Otto, Prince of Bismarck, Count of Bismarck-Schönhausen, Duke of Lauenburg was a Prussian and later German statesman and diplomat.
William I or Wilhelm I was King of Prussia from 2 January 1861 and German Emperor from 18 January 1871 until his death in 1888. A member of the House of Hohenzollern, he was the first head of state of a united Germany. He was de facto head of state of Prussia from 1858, when he became regent for his brother Frederick William IV. During the reign of his grandson Wilhelm II, he was known as Wilhelm the Great.
The North German Confederation was initially a German military alliance established in August 1866 under the leadership of the Kingdom of Prussia, which was transformed in the subsequent year into a confederated state that existed from July 1867 to December 1870. A milestone of the German Unification, it was the earliest continual legal predecessor of the modern German nation-state known today as the Federal Republic of Germany.
Chlodwig Carl Viktor, Prince of Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, Prince of Ratibor and Corvey, usually referred to as the Prince of Hohenlohe, was a German statesman, who served as the chancellor of the German Empire and minister-president of Prussia from 1894 to 1900. Prior to his appointment as Chancellor, he had served in a number of other positions, including as minister-president of Bavaria (1866–1870), German Ambassador to Paris (1873–1880), Foreign Secretary (1880) and Imperial Lieutenant of Alsace-Lorraine (1885–1894). He was regarded as one of the most prominent liberal politicians of his time in Germany.
Albrecht Theodor Emil Graf von Roon was a Prussian soldier and statesman. As Minister of War from 1859 to 1873, Roon, along with Otto von Bismarck and Helmuth von Moltke, was a dominating figure in Prussia's government during the key decade of the 1860s, when a series of successful wars against Denmark, Austria, and France led to German unification under Prussia's leadership. A moderate conservative and supporter of executive monarchy, he was an avid modernizer who worked to improve the efficiency of the army.
The German Progress Party was the first modern political party in Germany, founded by liberal members of the Prussian House of Representatives in 1861 in opposition to Minister President Otto von Bismarck.
Karl Anton, Prince of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was the last prince of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen before the territory was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia in 1849. Afterwards he continued to be titular prince of his house and, with the death of the last prince of Hohenzollern-Hechingen in 1869, of the entire House of Hohenzollern. He served as Minister President of Prussia from 1858 to 1862, the only Hohenzollern prince to hold the post. His second son, Karl, became king of Romania. The offer of the throne of Spain to his eldest son, Leopold, was one of the causes of the Franco-Prussian War, which led to the unification of Germany and the creation of the German Empire.
The House of Bismarck is a German noble family that rose to prominence in the 19th century, largely through the achievements of the statesman Otto von Bismarck. He was granted a hereditary comital title in 1865, the hereditary title of Prince of Bismarck in 1871, and the non-hereditary title of Duke of Lauenburg in 1890. Several of Otto von Bismarck's descendants, notably his elder son Herbert, Prince of Bismarck, have also been politicians.
Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff was a Prussian statesman.
The Landtag of Prussia was the representative assembly of the Kingdom of Prussia implemented in 1849, a bicameral legislature consisting of the upper House of Lords (Herrenhaus) and the lower House of Representatives (Abgeordnetenhaus). After World War I and the German Revolution of 1918–19 the Landtag diet continued as the parliament of the Free State of Prussia between 1921 and 1934, when it was abolished by the Nazi regime.
The chancellor of Germany, officially the federal chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, is the head of the federal government of Germany, and the commander-in-chief of the German Armed Forces during wartime. The chancellor is the chief executive of the Federal Cabinet and heads the executive branch. The chancellor is elected by the Bundestag on the proposal of the federal president and without debate.
Otto Grafzu Stolberg-Wernigerode was an Imperial German officer, diplomat and politician who served as the first vice-chancellor of the German Empire under Otto Von Bismarck between 1878 and 1881.
Events from the year 1871 in Germany.
The Reichstag of the North German Confederation was the federal state's lower house of parliament. The popularly elected Reichstag was responsible for federal legislation together with the Bundesrat, the upper house whose members were appointed by the governments of the individual states to represent their interests. Executive power lay with the Bundesrat and the king of Prussia acting as Bundespräsidium, or head of state. The Reichstag debated and approved or rejected taxes and expenditures and could propose laws in its own right. To become effective, all laws required the approval of both the Bundesrat and the Reichstag. Voting rights in Reichstag elections were advanced for the time, granting universal, equal, and secret suffrage to men above the age of 25.
The proclamation of the German Empire, also known as the Deutsche Reichsgründung, took place in January 1871 after the joint victory of the German states in the Franco-Prussian War. As a result of the November Treaties of 1870, the southern German states of Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt, with their territories south of the Main line, Württemberg and Bavaria, joined the Prussian-dominated "North German Confederation" on 1 January 1871. On the same day, the new Constitution of the German Confederation came into force, thereby significantly extending the federal German lands to the newly created German Empire. The Day of the founding of the German Empire, January 18, became a day of celebration, marking when the Prussian King William I was proclaimed German Emperor at the Palace of Versailles.
Georg Herbert Fürst zu Münster von Derneburg , also known by his earlier title of Count of Münster-Ledenburg, was a Hanoverian and later German diplomat and politician. He served as ambassador to London 1873–1885 and Paris (1885–1900).
Robert Heinrich Ludwig, Graf von der Goltz was a German diplomat and politician in Prussia.
The Hohenzollern Cabinet formed the Prussian State Ministry appointed by Prince Regent Wilhelm I from November 6, 1858, to March 11, 1862. The transfer of government duties to William I by the ill King Frederick William IV resulted in a change of political course. The newly installed government consisted of liberal-conservative representatives of the Wochenblatt Party. The term in office is referred to as the "New Era", in which, in a certain departure from the reactionary era, public life was liberalized and the government cooperated more closely with the liberal chamber majority. However, the de facto head of the cabinet was not the Prime Minister, but the liberal former Prime Minister of 1848, Rudolf von Auerswald. As a minister without a portfolio, he was de facto deputy to the Prime Minister. In the spring of 1862, the Army reform escalated the Prussian constitutional conflict with the liberal chamber majority over the state parliament's co-determination in military affairs and fundamentally over the of Prussia, which led to the government's resignation and the end of the New Era.
The Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen Cabinet formed the Prussian State Ministry appointed by King William I from March 11 to September 23, 1862. After the previous government failed due to the Prussian constitutional conflict with the liberal chamber majority over the state parliament's participation in military affairs and, in principle, the parliamentarization of Prussia, William I installed a more conservative government that tried to agree on a compromise solution with the parliamentary majority, which, however, did not succeed. One week after Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen took office, the cabinet was fundamentally reorganized. The leading head of the cabinet was not the Prime Minister, but Finance Minister August von der Heydt.
The Caprivi Cabinet formed the Prussian State Ministry appointed by William II, King of Prussia and German Emperor, from March 20, 1890, to March 23, 1892.
