The German Empire

German Political History I: Empire, War & Weimar's Collapse

Chapter 1 · The German Empire: Unification and Its Political Structure (1871)

This course asks a deliberately narrow question across a genuinely wide span: how was Germany actually governed, at each real stage, between 1871 and 1945? Not how its wars were fought — the site's own Military History sub-series covers that ground — but who held power, how they got it, and what could remove them. In under seventy-five years, Germany moved through a monarchy, a genuine parliamentary democracy, and a one-party dictatorship. This chapter starts at the beginning: the empire that made all three possible.

Unification: Three Wars, One Proclamation

The German Empire didn't emerge from a single event — it was the real, deliberate outcome of Prussian Minister-President Otto von Bismarck's own "Realpolitik," engineered through three wars in seven years: the Second Schleswig War against Denmark (1864), the Austro-Prussian War (1866), and the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71). Each one drew the German states closer under Prussian leadership, culminating in a moment of real, pointed symbolism.

18 January 1871: proclaimed inside the defeated enemy's own palace The German Empire was proclaimed on 18 January 1871 — not in Berlin, but in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles, while Prussian forces were actively besieging Paris. Bismarck engineered the unification of the German states into a single empire at the literal seat of French royal power, during a war France was actively losing. The location was not incidental; it was a real, deliberate statement about which power now dominated continental Europe.

A Federal Empire, Overwhelmingly Prussian

On paper, the new empire was federal: 25 constituent states — four kingdoms, six grand duchies, five duchies, seven principalities, three free Hanseatic cities, and one imperial territory — each keeping its own monarch or government. In practice, one state dominated everything else combined: Prussia held roughly two-thirds of the new empire's entire population and territory, and the King of Prussia simultaneously held the new title of German Emperor — meaning Prussia's own head of state and the Empire's own head of state were, by constitutional design, the same person.

The Kaiser and the Chancellor: A Third Real Model of Executive Power

This course's own sibling courses in the Politics Subject each established one real model of how an executive relates to a legislature: UK Politics Fundamentals' fused system, where the Prime Minister is a sitting MP whose government falls if it loses the Commons' confidence, and US Politics Fundamentals' separated system, where the President serves a fixed term regardless of Congress and can be removed only by impeachment. The 1871 Imperial Constitution built a genuine third model.

The Kaiser

A hereditary monarch with real, substantial constitutional power: appointing (and dismissing) the Chancellor, commanding the armed forces, declaring war, and conducting diplomacy — powers that answered to no elected body at all.

The Chancellor

Appointed and dismissed by the Kaiser alone. The Constitution gave the Reichstag no mechanism whatsoever to remove a sitting Chancellor — accountability ran upward to the monarch, never downward to the elected chamber.

Finding: neither fused nor separated — answerable to a monarch instead UK Politics Fundamentals' Prime Minister survives by keeping the confidence of an elected chamber; US Politics Fundamentals' President survives a fixed term regardless of Congress, removable only through a formal impeachment process. Imperial Germany's Chancellor answered to neither mechanism — not to the Reichstag's confidence, and not to any fixed, legally protected term of their own. The Chancellor served entirely at the Kaiser's own personal pleasure, a real structural design this course will show carrying direct, lasting consequences once the monarchy itself finally collapsed.

The Reichstag: Broad Suffrage, Almost No Power

Here is the real, genuine paradox at the center of Imperial Germany's own constitution. The Reichstag was elected by universal manhood suffrage — every male citizen over 25, voting directly by secret ballot — a genuinely progressive franchise for 1871, well ahead of comparable Western nations at the time.

But the vote bought almost no real power Despite that broad franchise, the Reichstag could not initiate its own legislation — bills were laid before it "in the name of the emperor," on the Bundesrat's own resolution. It had no mechanism to remove the Chancellor. And it had no independent budget veto: money bills still required Bundesrat approval, meaning the one elected body with a genuinely wide franchise had real influence over almost nothing that mattered most.

The Bundesrat: The Real Center of Power, and Prussia's Veto

The Bundesrat — a federal council of delegates bound by their own state governments' instructions, voting as blocs rather than as individuals — held the empire's real legislative and executive authority, alongside the Reichstag. Votes were apportioned by state: Prussia held 17 votes out of an original 58 (rising to 61 once Alsace-Lorraine received 3 votes after 1911). That 17-vote bloc mattered enormously for one specific reason: only 14 negative votes were needed to block a constitutional amendment outright — meaning Prussia alone, without needing a single ally, could veto any change to the Empire's own founding document.

Body	Real electoral basis	Real power
The Kaiser	Hereditary; no election at all	Appoints/dismisses the Chancellor; commands the military; declares war; conducts diplomacy
The Reichstag	Universal manhood suffrage, direct secret ballot	Co-legislates with the Bundesrat, but cannot initiate bills, cannot remove the Chancellor, and has no independent budget veto
The Bundesrat	Appointed by each state government; votes as state blocs	Real legislative and executive authority; Prussia's 17 votes alone can block any constitutional amendment

Finding: a genuine structural fault line, not just an odd historical curiosity Every real subsequent chapter in this course builds on this one specific tension: an executive answerable only to a hereditary monarch, and a broadly-elected legislature with almost no real leverage over that executive at all. When Chapter 3 covers the Kaiser's own real abdication in 1918, this is the exact structural gap that made an orderly, parliamentary transfer of power effectively impossible — there was no existing mechanism for the Reichstag to simply take over, because the Constitution had never given it one.

Hands-On Exercises

Exercise 1

Explain the real, deliberate symbolism of proclaiming the German Empire at the Palace of Versailles in January 1871, rather than in Berlin.

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Exercise 2

A Reichstag majority in 1880 strongly opposes the sitting Chancellor's own policy. Explain exactly what real, formal options that majority actually had available to remove him — and what it did not have.

→ Solution

Exercise 3

Explain why the Imperial Constitution's structure is genuinely a third model of executive-legislative relations, distinct from both the UK's fused system and the US's separated system covered in this Subject's sibling courses.

→ Solution

Quick Reference

Unification: three wars (1864, 1866, 1870–71), engineered by Otto von Bismarck
Proclamation: 18 January 1871, Hall of Mirrors, Palace of Versailles — during the siege of Paris
Federal structure: 25 constituent states; Prussia alone held roughly two-thirds of the Empire's population and territory
The Kaiser: hereditary; appoints/dismisses the Chancellor, commands the military, declares war
The Chancellor: answerable only to the Kaiser — the Reichstag had no removal power over them
The Reichstag: universal manhood suffrage (over 25, direct, secret ballot) — but cannot initiate legislation, remove the Chancellor, or independently veto a budget
The Bundesrat: real legislative/executive power; Prussia's 17 (of 58, later 61) votes alone could block any constitutional amendment