Europe · The modern states
German Confederation
1815–1866
The Deutscher Bund, an association of 39 predominantly German-speaking sovereign states in Central Europe, was created by the Congress of Vienna (constitution adopted 8 June 1815; Wikidata records 10 June) to replace the dissolved Empire.
- Existed
- 1815–1866
- Shown on the map
- 1815–1863
- Peak area
- 352k km²
- Region
- Europe
Overview
The Deutscher Bund, an association of 39 predominantly German-speaking sovereign states in Central Europe, was created by the Congress of Vienna (constitution adopted 8 June 1815; Wikidata records 10 June) to replace the dissolved Empire. Its capital was Frankfurt, and its sole organ was the Federal Convention (Bundesversammlung/Bundestag), a diet of member-state representatives meeting at the Palais Thurn und Taxis under Austrian presidency; the most important issues required unanimity. It was widely judged weak and an obstacle to nationalism, though it fostered the Zollverein customs union from 1834. The 1848 revolutions produced the Frankfurt Parliament (Frankfurt National Assembly), whose liberal-nationalist constitution failed when Prussia rejected it; the Confederation briefly dissolved (1848) and was restored (1850, Punctation of Olmütz). Austro-Prussian dualism culminated in the Austro-Prussian (Seven Weeks') War of 1866; after Prussia's decisive victory at Königgrätz (3 July 1866), the Peace of Prague (23 August 1866) dissolved the Confederation.
Common questions
- What was the German Confederation?
- The Deutscher Bund, an association of 39 predominantly German-speaking sovereign states in Central Europe, was created by the Congress of Vienna (constitution adopted 8 June 1815; Wikidata records 10 June) to replace the dissolved Empire.
- When did the German Confederation exist?
- The German Confederation existed 1815–1866. On this map it is drawn 1815–1863.
- How large was the German Confederation?
- At its greatest extent drawn on this map, the German Confederation covered about 352,000 km². That is the largest area the border data gives it across the years it is drawn, not necessarily its greatest extent in history.
Sources
This compendium cites its sources once for the whole document rather than per territory. Its bibliography names the English Wikipedia articles for each territory as the primary basis, with Encyclopædia Britannica, the World History Encyclopedia, German History in Documents and Images, national institutions such as the Swiss Federal Council and the National Museum of Denmark, and the scholarship of Peter H. Wilson and Joachim Whaley on the Holy Roman Empire. The article this entry is anchored on:
- Wikipedia — German Confederation en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Confederation
This entry was last updated .
This entry was researched and drafted with AI from the sources above, and has not been reviewed by a historian. How entries are made
Text available under CC BY-SA 4.0: reuse it with a credit to The World Through Time and a link to this page. Passages drawing on the Wikipedia articles listed above are also licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by their contributors.
Border geometry for the map itself comes from Cliopatria v0.12 (Seshat Global History Databank, CC-BY-4.0).
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