Why didn't Austria-Hungrary become part of Germany under Bismarck's unification plan?

Question

Any info is most welcome.

Answer 1

Bismarck was a student of the "Kleindeutschland" or Small Germany solution to unification; he wanted to fully exclude Vienna's influence in German affairs and replace it with Berlin's. The Habsburgs, on the other hand, wanted a "Grossdeutschland" or Greater Germany, which would be a German state with Austria as its leader. The Prussians and Austrians went to war in 1866, and Prussia emerged as the power to lead Germany.

Austria turned to Hungary in response, and the Dual Monarchy was formed in 1867, creating the political entity known to history as Austria-Hungary (before 1867 it was the Austrian Empire).

Answer 2

In 1866, in concert with Italy, Bismarck created an environment in which Austria declared the Austro-Prussian War (also known as the Seven Weeks' War or German Civil War). A decisive, one day victory at the Battle of Königgrätz allowed Prussia to annex some territory and allowed Bismarck to exclude long-time rival Austria and most of its allies from the now-defunct German Confederation when forming the North German Confederation with the states that had supported Prussia. This war also resulted in the end of Austrian dominance of the German nations.

Answer 3

Although the Austrio-hungarian Empire shared much of the cultural and ethnic heritage of Germany, it was a distinct nation--and was internally a unified political state. Germany, on the other hand, was not actually one state--there were thirty-nine (if I remember the exact number correctly)--a collection of duchys and principalities. Up until the Napoleonic period (c.1800, give or take) there had been many more--but Napoleon reorganized them into these 39 larger units and the new arrangemet stuck after he lost power and the French were driven out.

Bismark sought, successfully, to unify all these Germanic states into a single political entity--but the unification was focused on that region only. It was Hitler who wanted to force other countries with Germanic roots into his "3rd Reich"--but hen, he wanted to conquer everyone--that was just the excuse where Czechoslovakia and Austria were concerned.

Answer 4

The Prussian "new kids on the block" in the German Union (Prussia had only been a kingdom since 1700) wouldn't have stood a chance to rule the whole of German speaking Europe against the Habsburgs who had almost without interruption been Holy Roman Empereors since Frederick III in the 15th century.

Answer 5

The hungarians are not Germanic and they were part of an empire that considered itself greater than Germany at the time.

Answer 6

one of the reasons was that Bismark wanted to create a German empire and Austria-Hungary had many different nationalities who would be too much trouble to govern.he only took land off them that was German and important for the Germans to have for industrial and possibly military reasons

Answer 7

Austria-Hungary had it's own Monarchy.