Germanic Confederation

The Germanic Confédération ( Deutscher Bund ) was a confederation of German States of 1815 with 1866. It marked one of the preliminary stages of the national union of Germany.

After the formal dissolution of the Holy Germanic Roman Empire in 1803, Napoleon had set up in 1806 a Confédération of the Rhine ( Rheinbund ) gathering various German States combined with him, excluding Prussia as well as Austria.

After the final defeat of Napoleon with Waterloo in 1815, the German States were linked to form the Germanic Confederation - an organization rather vague and deprived of capacities, especially because the two large rivals, the Austrian empire and the Prussia, feared the domination of the other. The German confederal Act, the constitution of the new entity, was adopted with the Congrès of Vienna on June 8th, 1815. Starting from 1834, efforts were made to improve the confederation with creation of a customs union, the Zollverein.

In 1848 - 1849, the liberals fomented a revolution to unify Germany but they failed. The king Frederic-Guillaume IV of Prussia refused to receive the German crown which offered to him the Parlement of Frankfurt. This failure pushed many Germans to emigrate, in particular towards the the United States. During the American Civil War, the US government incited German soldiers to integrate the army of the Union, against the ground promise. Today, 22% of the Americans have German ancestors.

In the war austro-Prussian of 1866, the empire of Austria and its allies were demolished by Prussia and its allies. The Confederation broke and German-speaking Austria was definitively excluded from future unified Germany.

The Germanic Confederation was followed in 1867 of the Confédération of Germany of North, dominated by the Prussia.

Member States

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