In 1871 the North German Confederation was transformed into the German Empire,
but the new central government in Berlin never managed to wield
total authority over every part of the country. Germany was a federation that
contained a plethora of princedoms beneath the imperial government,
so then how much power did those sub-states have, and who was really running the show?
Just how did the German Empire as a whole actually work?
Well, the Empire was dominated by its largest state, the Kingdom of Prussia, which through a
combination of war and deft diplomacy had united Germany over the course of the decade before 1871.
The other 24 states each had varying degrees of autonomy,
but as a general rule, the smaller states of the north were more dependent on Prussia,
while the three larger states of the south, most notably Bavaria, made more of their own decisions.
The core institutions of the central government were derived from the
earlier German Confederation, headed by Austria, as well as from the North
German Confederation which was created by Prussia after it defeated Austria in 1866.
Its mastermind was Prussia’s Minister-President Otto von Bismarck who after unification,
as Reichskanzler of the German Empire would effectively rule Germany for nearly 30 years.
Of course, the man who was formally in charge was Prussia’s King, Wilhelm I,
and Bismarck designed the German constitution so that whomever was King of Prussia,
which made up about ⅔ of the Empire, was also the German Emperor by definition.
In theory, the imperial title only made the Kaiser a first-among-equals with his fellow
royals and other sovereigns in the empire. The November Treaties of 1870, reserved certain rights
to the monarchs of Germany’s southern states in exchange for them accepting the Empire’s creation.
The south generally was, and is, much more culturally similar to Austria than to Prussia,
which made them more hesitant to sign up to unification.
Also, Prussia couldn’t crush them quite as easily.
The region was primarily Catholic, in contrast to the Protestant north as well.
As for the actual concessions, Bavaria specifically could maintain its own army,
and almost complete control over its domestic policies: from railroads,
to taxation, and issues of culture.
Similar deals were made with the other states.
In reality though, the Kaiser would be much more of a political force than
some of the south Germans might have hoped, but critically he only needed
to be as personally involved in governing as he wanted to be.
The office of Chancellor, essentially Prime Minister,
was fully within the gift of the Emperor:
he could give anyone he wanted the job, and Wilhelm I was quite happy to leave the reigns
of power in Bismarck’s hands. They were both traditionally aristocratic men in outlook,
almost ideological soulmates, and essentially Bismarck wrote a constitution that put virtually
all power in the hands of whomever could maintain the Emperor’s trust.
His trademark approach to politics, Realpolitik, would serve him and the Kaiser well.
He was clever about asserting his control. The German Empire was never an autocracy on paper,
and the so-called Iron Chancellor set up a number of institutions that at least nominally,
and occasionally practically, did limit executive power. The Empire had two houses of Parliament:
the elected Reichstag and the princely Bundesrat.
The Reichstag was a 390-member assembly elected through universal (male) suffrage,
a truly extraordinary idea for the time. Britain wouldn’t introduce it until 1918.
Universal suffrage was a cynical move by Bismarck though,
and also one that worked out really well for him.
The Reichstag gave Germany a veneer of liberalism:
members were immune from prosecution and could speak their mind on the floor, they
also were explicitly not representatives of their states’ sometimes quite autocratic governments,
but of the people directly. The problem? Those elected representatives had very little power.
Half the time they wouldn’t even show up because their pay was so poor,
and when they did, they challenged the government very little.
The Reichstag was often split between two extremes: with loyal supporters of Bismarckian,
pragmatic, oligarchy, on the one side, and leftist social revolutionaries on the other, which left
the Reichstag unwilling to or incapable of working as an independent counter to executive authority.
It was the upper house, the Bundesrat where real power lied.
Not surprisingly, it was chaired by Bismarck.
61 votes were distributed among the state governments, not the people,
of the Empire, based very roughly on state size.
The Bundesrat maintained 8 permanent committees,
each with jurisdiction over a certain critical aspect of government,
as well as many temporary ones that popped up to respond to matters of the day.
Of course, Prussia had the most power, with 17 votes (second place: Bavaria,
had only six), and Prussia’s minister-president (who was almost always the imperial chancellor
as well) was guaranteed a seat on every single one of the permanent committees,
as well as the permanent chairmanship of the Bundesrat as a whole.
Those positions, along with Prussia’s economic and military might, and the Kaiser’s blessing,
allowed Bismarck to come very, very close to being a one-man dictator of Germany.
In theory the Reichstag gave the people a voice, and the Bundesrat
ensured that every prince from Brunswick to Baden, to the King of Prussia himself,
had a say on the direction of the empire, but whatever guise of collective consensus
there may have been, during his career Bismarck was always pulling the strings.
That said, while the Reichstag was weak,
the Kaiser was always theoretically a powerful force in his own right;
what changed was how willing any particular Kaiser was to use that power.
Wilhelm I, again, was happy to leave things to Bismarck, and so until Wilhelm's death in 1888,
the Chancellor may as well have been the Emperor for most practical purposes. The Kaiser,
and therefore de facto Bismarck was immune from prosecution,
he could convene and dissolve parliament, he was head of state,
and his signature was necessary to bring any treaty into force.
Members of the Bundesrat committees on the Army and the Navy were officially appointed
by the Kaiser, and in addition to controlling all of Prussia,
he had full authority over the German colonial empire,
and the province of Alsace-Lorraine which had been taken from France in 1871.
The Kaiser was also commander-in-chief of the German armed forces, though the
armies of Saxony, Württemberg and Bavaria retained some autonomy.
Control over Prussia gave the Emperor direct control over Prussia’s 17 Bundesrat votes,
not to mention another 3 he got from ruling Alsace-Lorraine,
and one more via a treaty with Waldeck.
With those, whoever controlled Prussia could
effectively prevent almost any legislation from passing,
and it allowed the Kasier, or a Chancellor acting in his stead,
to veto any constitutional amendment.
Like for example one that would change any of what I’ve just listed;
it only took fourteen votes to stop one in its tracks.
So then the German Empire was something close to a perfect system,
certainly from Bismarck’s perspective,
but it did have a big flaw: mortality.
The Empire’s constitution was built around the stable relationship between Otto von Bismarck
and Wilhelm I, but his son, who died after only 99 days on the throne,
so more importantly his grandson Wilhelm II was quite a different character.
If the elder Wilhlem, through Bismarck,
was measured and pragmatic, Wilhelm II was egotistical and impulsive.
He resented Bismarck: the power he had accrued,
and his view that a monarch should be a figurehead, not an active executive.
The new Kaiser dismissed Bismarck in 1890,
using Social Democratic victories in the Reichstag as a convenient excuse,
and went on to govern the empire much more directly than his grandfather.
Bismarck designed a system that was meant to be ran by one man,
and when that one man was as capable as himself, the empire thrived. But, when the man
manipulating the system was as questionably competent as Wilhelm II turned out to be
(most notably he reversed Bismarck’s work to foster peace among the European
great powers and adopted a much more belligerent foreign policy)
it did not.
Belligerent foreign policy would go on to get another German regime into heaps of more trouble.
You can find out exactly how Germany was occupied and divided after WW2 in the video to the left,
and as always, I’ve been James and thank you for watching Look Back History.