Examine the role of Bismarck in state building in Germany.

Answer:

Bismarck's achievement was not merely the unification of Germany but the construction of a state. Between 1862 and 1890 he welded the German lands into an empire and endowed it with institutions, a legal order, a social policy and a diplomatic system designed to preserve it.

Unification by blood and iron

• He declared that the great questions of the day would be settled by blood and iron.
• The Danish War of 1864 secured Schleswig and Holstein.
• The Austro-Prussian War of 1866 excluded Austria and created the North German Confederation.
• The Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 brought in the southern states.
• The empire was proclaimed at Versailles in January 1871 under Prussian leadership.

Constructing the state

• The imperial constitution of 1871 created a federal structure dominated by Prussia.
• The Reichstag was elected by universal male suffrage but had limited power over the executive.
• The Chancellor was responsible to the Kaiser alone, not to parliament.
• A common currency, the mark, a Reichsbank and a unified legal code were established.
• Railways, posts and the army were integrated on a national basis.

Domestic policy

• The Kulturkampf sought to subordinate the Catholic Church to the state.
• It largely failed, and Bismarck made peace with the Centre Party.
• Anti-socialist laws from 1878 suppressed the Social Democrats.
• Pioneering social insurance, sickness, accident and old-age, was introduced from 1883 to draw workers from socialism.
• Protective tariffs from 1879 allied industrialists with the landed Junkers.

Foreign policy and legacy

• After 1871 he declared Germany satiated and worked to preserve peace.
• The Three Emperors' League, the Dual and Triple Alliances isolated France.
• He acted as honest broker at the Congress of Berlin in 1878.
• His system depended on his own management and unravelled after his dismissal in 1890.
• The state he built was strong but authoritarian, leaving parliament weak.

The foundations of his success

• Prussia's Zollverein and railways had already prepared economic unity.
• Moltke's general staff and Roon's army reforms supplied the military instrument.
• A.J.P. Taylor stressed his opportunism rather than any long-laid master plan.
• His dismissal in 1890 left a powerful state without his restraining hand.

Bismarck's role in German state building was therefore decisive and double-edged. As A.J.P. Taylor and others have argued, he created a powerful, modern and socially innovative state, but one in which authority remained with the crown and the army, a structure whose weaknesses would be revealed within a generation of his fall.