After Napoleonic Era
A German Confederation ( Deutscher Bund ) was established in place of the Holy Roman Empire. The Confederation was made up of thirty-eight states (thirty-nine after 1817): thirty-four monarchies and four free cities. The Confederation’s boundaries were basically the same as those of the Holy Roman Empire. It did not correspond with the ethnic/cultural population of Germans in central Europe, since some non-German minorities (such as Italians and Czechs) were included, while some German populations were excluded. The King of England, in his capacity as ruler of Hanover (until 1837) was one of the princes participating in the Confederation. The Confederation was not itself a federal state ( Bundesstaat ), but rather a loose federation of states ( Staatenbund ). It had no common head of state, no administrative or executive organs, no common legal system, no common citizenship, and was able to make only precious few common decisions. The Federal Diet which met at Frankfurt was essentially a congress of ambassadors representing the interests of their own separate states. These states themselves emerged as relatively strong political units, at least in comparison with their eighteenth-century predecessors. Territorially, there was considerable reorganisation. Obviously, the new states were enlarged by the absorption of smaller political units. Prussia in particular gained by its initially rather unwilling acquisition of the Rhineland and Westphalia. This was intended as a means of turning Prussia into a strong power between France and Russia. In the process, it doubled Prussia’s population and gave the previously economically rather backward state the benefit of mineral riches and areas more advanced in commerce and industry. On the other hand, the disadvantage from Prussia’s point of view was that it had to give up some of its land gains in the east (from the second and third partitions of Poland). But in the long term, the effective moving of Prussia westwards further shifted the balance of power between Prussia and Austria in favour of the former. Prussia became both more representative of German interests, and more important as a protector of Germania.
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