What contribution did the Zollverein make to the unification of Germany?

         Prussia’s status as the initiator of and the only ‘Great Power’ in the Zollverein ensured its dominance of the union’s agenda. Aside from its role in the economic unity of the German states, the importance of the Zollverein in terms of the type of Germany that emerged is that it was the only Germany wide political arena from which Austria was excluded. Even in 1830, Prussia’s finance minister indicated to Frederick William III that such a union could isolate Austria from German affairs. Hence, in spite of Austria’s preeminence in the Bund, Germany’s principal political focal point, there was a separate entity around which Kleindeutschland enthusiasts could gather. This initially gave the Zollverein its political significance. It was also the first step in Prussian defiance of Austria, as W.G Shreeves puts it ‘the first break in the German settlement of 1815’.

         Although the Zollverein remained only economic union for the time being, becoming a member effectively meant a ‘diminution of...sovereignty’. Interestingly, AJP Taylor asserts that the princes of the smaller German states only accepted this loss of sovereignty because they feared that the middle classes, if restricted by internal tariffs, would agitate for a German Republic. The Princes ‘far from envisaging a united Germany [acted with] the deliberate purpose of making a united Germany unnecessary’. Therefore, although by joining the Zollverein the German states appeared to be moving towards unification, in fact their leaders felt they were preventing it, or at least hoping for a more acceptable autocratic form. This analysis of events sheds a very different light on the contribution of the Zollverein to German Unification. Nonetheless, if the German princes felt they were moving away from political unification they were certainly moving towards economic unification, which other historians such as W.O Henderson have placed as a principal factor underlying German Unification. The Zollverein appeared to be fulfilling German economist Friedrich List’s (1789-1846) prediction that an economic would form the basis of a German national state. Prussia’s ascendancy in the union meant, that although any member state could negotiate foreign trade treaties, it was nearly always Prussia who did so. By the 1850s the ‘the emergent economic power of entrepreneurs [created by the Zollverein] constrained the freedom of action of German governments’. In essence, the Zollverein came to be force for German unity, which even if opposed by rulers of member states, was supported by their people. Nevertheless, it is important not to overestimate the unifying affect of the Zollverein. German Unification was by no means inevitable, in the same way that ‘no one assumes today that the European Union will inevitably lead to a European State’. The Zollverein was clearly becoming a strong basis for unity for as the poet Fallersleben states the Zollverein had ‘wound a bond around the German fatherland, and this bond has done much more than the confederation tobind German’s hearts together’. The economic unity of the German states was not the only factor in German Unification.

         Whilst the members of the Zollverein were partly surrendering their sovereignty to the Prussians in the 1830s and 1840s, many fellow German buffer states felt the threat of a French invasion and looked to Prussia for military protection. All this helped moved Germany towards the Kleindeutschland solution and towards a greater unity.

         By the time Austria realised how important the Zollverein had become in the early 1850s, it was too late as Prussian dominance of the German Customs Union had ‘tied virtually all of non-Austrian Germany to [Prussian] leadership’. Austria proposed a larger Zollunion including Austria and all other German states not yet part of the Zollverein. However, Austria’s ‘intentions were political rather than economic’ hence even the southern German Catholic states would rather side with the Protestant and economically successful Prussia than accept Austria’s ‘economically impractical’ suggestion. Impractical because Austria’s far weaker industries could not survive open competition. Although by the 1850s had become clear to Austria that the Zollverein was assuming political overtones, due to the member states virtual surrender of economic affairs to Prussia and their growing interdependence, Prussia was intent on permanently excluding Austria from the union. Austria failed again in the mid 1860s to enter the German Customs Union.

         The Zollverein gained even greater importance in the 1860s as Prussia went through its period of massive industrialization and creation of rail and communication networks, whilst Austria stuck outside the union and fell behind. Although, Austria did industrialise to some extent this was only in commodities rather than the heavy manufacturing that Prussia used to support its military. Consequently, during the 1860s Austria even began to lose its political muscle within the Bund, as it no longer had the military might to back up any political aggression. As the Zollverein was behind Prussia’s economic success, it contributed not only to Germany as unifying economic force but also helped Prussia to gain political and military ascendancy over Austria which paved the way for a Kleindeutschland.

         When Bismarck became Prussian first minister in 1862, with the stated aim of German Unification under the Prussian crown Prussia ‘had already gone a long way towards gaining economic control over Germany’. Thus, Bismarck’s assertion that the years 1815-48 were ‘the time when nothing happened’ seems unfair. However, the amount of work left for Bismarck to do if he wished to unite Germany must not be underestimated. ‘The Zollverein created a common German market rather than fully integrated economy’, this statement seems especially true in light of the fact that Hamburg and Bremen only joined the Zollverein in 1888, 17 years after they had become constituents of the 1871 German Empire. The Zollverein also did nothing towards creating a unified German culture or religion, although it did help southern Germany to forget its religious divisions with the north.

         Fundamentally, the Zollverein gave economic unity to Germany and the initiations of political unity, Prussia the strength to dominate and overcome Austria creating a Kleindeutschland, yet all of this would be irrelevant were it not for the already present German cultural identity and the brilliant diplomacy of Otto von Bismarck. The Zollverein paved the way for German Unification to happen, but it did not make it happen.