Hapsburgs Unable to Unite Their Domains

Those who hoped to see the unity of Germany realized by Austria were singularly mistaken about the nature of that power.

Continuing Unification of Germany,
our selection from Foundations of Modern Europe by Emil Reich published in 1908. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages. The selection is presented in four easy 5 minute installments.

Previously in Unification of Germany.

Time: 1871
Place: Versailles,

The Germans, while politically paralyzed and unable to shake off the torpor that had fallen upon them since the end of the Thirty Years’ War in 1648, had yet one great ideal in common. While Germany was practically a mere geographical expression, Deutschthum (“Germandom”) as they call it themselves, soon began to exert itself. To put it in plain words, the unity of the Germans was, in contrast with that of the English and the French, at first not a political unity, but an intellectual one. They were politically as diverse as if they had been total foreigners to one another. But intellectually, in the second half of the eighteenth century, they had begun to learn the immense value of their language in scientific and literary works, and so to feel a consciousness of German nationality which, although still lacking political union, yet prepared the way for it. In this sense the history of German literature is even more important to the historian than is the history of French or English literature. The works in which for the first time the unparalleled resources of the German language were made use of were the greatest possible incentive to a feeling of nationality in Germany.

Even up to the middle of the eighteenth century all the most valuable works published in Germany were still written in Latin or in French. When, however, in the second half of that century, Lessing, Herder, Goethe, Wieland, Schiller, and other German writers manifested the power of the German idiom, its adaptability to prose and poetry alike, its capacity for the highest philosophical researches as well as for the lowest comedy, its force in narrative, didactic and descriptive style alike—when all this became clear to the enthusiastic readers of these authors, the Germans felt that a new era had begun in their history. As in the sixteenth century the spiritual effect of the Reformation had brought home to the Germans their spiritual unity, so in the second half of the eighteenth century and in the first half of the nineteenth the constantly increasing number of classical works written in German impressed upon the Germans the fact that they were fast becoming united intellectually.

The military disasters that fell upon the Germans in 1805-1807 could not but impart to every German a feeling that a nation cannot rest with a unity that is only intellectual and spiritual. More than that was needed. Political unity was required, and it now became not only a dream, but a practical interest, for all Germans to consolidate their political edifice in order to reap the full benefit of their spiritual and intellectual unity. At that time the question really was, not whether the political unity of Germany should be attempted—for on that point all German-speaking nations were at one—but which German power should realize the unity? The house of Hapsburg played, even in 1815, a considerable role in the so-called German Confederation; and until 1850 the King of Prussia, the only rival of the Hapsburgs, could not secure any ascendency or hegemony in that Confederation; and thus it was that many expected the unity of Germany to come from Austria. The problem, therefore, which the Germans had to solve in the second half of the nineteenth century was, whether their political unity should come from South Germany or Austria, whence had come their spiritual and intellectual unity, or whether it should come from North Germany or Prussia, which had hitherto done little or nothing for the intellectual regeneration of the nation except the establishment of a few universities, and which in 1806 and 1807 had proved itself to be utterly helpless, disorganized, and decadent. Those who hoped to see the unity of Germany realized by Austria were singularly mistaken about the nature of that power. The Hapsburgs, for reasons that are not quite clear, have never been able to unite any of the nations that have come under their rule in a real union. Austria (or rather the Hapsburgs) has at all times been unsuccessful in its attempts at bringing about that political and national unity which in the latter half of the nineteenth century many a patriotic German hoped to see introduced into his own country.

In order to understand this important point very clearly, we must hark back for a moment to the times of a struggle that took place long before the period here treated, but the influence of which is clearly evident at the present day. We mean the famous Silesian wars, which, with the interruption of a few years (1748 I756) raged from 1740 to 1763. In 1741 Frederick the Great succeeded, by one victory, in wresting from Austria the large and fertile Province of Silesia. Prussia, which obtained the heterogeneous elements of three portions of Poland in 1772, 1793, and 179 5, was yet rich in her German Provinces, especially after the Congress of Vienna in 1815, when she obtained large provinces on the Rhine; and her national unity was infinitely superior to that of Austria. She occupied a very considerable part of Germany proper, had German people as subjects, and a unity of language and also largely of religion; all that she lacked was some one great statesman who might realize the old hope. On the other hand, Austria’s ethnography was a bar to any statesmen who should have tried to realize the unity of Germany. Prussia, indeed, wanted great men; Austria could not have done much even with the greatest man at the helm. Moreover, Austria had neither a powerfully organized and united army, nor a regular and well-stocked exchequer. Prussia, through the reforms introduced by non-Prussian statesmen—such as Stein, Hardenberg, Scharnhorst, and Altenstein—from 1807, had created a system of national education both in law- and high-schools, by works both scientific and literary; and in her army as well as in her national revenue she had made herself highly efficient.

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