German Question

"The German Question" was a debate in the 19th century, especially during the Revolutions of 1848, over the best way to achieve the unification of Germany. From 1815 to 1866, about 37 independent German-speaking states existed within the German Confederation. The  ("Greater German solution") favored unifying all German-speaking peoples under one state, and was promoted by the Austrian Empire and its supporters. The  ("Lesser German solution") sought only to unify the northern German states and did not include Austria; this proposal was favored by the Kingdom of Prussia.

The solutions are also referred to by the names of the states they proposed to create,  and  ("Lesser Germany" and "Greater Germany"). Both movements were part of a growing German nationalism. They also drew upon similar contemporary efforts to create a unified nation state of people who shared a common ethnicity and language, such as the unification of Italy by the House of Savoy and the Serbian Revolution.

During the Cold War, the term also referred to the matters pertaining to the division, and re-unification, of Germany.

Background

On August 6, 1806, Habsburg Emperor Francis II had abdicated the throne of the Holy Roman Empire in the course of the Napoleonic Wars with France, thereby ending the loose Empire.  Despite its later name affix "of the German Nation", the Holy Roman Empire had never been a nation state. Instead its rulers over the centuries had to cope with a continuous loss of authority to its constituent Imperial States. The disastrous Thirty Years' War proved especially fatal to the Holy Roman Emperor's authority, as the mightiest entities, the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy and Brandenburg-Prussia, evolved into rivaling European absolute powers with territory reaching far beyond Imperial borders. The many small city-states splintered, meanwhile.  In the 18th century the Holy Roman Empire consisted of over 1800 separate territories governed by distinct authorities.

This German dualism phenomenon at first culminated in the War of the Austrian Succession and outlasted the French Revolution and Napoleon's domination of Europe. Facing the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, the ruling House of Habsburg proclaimed the Austrian Empire in the lands of the Habsburg Monarchy instead, retaining the imperial title. The 1815 restoration by the Final Act of the Vienna Congress established the German Confederation, which was not a nation but a loose association of sovereign states on the territory of the former Holy Roman Empire.

While a number of factors swayed allegiances in the debate, the most prominent was religion.  The  would have implied a dominant position for Catholic Austria, the largest and most powerful German state of the early 19th century.  As a result, Catholics and Austria-friendly states usually favored .  A unification of Germany led by Prussia would mean the domination of the new state by the Protestant House of Hohenzollern, a more palatable option to Protestant northern German states.  Another complicating factor was the Austrian Empire's inclusion of a large number of non-Germans, such as Hungarians, Romanians, Serbs, Croats, and Czechs. The Austrians were reluctant to enter a unified Germany if it meant giving up their non-German speaking territories.

March Revolution

 
In 1848, German liberals and nationalists united in revolution, forming the Frankfurt Parliament. The Greater German movement within this National Assembly demanded the unification of all German-populated lands into one nation. In general, the left favored a republican , whereas the liberal center favored the  with a constitutional monarchy.

Those supporting the  position argued that since the Habsburgs had ruled the Holy Roman Empire for almost 400 years from 1440 to 1806 (the only break coming from the extinction of the Habsburg male line in 1740 to the election of Francis I in 1745), Austria was best suited to lead the unified nation. However, Austria posed a problem because the Habsburgs ruled large chunks of non-German-speaking territory. The largest such area was the Kingdom of Hungary, which also included large Slovak, Romanian and Croat populations. Austria further comprised numerous possessions with predominantly non-German populations, including Czechs in the Bohemian lands, Poles, Rusyns and Ukrainians in the Galician province, Slovenes in Carniola, and Italians in Lombardy–Venetia and Trento, which was still incorporated into the Tyrolean crown land, all together making up the larger part of the Austrian Empire. Except for Bohemia, Carniola and Trento, these territories were not part of the German Confederation because they had not been part of the former Holy Roman Empire, and none of them desired to be included into a German nation state. The Czech politician  explicitly rejected the offered mandate to the Frankfurt assembly, stating that the Slavic lands of the Habsburg Empire were not a subject of German debates. On the other hand, for Austrian prime minister Prince Felix of Schwarzenberg, only an accession of the Habsburg Empire as a whole was acceptable because it had no intention to part from its non-German possessions and dismantle in order to remain in an all-German Empire.

Thus, some members of the assembly and namely Prussia promoted the , which excluded the whole Austrian Empire with its German and its non-German possessions. They argued that Prussia, as the only Great Power with a predominantly German-speaking population, should lead the unified Germany. Yet, the drafted constitution provided for the possibility for Austria to join without its non-German possessions later. On March 30, 1849, the Frankfurt parliament offered the German Imperial crown to King Frederick William IV of Prussia, who rejected it. The revolution failed and several subsequent attempts by Prince Schwarzenberg to build up a German federation headed by Austria came to nothing.

Austro-Prussian War and Franco-Prussian War

These efforts were finally terminated by Austria's humiliating defeat in the 1866 Austro-Prussian War. After the Peace of Prague, the Prussian chancellor , now at the helm of German politics, pursued the expulsion of Austria and managed to unite all German states except Austria under Prussian leadership, while the Habsburg lands were shaken by ethnic nationalist conflicts, only superficially resolved with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867.

At the same time, Bismarck established the North German Confederation, seeking to prevent the Austrian and Bavarian Catholics in the south from being a predominant force in a mainly Protestant Prussian Germany.  He successfully used the Franco-Prussian War to convince the other German states including the Kingdom of Bavaria to stand with Prussia against the Second French Empire; Austria-Hungary did not participate in the war.  After Prussia's speedy victory, the debate was settled in favor of the  in 1871.  Bismarck used the prestige gained from the victory to maintain the alliance with Bavaria and declared the German Empire.  Protestant Prussia became the dominant power of the new state, and Austria-Hungary was excluded remaining a separate polity. The Lesser German solution prevailed.

Later influence

The idea of Austrian territories with a significant German-speaking population joining a Greater German state was maintained by some circles both in Austria-Hungary and Germany. It was again promoted after the close of World War I and the dissolution of the Austro–Hungarian monarchy in 1918 by the proclamation of the rump state German Austria.  Proponents attempted to incorporate German Austria into the German Weimar Republic; however, this was prohibited by the terms of both the Treaty of  and the Treaty of Versailles, though the major Austrian political parties such as the Greater German People's Party or the Social democrats pursued this idea regardless.

The Austrofascism of Austria between 1934 and 1938 focused on the history of Austria and opposed the absorbing of Austria into the Third Reich (according to the belief that Austrians were "better Germans") and the Austrian Chancellor  (1934–1938) called Austria the "better German state" but struggled to keep Austria independent. Nevertheless, German nationalists' desire for a unified nation-state incorporating all Germans into a Greater Germany persisted.  

In 1938, Adolf Hitler, an Austrian German by birth, completed his long-desired union between his birthplace Austria and Germany (), which violated the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. This was met with an overwhelming approval of the German-Austrian people. Unlike the political situation in the 19th century, Austria was a shadow of its former power in 1938, and became by far the subordinate partner in the new unified German-speaking state. In a reference to the 19th century "Greater German solution", the enlarged state was referred to as the  ("Greater German Reich") and colloquially as . The names were informal at first, but the change to  became official in 1943. As well as Germany (pre-World War II borders), Austria, and Alsace-Lorraine, the  included the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, Sudetenland, Bohemia and Moravia, the Memel Territory, the Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, the Free State of Danzig, and the "General Government" territories (territories of Poland under German military occupation).

East and West Germany and reunification

This unification lasted only until the end of World War II. With the defeat of the Nazi regime in 1945, "Greater Germany" was separated into West Germany, East Germany, and Austria by the Allied Powers. In addition, Germany was stripped of much of historic eastern Germany (i.e. the bulk of Prussia), which was annexed in mostly Poland and a small portion the Soviet Union. Luxembourg, the Czech (via Czechoslovakia), and the Slovenian lands (via Yugoslavia) regained their independence from Germany.

The division of Germany started with the creation of four occupation zones, continued with establishing two German states (West Germany and East Germany), was deepened in the period of Cold War with the Berlin Wall from 1961 and existed until 1989/1990. After the Uprising of 1953 in East Germany, the official holiday in the Federal Republic of Germany was set on 17 June and was named "Day of German Unity", in order to remind all Germans of the “open” (unanswered) German Question (), which meant the call for reunification.

Modern Germany's territory, after the reunification of East and West Germany in 1990, is closer to what the  envisioned (aside from the fact large areas of the former Prussia were no longer part of Germany) than the , for Austria remains a separate country. Because of the idea's association with the Third Reich, there are no mainstream political groups in Austria or Germany that advocate a "Greater Germany" today; those that do are often regarded as fascist and/or neo-Nazis.

See also
 Inner German border
 Legal status of Germany
 German nationalism in Austria

References

External links
Maps of German and European revolutions of 1848-49 and German unification (omniatlas.com)

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Category:19th century in Prussia
Category:19th century in the Habsburg Monarchy
Category:Irredentism
Category:National questions
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Category:Political movements