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Kleinstaaterei is a German word, mainly used for the political situation in Germany and neighbouring regions during the Holy Roman Empire. It refers to the large number of small states and city-states, some of which were little larger than a single town; see List of participants in the Reichstag of 1792 for a list as of that year.

History

Whereas in other parts of Europe, such as France or even Poland, coherent nation-states emerged from the early modern trend of political concentration and centralisation, no such state emerged within the Holy Roman Empire. While two relatively large states developed within the Holy Roman Empire, both—the Habsburg Monarchy and the Kingdom of Prussia—were really multinational empires that included substantial non-German territories and lands outside the borders of the Holy Roman Empire.

Apart from these two states, the Holy Roman Empire consisted of hundreds of small, German-speaking principalities, most of which derived from successive dynastic splits, sometimes reflected in compound names such as Saxe-Coburg. During the early modern period, these small states modernised their military, judicial, and economic administrations. These hardly existed at the imperial level, and the emperor was little more than a feudalistic confederal figurehead, without political or military clout. After the Reformation, the Empire's small states were divided along religious lines. Those headed by Roman Catholic dynasties faced those ruled by Protestant dynasties in the Thirty Years' War and other conflicts.

After French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte forced the Holy Roman Emperor, Francis II, to dissolve the Empire in 1806, Kleinstaaterei was altered but not eliminated. Through the elimination of territories ruled by prince-bishops (secularisation) and through the consolidation of neighbouring principalities, enclaves, and exclaves, Napoleon reduced several hundred states into a relative concentration of a little over two dozen states in the Confederation of the Rhine. This confederation did not survive Napoleon's military defeat at the hands of the allies. These allies included Prussia and the Austrian Empire—the successor state to the Habsburg Monarchy. These two were the only major German powers, and neither had been part of the Confederacy of the Rhine. The victorious allies, including Prussia and Austria, decided at the Congress of Vienna (1814–15) on widespread dynastic restorations, although some of Napoleon's consolidations were allowed to stand, and Austria and Prussia helped themselves to some formerly independent territories. The resulting territorial division resulted in a consolidated version—around 40 states—of the pre-Napoleonic Kleinstaaterei.

The rise of nationalism across Europe brought movements striving for 'nation-states', each governing an entire (ethno-cultural) people. German nationalists began to insist on a unified Germany. This mood led to the pejorative use of the word Kleinstaaterei during this era. The call for a unified nation-state was one of the central demands of the Revolutions of 1848, but the ruling dynasties of the smaller German states and of multinational Austria and Prussia managed to resist nationalist efforts at unification.

Only after Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck gradually built a unified German state under the Prussian royal house of Hohenzollern did Kleinstaaterei largely end in 1871 with the founding of the German Empire. (The only surviving small states —Luxembourg and Liechtenstein—were at the periphery of the German-speaking world.) The founding of the German Empire created a largely German nation-state. (While the German Empire excluded the partly German but multinational Habsburg domains of Austria–Hungary, it included a substantial Polish minority in parts of eastern Prussia and other minorities along its northern and western borders.) The unification of the German Empire put Germany on the map as a major European power, albeit too late to become a major colonial power.

The decentralised nature of Kleinstaaterei made it difficult for the German economy to live up to its potential. Varying systems of weights and measures, different currencies, and numerous tariffs created a system that impeded trade and investment, although the creation of the German Customs Union had begun to lift these barriers. The startling rapidity of Germany's economic growth after unification under Bismarck provided further evidence that Kleinstaaterei had been economically repressive. The system did contribute to cultural diversity within Germany, and the numerous rival courts—though usually politically insignificant—often gained some renown through patronage.

Modern German usage

Today, the term Kleinstaaterei is sometimes used in the German media and elsewhere in a figurative sense to describe the German political system of federalism in a critical way, especially referring to its seeming inefficiency to decide on reforms in political fields that are in the responsibility of the Länder and thus are under the auspices of sixteen different administrations.

Other uses

By analogy Kleinstaaterei equally applies to similar cases, especially, until its Risorgimento (reunification as a kingdom from 1861–70), to the Italian peninsula, where many partially republican city states of widely varying sizes coexisted with numerous, often petty, monarchies. The term applies even though in time several regions had seen significant concentrations resulting in a few major powers which were stronger than their size suggested, as their power came from being among Europe's richest states, including the Papal States in central Italy, the dogal Venetian Republic, the duchy of Milan in Lombardy, Piedmont–Sardinia (which would achieve the unification from its Turin-based home territories), and the largest, the Neapolitan Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

The related word Kleinstaat (small state, pl. Kleinstaaten) is also, sometimes disparagingly, used to refer to small countries, like the Vatican City, Monaco, Liechtenstein, San Marino etc; or sometimes in reference to small island-states, like Micronesia, Vanuatu, Nauru etc.

See also

• Balkanisation
• List of states in the Holy Roman Empire
• List of participants in the Reichstag of 1792
• German Mediatisation

Sources and references

• The German Wikipedia article (unsourced when consulted, February 2006)

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