Before Bismarck, there was an idea: In 1815 'Germany' was not a country. It was 39 separate states loosely joined in the German Confederation — a talking-shop dominated by Austria, with no shared army, currency, or government.
The period 1815-48 is called the Vormärz. It is the story of an idea — that Germans should be one nation — slowly gaining strength underneath a political system built to crush it.
The idea of German nationalism did not come from politicians. It came from thinkers, students, and gymnastics clubs. Understanding where it came from matters, because it explains WHY it stayed a middle-class, cultural movement rather than a mass uprising — and why it was so easy for governments to suppress in the short term.
Where the idea came from
- Romanticism — writers and philosophers like Herder and Fichte argued that each Volk (people) had its own unique spirit, language and culture, expressed through folk tales, music and history. This gave Germans a sense of shared identity even without a shared state.
- The Napoleonic experience — French occupation (1806-13) had humiliated the German states but also modernised them and, ironically, taught Germans what unity and reform could look like. Resistance to Napoleon planted an early nationalist spark.
- Student and gymnastics societies — the Burschenschaften (university fraternities) and Turnvereine (gymnastics clubs) spread nationalist and liberal ideas among educated young men. The 1817 Wartburg Festival, where students burned reactionary books, showed this movement was alive but still tiny and elite.
- Liberalism — nationalism was tangled up with liberal demands for constitutions, a free press, and elected assemblies. Most nationalists in this period wanted a unified AND a liberal Germany, not unity for its own sake.
A crucial debate: how strong was nationalism really?: Historians disagree sharply here, and it is exactly the kind of debate a Paper 3 essay rewards.
One view: nationalism was a powerful, growing force by the 1840s — proven by the 1848 uprisings themselves.
The counter-view: it remained a minority, middle-class, intellectual movement — students, professors, lawyers — with little real support among peasants or workers, which is exactly why it collapsed so quickly after 1848. Which view you lean toward should shape your judgement on any 'to what extent' essay about this period.
The Vormärz monarchy: how Metternich kept the lid on
The dominant figure of this period was not a German at all — it was the Austrian chancellor Klemens von Metternich. He saw nationalism and liberalism as twin threats to the old monarchical order, and he built a system to strangle both.
| Tool of control | What it did |
|---|---|
| Carlsbad Decrees (1819) | Banned the Burschenschaften, imposed press censorship, and placed spies in universities after the murder of a reactionary writer by a nationalist student |
| German Confederation Diet | A weak assembly of princes' representatives at Frankfurt, controlled by Austria, designed to block any move toward real unity |
| Individual state rulers | Most German princes were absolute or near-absolute monarchs; only a few states (like Baden) had real constitutions |
| Censorship & police surveillance | Newspapers, universities and public meetings were closely watched to stamp out liberal or nationalist talk |
Cause and consequence angle: Notice the pattern: repression (Carlsbad Decrees) did not kill nationalism, it just pushed it underground and made it more radical by 1848. When you argue causation in a Paper 3 essay, show this kind of chain — a cause producing an unintended, delayed consequence — rather than a simple straight line.
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While Metternich's Austria tried to freeze Germany in place, one German state was quietly growing stronger: Prussia. Its rise in this period was economic and administrative, not military or political — and that distinction matters a lot for how you judge Prussia's importance before 1848.
Why Prussia was pulling ahead by the 1840s
Territory after 1815
The Congress of Vienna gave Prussia the Rhineland — rich in coal, iron and industry. This gave Prussia an economic base no other German state could match.
Administrative efficiency
Prussia had a strong, professional civil service and a well-organised army, giving it a reputation for order and competence that impressed other German states.
Industrial growth
Prussia industrialised faster than most German states in the 1830s-40s — railways, coal mines and factories expanded, especially in the Rhineland and Ruhr.
The Zollverein (from 1834)
A customs union removing tariffs between member states, led by Prussia. It gave Prussia enormous soft power over the German economy — see below.
Prussia rose through coal, cash and customs — not conquest — before 1848.
What the Zollverein actually was: The Zollverein, founded in 1834 and led by Prussia, abolished internal tariffs between member states and set a common external tariff. By the 1840s most German states except Austria had joined.
This meant goods could move across German borders without tolls — a huge boost to trade, industry and the merchant middle class who had long wanted exactly this kind of practical unity.
Zollverein AS economic unity
- Created a genuine free-trade zone across most of Germany
- Gave ordinary merchants and manufacturers a taste of what a united Germany could offer
- Was purely practical — states joined for money, not nationalist feeling
- Deliberately excluded Austria, weakening Vienna's influence over German trade
Zollverein AS a step toward POLITICAL unity
- Prussia did not intend it as a nationalist project at first — it was about revenue and trade
- It had no political or military dimension — states kept their own armies, laws and rulers
- But it habituated German states to cooperating under Prussian leadership
- It made a future 'Prussian-led' unification economically logical by the 1860s
The historical debate: was the Zollverein a cause of unification?: This is one of the most argued points in this whole regional study, and a classic 'to what extent' essay claim.
For: the Zollverein built Prussian economic dominance, excluded Austria, and created habits of cooperation that made 1871 unification under Prussia easier.
Against: the Zollverein was a customs arrangement with zero political ambition in the 1830s-40s; unification in 1871 came from wars and diplomacy (Bismarck) decades later, not economic logic alone. A strong essay weighs both and reaches its own judgement rather than just asserting one side.
It is worth being precise about the limits of Prussia's rise in this period. By 1848, Prussia was economically strong but politically it was still an absolute monarchy like the others — King Frederick William IV had no intention of leading a liberal, unified Germany. Prussia's ECONOMIC leadership came decades before its POLITICAL leadership of unification.
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In February 1848 revolution broke out in Paris and swept across Europe within weeks — Vienna, Berlin, most German and Italian states, and the Habsburg Empire all saw uprisings. It looked, briefly, like the age of Metternich was over.
New ideas unleashed: The 1848 revolutions were driven by a mix of demands that had been building for decades: liberal constitutions, national unity, and — for the first time on a large scale — early socialism and demands for workers' rights, sharpened by a recent economic crisis and poor harvests (1845-47).
In German states, crowds forced princes to grant constitutions and free elections almost overnight. In Italy, revolts broke out from Sicily to Venice, and even the Pope briefly seemed to back reform.
Who actually made the revolutions happen
- The middle classes — lawyers, professors, doctors, merchants — provided the leadership, ideas and organisation. They wanted constitutions, a free press, and (in Germany) national unity.
- Intellectuals and students — many of the same Burschenschaften networks from the Vormärz supplied the delegates who met at the Frankfurt Parliament (May 1848), an elected assembly trying to write a constitution for a united Germany.
- Urban workers and artisans — joined the street protests, often for economic reasons (unemployment, hunger, guild protection from industrial competition) rather than nationalism — their goals often diverged sharply from the middle-class leaders.
- Peasants — mostly wanted an end to remaining feudal dues and obligations; once these were granted in many states, peasant support for the revolution often evaporated.
Why this alliance was fragile — the key to explaining 1848's collapse: The middle classes wanted ORDER plus liberal reform. Workers increasingly wanted social and economic change, even hinting at socialism. Once middle-class liberals saw crowds of armed workers on the streets, many got frightened of revolution going further than they wanted — and started looking to the old monarchies to restore order. This split is one of the single most important explanations for why 1848 failed.
The Frankfurt Parliament and its problem
The Frankfurt Parliament (May 1848 - May 1849) was the great symbol of German nationalist hope: an elected, all-German assembly trying to design a unified, constitutional nation. But it had no army, no tax power, and no way to enforce its decisions — it could only persuade existing rulers to cooperate.
It also faced an impossible choice known as the Grossdeutsch/Kleindeutsch question: a 'Greater Germany' including German-speaking Austria, or a 'Lesser Germany' led by Prussia and excluding Austria. In March 1849 the Parliament chose Kleindeutschland and offered the imperial crown to the Prussian king, Frederick William IV — who refused it, famously saying he would not accept 'a crown from the gutter' offered by an elected assembly rather than by fellow princes.
Political impact: the return of autocracy
| What happened | Why it mattered |
|---|---|
| Frederick William IV refused the imperial crown (1849) | Killed the Frankfurt Parliament's project; showed monarchs would not accept legitimacy 'from below' |
| Austrian and Prussian armies crushed remaining uprisings (1849) | Old military power reasserted itself once initial shock wore off |
| Frankfurt Parliament dissolved (May 1849) | The liberal-nationalist experiment in an elected all-German government ended in failure |
| Punctation of Olmütz (1850) | Austria forced Prussia to abandon its own rival unification scheme (the Erfurt Union), reasserting Austrian dominance over Germany |
| Most states withdrew constitutions or reduced their scope | Autocracy was largely re-established, though a few gains (like Prussia's own limited 1850 constitution) survived |
Significance angle for your essay: Even though 1848 'failed' politically within a year, argue its SIGNIFICANCE for the longer story: it proved nationalism had real popular energy, discredited a purely idealistic/liberal route to unity, and taught a generation (including the future Bismarck) that unification would need 'blood and iron' — real power politics — not parliamentary debate.