Germany - MSN Encarta

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Introduction; Land and Resources; People; Culture; Economy; Government; History

Austrian-Prussian Rivalry

By 1740 the German states of Austria and Prussia had emerged as the chief rivals for dominance in central Europe. Austria had been the core territory of the Habsburg family since the 13th century. The Habsburgs had built their power and land by acquiring territory through diplomacy and dynastic marriages and had become one of the most powerful states in Europe by the beginning of the Reformation. However, religious and dynastic wars, Ottoman invasions in the 17th century, and growing conflict with Prussia had weakened the state by the early 1700s.

Growth of Prussia

The Hohenzollern family, which had been granted Brandenburg in the 15th century, also held a number of other territories in the west. Outside the empire to the east, the Hohenzollerns had inherited Prussia as a Polish duchy in 1618 and converted it into an independent kingdom in 1701. Gradually, all the Hohenzollern lands came to be known as the kingdom of Prussia.

Unlike many other European dynasties, the Hohenzollerns enjoyed an unbroken (and therefore uncontested) series of male heirs from 1640 to 1786. These rulers were thus able to focus their efforts on building an efficient centralized state, a task that most of them successfully pushed forward. Frederick William of Prussia, known as the Great Elector, reigned from 1640 to 1688. He was a sturdy, hardheaded soldier determined to unite his disparate possessions into a modern military state. He created an efficient, honest bureaucracy that filled the treasury and ran the country for the benefit of a large standing army. By 1678 he had established a military force of 40,000 that absorbed more than 50 percent of the state’s revenue. His intellectual and artistic son Frederick paid more attention to building palaces and promoting the arts than to the army. He did, however, obtain the title king of Prussia from the emperor.

Frederick’s son, Frederick William I, developed a centralized financial system and a standing army of 90,000 by the time of his death in 1740. Frederick II, the Great, was equally at home on the battlefield and enjoying French literature and music in his palace near Berlin. He refined and reorganized the Prussian government, economy, and army.

War of the Austrian Succession

Emperor Charles VI, anxious to keep Habsburg lands unified, issued the Pragmatic Sanction in 1713, declaring that his only child, Maria Theresa, should succeed him. When he died in 1740, the electors of Bavaria and Saxony rejected the Pragmatic Sanction on the grounds that they themselves had prior claims through their wives. Frederick II of Prussia offered his support to Maria Theresa in exchange for the rich province of Silesia. When she refused, Frederick promptly invaded Silesia, precipitating the War of the Austrian Succession. The Bavarians, Saxons, and French invaded Austria and Bohemia, while Britain, the Dutch Republic, and Russia came to the aid of Austria. Alarmed by Frederick’s military victories, Maria Theresa made peace with him in 1742, ceding Silesia. Austria and its allies then succeeded in driving the French from Bohemia and conquering Bavaria. By the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1745), Maria Theresa’s husband, Franz, Duke of Lorraine, was recognized as emperor, although it was she who actually ruled. In exchange, Maria Theresa returned Bavaria to the Wittelsbachs and allowed Prussia to keep Silesia.

The Seven Years’ War

The emergence of Prussia as a major power led to a radical shift of alliances and to new hostilities. Austria, determined to reconquer Silesia, made an alliance with Russia as well as its old rival France. Prussia, anticipating encirclement, struck first in 1756 by invading Saxony and Bohemia, thus beginning the Seven Years’ War. Despite good leadership, Frederick II found himself pressed by many enemies. He was conveniently rescued by the death of Elizabeth of Russia in 1761 and the succession of Peter III, who admired Frederick and immediately made peace with him. The exhausted French also wanted peace, and hostilities ended in 1763 with all territories restored to prewar status.

Bitterly disappointed, Maria Theresa devoted herself to internal affairs. She gradually reorganized the government and established uniform taxes, a customs union, and state-supported elementary schools. She encouraged commoners as well as nobles to take government and army positions. Pious, warmhearted, and tactful, she was an extremely popular monarch. Her idealistic son, Joseph, with whom she did not always agree, succeeded her in 1780. Joseph II strove impatiently to create an efficient, modern bureaucracy without regard for local customs or prejudices.

Both Prussia and Austria looked to the east for territorial expansion. Prussia had long been anxious to annex the Polish territory separating Brandenburg and Prussia. Austria, ever regretting the lost Silesia, also looked to Poland for compensation. Both countries feared the Russians, who were exercising greater and greater control over Poland, and who had deposed the Polish king in 1764. A weak Poland seemed ample excuse for intervention, and in 1772 Austria, Prussia, and Russia agreed to the first partition of Poland. This partition reduced Poland’s area by about one-quarter. In 1792 the Russians secretly organized a revolt within Poland that gave Russian and Prussian forces an excuse to occupy the country and further reduce Polish territory by about two-thirds. After another Polish attempt to regain territory in 1794, the remainder of the country was divided between Prussia, Austria, and Russia in 1795.

Life in Germany During the Baroque Age

Social Changes

Almost a century passed before Germany’s population recovered to a level near that of before the Thirty Years’ War, reaching about 20 million in 1750. Frequent harvest failures, disease, and unemployment left about a quarter of the population destitute, leading to widespread migration within the empire and the growth of a criminal underclass in many cities. Emigration was another option, and more than 200,000 Germans had left for the Americas by the end of the 18th century. Urban populations continued to grow, most dramatically in the Prussian capital of Berlin, which grew from 6,000 in 1640 to 55,000 in 1700, and to 150,000 in 1800. The much older and more cosmopolitan Austrian capital of Vienna had a population of 210,000 by 1800.

The social order of the Middle Ages remained strikingly unchanged. Serfdom was abolished in 1773 in Prussia but was still widely practiced. In Austria it was abolished in 1781 but restored at Joseph’s death in 1791. West of the Elbe, free peasant farmers continued to constitute the largest social group, with domestic servitude the single largest occupational category (10 to 15 percent of the general population). Landed aristocrats often intermarried with wealthy merchant families. The new political identity of citizen became more common in the mid-18th century but was still often used interchangeably with the designation subject. Some princely states, most notably the archbishoprics of Salzburg and Würzburg, developed elaborate court cultures and patronized the arts. In Prussia, many members of the nobility were drawn into the newly professionalized army.