Germany united into two?

This might sound kind of hokey, but what if Prussia goes East during the Crimean War?

They grab Poland, and maybe a few other areas, and now Prussia looks a lot more like Austria than a solid German state, would they still want all of Germany if there were good pickings to be had off of Russia?

The Gunslinger

Effectively this happened in the previous century with the Polish partitions, which left Warsaw as Prussia's biggest city. If you avoid the territorial changes in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars then Prussia doesn't gain sizeable and wealthy western lands and is about half Polish. As such while it's likely to still be the main rival to Austria [unless and until someone emerges in western Germany possibly] neither would provide that clear a national solution. Given that the Polish lands would be overwhelmingly Catholic this would also blur any religious divide.

Steve
 
Catholic (by population). And yet the noticeably most prussia-phile of the southern states.


Baden's ruling house was Protestant . Iirc there were originally Catholic and Protestant branches, but the Catholic one died out.

In 1866 the reigning Grand Duke was the son-in-law of Wilhelm I of Prussia. His Parliament and people forced him to take the Austrian side, but he took care that his troops didn't move until the war was effectively over.
 
The Gunslinger

Effectively this happened in the previous century with the Polish partitions, which left Warsaw as Prussia's biggest city. If you avoid the territorial changes in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars then Prussia doesn't gain sizeable and wealthy western lands and is about half Polish. As such while it's likely to still be the main rival to Austria [unless and until someone emerges in western Germany possibly] neither would provide that clear a national solution. Given that the Polish lands would be overwhelmingly Catholic this would also blur any religious divide.

Steve

With both Austria and Prussia becoming countries on the edge of Germany in which Germans are merely a minority of the population, I'd imagine that the remaining small states form a union sooner or later (far easier without the "big ones"). Thus, we'd have a three-way partition.
 

Susano

Banned
Baden's ruling house was Protestant . Iirc there were originally Catholic and Protestant branches, but the Catholic one died out.

In 1866 the reigning Grand Duke was the son-in-law of Wilhelm I of Prussia. His Parliament and people forced him to take the Austrian side, but he took care that his troops didn't move until the war was effectively over.

I know there was something, but I didnt quite remember it clearly anymore, and hence simply wrote "by population" without going into details ;) And, IIRC, if the monarchy hadnt been abolished, Württemberg wouldve ended up with a Catholic ruling house, despite its protestant tradition and corelands. Heh.

But in any case it doesnt greatly matter. Religiousness was of course still important at the time, but cofnessional divide wasnt really anymore, or at least not in politics (everyday society is another matter). What mattered more were Badens quarrels with Bavaria and its economic competition with Württemberg.

Now as for Prussia going east: If its post-1815, i.e. with the western territories already gained, it would make zero difference. However, if it isnt "shifted west" in the Congress - well, it was still a Great Power. Lets not forget that. But it also was the weakest. Probably it would not have been able to challenge Austria at all. OTOH, its likely that Germany minus Austria would still economically band together, and then Prussia will still be the strongest among them. It would probably be a parallel co-existence of an increasingly unimportant German Confederation and an increasingly pulling together, EU-style, Zollverein equivalent.

And the Bavarian government WAS opposing Prussia. It was also the only southern state to actively do so and search for alternatives. Its just that there werent any. The idea of a Bavaria-led "Third Germany" was nothing short of absurdly unrealisable.
 
I know there was something, but I didnt quite remember it clearly anymore, and hence simply wrote "by population" without going into details ;) And, IIRC, if the monarchy hadnt been abolished, Württemberg wouldve ended up with a Catholic ruling house, despite its protestant tradition and corelands. Heh.

But in any case it doesnt greatly matter. Religiousness was of course still important at the time, but cofnessional divide wasnt really anymore, or at least not in politics (everyday society is another matter). What mattered more were Badens quarrels with Bavaria and its economic competition with Württemberg.

Now as for Prussia going east: If its post-1815, i.e. with the western territories already gained, it would make zero difference. However, if it isnt "shifted west" in the Congress - well, it was still a Great Power. Lets not forget that. But it also was the weakest. Probably it would not have been able to challenge Austria at all. OTOH, its likely that Germany minus Austria would still economically band together, and then Prussia will still be the strongest among them. It would probably be a parallel co-existence of an increasingly unimportant German Confederation and an increasingly pulling together, EU-style, Zollverein equivalent.

And the Bavarian government WAS opposing Prussia. It was also the only southern state to actively do so and search for alternatives. Its just that there werent any. The idea of a Bavaria-led "Third Germany" was nothing short of absurdly unrealisable.

Basically, the only way to get a Bavarian-led Germany is if at Vienna the Bavarian Palatinate is expanded to include the south of what would be Prussia's Western territories (including the Saarland) and possibly the Ruhr as well (though that would probably go to someone else. Hannover or Hesse I reckon).
 
Could Germany have never fully united in the 19th century, but instead crystallized into a Prussian-dominated North German Confederation, and a southern German amalgamation led by Bavaria, other fellow major German states, with close ties to Austria?
It's a lot more likely that most think. The Franco-Prussian War and resulting unification of Germany was more or less an accident of the alliance system set up by Bismarck among the German states. He was fully content with there being merely a North German Federation, and William I was fine with being King of Prussia. Mind, William remained a Prussian particularist even during his tenure as Emperor. And Bismarck, as evidenced by the kulturkampf, had no love for Bavarian and Franconian Catholics.

Had that one diplomatic hiccup that caused the Franco-Prussian War not occurred, there very well may have been a divided Germany that, as time and the status quo marched on, could have crystallised these new (or rather, old yet languishing) national and cultural identities.
 

Susano

Banned
It's a lot more likely that most think. The Franco-Prussian War and resulting unification of Germany was more or less an accident of the alliance system set up by Bismarck among the German states. He was fully content with there being merely a North German Federation, and William I was fine with being King of Prussia. Mind, William remained a Prussian particularist even during his tenure as Emperor. And Bismarck, as evidenced by the kulturkampf, had no love for Bavarian and Franconian Catholics.

Bismarck had no problem politically allying with Catholics. He had a problem with Catholics demanding political ifnluence for their Church. It was a conflict for state power, nothing more, and for once Bismarck was the good guy.

Your characterisations of the NGC and the Franco-German War are correct, of course, but it is unlikely that nothing whatsoever would have happened without that war. Do you really think stasis would have reigned supreme for generations? The economical path to politcial integration as said already had been laid, and the cultural (identity) path had been there all along, after all.
 
From an old post of mine:
Consider where we are in 1870. The North German Confederation contains some 29 million souls. The southern states are members of a Zollverein with the North German Federation, 8.5 million strong. Prussia has ninety percent of the production in mining and metallurgy, half the output in textiles, and two-thirds of all workers employed in the core industries in Germany. Departing from ties with North Germany would be economic suicide. The Zollverein contained representatives appointed by princes at its council, and a lower house elected by popular vote. Baden, under its liberal Duke, had tried to join the North German Confederation.

Okay, the Luxembourg Crisis illustrated some flaws. When Napoleon blundered into the negotiation with the King of Holland over the purchase of Luxembourg, he immediately unleashed a storm of indignation in Germany, which was adroitly exploited by Bismarck. Under treaties with Prussia after 1866, the south German states increasingly aligned their military forces along the Prussian model.

On the other hand, Bavaria and Württemberg had in this crisis not been willing unreservedly to commit themselves to war alongside Prussia. The alignment of the South German with the Prussian armed forces met much resistance and in many quarters a militia on the Swiss model would have been preferred. The demands of military service on the Prussian model and high military expenditure were factors feeding the antiPrussian sentiment in the south. But the fact that the southern states are adopting a Prussian military system, while bound economically...
 
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