page_title: German Empire
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: German Empire / History / Background
caption_attribution_description: Information added by Wikimedia users.English: Otto von Bismarck-Schönhausen (Reichskanzler of Germany, 1871 - 1890), after his resignation in 1890.
context_page_description: The German Empire or the Imperial State of Germany, also referred to as Imperial Germany, was the German nation state that existed from the unification of Germany in 1871 until the November Revolution in 1918.
  It was founded on 1 January 1871 when the south German states, except for Austria, joined the North German Confederation and the new constitution came into force changing the name of the federal state to the German Empire and introduced the title of German Emperor for Wilhelm I, King of Prussia from the House of Hohenzollern. Berlin remained its capital, and Bismarck, Minister-President of Prussia became Chancellor, the head of government. As these events occurred, the Prussian-led North German Confederation and its southern German allies were still engaged in the Franco-Prussian War.
  The German Empire consisted of 26 states, most of them ruled by royal families. They included four kingdoms, six grand duchies, five duchies, seven principalities, three free Hanseatic cities, and one imperial territory. Although Prussia was one of four kingdoms in the realm, it contained about two thirds of Germany's population and territory.
context_section_description: The German Confederation had been created by an act of the Congress of Vienna on 8 June 1815 as a result of the Napoleonic Wars, after being alluded to in Article 6 of the 1814 Treaty of Paris.
  Bourgeois revolutions of 1848, associated with highly educated and middle class were crushed in favor of peasants, artisans and Otto von Bismarck's pragmatic Realpolitik. Bismarck sought to extend Hohenzollern hegemony throughout the German states; to do so meant unification of the German states and the exclusion of Prussia's main German rival, Austria, from the subsequent German Empire. He envisioned a conservative, Prussian-dominated Germany. Three wars led to military successes and helped to persuade German people to do this: the Second Schleswig War against Denmark in 1864, the Austro-Prussian War in 1866, and the Franco-Prussian War in 1870–1871.
  The German Confederation ended as a result of the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 between the constituent Confederation entities of the Austrian Empire and its allies on one side and the Prussia and its allies on the other. The war resulted in the partial replacement of the Confederation in 1867 by a North German Confederation, comprising the 22 states north of the Main River. The patriotic fervour generated by the Franco-Prussian War overwhelmed the remaining opposition to a unified Germany (aside from Austria) in the four states south of the Main and during November 1870 they joined the North German Confederation by treaty.
caption: Chancellor Bismarck, the visionary statesman who unified Germany with his skillful political moves
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