Economic changes and the Zollverein

The struggle of parties and ideologies during the restoration of the old order reflected the beginning of important changes in the structure of the economy and the community. In the long run, the most significant of these changes was the gradual emergence of large-scale industry in Germany. Mechanization, introduced in textile mills and coal mines, spread to other branches of manufacture and influenced the entire economic life of the nation. The transportation network improved with the construction of railroads, steamships, and better roads and canals. Banking institutions and private investors began to transfer their funds from government bonds and commercial ventures to manufacturing enterprises. Factory and railroad owners, financiers, and stockbrokers gradually formed a new upper middle class whose wealth derived primarily from industrial activity and whose growing economic importance encouraged its members to demand greater political influence. Skilled handicraftsmen, who had constituted the bulk of the urban working class, could not compete successfully with the factories. Because rural population grew faster than rural employment following the Congress of Vienna, population began to shift from country to city, although a majority of the inhabitants of the German Confederation continued to live in rural communities. Many of the migrants from the countryside took jobs as factory labourers in the cities.

Agriculture went through as difficult a period of reorganization and rationalization as industry. Peasant emancipation in Prussia allowed the Junkers east of the Elbe River to enlarge their lands by absorbing the holdings of small farmers. The former serfs now formed a propertyless rural proletariat who cultivated the aristocratic landowners’ large estates. The result was the continuing economic, social, and political domination of the village by the nobility in the eastern provinces of Prussia. The squirearchy entrenched in Pomerania, Brandenburg, Silesia, and East Prussia controlled agriculture, commanded the army, directed the bureaucracy, and influenced the court. It constituted a powerful force for conservatism and particularism.

West of the Elbe the basic problem was not landlessness but overpopulation. The aristocracy along the Rhine and the Danube was often willing to give the peasantry possession of the soil in return for a substantial payment. The farmer was thereby saddled with heavy financial obligations. Many small farmers tried to escape poverty by emigrating to the New World; those who remained faced rapid population growth and often had to subdivide small holdings among their children until they yielded no profit. Civil discontent mounted among impoverished villagers who lacked employment in industry.

The system of authority in the German Confederation was thus being undermined by the struggle of artisans against industrial mechanization, by the disaffection of peasants hungry for land, and above all by the criticism of businessmen constrained by the policies of unresponsive governments. Industrialists and financiers had to overcome the barriers created by a variety of monetary systems, commercial regulations, excise taxes, and state boundaries. It is little wonder that the bourgeoisie of Germany turned increasingly to the teachings of liberalism and nationalism. Yet the established order did make a major attempt to meet the needs of the business community. Before long, several of the more important secondary governments concluded agreements with Prussia by which a sizable free trade area was established in the heart of Germany.

In 1834 the Zollverein, or Customs Union, including most of the states of the German Confederation, came into existence. With the accession of several more states by 1842, only Austria and the northwest coastland remained aloof. The industrialists of the Habsburg empire, who wanted their products protected against outside competition, felt that the tariffs of the new association were too low for their needs, whereas the merchants and bankers of the coastal region, who depended on foreign trade, thought they were too high. Yet for some 25 million Germans the Zollverein meant in effect the achievement of commercial unification without the aid of political unification. Prussia, meanwhile, acquired a powerful new weapon in the struggle against Austria for the dominant position in Germany. Still, although the Zollverein helped meet the demands of some businessmen for economic consolidation, it could not surmount all the material disadvantages of a particularistic form of government. People of means and education continued to grumble about the confederal system under which they lived, while the masses became increasingly restless under the pressure of social and economic dislocation.