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The Deutscher Nationalverein, or German National Association, holds a special position in the history of political organization in the nine- teenth century. It was, as Friedrich Engels opined in retrospect, the ‘strongest organization the German bourgeoisie has ever had’.1 _Founded

in September 1859, it aimed to bring about a German national state with a directly elected parliament and a central government under Prussian leadership. This national union of federal states was to replace the Deutscher Bund or German Confederation, which had united the 36 German states since 1815 into a confederation of federal states but which was a purely monarchical construct and possessed no democratic legitimacy whatsoever.2 _{The National Association based its political}

agenda on the Reichsverfassung, the German constitution proclaimed by the revolutionary national assembly in Frankfurt on 28 March 1849.3

However, this time, it wanted to achieve its goals not by revolution but by organizing. In the self-confident words of its manager Lorenz Nagel

A. Biefang (*)

The Kommission für Geschichte des Parlamentarismus und der politischen Parteien, Berlin, Germany

(April 1865), it wanted ‘to bring the German people to power by means of organizing’.4

Indeed, the founders of the association did much more in the field of organizing than what the liberal middle classes had so far been prepared to do. To that end, they borrowed and combined concepts from German, Italian and English examples. Within a few years, the Nationalverein developed from a nationalist pressure group into a mass organization that was directed towards parliament and resembled a modern political party. However, in 1867, immediately after the foundation of the North German Confederation it disbanded again. Its successor, the National Liberal Party, was set up as a parliamentary party without any extra-parliamentary structures to speak of. The Social Democrats, who around 1900 were the European model or bogeyman of a bureaucratic mass party, took over the organizational heritage of the National Association.

This contribution will present the National Association as a labora- tory of the nineteenth-century bourgeois attempts at organization. The first section will discuss the phases of the history of the association and its corresponding political strategies. The development of the organiza- tion can be understood only in relation to its dramatic political history. The second and most important section will discuss the organizational design of the National Association, its models, leaders and the way it oper- ated. The development from pressure group to prototype of mass party deserves special attention as does the question of democracy within the party itself. The third and last section will explain the reasons for the dis- solution (Auflösung) of the National Association and will try to determine the place of the Association in the history of political organizing by the liberal middle classes.

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The foundation of the Nationalverein in September 1859 was a result of the so-called New Era. This expression served as a euphemism for the hoped-for domestic policy reforms and political campaigns aimed at estab- lishing a united German nation that a large part of the middle classes asso- ciated with the accession of the Prince Regent and later King Wilhelm I of Prussia.5 _{After a decade of oppression, the state persecution of the press}

and of associations, clubs, societies and the like, which had characterized the decade after the suppression of the 1848–1849 revolutions, did in

fact ease off. The establishment of a supra-local political organization would otherwise not have been possible. The first of these newly founded national organizations was the Kongress Deutscher Volkswirte, the con- gress of German economists, which was established in 1858 and advocated a liberal-capitalist economic order. The Deutscher Nationalverein evolved a year later largely from its political wing. An important reason for its organization was the war between the Habsburg Monarchy and Sardinia- Piedmont, which was supported by France. Many liberals and democrats saw the ‘Vaterland in Gefahr’. From the early phases of its establishment, it testified to the strong mobilizing power of emerging nationalism for the self-organization of citizens.6

A range of meetings at regional level preceded the foundation of the Nationalverein, which was formalized at a national assembly in Frankfurt called for 16 September 1859 and attended by over 100 liberal and demo- cratic politicians. A temporary political agenda was agreed upon and a con- cise organizational statute was decided on. It was to be drawn up in detail by a commission consisting of 12 members.7 _{In the first few months after}

the foundation, the Nationalverein’s steering committees, the commission and the executive committee were kept busy with the consolidation of the organization’s structure and agenda. The difficulty was that a ‘German nation’ as a political and emotional community existed only half-heartedly, as large parts of the various federal states’ respective populations were still focused entirely on the individual states’ centres. The Nationalverein’s organizational structure and agenda had to unite 1848 constitutionalists and 1848 democrats, northern and southern Germans, Protestants and Catholics, those who believed in a ‘Greater Germany’, and those who did not. It was therefore both a driver and an expression of nation-building.

The Nationalverein’s political history can be divided into three phases that greatly depended on the political developments in Prussia. These phases corresponded with a respectively adapted political strategy. The first phase was defined by the advent of the so-called New Era in Prussia and lasted from 1859 to around 1861–1862. During these years, the Nationalverein pursued a political strategy that could be described as a ‘warmongering strategy’. It was applied for the first time on the occasion of the war in Northern Italy in 1859. The basic idea was as simple as it was risky. At the time, the Nationalverein called for the military and diplo- matic authority of the Confederation’s various members to be transferred entirely to Prussia for the duration of the war. It was hoped that this action would break the hated principle of a confederation of federal states in

favour of a single, powerful German state. The thinking behind this plan was that Prussia would not relinquish this authority once it possessed it, or at any rate not if the war ended in a victory. A national parliament would subsequently have to be established to ensure that the political order thus created did not smack of despotism and to lend it political legitimacy. The war thereby became a nationalist-revolutionary-charged instrument to aid the foundation of a Prussian-dominated national state.

Over the next few years, the Nationalverein attempted to engender sev- eral foreign policy crises or to exacerbate such crises by means of agitation in order to trigger the described mechanism. The first such instance was the occasion of Savoy and Nice being ceded to France in the spring of 1860 as agreed by Piedmont-Sardinia in return for French military aid. After that, the warmongering concentrated increasingly on Schleswig-Holstein, a problem firmly and deeply rooted in the nation’s emotions and far better suited to agitation designed for mass impact than evoking the comparably abstract idea of a ‘danger emanating from France’. To some extent, this strategy proved successful with the war against Denmark in 1864, but in completely different and less favourable circumstances than expected. On the occasion of the 1867 ‘Luxembourg Crisis’ in 1867, involving the question as to whether the Grand Duchy, which had so far belonged to the German Confederation, would in future be French, German or neu- tral, the Nationalverein again reverted to its warmongering strategy. The 1870–1871 national-liberal enthusiasm for war was also a direct result of the warmongering strategy described above. From the emerging national- liberal perspective, the 1864, 1866 and 1870–1871 wars were fought for the purpose of national unification.

From the perspective of the Nationalverein, this ‘warmongering strat- egy’ assumed a liberalized Prussia willing to accept considerable foreign policy and military risks. Alas, there was no such Prussia. In actual fact, in terms of foreign policy, the conservative monarchy’s actions never went against the legal system of the German Confederation and any interna- tional treaties, and as far as domestic policy was concerned, the short phase of cautious liberalization soon came to an end. On the contrary, the debates about military reform rapidly grew into a constitutional crisis between the liberal-dominated parliament and the royal government. The Nationalverein responded to these developments by ceasing to appeal directly to the Prussian government and shifting its political focus to the individual states. However, it was not averse to reverting to its original strategy whenever possible.

The second phase in the organization’s politics, which lasted from 1861 until early 1864, was determined by the necessity of having to dis- tance itself from Prussia at times. The basic principle of this new strategy consisted of concentrating on bringing the policies of the various German federal states in line with each other. This was intended to increase the pressure on the ‘Bundestag’, then the standing conference of the member states of the German Confederation, to instigate reforms, and indirectly also on Prussia. Branches of the ‘Deutsche Fortschrittspartei’, the German progress party, were founded in Prussia, Württemberg, Bavaria, Hesse- Darmstadt, Nassau, Hanover and other federal states whose steering com- mittee members enjoyed close links with their Nationalverein counterparts with the intention of creating the institutional prerequisites for achieving this goal.8 _{For the same reason, the Nationalverein also became involved}

in the foundation of the Deutscher Handelstag, the German chamber of commerce, and the Deutscher Abgeordnetentag, the German members of parliament congress, both of which had their roots in the individual states’ respective institutions. The collaboration and division of labour with the Abgeordnetentag was particularly successful, as the congress consisted of progressive-liberal members of federal state parliaments from across the Confederation’s states.

At the same time, the Nationalverein practised a more ‘grassroots’ political approach with increased mass impact, which resulted in a con- siderably higher number of meetings held at a local level. However, this new style also included demonstrative participation in events organized by the national gymnastics and shooting associations and also the inde- pendent organization of celebrations commemorating Fichte and, above all, the anniversary of the proclamation of the Reichsverfassung consti- tution in 1849. By means of such performative and symbolic acts, the Nationalverein attempted to credibly demonstrate that large parts of the population supported its aims. The October 1862 general assembly, at which the 1849 Reichsverfassung constitution including the fundamen- tal rights and electoral laws defined therein were formally adopted as the Nationalverein’s agenda, was the peak of its sharp swing to the left.

The fundamentally pro-Prussian Nationalverein’s cohesion was thereby maintained also during the constitutional crisis. The organization even managed to gain new members, and to reject the Austrian reform plans for the Confederation, which did not entail a directly elected parliament, as undemocratic and anti-national. However, when the Prussian govern- ment, under its new chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who was considered

the incarnation of political backwardness, continued to pursue its colli- sion course against the parliament in violation of the constitution, the Nationalverein underwent a crisis. The October 1863 general assembly was marred by disputes between the various wings of the organization and splitting tendencies.

In what was a difficult situation for the Nationalverein, the conflict about which nation Schleswig-Holstein belonged to entered its deci- sive stage occasioned by the death of King Frederick VII of Denmark, who by personal union was also Duke of Schleswig and Holstein. The Nationalverein entered the third and final phase of its history. In a dra- matic sitting in late December 1863, it decided to revert to the ‘warmon- gering strategy’, although in a radicalized and extended form: the plan consisted of clarifying matters by supporting the German pretender to Schleswig-Holstein’s throne, Friedrich von Augustenburg. This involved the ‘Augustenburger’ taking up residency in Kiel immediately, supported by a semi-legal army of volunteers organized by the Nationalverein, and taking over all affairs of state. The idea behind this show of partiality was to turn the international legal conflict between the German confedera- tion and Denmark into a war between the nations, fought for Schleswig- Holstein’s liberty. The intended outcome was a united German nation under Prussian leadership—without Bismarck.

This strategy, pervaded by nationalist-revolutionary elements, failed primarily due to Prussia’s and Austria’s determination to conquer the duchies for Germany not by citing nationalist-revolutionary rights but on the strength of international treaties. With these latest—above all, Prussian—military victories, the national constitution movement’s strat- egy completely collapsed. The Nationalverein was cast into a maelstrom of opposing currents: on the one side, there were those who were pro- annexation and prepared to tolerate Bismarck’s now even more powerful regime and in return accept the fact that Prussia’s territories would be extended northwards. On the other side stood the principled federalists who were opposed to granting concessions to a still reactionary Prussia.

The Nationalverein no longer managed to consolidate these diver- gent opinions into an agenda acceptable to all. From 1865 onwards, it became restricted to its right-leaning, liberal, primarily Protestant wing as members departed and breakaway groups formed. It became regionally weighted in favour of northern Germany and the minor central German states. These remnants, too, were unable to agree on a common attitude towards the Prussian government and wavered between cooperation and

confrontation. Nevertheless, once the Prussian proposals for the reform of the German Confederation—which included the establishment of a body of directly elected national representatives—became public in April 1866, the Nationalverein became involved in instigating the tough negotiations that culminated in the 1867 constitutional compromise, which antici- pated the constitution adopted by the newly founded German Empire in 1871.9 _{The nationalist-liberal remnants of the Nationalverein, which later}

evolved into the nationalist-liberal wing of North German Confederation’s Reichstag, played a major part in ensuring that the new state was born as a federal state rather than simply a Prussia enlarged by annexations.

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tructure The Nationalverein managed to have such political impact not least due to its new and modern organizational structure. Its founders modelled the organization’s structure on various national and international examples, which they combined with a few innovations. Most of the literature cites the Italian Società nazionale as a role model, which has always seemed likely due to the identical name and the somewhat similar political circum- stances.10 _{However, this assumption is superficial and must be modified. In}

actual fact, the organization’s founders at best looked towards the Italian role model in political terms. Italy’s Società nazionale, founded in 1857 as a union of liberal and democratic nationalists, fought for the establishment of a unified Italian state in close cooperation with the Piedmont govern- ment led by Camillo Cavour. The Nationalverein’s ‘conservative liberal’ constitutional wing would have hoped for a similar cooperation with the Prussian government, but the greater majority of the organization was not content with playing the role of mere propaganda organ for Prussia. As far as the organizational structure was concerned, the organization’s found- ers in fact built on experiences gained throughout the history of German associations, clubs and societies. Above all, however, they were inspired by Richard Cobden’s Anti-Corn Law League, copying many details of its organizational structures and forms of action.11 _{The Nationalverein’s}

founders did not look towards Italy for guidance, but to highly industrial- ized and politically developed England.12

The Nationalverein continued the traditions of traditional German associations, clubs and societies, and therefore also adopted their tradi- tionally democratic internal structures: the principle of making a pub- lic impact as well as the regular members’ meetings, agenda debates, an

elected board and functionary accountability.13 _{However, in one impor-}

tant aspect, the organization differed from the previous norm: its central- ist architecture. The federative fraternity alliances during the Vormärz era, the decades leading up to the March Revolution in the states belonging to the German Confederation, and the years of the Revolution, above all the Preß- und Vaterlandsverein, founded in 1832, and the democratic Centralmärzverein, founded in 1848–1849, had been unusual in that the political decision-making power had remained at the level of the local society.14 _{Decision-making was visible at a national level only through}

annual general meetings, where the so-called ‘Vororte’, outposts, were elected. These were local organizations of particular importance that were charged with running the business for one year. The ‘Vororte’ had little authority. They served mainly as coordination and communication centres and could neither act nor issue instructions in the name of their affiliated organizations.

The Nationalverein broke with this cumbersome pattern. In 1859, it constituted itself as a single organization for the whole of Germany and did not permit any local branches. Each member therefore received instruc- tions directly from headquarters. The political power was concentrated in its main executive body, the commission, replacing the almost authority- less ‘Vororte’. This created a new type of organization: a centralized and powerful union of agitators.

The commission originally set up when the Nationalverein was founded became the hub of its power. Its members were elected at the annual general meeting by way of secret and equal vote. It was charged with lead- ing the organization in political as well as business terms for one year at a time. For the day-to-day business, the commission elected an executive committee from amongst its members, which consisted of a chairman, his deputy and a head executive secretary as well as two to four other people. The commission had a lot of power. It was authorized to represent the Nationalverein and act in its name, and managed the organization’s substantial funds. It also had an unrestricted right to co-opt, which de facto diminished the democratic character of the commission elections. If a person was not elected at the general meeting, he was simply co-opted, if

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