History UsefulNotes / AllTheLittleGermanies

* ''Theatre/TheFlyingDutchman'' and other early operas by Music/RichardWagner

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* Any version of the story of the ''[[Creator/TheBrothersGrimm Brüder Grimm]]'' (e.g., ''Film/TheBrothersGrimm'' and ''The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm'')

North German unity, at least, would be achieved when the Prussian prime-minister, [[UsefulNotes/OttoVonBismarck Otto von Bismarck-Schönhausen]] (after victory in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 effectively diminished Austrian influence among the German states) took advantage of the German nationalist sentiment inspired by Prussia's successful war with France in 1870 to have Wilhelm I of Prussia crowned German Kaiser at Versailles in 1871. Substantial bribes to various South German sovereigns and ministers (many of whom were, in any case, more nervous of Austria than of a more distant Prussia) secured the acquiescence of Catholic Germany. The [[UsefulNotes/ImperialGermany Second Reich]]'' had thus begun.

North German unity, at least, would be achieved when the Prussian prime-minister, [[UsefulNotes/OttoVonBismarck Otto von Bismarck-Schönhausen]] (after victory in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 effectively diminished Austrian influence among the German states) took advantage of the German nationalist sentiment inspired by Prussia's successful war with France in 1870 to have William I of Prussia crowned German Emperor at Versailles in 1871. Substantial bribes to various South German sovereigns and ministers (many of whom were, in any case, more nervous of Austria than of a more distant Prussia) secured the acquiescence of Catholic Germany. The [[UsefulNotes/ImperialGermany Second]] ''[[UsefulNotes/ImperialGermany Reich]]'' had begun.

Not to be confused with the [[UsefulNotes/EastGermany more recent split of Germany between 1949 and 1990]].

* The ''Sissi'' trilogy (''Sissi'', ''Sissi -- Die junge Kaiserin'', ''Sissi -- Schicksalsjahre einer Kaiserin'') starring Creator/RomySchneider paints a romantic picture of the life of Bavarian-born Empress Elisabeth of Austria during this period.

* ''VideoGame/VictoriaAnEmpireUnderTheSun'': Sizable part of both Victorias is about supporting, slowing down or outright stopping German unification, depending on country player picked.

* ''Literature/TheLifeAndOpinionsOfTheTomcatMurr'', ''Literature/TheNutcrackerAndTheMouseKing'', ''Literature/TheSandman'' and many other works of Creator/ETAHoffmann.

When Francis II abdicated as Holy Roman Emperor in 1806 and fell back on his title of Francis I of the Empire of Austria (1804), the implied acceptance of the death of the [[UsefulNotes/HolyRomanEmpire Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation]], though dictated by Napoleon, was simply a recognition of reality. Napoleon, however, having shattered German unity legally, ironically went a good way toward re-establishing it politically by amalgamating the tiny imperial states into larger units. He also rewarded his German allies and relatives with title upgrades, in the process creating new kingdoms. Bavaria and Württemberg became kingdoms on January 1, 1806, Saxony followed on December 20, and Westphalia was created as a kingdom for Napoleon's youngest brother Jérôme in 1807. After the fall of Napoleon, the Congress of Vienna in 1815 recognized most of these (Westphalia being a notable exception) while restoring some of the larger earlier units such as Hanover (now also raised to a Kingdom). UsefulNotes/{{Prussia}}, which had been halved in size after its defeat in 1807, was awarded substantial territories in the Rhineland and Saxony, in recognition of the magnitude of her efforts against Napoleon - and of her army.[[note]]This included the restoration of the territories west of the Elbe that had belonged to Prussia until 1806 and was in part considered a compensation for those territories in the east that were not restored to Prussia but used to form the Russian-controlled new Kingdom of Poland.[[/note]] After the Empire itself ceased, the run-up to the establishment of the ''[[UsefulNotes/ImperialGermany Deutsches Reich]]'' may be considered the period of All the Little Germanies. (The first part, from 1815 to the [[UsefulNotes/RevolutionsOf1848 March Revolution of 1848]], is usually called the ''Biedermeier'' period[[note]] The name is taken from Gottlieb Biedermaier (note the "a"), a fictitious bourgeois Swabian poet, the alleged simple-minded writer of a number of parody poems that were published between 1848 and 1855[[/note]] in Germany).

* The ''Sissi'' trilogy (''Sissi'', ''Sissi -- Die junge Kaiserin'', ''Sissi -- Schicksalsjahre einer Kaiserin'') starring Romy Schneider paints a romantic picture of the life of Bavarian-born Empress Elisabeth of Austria during this period.

The flip side of ''Restauration'' during the Biedermeier period is called ''Vormärz'', "Before-March", referring to the European Revolution that broke out in Germany in March 1848. ''Vormärz'' refers to the diverse oppositional movements of the time: liberals, democrats, nationalists, early socialists etc., often associated with student societies (''Burschenschaften'') and the literary movement that came to be called "Young Germany". Discontent with the stagnation of the political development at home, many of them went to exile in Paris or Brussels after the Revolutions of 1830 and 1831. A wind of change did sweep through Germany in 1848 and 1849, and for the first time Germans (well, German men at any rate) elected a National Assembly, which convened in Frankfurt and framed a constitution. However, the attempt to set up a German national state failed, as in Prussia, Austria and many other states the old monarchs who never had entirely lost the hold over their armies regained control of the situation. The last remnants of the more radical revolutionaries were put down with harsh military force, and many of them went into exile. Many of them ended up in the United States, where they became known as "Forty-Eighters", associated with the radical abolitionist wing of the nascent Republican party and went on to fight [[UsefulNotes/AmericanCivilWar another war for freedom]] some years later. Others ended up in Switzerland, like Music/RichardWagner, or in London, like Creator/KarlMarx. Nevertheless, the dream of a united Germany lived on, and things did not return to those of the ''Restauration'' era. Even Prussia now had to enact a written constitution, and states all over Germany got in the habit of having elected legislatures (even if some of them, like Prussia, elected them in systems which favored the rich). The parties that would characterize German party politics for the next ca. 70 years began to take shape, and one of them, the Social Democratic Party (founded in the 1860s), continues to this day.

[[[[UsefulNotes/TheStudentenverbindung quoteright:217:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/PrussiaAndAllThatLot.JPG]]]]

[[quoteright:217:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/PrussiaAndAllThatLot.JPG]]

Oh no! oh no! oh no! oh no!\\

* The ''Sissi'' trilogy (''Sissi'', ''Sissi -- Die junge Kaiserin'', ''Sissi -- Schicksalsjahre einer Kaiserin'') starring Romy Schneider paints a romantic picture the life of Bavarian-born Empress Elisabeth of Austria during this period.

!! Tropes associated with All the Little Germanies include:

* AmazingTechnicolorWorld:
** As an exhibition demonstrated a few years ago, people in the Biedermeier really liked bright colors, creating wallpapers and upholstery decorated in bright complementary colours (purple-yellow, red-green, blue-orange) as popularized by Creator/JohannWolfgangVonGoethe in his theory of colours. This was partially facilitated by the emergence of new artificial, industrially produced pigments. Some of these, most famously [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Green Schweinfurt Green]], turned out to be highly toxic, however.
** The eruption of the volcano Tambora in 1815 not only caused the "year without a summer" in 1816, but the volcanic dust in the atmosphere for decades created some of the most glorious and multicoloured sunsets ever seen.
* ArrangedMarriage:
** Still very much the standard for members of ruling houses, but also for the upper and middle classes, despite the idea of marrying for love gaining ground thanks to its fictional portrayals. For instance, in some places it was still possible for a guild to tell a journeyman who became a master that he must marry another master's widow.
** The most famous aversion of this trope was probably the 1829 [[MarryForLove wedding of Archduke John of Austria with Anna Plochl]], the daughter of a postmaster, which cost the bridegroom, a younger brother of Francis I, his place in the succession.
* BadassBeard: Came into its own during this period. During the 18th century most men were clean-shaven. Only a few, especially certain types of soldiers like grenadiers or hussars, wore [[BadassMoustache mustaches]]. Mustaches (and muttonchops) became much more common in Germany during UsefulNotes/TheNapoleonicWars, and in the period that followed full beards became associated with radicals and revolutionaries like Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, Friedrich Hecker, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, before the fashion became "mainstream" after the Revolution of 1848. The changing fashion for facial hair can be seen for instance with the kings of Prussia (whose styles obviously became imitated by many): Frederick William III grew a mustache after the defeat of 1806, of his two eldest sons Frederick William IV went clean-shaven and William I wore a mustache and sideburns, while William's son Frederick William (the future Frederick III) grew a full beard.
* ChemistryCanDoAnything: Following the lead of France, Chemistry established itself as a science of its own at German universities. The most famous German chemist of the day was Justus von Liebig, the founder of agrochemics and inventor of an extract of meat that became used worldwide in the 1860s.
* CoolTrain: The first German railway line, between Nuremberg and Fürth in the kingdom of Bavaria, was opened in 1835, and soon a railway network began to evolve in several states, Prussia taking the lead.
* {{Cosplay}}: At the "Festival of the White Rose" in Potsdam (13 July 1829), in honor of the birthday of visiting Czarina Alexandra Fyodorovna (daughter of King Frederick William III), princes and nobles performed a "carousel" and "living pictures" that lasted until the morning of the next day dressed up as medieval knights. Architect and painter Karl Friedrich Schinkel was responsible for the designs. This was because Alexandra was a fan of the historical novels of Friedrich de la Motte-Fouqué; in her family she had the nickname "Blanchefleur", after one of Fouqué's characters.
* FunnyForeigner: Germany, especially the newly "discovered" Rhine valley and the Elbe valley south of Dresden, began to attract much larger numbers of foreign tourists than ever before, including e. g. Creator/VictorHugo, Creator/HansChristianAndersen, and painter J.M.W. Turner. This led to foreign tourists, especially eccentric Englishmen with more money than sense, to become popular comedy figures in German media.
* HappilyMarried: This became very much an ideal during the ''Biedermeier'', in part because the more severe policing of public assemblies and societies led many to retreat into private life, and living a contented, harmonious life with your family became something to be praised in works of fiction, art etc. Interestingly this also led to the rulers' family lives to be held up to much greater scrutiny than in the 18th century. For instance, King Ludwig I of Bavaria in the end had to abdicate over his liaison with the Irish dancer Lola Montez.
* NiceHat: The era saw a few. Men wore various types of toppers, while in the 1840s the Italian-style ''Kalabreser'' came to be regarded as the hat of radicals and democrats. Women wore mob caps and the like, often cut in a way that protected the face from becoming unfashionably tanned. The military switched from tricorn hats to shakos and later képis and ''Pickelhauben''.
* {{Oktoberfest}}: The first one was held in Munich in 1810 to celebrate the wedding of Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria and Princess Therese; [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness the main event was a horse-race]]. After the Napoleonic Wars it became the annual popular fair we know today. The first ''Oktoberfest'' also for the first time created widespread interest in traditional folk dress among the upper and middle classes. However, folk dress still looked rather different from what one associates with Bavaria today; for instance, the ''Dirndl'' dress only began to emerge in the 1880s and 1890s. During the early and mid-1800s, ''Lederhosen'' were almost exclusively worn by hunters, being too expensive and impractical for everyday wear; Bavarian peasants wore cloth trousers to work, which rather resembled the ones tailored by a Bavarian emigrant to America, Levi Strauss.
* OurMermaidsAreDifferent: One of the great international literary successes of the time was the novella ''Undine'' (1811) by Friedrich de la Motte-Fouqué. The romantic and sad story of mermaid Undine who falls in love with the knight Huldbrand was adapted by Fouqué into an opera with music by his friend Creator/ETAHoffmann (1816), two other opera adaptations were written by Albert Lortzing (1845) and Music/PyotrIlyichTchaikovsky (1869). ''Undine'' led to a fashion for mermaids, nixies and sirens among German and [[Literature/TheLittleMermaid other]] [[Music/AntoninDvorak creators]], for instance in poems by Goethe, Heine, and Joseph von Eichendorff, as well as the story ''Die Historie von der schönen Lau'' ("The history of the Fair Lau") by Eduard Mörike and Richard Wagner's Rhinemaidens.
* {{Romanticism}}: To a large extent it dominated literature, the arts, and especially music, with composers like Music/LudwigVanBeethoven, Music/JohannesBrahms, Fanny Hensel (née Mendelssohn), Creator/ETAHoffmann, Heinrich August Marschner, Music/FelixMendelssohn, Giacomo Meyerbeer, Music/FranzSchubert, Music/RobertSchumann, Music/RichardWagner, and Carl Maria von Weber.
* RomanticismVersusEnlightenment: As many Romantics became more "mainstream" and conservative, new social and political movements as well as the writers of "Young Germany" swung back to an approach closer to those of the Age of Enlightenment.
* {{Ruritania}}: Frequently the Hollywood version of the smaller German states of this era.
* SpareToTheThrone:
** If anyone had a princeling they couldn't figure out what to do with they dumped him here. If one of the royal families here had one of these they dumped them somewhere else. As a result, almost every monarchy in Europe had/has some minor German prince in the ancestry--if indeed the royal family wasn't already of German origin (such as UsefulNotes/TheHouseOfHanover).
** Britain was particularly fond of marrying German princelings. From the accession of George I until quite recently, the British monarchs fairly consistently married only German consorts, with the occasional Dane for flavor--and the Danish monarchs come from a branch of the German house of Oldenburg, namely that of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg.
** Ditto for Russia. Nicolas II and George V were first cousins [[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/84/Tsar_Nicholas_II_%26_King_George_V.JPG/1024px-Tsar_Nicholas_II_%26_King_George_V.JPG and looked pretty much like twins]].
** When new thrones were created or old ones became vacant, people would often look for a German prince to sit on it. Thus in 1831 newly-independent UsefulNotes/{{Belgium}} selected Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha as its new king, and a year later the [[UsefulNotes/{{Greece}} Greeks]] did the same with Prince Otto of Bavaria. Later they became discontented with him, deposed him and in 1862 chose Prince George of Denmark as his successor. Later that decade the possibility that Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, scion of a Catholic side-branch of the Prussian royal family, might become king of Spain was one of the factors that led to the [[UsefulNotes/FrancoPrussianWar Franco-German War]] in 1870.
* TooGoodForThisSinfulEarth: Given the contemporary state of public medicine and occasional epidemics (e. g. typhoid during the Napoleonic Wars, cholera in the 1830s), it is not surprising that quite a number of famous creators died at a young age, for instance painter Philipp Otto Runge (1777-1810), composers Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826), Music/FelixMendelssohn (1809-1847) and Music/FranzSchubert (1797-1828), and writers Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811, suicide), Christian Dietrich Grabbe (1801-1836), Wilhelm Hauff (1802-1827), and Georg Büchner (1813-1837) did not reach age 40.
* TheWestern: Thanks to the success of the writings of Creator/JamesFenimoreCooper and the large numbers of Germans emigrating to the United States, interest in America increased dramatically. Starting in the 1830s [[UnbuiltTrope German-language proto-westerns]] written by writers like Charles Sealsfield (Carl Anton Postl) and Friedrich Gerstäcker becan to carve out a big niche for themselves in the book market.
* YeGoodeOldeDays: After Creator/JohannWolfgangVonGoethe wrote ''Von deutscher Baukunst'' (1773), the Gothic style was misidentified as a peculiarly German style of architecture (it is actually French in origin, and people started to build new buildings in that style. This fashion really came into full force after the Napoleonic Wars and led e. g. to the intense rebuilding of castles on the Rhine. However, in contrast to the English-speaking world, where Gothic Revival is often associated with monarchy and Classicism with republicanism, the rulers and architects of the Little Germanies said: Why not have a bit of both? So e. g. in Berlin Frederick William III had Karl Friedrich Schinkel build the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_National_Monument_for_the_Liberation_Wars Kreuzberg Monument]] in a Neo-Gothic style and the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altes_Museum new museum (now Old Museum)]] in a classicist one. Ludwig I of Bavaria liked both Classicist and Neo-Renaissance, while Frederick William IV also had new church buildings modeled on Early Christian basilicas. Meanwhile in republican Hamburg the Gothic Revival led to the rediscovery of redbrick building.

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* ''TabletopGame/Skat''

Not to be confused with the [[UsefulNotes/EastGermany more recent split]] of Germany between 1949 and 1990.

|: That it shall be! That it shall be!\\
The whole Germany it shall be! :|\\''

* ''VideoGame/EmpireTotalWar'' is set during this time.

And give us true german bravery,\\

* BadassBeard: Came into its own during this period. During the 18th century most men were clean-shaven, only a few, especially certain types of soldiers like grenadiers or hussars, wore [[BadassMoustache moustaches]]. Moustaches (and muttonchops) became much more common in Germany during UsefulNotes/TheNapoleonicWars, and in the period that followed full beards became associated with radicals and revolutionaries like Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, Friedrich Hecker, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, before the fashion became "mainstream" after the Revolution of 1848. The changing fashion for facial hair can be seen for instance with the kings of Prussia (whose styles obviously became imitated by many): Frederick William III grew a moustache after the defeat of 1806, of his two eldest sons Frederick William IV went clean-shaven and William I wore a moustache and sideburns, while William's son Frederick William (the future Frederick III) grew a full beard.

* {{Cosplay}}: At the "Festival of the White Rose" in Potsdam (13 July 1829) in honour of the birthday of visiting Czarina Alexandra Fyodorovna (daughter of King Frederick William III) princes and nobles performed a "carrousel" and "living pictures" that lasted until the morning of the next day dressed up as medieval knights. Architect and painter Karl Friedrich Schinkel was responsible for the designs. This was because Alexandra was a fan of the historical novels of Friedrich de la Motte-Fouqué; in her family she had the nickname "Blanchefleur", after one of Fouqué's characters.
* FunnyForeigner: Germany, especially the newly "discovered" Rhine valley and the Elbe valley south of Dresden, began to attract much larger numbers of foreign tourists than ever before, including e. g. Creator/VictorHugo, Creator/HansChristianAndersen, and painter J.M.W. Turner. This led to foreign tourists, especially eccentric Englishmen with more money than sense to become popular comedy figures in German media.

* {{Romanticism}}: To a large extent dominated literature, the arts, and especially music, with composers like Music/LudwigVanBeethoven, Music/JohannesBrahms, Fanny Hensel (née Mendelssohn), Creator/ETAHoffmann, Heinrich August Marschner, Music/FelixMendelssohn, Giacomo Meyerbeer, Music/FranzSchubert, Music/RobertSchumann, Music/RichardWagner, and Carl Maria von Weber.

** Britain was particularly fond of marrying German princelings. From the accession of George I until quite recently, the British monarchs fairly consistently married only German consorts, with the occasional Dane for flavour--and the Danish monarchs come from a branch of German house of Oldenburg, namely that of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg.

* YeGoodeOldeDays: After Creator/JohannWolfgangVonGoethe wrote ''Von deutscher Baukunst'' (1773) the Gothic style was misidentified as a peculiarly German style of architecture (it is actually French in origin) and people started to build new buildings in that style. This fashion really came into full force after the Napoleonic Wars and led e. g. to the intense rebuilding of castles on the Rhine. However, in contrast to the English-speaking world, where Gothic Revival is often associated with monarchy and Classicism with republicanism, the rulers and architects of the Little Germanies said: Why not have a bit of both? So e. g. in Berlin Frederick William III had Karl Friedrich Schinkel build the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_National_Monument_for_the_Liberation_Wars Kreuzberg Monument]] in a Neo-Gothic style and the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altes_Museum new museum (now Old Museum)]] in a classicist one. Ludwig I of Bavaria liked both Classicist and Neo-Renaissance, while Frederick William IV also had new church buildings modeled on Early Christian basilicas. Meanwhile in republican Hamburg the Gothic Revival led to the rediscovery of redbrick building.

The flip side of ''Restauration'' during the Biedermeier period is called ''Vormärz'', "Before-March", referring to the European Revolution that broke out in Germany in March 1848. ''Vormärz'' refers to the diverse oppositional movements of the time: liberals, democrats, nationalists, early socialists etc., often associated with student societies (''Burschenschaften'') and the literary movement that came to be called "Young Germany". Discontent with the stagnation of the political development at home, many of them went to exile in Paris or Brussels after the Revolutions of 1830 and 1831. A wind of change did sweep through Germany in 1848 and 1849, and for the first time Germans (well, German men at any rate) elected a National Assembly, which convened in Frankfurt and framed a constitution. However, the attempt to set up a German national state failed, as Prussia, Austria and many other states the old monarchs, who never had entirely lost the hold over their armies, regained control of the situation. The last remnants of the more radical revolutionaries were put down with harsh military force, and many of them went into exile. Many of them ended up in the United States, where they became known as "Forty-Eighters", associated with the radical abolitionist wing of the nascent Republican party and went on to fight [[UsefulNotes/AmericanCivilWar another war for freedom]] some years later. Others ended up in Switzerland, like Music/RichardWagner, or in London, like Creator/KarlMarx. Nevertheless, the dream of a united Germany lived on, and things did not return to those of the ''Restauration'' era. Even Prussia now had to enact a written constitution, and states all over Germany got in the habit of having elected legislatures (even if some of them, like Prussia, elected them in systems which favoured the rich). The parties that would characterize German party politics for the next ca. 70 years began to take shape, and one of them, the Social Democratic Party (founded in the 1860s), continues to this day.

North German unity, at least, would be achieved when the Prussian prime-minister, [[UsefulNotes/OttoVonBismarck Otto von Bismarck-Schönhausen]] (after victory in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 effectively diminished Austrian influence among the German states) took advantage of the German nationalist sentiment inspired by Prussia's successful war with France in 1870 to have the William I of Prussia crowned German Emperor at Versailles in 1871. Substantial bribes to various South German sovereigns and ministers (many of whom were, in any case, more nervous of Austria than of a more distant Prussia) secured the acquiescence of Catholic Germany. The [[UsefulNotes/ImperialGermany Second]] ''[[UsefulNotes/ImperialGermany Reich]]'' had begun.

In popular culture outside Germany, the unrest of this time period is all but ignored. All the Little Germanies, so far as fiction is concerned, is pure ''Gemütlichkeit'', with lots of diplomats waltzing in embroidered tailcoats and silk stockings, ''Burschen'' dueling (as often with large Steins of Pilsner as with sabres), mob-capped grandmothers telling fairy tales, blue-eyed peasant maidens singing folk songs (especially [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdOUWbYnsFA Die Lorelei]] [[note]]Although that one is NOT a folk song. The Lorelay as a fair maiden dooming passing boats was a contemporary invention which afterwards got [[NewerThanTheyThink misrepresented as folklore]][[/note]]), and dozens of aristocratic Uhlans and Hussars in multi-colored uniforms to woo them.

** As an exhibition demonstrated a few years ago, people in the Biedermeier really liked bright colours, creating wallpapers and upholstery decorated in bright complementary colours (purple-yellow, red-green, blue-orange) as popularized by Creator/JohannWolfgangVonGoethe in his theory of colours. This was partially facilitated by the emergence of new artificial, industrially produced pigments. Some of these, most famously [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Green Schweinfurt Green]], turned out to be highly toxic, however.

The powerful nineteenth century impulse toward Nationalism spurred efforts to secure the establishment of a single German nation. But the exhaustion of Germans after a quarter century of war, the rivalry between the two great German powers, Catholic Austria and predominantly Protestant Prussia and the efforts of the rulers of medium-sized German states to increase their own power, plus the unwillingness of Great Britain, Russia, and France to see the emergence of a powerful Central European empire dashed these hopes. Ministers who had few scruples about what methods to use to promote the interests of their sovereigns (such as the Anglo-Irish Castlereagh, the Russian Nesselrode, the wily Frenchman Talleyrand, the Prussian Hardenberg, and the influential Austrian Metternich) set up a European balance of power, which nonetheless did manage to preserve peace for four decades. Which means that until the UsefulNotes/TheCrimeanWar there was no war that pitted one of the five great powers against another.

Instead of a national state the Germans got the fairly loose German Confederation (''Deutscher Bund''), which consisted of 42 states (38 monarchies and four free cities), or more correctly, states and parts of states, as e. g. big chunks of Prussia and Austria lay outside its borders. The Confederation's legislative debating forum, the ''Bundestag'', unlike its [[UsefulNotes/PoliticalSystemOfGermany modern namesake]], was a no more than a permanent conference of ambassadors. It soon enabled Metternich to institute repressive measures to protect the ''[[StatusQuoIsGod status quo]]'' in Germany and Europe and to combat revolutionary and nationalist movements. This was institutionalized in the Karlsbad decrees of 1819, which most notably involved a tightening of the screws in the censorship of newspapers, periodicals and books. This aspect of the ''Biedermeier'' period goes under the headline of "Restoration" (''Restauration''), and some of the smaller states took it to ludicrous extremes. For instance, in Electoral Hesse (''Kurhessen'', capital Kassel) it was even attempted for a time to restore the pre-1806 pigtails and to forbid state officials from wearing "seditious" mustaches.

The Romantic movement, which never really had a coherent political philosophy and which always had a huge interest in the past, indulged its nostalgic tendencies during the Biedermeier, often encouraged by monarchs who themselves felt that way, like Ludwig I of Bavaria and Frederick William IV of Prussia. The time of [[TheHighMiddleAges the Hohenstaufen]] was exalted as Germany's [[YeGoodeOldeDays Golden Age]], the exploration of traditional culture in the form of folk-lore and folk-music was encouraged as the proper expression of national sentiments, and religion took on the style, if not the substance, of [[ChristianityIsCatholic Roman Catholicism]], even among Protestants such as the painter Caspar David Friedrich. (A particular embodiment of this impulse was the recommencement, with the warm approval of Frederick William IV, of construction on the Catholic cathedral of Köln, abandoned in the sixteenth century.) However, at the same time the German states did make significant progress in other fields, notably in science, education, and industry. On the economic front, Prussia took the lead in replacing the outmoded forms (guilds, privileged enterprises etc.) with capitalist free enterprise and the removal of inner-Prussian and inner-German customs barriers. By 1854 most of the territories that would form the German Empire of 1871 (with the exception of Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg and the Hanseatic cities) had joined the Prussian-led Deutsche Zollverein (customs union). Thus the economic union preceded the political one. However, industrialization and the introduction of a free market was accompanied by economic hardship in many places, which e. g. led to revolts by impoverished hand-weavers in Silesia in the 1840s and which became an important "push" factor that made Germans the most numerous group of immigrants to the United States during the mid-19th century, just ahead of the Irish.