Proclamation of the German Empire (1871)
독일 제국 선포 (1871)
The ceremony in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles, outside besieged Paris, at which King Wilhelm I of Prussia was proclaimed German Emperor on 18 January 1871. A symbolic act following the November Treaties that brought the South German states into the North German Confederation and the new constitution in force from 1 January, it was timed to the anniversary of the founding of the Kingdom of Prussia in 1701 and was celebrated as the empire's founding day.
In depth
For Bismarck, who had excluded Austria and founded the North German Confederation in 1866, the war of 1870 was the chance to overcome South German particularism. The victories of August and September inclined the southern princes to join, and in November 1870 Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt, Württemberg and Bavaria signed treaties. On 8 December the Bundesrat voted to rename the Confederation the "German Empire" and to make the king of Prussia German Emperor, Wilhelm agreed that day before a Reichstag delegation, and on 9 and 10 December the Reichstag voted to offer the title and passed the constitutional amendment admitting the southern states. The new constitution and the imperial title came into effect on 1 January 1871. Wilhelm feared the title would overshadow his Prussian kingship and wanted "Kaiser von Deutschland", but Bismarck warned that the South German princes and the emperor of Austria might protest, and the king grudgingly accepted "Deutscher Kaiser". The date chosen was 18 January, the anniversary of the coronation of Elector Frederick III of Brandenburg as King Frederick I of Prussia in 1701, and the place the Hall of Mirrors, whose ceiling celebrated Louis XIV as a conqueror of German cities and states. The great headquarters of the German armies was at Versailles, and the Prussian leadership and part of the allied leaders were gathered around Paris.
On 18 January German troops paraded behind military bands around the palace, and delegations of the field regiments raised their battle-torn banners in the Hall of Mirrors in a "colourful forest". A service was held at an altar in the middle of the hall, ending with everyone singing "Nun danket alle Gott", and Wilhelm I and the princes stood on a raised podium at the end of the gallery. Bismarck read out the proclamation, and Grand Duke Frederick I of Baden, Wilhelm's only son-in-law, avoided the precise constitutional title and shouted "His Majesty, Kaiser Wilhelm", which those present repeated three times. The rulers of Hesse, Brunswick, the two lines of Reuss, Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, Waldeck-Pyrmont and Lippe were not represented. Wilhelm's letter, Bismarck's account and the record of the historian Albert von Pfister, present as a soldier, agree that a field altar was built instead of a throne. Wilhelm emphasised the religious nature of the ceremony, while Bismarck openly criticised the emperor for seeing himself not as holding authority over the princes but as a master of war triumphing with his faithful. After the election of a new Reichstag on 3 March the constitution of the German Empire came into force on 4 May, and France recognised the empire in the Treaty of Frankfurt on 10 May. The empire was a federation of 25 kingdoms, grand duchies, duchies, principalities and free cities in which the emperor, as "first among equals", presided over the Bundesrat and appointed the chancellor. Amid the criticism that unity had been achieved at the expense of freedom, Marx called the empire "a military despotism cloaked in parliamentary forms".