North German Confederation

The North German Confederation was the German federal state which existed from July 1867 to December 1870. Some historians also use the name for the alliance of 22 German states formed on 18 August 1866 . In 1870–1871, the south German states of Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt, Württemberg and Bavaria joined the country. On 1 January 1871, the country received a new constitution that gave it the name "German Empire". The North German Confederation continues as the German nation state which still exists today.The federal constitution established a constitutional monarchy with the Prussian king as the bearer of the Bundespräsidium, or head of state. Laws could only be enabled with the consent of the Reichstag and the Federal Council . During the three years of the North German Confederation, a conservative-liberal cooperation undertook important steps to unify Germany with regard to law and infrastructure. The political system remained essentially the same in the years after 1870.The North German Confederation had nearly 30 million inhabitants, of which eighty percent lived in Prussia. Three quarters of the people of the 1871 Empire had already been "North German"'.Creation of the North German ConfederationPrussia's plans to unify GermanyFor the most of 1815–1848, Austria and Prussia worked together and used the German Confederation as a tool to suppress liberal and national ambitions in the German population. In 1849, the National Assembly in Frankfurt elected the Prussian king as the Emperor of a Lesser Germany (a Germany without Austria). The king refused and tried to unite Germany with the Erfurt Union of 1849–1850. When the union parliament met in early 1850 to discuss the constitution, the participating states were mainly only those in Northern and Central Germany. Austria and the southern German states Württemberg and Bavaria forced Prussia to give up its union plans in late 1850.