How Democratic Was the German Empire?
By Angelina Kuzai D’Abronzo
The German Empire was an important period in the development of modern Germany and its existing political system. It was the Empire that created a unified German state, introduced new political institutions, and changed the relation between citizens and political power. But how democratic was the German Empire really?
This is a question that is not as simple as it might first appear. And to answer to it, one must first know what is understood under democracy.
Democracy is generally taken as a system, in which political power ultimately belongs to the people, who are therefore able to participate in political decision-making. What is important to note is that to have a democracy does not necessarily mean that every decision is made directly by citizens. It could also be a representative democracy, for example, where citizens choose representatives who are supposed to exercise political power on their behalf.
If we use this idea of democracy as our starting point, the German Empire becomes difficult to classify.
The creation of the Empire in 1871 is often described as a Reichsgründung von oben, which, when translated to English, means “Revolution from above”. This refers to the important role played by the German princes, particularly the Prussian monarchy, and political leaders such as Otto von Bismarck, the Minister-President of Prussia, in creating the new German state.
And this is extremely important to analyzing how democratic the German Empire was, because it shows us directly where political power actually came from.
In a democracy, political authority is ultimately supposed to come from the people. The German Empire, however, was not created by the whole German population; to establish a new political system was not exactly a collective decision. Instead, German unification was largely negotiated and carried out by the already existing rulers of the German states and their governments. Which ends up being very different from a revolution driven primarily by ordinary citizens challenging the existing political order.
In comparison, the French Revolution, for example, challenged the existing political and social structure of the monarchy and promoted the idea that political sovereignty should belong to the nation rather than simply to the monarch. It was a “revolution from below”, something driven by the people directly.
The German unification of 1871 followed a very different path. It created a unified national state while still largely preserving the authority of the existing monarchies.
This does not mean that ordinary Germans had no political influence or that the population did not support German unity, because German nationalism had been growing for decades, and many people supported the idea of a unified Germany. What matters though is, that once the German Empire was built around the existing monarchies, the people were given political representation, but they were not the primary creators of the new political order.
And this distinction becomes important when looking at the institutions created in 1871. The Reichstag, a type of parliament of the time, being one of them. According to Article 20 of the 1871 Constitution, the Reichstag was elected through universal, direct and secret elections. In practice, this meant universal male suffrage, but it was actually a relatively broad voting system for its time. Citizens had, in theory, the opportunity to elect representatives and therefore had a “real” way of influencing the composition of the Reichstag. “Real” being put in quotation marks, because even though the Reichstag and the Bundesrat had real impact and participation in the legislation, it would be incorrect to describe the Reichstag as simply a symbolic institution with no influence.
However, neither did the Reichstag nor the Bundesrat actually control the government. The Chancellor was appointed by the Emperor rather than elected by the assembly, and the government was responsible to the Emperor rather than to the elected parliament. So we basically had an assembly that could criticize and oppose the government, but never trespass the Emperor’s or the Chancellor’s power. The Emperor could summon, open, adjourn and dissolve the Reichstag under certain conditions, which show us how influenced this democracy actually was.
Besides that, the Bundesrat, who theoretically also possessed important legislative and constitutional powers, had a clear Prussian sovereignty in member numbers, and held 17 of the 58 votes in the Bundesrat. It’s also well known that the Prussian representatives were normally under direct order of the Emperor and the Chancellor, which shows us, once again, that this democracy was actually pretty much influenced.
For this reason, I would describe the German Empire as a hybrid political system rather than a parliamentary democracy or a full monarchy. Because it contained genuine democratic institutions, but political power was still divided in a way that prevented the elected population from having ultimate control over the government. I would also say that the German Empire was an important stage in Germany’s longer and uneven process of democratization. The institutions created during this period, especially the Reichstag, became increasingly important in German political life, so it would also be right to describe it as step forward democracy.
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