368 



GERMANY. 



GEKMANY. From 1806, when the old 

 German Empire was'dissolved by the abdication 

 of Emperor Francis II., until 1870, Germany 

 was only the collective name for a number of 

 independent states, bound together by the feel- 

 ing of a common nationality. The Congress 

 of Vienna, in 1815, established a confederation 

 of the German states, with a Federal Diet 

 (Bundestag), consisting of the plenipotentiaries 

 of the several governments and presided over 

 by a representative of Austria, as a bond of 

 union. The revolutionary movements of the 

 year 1848 led to the convocation of a National 

 Parliament, but the attempt to reestablish the 

 empire failed, and, after a protracted state of 

 transition, the old Federal Diet was restored. 

 The war between Austria and Prussia in 1866 

 was the first great step toward the reconstruc- 

 tion of a united Germany. Twenty-two states 

 formed under the presidency of Prussia the 

 North-German Confederation, while, chiefly 

 owing to the opposition of France to a union 

 of all Germany, the South-German States of 

 Bavaria, Wurtemberg, Baden, and a part of 

 Hesse-Darmstadt, were left wholly indepen- 

 dent and free, in case they saw fit to do so, to 

 establish a South-German Confederation. For 

 the year 1870 it was reserved to remove the 

 last obstacles to a reunion of the northern and 

 southern states, and to reintroduce the German 



Empire into the family of European nations. 

 The governments of the southern states con- 

 cluded treaties with the North-German Con- 

 federation concerning their entrance into the 

 union ; all the princes and free towns request- 

 ed King William of Prussia to assume the title 

 of Emperor ; the North-German Parliament 

 expressed the same wish, and King William 

 yielded to the general request. The treaties 

 were ratified by the legislatures of the south- 

 ern states, with the exception of the Lower 

 Chamber of Bavaria, which delayed its assent 

 until January, 1871. On the 18th of January, 

 1871, King William, by a formal proclamation, 

 announced that he assumed the imperial title 

 for himself and his successors. The new Ger- 

 man Empire, which was thus reconstructed, 

 embraced all the countries represented in the 

 Federal Diet of 1815, except Austria, Lim- 

 burg, Luxemburg, and Lichtenstein ; on the 

 other hand, the duchy of Schleswig, and the 

 two Prussian provinces of Prussia and Posen, 

 which did not belong to the Confederation of 

 1815, are parts of the new empire, and the 

 victory of Germany over France in 1870 mado 

 it probable that, on the conclusion of peace, 

 Alsace and Lorraine would also be annexed 

 to Germany. 



The area and population of the German 

 States were, at the latest census, as follows: 



As regards nationality, the population of the 

 middle and smaller states is exclusively Ger- 

 man. The foreign element in Saxony consist- 

 ed of 51,895 Yindes of Slavonian origin, while 

 Prussia numbered, in 1867, 2,901,000 non-Ger- 

 man inhabitants, almost exclusively in the east- 

 ern provinces. Altogether the North-German 

 Confederation contained 26,946,000 Germans, 



or 90 per cent., and 2,960,000 non-Germans, or 

 9.9 per cent, of the entire population. 



Besides those enumerated in the following 

 table, there were 2,500 Greek Catholics, 

 106,000 belonging to other Christian sects, 

 and 5,200 not belonging to any of the de- 

 nominations named. The religious statistics 

 of Germany, in 1867, were as follows : 



