Editing Unification of Germany (section)

=== ''Vormärz'' ===
{{Main|Vormärz}}
The period of Austrian and Prussian police-states and vast censorship between the Congress of Vienna and the [[Revolutions of 1848 in Germany]] later became widely known as the ''[[Vormärz]]'' ("before March"), referring to March 1848. During this period, European liberalism gained momentum; the agenda included economic, social, and political issues. Most European liberals in the ''Vormärz'' sought unification under nationalist principles, promoted the transition to capitalism, and sought the expansion of male suffrage, among other issues. Their "radicalization" depended upon where they stood on the spectrum of [[Universal suffrage|male suffrage]]: the wider the definition of suffrage, the more radical they had the potential to be.{{Sfn|Sperber|1993}}

The surge of German [[nationalism]], stimulated by the experience of Germans in the Napoleonic period and initially allied with [[liberalism]], shifted political, social, and cultural relationships within the German states.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Namier |first=Lewis |title=Avenues of History |date=1952 |publisher=Macmillan |location=New York |page=34 |oclc=422057575 |ol=6114891M |author-link=Lewis Namier}}</ref> In this context, one can detect nationalism's roots in the experience of Germans in the Napoleonic period.{{Sfn|Nipperdey|1996|pp=1–3}} Furthermore, implicit and sometimes explicit promises made during the [[German Campaign of 1813]] engendered an expectation of [[popular sovereignty]] and widespread participation in the political process, promises that largely went unfulfilled once peace had been achieved.{{Sfn|Sheehan|1989|pp=407–408, 444}}

==== Emergence of liberal nationalism and conservative response ====
[[File:Wartburg demonstration 1817.jpg|thumb|alt=students carrying flags and banners march to the castle on the hill|In October, 1817, approximately 500 students rallied at [[Wartburg Castle]], where [[Martin Luther]] had sought refuge over three centuries earlier, to demonstrate in favor of national unification. Wartburg was chosen for its symbolic connection to German national character. Contemporary colored wood engraving<ref>{{Harvnb|Sheehan|1989|pp=460–470}}; [http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_image.cfm?image_id=426&language=english German Historical Institute]</ref>]]
[[File:Zug-zum-hambacher-schloss 1-1200x825.jpg|thumb|alt=men and women marching to the ruined castle on top of a hill|Pro-nationalist participants march to the ruins of Hambach Castle in 1832. Students and some professionals, and their spouses, predominated. They carried the flag of the underground ''Burschenschaft'', which later became the basis of the flag of modern Germany.]]
[[File:Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz.jpg|thumb|upright=1.3|alt=Men sitting around a table. Most of them are muzzled, some are gagged as well, some have blindfolds on, and some have their ears muffled.|A German caricature mocking the [[Carlsbad Decrees]], which suppressed freedom of expression]]
Despite considerable conservative reaction, ideas of unity joined with notions of popular sovereignty in German-speaking lands. The ''[[Burschenschaft]]'' student organizations and popular demonstrations, such as those held at [[Wartburg]] Castle in October 1817, contributed to a growing sense of unity among German speakers of Central Europe.{{Sfn|Sheehan|1989|pp=442–445}}

At the [[Wartburg Festival]] in 1817 the first real movements among students were formed – fraternities and student organizations emerged. The colors black, red and gold were symbolic of this. Agitation by student organizations led conservative leaders such as [[Klemens Wenzel, Prince von Metternich]], to fear the rise of nationalist sentiment.{{Sfn|Sheehan|1989|pp=407–408, 444}}

The assassination of German dramatist [[August von Kotzebue]] in March 1819 by a radical student seeking unification was followed on 20 September 1819 by the proclamation of the [[Carlsbad Decrees]], which hindered intellectual leadership of the nationalist movement.{{Sfn|Sheehan|1989|pp=407–408, 444}} Metternich was able to harness conservative outrage at the assassination to consolidate legislation that would further limit the press and constrain the rising liberal and nationalist movements. Accordingly, these decrees drove the ''Burschenschaften'' underground, restricted the publication of nationalist materials, expanded censorship of the press and private correspondence, and limited academic speech by prohibiting university professors from encouraging nationalist discussion. The decrees were the subject of [[Johann Joseph von Görres]]'s pamphlet ''Teutschland [archaic: Deutschland] und die Revolution'' (''Germany and the Revolution'') (1820), in which he concluded that it was both impossible and undesirable to repress the free utterance of public opinion by reactionary measures.{{Sfn|Sheehan|1989|pp=442–445}}

The [[Hambach Festival]] (''Hambacher Fest'') in May 1832 was attended by a crowd of more than 30,000.{{Sfn|Sheehan|1989|pp=610–613}} Promoted as a [[county fair]],{{Sfn|Sheehan|1989|p=610}} its participants celebrating fraternity, liberty, and national unity. Celebrants gathered in the town below and marched to the ruins of [[Hambach Castle]] on the heights above the small town of Hambach, in the Palatinate province of Bavaria. Carrying flags, beating drums, and singing, the participants took the better part of the morning and mid-day to arrive at the castle grounds, where they listened to speeches by nationalist orators from across the political spectrum. The overall content of the speeches suggested a fundamental difference between the German nationalism of the 1830s and the French nationalism of the [[July Revolution]]: the focus of German nationalism lay in the education of the people; once the populace was educated as to what was needed, it would reach those goals. The Hambach rhetoric emphasized the overall peaceable nature of German nationalism: the point was not to build barricades, a very "French" form of nationalism, but to build emotional bridges between groups.{{Sfn|Sheehan|1989|p=612}} As he had done in 1819, after the [[August von Kotzebue|Kotzebue]] assassination, Metternich used the popular demonstration at Hambach to push conservative social policy. The "Six Articles" of 28 June 1832 above all else reaffirmed the principle of monarchical authority. On 5 July, the Frankfurt Diet voted for an additional 10 articles, which reiterated existing rules on censorship, restricted political organizations, and limited other public activity. Furthermore, the member states agreed to send military assistance to any government threatened by unrest.{{Sfn|Sheehan|1989|p=613}} [[Karl Philipp von Wrede|Prince Wrede]] led half of the Bavarian army to the Palatinate to "subdue" the province. Several hapless Hambach speakers were arrested, tried and imprisoned; one, Karl Heinrich Brüggemann (1810–1887), a law student and representative of the secretive ''Burschenschaft'', was sent to Prussia, where he was first condemned to death, but later pardoned.{{Sfn|Sheehan|1989|pp=610–613}}

Crucially, both the Wartburg rally in 1817 and the Hambach Festival in 1832 had lacked any clear-cut vision for unification. At Hambach, the positions of the many speakers illustrated their disparate agendas. Held together only by the idea of unification, their notions of how to achieve this did not include specific plans but instead rested on the nebulous idea that the ''Volk'' (the people), if properly educated, would bring about unification on their own. Grand speeches, flags, exuberant students, and picnic lunches did not translate into a new political, bureaucratic, or administrative apparatus. While many spoke about the need for a constitution, no such document emerged from the key nationalist rallies. In 1848, nationalists sought to remedy that problem.{{Sfn|Sheehan|1989|pp=610–615}}

==== Economy and the customs union ====
[[File:1834customstarrifs.jpg|thumb|upright=1.3|alt=drawing of a wagon loaded with barrels, covered with a tarp, stuck between two border signs, the driver paying a fee to cross. Caption reads "German cartoon on customs prior to the Zollverein, 1834".|This drawing offered a satirical commentary on the prevalence of toll barriers in the many German states, circa 1834. Some states were so small that transporters loaded and reloaded their cargoes two and three times a day.]]
Several other factors complicated the rise of [[nationalism]] in the German states. The man-made factors included political rivalries between members of the German confederation, particularly between the Austrians and the Prussians, and socio-economic competition among the commercial and merchant interests, and the old land-owning and aristocratic interests. Natural factors included widespread drought in the early 1830s, and again in the 1840s, and a food crisis in the 1840s. Further complications emerged as a result of a shift in industrialization and manufacturing; as people sought jobs, they left their villages and small towns to work during the week in cities, returning for a day and a half on weekends.{{Sfn|Blackbourn|1994}}

The economic, social and cultural dislocation of ordinary people, the economic hardship of an economy in transition, and the pressures of meteorological disasters all contributed to growing problems in Central Europe.{{Sfn|Sperber|1993|p=3}} The failure of most of the governments to deal with the food crisis of the mid-1840s, caused by the [[Phytophthora infestans|potato blight]] (related to the [[Great Famine (Ireland)|Great Irish Famine]]) and several seasons of bad weather, encouraged many to think that the rich and powerful had no interest in their problems. Those in authority were concerned about the growing unrest, political and social agitation among the working classes, and the disaffection of the [[intelligentsia]]. No amount of censorship, fines, imprisonment, or banishment, it seemed, could stem the criticism. Furthermore, it was becoming increasingly clear that both Austria and Prussia wanted to be the leaders in any resulting unification; each would inhibit the drive of the other to take the lead in unification.{{Sfn|Blackbourn|1998|p=127}}

Formation of the ''[[Zollverein]]'', an institution key to unifying the German states economically, helped to create a larger sense of economic unification. Initially conceived by the Prussian Finance Minister [[Hans, Count von Bülow]], as a Prussian [[customs union]] in 1818, the ''Zollverein'' linked the many Prussian and [[Hohenzollern]] territories. Over the ensuing thirty years (and more) other German states joined. The Union helped to reduce protectionist barriers between the German states, especially improving the transport of raw materials and finished goods, making it both easier to move goods across territorial borders and less costly to buy, transport, and sell raw materials. This was particularly important for the emerging industrial centers, most of which were located in the Prussian regions of the [[Rhineland]], the [[Saar River|Saar]], and the [[Ruhr (river)|Ruhr]] valleys.<ref>{{Harvnb|Sheehan|1989|pp=465–467}}; {{Harvnb|Blackbourn|1998|pp=106–107}}</ref> States more distant from the coast joined the Customs Union earlier. Not being a member mattered more for the states of south Germany, since the external tariff of the Customs Union prevented customs-free access to the coast (which gave access to international markets). Thus, by 1836, all states to the south of Prussia had joined the Customs Union, except Austria.<ref name="keller">{{Cite book |last1=Keller |first1=Wolfgang |title=The Trade Impact of the Zollverein |last2=Shiue |first2=Carol |date=5 March 2013 |publisher=University of Colorado |location=Boulder |pages=10, 18}}</ref>

In contrast, the coastal states already had barrier free access to international trade and did not want consumers and producers burdened with the import duties they would pay if they were within the Zollverein customs border. Hanover on the north coast formed its own customs union – the "Tax Union" or [[Steuerverein]] – in 1834 with Brunswick and with Oldenburg in 1836. The external tariffs on finished goods and overseas raw materials were below the rates of the Zollverein. Brunswick joined the Zollverein Customs Union in 1842, while Hanover and Oldenburg finally joined in 1854<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Ploeckl |first=Florian |date=August 2010 |title=The Zollverein and the Formation of a Customs Union |url=http://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/economics/history/paper84/ploeckl84.pdf |journal=Economic and Social History Series, Nuffield College, Oxford, Nuffield College |issue=Discussion Paper 84 |page=23}}</ref> After the Austro-Prussian war of 1866, Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg were annexed by Prussia and thus annexed also to the Customs Union, while the two Mecklenburg states and the city states of Hamburg and Bremen joined later because they were reliant on international trade. The Mecklenburgs joined in 1867, while Bremen and [[Accession of Hamburg to the German Customs Union (Zollverein)|Hamburg joined in 1888]].<ref name="keller" />

==== Roads and railways ====
By the early 19th century, German roads had deteriorated to an appalling extent. Travelers, both foreign and local, complained bitterly about the state of the ''Heerstraßen'', the military roads previously maintained for easy troop movement. As German states ceased to be a military crossroads, however, the roads improved; the length of hard–surfaced roads in Prussia increased from {{convert|3800|km|mi|sp=us}} in 1816 to {{convert|16600|km|mi|sp=us}} in 1852, helped in part by the invention of [[macadam]]. By 1835, [[Heinrich von Gagern]] wrote that roads were the "veins and arteries of the body politic..." and predicted that they would promote freedom, independence and prosperity.{{Sfn|Sheehan|1989|p=465}}As people moved around, they came into contact with others, on trains, at hotels, in restaurants, and for some, at fashionable resorts such as the spa in [[Kurhaus (Baden-Baden)|Baden-Baden]]. Water transportation also improved. The blockades on the Rhine had been removed by Napoleon's orders, but by the 1820s, steam engines freed riverboats from the cumbersome system of men and animals that towed them upstream. By 1846, 180 steamers plied German rivers and [[Lake Constance]], and a network of canals extended from the [[Danube]], the [[Weser]], and the [[Elbe]] rivers.{{Sfn|Sheehan|1989|p=466}}

As important as these improvements were, they could paled in comparison to the impact of the railway. German economist [[Friedrich List]] called the railways and the Customs Union "Siamese Twins", emphasizing their important mutually beneficial relationship.{{Sfn|Sheehan|1989|pp=467–468}} He was not alone: the poet [[August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben]] wrote a poem in which he extolled the virtues of the ''Zollverein'', which he began with a list of commodities that had contributed more to German unity than politics or diplomacy.{{Sfn|Sheehan|1989|p=502}} Historians of the [[German Empire]] later regarded the railways as the first indicator of a unified state; the patriotic novelist, [[Wilhelm Raabe]], wrote: "The German empire was founded with the construction of the first railway..."{{Sfn|Sheehan|1989|p=469}} Not everyone greeted the ''iron monster'' with enthusiasm. The Prussian king [[Frederick William III]] saw no advantage in traveling from Berlin to [[Potsdam]] a few hours faster, and Metternich refused to ride it at all. Others wondered if the railways were an "evil" that threatened the landscape: [[Nikolaus Lenau]]'s 1838 poem ''An den Frühling'' (''To Spring'') bemoaned the way trains destroyed the pristine quietude of German forests.{{Sfn|Sheehan|1989|p=458}}

The [[Bavarian Ludwig Railway]], which was the first passenger or freight rail line in the German lands, connected [[Nuremberg]] and [[Fürth]] in 1835. Although it was {{convert|6|km|mi|sp=us}} long and only operated in daylight, it proved both profitable and popular. Within three years, {{convert|141|km|mi|sp=us}} of track had been laid, by 1840, {{convert|462|km|mi|sp=us}}, and by 1860, {{convert|11157|km|mi|sp=us}}. Lacking a geographically central organizing feature (such as a national capital), the rails were laid in webs, linking towns and markets within regions, regions within larger regions, and so on. As the rail network expanded, it became cheaper to transport goods: in 1840, 18 ''[[Pfennig]]s'' per ton per kilometer and in 1870, five ''Pfennigs''. The effects of the railway were immediate. For example, raw materials could travel up and down the [[Ruhr]] Valley without having to unload and reload. Railway lines stumulated economic activity by creating demand for commodities and by facilitating commerce. In 1850, inland shipping carried three times more freight than railroads; by 1870, the situation was reversed, and railroads carried four times more. Rail travel changed how cities looked and how people traveled. Its impact reached throughout the social order, affecting the highest born to the lowest. Although some of the outlying German provinces were not serviced by rail until the 1890s, the majority of the population, manufacturing centers, and production centers were linked to the rail network by 1865.{{Sfn|Sheehan|1989|pp=466–467}}

==== Geography, patriotism and language ====
[[File:Maas memel etsch belt.svg|thumb|German linguistic area (green) and political boundaries around 1841 (grey) in comparison to the text's geographic references (bold blue)]]
As travel became easier, faster, and less expensive, Germans started to see unity in factors ''other'' than their language. The [[Brothers Grimm]], who compiled a massive dictionary known as ''The Grimm'', also assembled a compendium of folk tales and fables, which highlighted the story-telling parallels between different regions.{{Efn|They traced the roots of the German language, and drew its different lines of development together.<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Brothers Grimm online |url=http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm.html#jointpublication |website= Grimm Brothers' Home Page |access-date=April 27, 2023}}</ref>}} [[Karl Baedeker]] wrote guidebooks to different cities and regions of Central Europe, indicating places to stay, sites to visit, and giving a short history of castles, battlefields, famous buildings, and famous people. His guides also included distances, roads to avoid, and hiking paths to follow.<ref>{{in lang|de}} Hans Lulfing,  ''Baedecker, Karl'', ''Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB)''. Band 1, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, 1953, p. 516 f.</ref>

The words of [[August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben]] expressed not only the linguistic unity of the German people but also their geographic unity. In ''Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles'', officially called ''[[Das Lied der Deutschen]]'' ("''The Song of the Germans''"), Fallersleben called upon sovereigns throughout the German states to recognize the unifying characteristics of the German people.<ref>{{in lang|de}} Peter Rühmkorf, Heinz Ludwig Arnold, ''Das Lied der Deutschen'' Göttingen: Wallstein, 2001, {{ISBN|3-8924-4463-3}}, pp. 11–14.</ref> Such other patriotic songs as "[[Die Wacht am Rhein]]" ("The Watch on the Rhine") by [[Max Schneckenburger]] began to focus attention on geographic space, not limiting "Germanness" to a common language. Schneckenburger wrote "The Watch on the Rhine" in a specific patriotic response to French assertions that the Rhine was France's "natural" eastern boundary. In the refrain, "Dear fatherland, dear fatherland, put your mind to rest / The watch stands true on the Rhine", and in other such patriotic poetry as Nicholaus Becker's "Das Rheinlied" ("The Rhine"), Germans were called upon to defend their territorial homeland. In 1807, [[Alexander von Humboldt]] argued that national character reflected geographic influence, linking landscape to people. Concurrent with this idea, movements to preserve old fortresses and historic sites emerged, and these particularly focused on the Rhineland, the site of so many confrontations with France and Spain.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Dominick |first=Raymond III |title=The Environmental Movement in Germany |date=1992 |publisher=Indiana University |isbn=0-2533-1819-X |location=Bloomington |pages=3–41 |ol=1549008M}}</ref>