18 Facts About German Confederation

1.

German Confederation was an association of 39 predominantly German-speaking sovereign states in Central Europe.

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2.

German Confederation, on the one hand, was a strong alliance between its member states because federal law was superior to state law .

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3.

Additionally, the German Confederation had been established for eternity and was impossible to dissolve, with no member states being able to leave it and no new member being able join without universal consent in the Federal Convention.

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4.

On top of that, the functioning of the German Confederation depended on the cooperation of the two most populous member states, Austria and Prussia which in reality were often in opposition.

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5.

German Confederation was finally dissolved after the victory of the Kingdom of Prussia in the Seven Weeks' War over the Austrian Empire in 1866.

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6.

The constitutional weakness of the Confederation lay in the principle of unanimity in the Diet and the limits of the Confederation's scope: it was essentially a military alliance to defend Germany against external attacks and internal riots.

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7.

German Confederation was created by the 9th Act of the Congress of Vienna on 8 June 1815 after being alluded to in Article 6 of the 1814 Treaty of Paris, ending the War of the Sixth Coalition.

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8.

However, the Army Corps were not exclusive to the German Confederation but composed from the national armies of the member states, and did not include all of the armed forces of a state.

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9.

The German Confederation had roughly the same boundaries as the Empire at the time of the French Revolution .

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10.

Only organ of the German Confederation was the Federal Assembly, which consisted of the delegates of the states' governments.

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11.

All the constituent states of the former German Confederation became part of the in 1871, except Austria, Luxembourg, the Duchy of Limburg, and Liechtenstein.

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12.

German Confederation'storians have seen three Prussian goals: as a political tool to eliminate Austrian influence in Germany; as a way to improve the economies; and to strengthen Germany against potential French aggression while reducing the economic independence of smaller states.

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13.

Economic integration, especially increased national consciousness among the German Confederation states, made political unity a far likelier scenario.

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14.

German Confederation's document concentrated real power in the hands of the King and the upper classes, and called for a confederation of North German states—the Erfurt Union.

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15.

German Confederation ended as a result of the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 between the Austrian Empire and its allies on one side and the Kingdom of Prussia and its allies on the other.

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16.

The Diet of the North German Confederation moved to rename the North German Confederation as the German Empire and gave the title of German Emperor to the King of Prussia.

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17.

The new constitution of the state, the Constitution of the German Confederation, effectively transformed the Diet of the Confederation into the German Parliament .

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18.

The German Confederation was, according to historian Kotulla, an association of states with some elements of a federal state, and the North German Confederation was a federal state with some elements of an association of states.

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