Greater Austria
In the years 1849 to 1851 Austria repeatedly suggested that all Habsburg- ruled areas should join a German confederation. Large areas of the Habsburg countries in East Central Europe (such as Hungary and Northern Italy) did not belong to the previous German confederation, the German Confederation . The corresponding plans were given names such as Greater Austria , Seventy Million Empire or, according to the proposers, the Schwarzenberg Plan or Schwarzenberg-Bruck Plan .
An important initiative in this direction was the plan of the Austrian Prime Minister Felix zu Schwarzenberg of March 9, 1849. The accession of Hungary and Northern Italy would have strengthened Austrian supremacy in Germany considerably. The considerations of his trade minister Karl Ludwig von Bruck in October 1849 went in a similar direction : He designed the outline of a corresponding customs union with world power ambitions.
The plans of the years 1849 and 1850 are to be understood partly as real offers and partly as propaganda in the political debate on Germany at the time. Austria rejected the German Reich supported by the Frankfurt National Assembly because it was too liberal and because Austria was not allowed to join with all areas. It also turned against the Prussian attempt in 1849/1850 to found a more conservative federal state ( Erfurt Union ). This union would either have united most of the non-Austrian German states or at least many of these states.
Neither Prussia nor Austria were able to prevail with their plans: the medium-sized states such as Bavaria and Hanover were afraid of a federal state without Austria, in which Prussia would have been the supreme power, but also fear of a greater Austria as a pure confederation in which Austria would have dominated. In the summer of 1851 the old German Confederation was restored.
Starting position
Inhabitants in the German Confederation in 1848, by individual states
Distribution of residents in a "Greater Austria"
Since 1815 the German states were united by a state union, the German Confederation . Its main task was to ensure a common defense against attacks from outside. In addition, the conservative powers used it to fight efforts that wanted to turn Germany into a liberal federal state (with parliament and government). One of the peculiarities of the German Confederation was that the great powers Austria and Prussia did not belong to the Confederation with their entire national territory. The Prussian area outside the federal territory, the provinces of Prussia (later East and West Prussia ) and Posen , were of little importance. There were comparatively few residents there, and most of them spoke German. This is why these provinces even belonged to the federal government from 1848 to 1851.
It looked different with the Austrian parts of the country outside the federal government. “Non-German” Austria, that is, non-federally, far surpassed “German” Austria in terms of population: 12 million people lived within the Austrian federal territory, including many Czechs, but around 26 million outside. These areas outside of Austria were primarily northern Italy ( Lombardy-Veneto ) and the Kingdom of Hungary (not just today's ethnic Hungary). Austria's importance within Germany and as a major European power was based on the total mass of this national territory. Although the Germans provided the leadership, they were numerically in the minority.
The Frankfurt National Assembly of 1848/1849, a democratically elected parliament of the federal territory, wanted to turn Germany into a federal state, a German Empire . There were different concepts. Originally, almost all MPs wanted the territory of the new Reich to consist of the previous federal territory ( greater German solution , i.e. with Austria as part of the federal government as before).
However, the National Assembly demanded, at the latest by a resolution of October 27, 1848, that non-German areas should be separated from German areas (§§ 2 and 3 of the future Imperial Constitution ). The many non-German nationalities were seen as an obstacle to the functioning of a nation state (e.g. in parliament). The Austrian emperor could only have been ruler of his different countries in personal union. Austria should have reckoned with a collapse of her empire, since the mere personal union would probably not have held the countries together. As a result, the German speakers would have had less influence in Central Europe.
Austria aggressively opposed the National Assembly. So the small German solution gained supporters there. Accordingly, the federal state should consist of the federal territory except Austria. The liberal Heinrich von Gagern, a leading politician in the National Assembly, proposed a double league : the federal state, a “closer federation”, should be linked to the whole of Austria via a confederation (a “wider federation”). It was seen as a disadvantage that, through the small German solution, Prussia would have played a dominant role in the new federal state. Especially South Germans, conservatives and Catholics refused to push Austria out of Germany.
History of the Greater Austria Plans
Schwarzenberg Plan, March 1849
Conservative Austria had been strengthened again since the counter-revolution in Vienna (October 1848). However, it was not until the summer of 1849 that the uprisings in Hungary were put down. Austria was not yet fully capable of acting when, in the spring of 1849, the small German direction slowly gained a majority in the National Assembly. Above all, it would have been important for Austria to present an attractive alternative plan in order to win over public opinion in Germany.
At the Kremsier Reichstag on November 27, 1848, Austria's Prime Minister Schwarzenberg flatly rejected the Frankfurt resolutions of October 27. Austria should not be torn apart, instead the "mutual relations" between "rejuvenated" Germany and "rejuvenated Austria" have yet to be determined. It became more specific at the beginning of March 1849 with an offer for the German question. At the same time, Austria received an imposed constitution that emphasized its state unity
According to this Schwarzenberg or Greater Austria Plan, the areas of Austria and Prussia that did not yet belong to the German Confederation should join it. Thus, the entire Austrian Empire would have been under the protection of the Federation and would have led a Central European bloc that strengthened Austria's role as a great power. The renewed federation would have had a directorate (executive) with three Austrian, three Prussian and one Bavarian member. Delegates from the parliaments of the individual states should be represented in a house of states. Greater Austria, with around seventy million inhabitants, would have become by far the most populous country in Europe. Europe had an estimated 195 million inhabitants in 1850, of which 39 million lived in Russia, 29.3 million in France and 16.6 million in England.
Schwarzenberg was therefore reluctantly come to the zeitgeist, because actually he rejected a German parliament from, even in the weak form of delegates of parliaments. The main goal was the federal membership of Northern Italy and Hungary in order to consolidate Austria's power there domestically and internationally. Naturally, this made the plan unattractive for Germans outside Austria who did not want to be drawn into the Austrian nationality conflicts.
According to Manfred Luchterhand, Austria was considering buying the whole of Austria's accession to the confederation by allowing progress in integration, as the states in small Germany demanded. A directory as the executive would have been more effective than the old, larger Bundestag. Schwarzenberg's version of the double confederation also admitted that the “purely German” states were allowed to join together to form a closer confederation. The more important constitutional framework should, however, be the wider confederation of states with Austria. The Gagernsche Doppelbund, that is, a "bipolar union consisting solely of a Prussian-led 'German Reich' and Austria, was not acceptable."
Austria and Prussia's Union Policy, since May 1849
The Schwarzenberg Plan ripped off the Greater Germans in the National Assembly. On March 28, 1849, a majority in the National Assembly voted for the German imperial constitution . The constitution theoretically provided for Austria's accession, but the separation paragraphs 2 and 3 made this impossible from the point of view of the Austrian leadership. One day later the National Assembly elected the Prussian King as German Emperor .
It was fortunate for Austria that King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia rejected the constitution and the imperial crown in April 1849. But Schwarzenberg relied too much on the highly conservatives in the Prussian leadership. He believed that the Prussians would respond to the ideas of the national movement for tactical reasons alone. In fact, however, a federal state was quite interesting for Prussia: It would have expanded Prussian power in the small German area instead of fighting with Austria against the revolution and the nation state. Because the cooperation with Austria would have meant that Prussia had to submit to Austria. At first, Schwarzenberg could not do anything against this game between Prussia and the national movement.
In May 1849, Prussia concluded the three-king alliance with Hanover and Saxony and thus laid the foundation for the so-called Erfurt Union : This was the Prussian variant of the Gagern double union of the small German federal state and the small German-Austrian (greater Austrian) confederation. The Erfurt Union Constitution was more conservative than the liberal Frankfurt Imperial Constitution , and the interests of medium-sized states such as Hanover and Saxony should be better considered. Prussia definitely wanted to work together with the (right-wing) liberals and the national public.
According to Schwarzenberg, Austria would have become the junior partner of a Greater Prussia in such a double league. Hanover and Saxony de facto fell away from the union project in the autumn of 1849, but Prussia wanted to continue on its course with the small states of central and northern Germany. In terms of a containment policy , Schwarzenberg offered Bavaria a trialist solution for tactical reasons, i.e. one that would have consisted of three partners: Northern Germany, Austria and a southern German bloc. Thus the Prussian union policy should be set limits. But when Bavaria wanted to concretise the constitutional proposals, it had to realize that Austria wanted to prevent the Union, but still resisted a general representation of the people for Germany. Another idea of Austria in the course of 1849 envisaged a triple alliance: with Austria, with Prussia enlarged to include small northern German states, and with an association of the other states (such as Hanover and Bavaria).
"Map of the Austrian State" in an atlas 1848
German unification plans, including Greater Austria
German autumn crisis 1850 , with the states of the Erfurt Union in yellow
Bruck Plan, October 1849
Austria's Minister of Commerce, Karl Ludwig von Bruck, added an Austro-German trade union to the Schwarzenberg Plan on October 26, 1849. In the tradition of Friedrich List's thoughts , Bruck envisioned a large economic area in Central Europe under German rule. The customs barriers around this area would have made it free-trade inwards, but protectionist outwards. This should make Austrian foreign policy more attractive for the German national movement and the other states: economically underpinned and directed against the British.
The Bruck Plan was published in the official Wiener Zeitung and was extremely remarkable with its “imperial future fantasies” of a “world power Germany” (Manfred Luchterhand). The pro-German, nationalist (not nation-state) tone could appeal to the national movement and was particularly well received in southern Germany, where they relied on protective tariffs. It now looked as if not only Prussia, but also Austria no longer wanted to work together as a conservative power against the revolution and the nation state. However, it should still be a federation, not a state or nation-state. It is therefore misleading that this plan was also referred to as the "Seventy Million Empire". Most observers thought the plan was a step backwards.
Four Kings Covenant, February 1850
On February 27, 1850, the four kingdoms of Bavaria, Württemberg, Hanover and Saxony concluded the four kings alliance in Munich . The actual initiator behind the scenes was Austria, which initially did not join the alliance. This constitutional plan largely corresponded to the plans of Schwarzenberg and Bruck for a greater Austria of seventy million with a customs and trade union. All of Germany and all of Austria should belong to a federation with a directorate. The seven largest German states were represented in the Directory, and there should have been a national parliament for this purpose: a hundred members from Austria, a hundred from Prussia and a hundred from the other states. Parliament would have been elected indirectly (by the national parliaments) and would only meet every three years. For Schwarzenberg, that was already a hard-to-bear admission.
In the Prussian government, the highly conservatives like Otto Theodor von Manteuffel were ready to accept the plan. Schwarzenberg had promised the Prussians a certain expansion of power in northern Germany. The national conservative Joseph von Radowitz , advisor to the Prussian king and pioneer of Union policy, was genuinely interested in German unity. Even before a military conflict with Austria he would not have shrunk.
But Austria and the four kingdoms also soon distanced themselves from the plan of the four kings alliance. Schwarzenberg confidently called it a nonsensical Bavarian project; the Hanoverian minister Johann Carl Bertram Stüve expressed the opinion of the kingdoms that the proposed national representation would have been half-heartedness without material content. He was the first to go so far as to recommend a return to the German Confederation. After all, the medium-sized states wanted neither Austria nor Prussia to dispose of them.
Six points program, summer 1850
The Prussian union project could have led to the actual establishment of the state in May 1850 after the Erfurt union parliament had adopted the draft constitution. However, the interest of the Prussian king had since subsided, also because the Union constitution was still too liberal for him. In addition to his delaying tactics, in the summer of 1850 only twelve of the former 26 union states wanted to realize the federal state immediately.
Also in the summer of 1850 Schwarzenberg made a six-point proposal to the Prussian ambassador in Vienna. In this version of the double alliance, he offered Austria and Prussia to exercise strong central power in Germany on an equal footing, together and without the other states. This federation would include the non-German areas of Austria and would have seventy million inhabitants, albeit without a representative body. There would also be a customs union. Prussia is even allowed to form a closer alliance with willing states, which should not, however, lead to a German Empire.
On July 8, Schwarzenberg specified that the narrower federation should not have had a directly elected parliament, but only a body of members of the individual state parliaments. The closer federation was not allowed to accept more members than the previous Erfurt Union, and Prussia should have recognized that the Erfurt Union constitution was impracticable. In the Prussian cabinet, Manteuffel was in favor of accepting the points, but his cabinet colleagues and Radowitz rejected them. Despite the current expansion of power in Prussia, one would have had to do without a nation state. The decision was made on July 17, 1850.
Return to the Confederation and Outlook
The conflict between Austria and Prussia came to a head in the autumn of 1850 . Under Russian pressure, Prussia had to give up union policy entirely, which was sealed in the Olomouc punctuation with Austria on November 29, 1850. In Olomouc Prussia negotiated a ministerial conference in Dresden, among other things . There Austria was still trying to join the federal government as a whole, while Prussia was hoping for a closer union in northern Germany. Ultimately, however, the two great powers fell out over the issue of federal chairmanship: Prussia had unsuccessfully demanded that Austria hold the chairmanship on an equal footing.
In the summer of 1851, for example, the old German Confederation was established without any major changes. The conservative great powers worked together again to fight the liberals and the national movement, for example through the Federal Reaction Resolution of August 23, 1851. However, the ongoing rivalry flared up in the 1850s. In the 1860s, Austria, Prussia and the other states faced each other again with similar differences of opinion about German unity.
After a war between Prussia and most other states , the German Confederation was dissolved in 1866. In the years that followed, the German Empire came into being under Prussian leadership, and in 1879 it formed a dual alliance with Austria . This military alliance of convenience is the structure in German-Austrian history that most closely corresponded to Schwarzenberg's Greater Austria plan, but also to Gagern's double alliance.
literature
- Manfred Luchterhandt : Austria-Hungary and the Prussian Union Policy 1848–1851. In: Gunther Mai (ed.): The Erfurt Union and the Erfurt Union Parliament 1850. Böhlau, Cologne et al. 2000, ISBN 3-412-02300-0 , pp. 81–110.
Web links
- Failure of a dream , Federal Agency for Civic Education
- The German Revolution and the Question of the New State , Deutsche Welle
supporting documents
- ^ Ernst Rudolf Huber : German constitutional history since 1789. Volume 2: The struggle for unity and freedom 1830 to 1850. 3rd, substantially revised edition. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart et al. 1988, ISBN 3-17-009741-5 , pp. 796-798.
- ^ Ernst Rudolf Huber: German constitutional history since 1789. Volume 2: The struggle for unity and freedom 1830 to 1850. 3rd, substantially revised edition. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart et al. 1988, ISBN 3-17-009741-5 , p. 799.
- ↑ Jürgen Angelow : The German Confederation. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2003, ISBN 3-534-15152-6 , p. 93.
- ^ Massimo Livi Bacci: Europe and its people. A population history. Beck, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-406-44700-7 , pp. 18-19.
- ^ Manfred Luchterhandt: Austria-Hungary and the Prussian Union Policy 1848-1851. In: Gunther Mai (ed.): The Erfurt Union and the Erfurt Union Parliament 1850. 2000, pp. 81–110, here pp. 86–87.
- ^ Manfred Luchterhandt: Austria-Hungary and the Prussian Union Policy 1848-1851. In: Gunther Mai (ed.): The Erfurt Union and the Erfurt Union Parliament 1850. 2000, pp. 81–110, here pp. 88–89.
- ^ Manfred Luchterhandt: Austria-Hungary and the Prussian Union Policy 1848-1851. In: Gunther Mai (ed.): The Erfurt Union and the Erfurt Union Parliament 1850. 2000, pp. 81–110, here pp. 90–92.
- ^ Manfred Luchterhandt: Austria-Hungary and the Prussian Union Policy 1848-1851. In: Gunther Mai (ed.): The Erfurt Union and the Erfurt Union Parliament 1850. 2000, pp. 81–110, here pp. 93–95.
- ↑ Jürgen Angelow: The German Confederation. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 2003, ISBN 3-534-15152-6 , pp. 93-94.
- ^ Manfred Luchterhandt: Austria-Hungary and the Prussian Union Policy 1848-1851. In: Gunther Mai (ed.): The Erfurt Union and the Erfurt Union Parliament 1850. 2000, pp. 81–110, here pp. 97–100.
- ^ Ernst Rudolf Huber: German constitutional history since 1789. Volume 2: The struggle for unity and freedom 1830 to 1850. 3rd, substantially revised edition. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart et al. 1988, ISBN 3-17-009741-5 , pp. 893-894.
- ^ Ernst Rudolf Huber: German constitutional history since 1789. Volume 2: The struggle for unity and freedom 1830 to 1850. 3rd, substantially revised edition. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart et al. 1988, ISBN 3-17-009741-5 , pp. 894-895.
- ^ Manfred Luchterhandt: Austria-Hungary and the Prussian Union Policy 1848-1851. In: Gunther Mai (Ed.): The Erfurt Union and the Erfurt Union Parliament 1850. 2000, pp. 81–110, here pp. 102–103.
- ^ Ernst Rudolf Huber: German constitutional history since 1789. Volume 2: The struggle for unity and freedom 1830 to 1850. 3rd, substantially revised edition. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart et al. 1988, ISBN 3-17-009741-5 , pp. 898-900.
- ^ Ernst Rudolf Huber: German constitutional history since 1789. Volume 2: The struggle for unity and freedom 1830 to 1850. 3rd, substantially revised edition. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart et al. 1988, ISBN 3-17-009741-5 , p. 901.
- ^ Ernst Rudolf Huber: German constitutional history since 1789. Volume 2: The struggle for unity and freedom 1830 to 1850. 3rd, substantially revised edition. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart et al. 1988, ISBN 3-17-009741-5 , pp. 901-902.