The Protestant princes united to form a union in 1608 under the leadership of the Palatinate Wittelsbacher Friedrich V of the Palatinate . Accordingly, the Catholic princes in 1609 concluded under the leadership of Bavaria Duke Maximilian I to league together.

The Thirty-Year War

After Rudolf II had ceded the business of government to his brother and successor as Emperor Matthias , the latter again restricted the rights granted. When the protest of the Bohemian estates was rejected by him, it came to the Prague lintel in 1618 , in which two imperial councilors were thrown out of the window ( defenestrated ) by Bohemian representatives in the Prague Castle .

In 1619, after the death of Emperor Matthias, the Bohemian Protestants proclaimed the leader of the Union, the Palatinate Elector Friedrich von der Pfalz, King of Bohemia. This was the trigger for the Thirty Years War . The new Emperor Ferdinand II moved to Bohemia with the army of the Catholic League under the leadership of the Bavarian Duke Maximilian I and the Bavarian general Tilly . The Bohemian army was defeated in the Battle of the White Mountain in 1620. The mostly Czech aristocracy was expropriated and the country was re-Catholicized. After Friedrich's flight from the Palatinate, Tilly occupied the Palatinate and the Upper Palatinate . As a reward, the Bavarian Duke received the Palatinate electoral dignity.

The Danish king Christian IV, who was allied with England, the Netherlands and the Protestant princes, entered northern Germany in 1625 with his army. But he was defeated by the imperial army under Tilly and the Bohemian nobleman Wallenstein . Pomerania , Jutland and Mecklenburg with the exception of Stralsund were occupied by the Catholic army.

After the end of the Danish war, the emperor issued the edict of restitution in 1629 , according to which all areas that had become Protestant should be re-Catholicized. Concerned about the significantly increased power of the emperor, the imperial estates achieved the deposition of Wallenstein at the Regensburg Electoral Congress in 1630.

Now the Swedish king Gustav II Adolf intervened in the war and advanced from Pomerania to Bavaria. Tilly fell at Rain am Lech in 1632. The emperor then reinstated Wallenstein. The King of Sweden fell at the Battle of Lützen in 1632. Because of his political views, Wallenstein was deposed again in 1634 by the emperor and soon afterwards murdered on his behalf for fear of an alliance between the general and the Swedes. In order to drive the Swedes off German soil, the emperor concluded a separate peace with the Protestant Saxon elector, the Peace of Prague , in 1635.

Catholic France intervened in 1635 out of fear of an overly powerful empire and allied with Sweden. However, neither side was able to win the war despite long fighting. Large parts of the empire were devastated. The negotiations that had been going on since 1642 led to the Peace of Westphalia on October 24, 1648 .

The peace treaty included the cession of parts of Lorraine and Alsace, with the exception of Strasbourg, to France. The Netherlands and Switzerland officially left the empire as sovereign states. The position of the imperial estates and the territories vis-à-vis the emperor was strengthened and the Augsburg Religious Peace of 1555 was confirmed. However, when the sovereign changed their denomination, the same step was no longer required of the population. The war killed an estimated 15 to 20 percent of the population. The pre-war population was not reached again until around 1750. Its effects on the literature of the Baroque in Germany were decisive - until the appearance of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's generation, the model of the cruelty of existence and the futility ( vanitas ) of everything earthly was a key theme.

Age of Absolutism

Main article: Germany in the age of absolutism

The destruction and population losses of the Thirty Years War promoted the development of state-controlled economic and social policy. Associated with the mercantilist economic system was the emergence of the absolutist form of rule based on the model of the French court under Louis XIV.

Under the absolutist ruling Elector Friedrich Wilhelm from Brandenburg, the rise of Prussia to the leading power in northern Germany began in 1640 . The Elector Friedrich III. called himself in 1701 Friedrich I , King in Prussia . Under the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm I , the state and society were militarized. The rise of Prussia led to the dualism between the two leading German states, Austria and Prussia, which determined Germany until 1871.

Under the Habsburg Emperor Leopold I , the empire was exposed to the twofold threat from the Ottomans and France's urge to expand under Louis XIV. In 1683, with the support of the German princes and the Polish king Jan Sobieski , the emperor was able to beat the Turks before Vienna and drive them out of Hungary. As a result of the Turkish wars , the Habsburg monarchy was able to gain large areas in which German colonists, the so-called Danube Swabians , were subsequently settled.

With the election of the Saxon Elector Friedrich August I in 1697 as King of Poland, a personal union of Saxony and Poland came about until 1763 . Likewise, from 1714 to 1837, Hanover and England were united. The extinction of the Spanish line of the Habsburgs triggered the War of the Spanish Succession in 1701 .

The extinction of the male line of the Austrian Habsburgs and the succession of the imperial daughter Maria Theresa ( pragmatic sanction ) in 1740 led to the War of the Austrian Succession . With the help of Hungary and Great Britain , she was able to defend the imperial crown against France, Bavaria and Prussia, who saw the Bavarian Wittelsbacher Karl Albrecht as his successor . However, after three Silesian Wars , of which the third was the Seven Years War between France, allied with Austria and England, allied with Prussia, it lost Silesia to Prussia in 1763 in the Peace of Hubertusburg .

Sweden lost almost all possessions on German soil in 1721 as a result of the Great Northern War against Russia and Saxony, which was linked with Poland in personal union. Due to the three partitions of Poland in 1772, 1793 and 1795, Austria and Prussia could record considerable territorial gains at Poland's expense.

The Enlightenment found its way into Prussia under the Prussian King Friedrich II and in Austria under the Austrian Emperor Joseph II and also in other German states. However, it only led to reforms that did not shake the feudal balance of power.

Germany from 1789 to 1815

As a result of the French Revolution , Prussia and Austria formed an alliance against revolutionary France in 1791, to which France responded in April with a declaration of war on the two German states. After initial success, the coalition fell on the defensive after the defeat of Valmy in September 1792. Four more coalition wars against France followed until 1809 , in which, in addition to German royal houses, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Russia and Portugal were also involved.

The coalition wars contributed to the radicalization of the French Revolution. In 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte took power in France through a coup d'état . In the course of the wars Austria had to cede the Austrian Netherlands to France. The areas on the left bank of the Rhine also came to France after the Treaty of Lunéville in 1801. As compensation for the loss of territory, the German princes received areas on the right bank of the Rhine. These were created in 1803 in the so-called Reichsdeputationshauptschluss through secularization and mediatization . In addition, Napoleon I rewarded Bavaria , Saxony and the newly created Electorate of Württemberg with the elevation to kingdoms for the change to the side of France . The newly created electorates of Baden and Hessen-Darmstadt were raised to grand duchies. Napoleon I crowned himself Emperor of the French in 1804.

In 1805 Austria was defeated in the Battle of the Three Emperors near Austerlitz . Austria had to cede its northern Italian territories to the Kingdom of Italy and Vorarlberg and Tyrol to Bavaria. When 16 German princely houses merged to form the Rhine Confederation in 1806 , Emperor Franz II laid down the imperial crown on an ultimatum from Napoleon. This meant the end of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation .

On October 16, 1806 Prussia was defeated in the double battle near Jena and Auerstedt . Napoleon's troops entered Berlin. The Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III. fled to East Prussia . In the Peace of Tilsit in 1807, Prussia lost half of its national territory and was only preserved as a state following the intervention of the Russian Tsar Alexander I. An uprising in Tyrol by Andreas Hofer in 1809 was put down by Napoleon.

In order to renew Prussia, there was a reform movement between 1807 and 1813. There were outstanding personalities from Stein and Hardenberg . In addition to the abolition of the inheritance of the peasants ( peasant exemption ), the guild obligation was abolished in 1810 and the freedom of trade was introduced. In 1812 the Jews were granted equal rights and all occupational restrictions were lifted. The army was reformed by Scharnhorst and Gneisenau , the aristocratic privilege for the officer career was abolished and general conscription was introduced based on the French model. The municipalities were also given the right to self-govern. Wilhelm von Humboldt reforms the education system .

After Napoleon's defeat in the Russian campaign in 1812 became known , uprisings broke out in Prussia. When the Prussian general Yorck von Wartenburg arbitrarily agreed an armistice with Russia in December 1812 ( Tauroggen Convention ), the Prussian king allied himself with the tsar against France in 1813 under pressure from the population and the students.

After Great Britain, Sweden and Austria joined the alliance, France was decisively defeated in the Battle of Leipzig from October 16 to 19, 1813. Napoleon withdrew from Germany. The Confederation of the Rhine switched to the side of the alliance. The wars of liberation against Napoleon led to a new national consciousness in Germany. The desire for a German nation-state was awakened in particular among the students involved in the wars.

In the spring of 1814, the Allied troops entered Paris and Napoleon was forced to abdicate. When Napoleon seized power again in France in 1815 after breaking out of his exile on Elba , the Allies finally defeated him in the Battle of Waterloo on June 18, 1815.

19th century

Age of Restoration

At the Congress of Vienna , under the leadership of the Austrian Foreign Minister Metternich, Europe was reorganized. The aim of the Congress of Vienna was to secure lasting peace by creating a new balance between the great powers, but also to restore the old political system. In the Holy Alliance , Austria, Prussia and Russia agreed to fight all revolutionary and nation-state movements in order to secure the monarchical systems. With the territorial reorganization, Prussia received the Rhineland , Westphalia and the northern part of Saxony , Austria renounced the Austrian Netherlands and got Veneto , Lombardy and areas in the Balkans . France could keep Alsace. The German Confederation was also brought into being, to which 35 sovereign princes belonged, including the kings of Great Britain, Denmark and the Netherlands because of their German possessions. The decision-making body of the German Confederation was the Bundestag , which met under the Austrian chairmanship in Frankfurt am Main as a conference of ambassadors. The princes did not take into account the wishes of the population for the creation of a unified German nation-state.

After the murder of the anti-liberal writer August von Kotzebue in 1819 by the student Karl Ludwig Sand , Metternich had fraternities and all other political associations at the universities outlawed in the Karlsbad Decrees and introduced extensive censorship. Works by writers such as Heinrich Heine , Georg Büchner and Hoffmann von Fallersleben were banned. Ultimately, however, Metternich's system could not prevent the German national movement from gaining strength during the so-called Vormärz . In 1817, numerous students gathered at the so-called Wartburg Festival . Encouraged by the July Revolution in France in 1830, the movement reached a new climax in the Hambach Festival from May 27th to 30th, 1832 with 30,000 participants.

Economically, Germany was unified by the German Customs Union, founded on January 1, 1834 . The onset of industrialization and the construction of the first railway line from Nuremberg to Fürth in 1835 brought an economic upswing.

Revolution of 1848

The February Revolution of 1848 in France led to the March Revolution of 1848 in the German states as in almost all of Europe . In Austria street fights broke out in Vienna and on March 13th Metternich's resignation and his flight to Great Britain.

Emperor Ferdinand issued a constitution in April 1848 and granted the people an armed militia.

In Hungary, Italy and the Slavic areas there were national uprisings against Austria, but these were crushed by the emperor's troops.

Barricade fighting also broke out in Prussia in Berlin on March 18 after a mass rally in front of the Berlin Palace. Under pressure from the population, the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV issued a constitution and granted the citizens freedom of assembly and the freedom of the press . Smaller states such as Baden and Saxony and others tried to prevent unrest by appointing liberal and national government members. Nevertheless, in the further course of the revolution until 1849, Saxony and Baden became the centers of radical democratic uprisings. (see Baden Revolution and Dresden May Uprising )

On March 31, 1848, with the approval of the German Confederation, 574 men were sent to the preliminary parliament in the Paulskirche in Frankfurt . At the beginning of May, elections for a German National Assembly took place in all countries . However, these were only directly elected in six states as decided by the pre-parliament. In all other states an indirect electoral procedure was used.

In Parliament both conservative monarchists were represented as well as liberals and Republicans. While academics and the educated bourgeoisie were strongly represented, workers and peasants in parliament had no representatives who came directly from their class.

On May 18, a provisional central government was formed under the leadership of the Austrian Archduke Johann as the so-called Reichsverweser . The government was recognized by the German princes, but was largely powerless due to the lack of its own army, police or civil servants.

Among other things, the National Assembly had to answer the question of the borders of a future German nation-state. It was also discussed whether the form of government should be centralized or federal , and whether there should be general or census voting.

The so-called Greater German solution , which envisaged a German state including German Austria with Bohemia , was first favored . However, since Austria was only willing to do so by including the entire area of ​​the multi-ethnic state Austria-Hungary, which in turn ran counter to the idea of ​​a German nation state, the majority decided in favor of the small German solution . This provided for the formation of a German state to the exclusion of Austria.

On March 28, 1849, an imperial constitution, the so-called Paulskirche constitution , was passed, which provided for a federal state with a central government under the direction of a hereditary empire and a Reichstag as the legislature. A general right to vote was also agreed. After the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV refused the German imperial crown offered to him by the National Assembly on April 2, 1849, Prussia and most other states withdrew their representatives from Frankfurt. An uprising in Dresden in May to force adoption of the constitution was put down by Prussia and Saxony. In the Bavarian Palatinate and in Baden there were also uprisings and in June even provisional governments, but these were put down by Prussia with the help of the other German states.

A minority of the MPs resisted being recalled and continued to sit as a rump parliament in Stuttgart , but this was dissolved by Prussian troops on June 18. The last revolutionaries surrendered in Rastatt on July 23, after a three-week siege . The constitution could never come into force. Numerous people who were politically persecuted as a result emigrated mainly to America (see Forty-Eighters ).

Response time and wars of unification

During the reaction era, the concessions made during the revolution were reversed. Schwarzenberg established a neo-absolutist regime in Austria . Most other German states such as Prussia, however, stuck to the constitutional system. The freedom of trade was also mostly retained.

In 1850 the German Confederation was re-established. After the end of the union plans , Prussia and its allies also joined him. In the restored federation, Prussia and Austria had an equal position and together held a leading role. Domestically, the federal government was initially successful in suppressing the opposition.

After political associations were approved in 1860, new parties and trade unions emerged in Germany. The first German party was the German Progressive Party in 1861 , and in 1863 Ferdinand Lassalle founded the General German Workers' Association . This newly formed party united in 1875 with the Social Democratic Labor Party under Wilhelm Liebknecht the Socialist Workers Party of Germany , which in turn 1890 into the still existing S ozialdemokratische P artei D eutschlands (SPD) has been renamed.

The dualism between Austria and Prussia, which had faded into the background due to the mutual opposition to national and liberal demands, intensified after the National Assembly in Frankfurt had given Prussia the leading role.

In 1859 the Prussian constitutional conflict began , which in 1862 led to the appointment of Otto von Bismarck as Prussian prime minister and to a strengthening of the king in relation to parliament, thus defining the form of government of a future German state.

In 1864 there was a war between Prussia and Austria against Denmark. The trigger was the annexation of Schleswig by Denmark. With the approval of the great European powers, both German states recaptured the duchies of Holstein and Schleswig.

After the war, the rivalry broke out again over the question of the political future of the two duchies, forced by Bismarck. After Austria initiated the mobilization of the other German states against Prussia, Bismarck declared the federal act to have expired.

The Austro-Prussian war against Austria and almost all German states that followed in 1866 was won by Prussia at Königgrätz . Prussia annexed Hanover , Nassau , Kurhessen , Schleswig-Holstein and the Free City of Frankfurt . In addition, the North German Confederation was founded under the leadership of Prussia. With this, Austria left Germany (“Little German Solution”). In return, Bismarck renounced Austria's land cession. The independence of Bavaria, Württemberg and Baden was recognized at the insistence of France.

Subsequently, tensions arose between France, which was neutral in the German war, and Prussia. The external reason for the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71 was the candidacy of Prince Leopold von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen for the Spanish throne. Bismarck provoked the war with the manipulated publication of the so-called Emser Depesche , in which France's demand for the abdication of the throne is rejected.

After France declared war, Prussia was able to win over all German states and the other major European powers. With a superior strategy and logistics, the German armies were able to defeat the France of Emperor Napoleon III. force surrender in six weeks by winning at Sedan . In Paris thereupon a republican government, which rejected the demand of Prussia after assignment of Alsace-Lorraine after initial readiness for peace was formed. The war then continued and only ended with the surrender of France in 1871. In the Peace of Frankfurt am Main , France was obliged to cede Alsace-Lorraine and to pay war indemnity. The German-speaking population of Alsace-Lorraine was incorporated into France 200 years ago and the majority have felt themselves to be part of the French nation since the French Revolution.

By granting so-called reservation rights , Bismarck was able to persuade the southern German states to join the North German Confederation. Bavaria, for example, retained sovereignty over the post office and railroad and, in times of peace, over the military as well.

The establishment of the German Empire , which was created through accession, was completed on January 18, 1871 in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles . The Prussian king received the title of German Emperor .

The German Empire

The imperial constitution of 1871 emphasized the monarchical element. The emperor, who was also King of Prussia, could appoint and remove the imperial government. The constitution was thus strongly influenced by the government. But the future of Germany was decisively dependent on the fate of its emperors and the imperial chancellors appointed by them . The federal element was put into perspective by the fact that Prussia had two thirds of the land area and population and a de facto veto right in the case of constitutional changes in the Federal Council. The Alsatians and the Poles living in the empire did not feel they belonged to the empire and formed their own parliamentary groups.

Bismarck pursued a policy of changing allies. As part of the Kulturkampf from 1871 to 1886 against the influence of the Catholic Church, Bismarck allied himself with the liberals. Although some measures were withdrawn after the end of the Kulturkampf, for example the introduction of civil marriage and state supervision of the school system were retained.

The next opponent of Bismarck were the socialists. The public mood after an assassination attempt on Kaiser Wilhelm I was used by Bismarck in 1878 to enforce the so-called socialist laws prohibiting socialist associations. The laws were in force until 1890 , but could not prevent the spread of socialist ideas. At the same time, Bismarck tried to counter the radicalization of workers through social legislation . General health insurance was introduced in 1883 , accident insurance in 1884 and statutory pension insurance in 1889 . However, Bismarck rejected further demands by the Social Democrats such as minimum wages or labor protection laws.

Economically, the unified economic area created by the establishment of the empire and favored by the French payments of war compensation triggered rapid economic growth. However, due to overheating, this culminated in the economic crisis of the so-called Founders' Crash in 1873 .

In terms of foreign policy, Bismarck pursued a policy of equilibrium between the great powers. By rising to become the strongest great power on the continent through the establishment of an empire, Germany aroused the fears of its neighbors. In order to prevent alliances of the other great powers against Germany, Bismarck built up an alliance system with diplomatic skill that resulted in the isolation of France, which became an arch enemy through the incorporation of Alsace-Lorraine .

In order to dampen the fears of the other great powers, Bismarck also renounced territorial expansion, but placed the colonial acquisitions of German private merchants in Togo , Cameroon , Southwest and East Africa and the Pacific under the protection of the German Empire in 1884/85 as a concession to the Zeitgeist . However, the economic importance of the German colonies remained low.

When Wilhelm II , who became emperor in 1888, dismissed Bismarck as Reich Chancellor in 1890 , there was a turnaround in German foreign policy. In contrast to his reluctant predecessor, the new emperor took foreign policy into his own hands ( personal regiment ) . This increasingly led to the isolation of Germany in terms of foreign policy; only Austria, Italy and the Ottoman Empire later remained as allies.

Domestic politics was strongly influenced by structural change and social issues . Chancellor Caprivi pursued a course of social reform. However, further political reforms in the following period failed.

The assassination of the Austrian heir to the throne Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914 in Sarajevo by a secret Serbian organization finally triggered the First World War .

Initially, the German population was still enthusiastic about the war. In the course of the war, the supply situation deteriorated noticeably. When the fleet was supposed to run out again against the Royal Navy in October 1918 , the sailors mutinied. The Kiel sailors' uprising spread across Germany within a few days and became the November Revolution . Workers 'and soldiers' councils were formed everywhere . On November 9th, there were also unrest in Berlin. In order to prevent a bloodbath, Chancellor Max von Baden declared the emperor's abdication without his consent. Wilhelm II then bowed to this decision and went into exile in the Netherlands. Max von Baden passed government power to Friedrich Ebert . In the afternoon the social democrat Philipp Scheidemann proclaimed the republic .

On November 10th, a provisional government was formed with the Council of People's Representatives . On November 11th, the fighting was stopped by a ceasefire .