German Confederation, organization of 39 German states, established by the Congress of Vienna in 1815 to replace the destroyed Holy Roman Empire. It was a loose political association, formed for mutual defense, with no central executive or judiciary. Delegates met in a federal assembly dominated by Austria. Amid a growing call for reform and economic integration, conservative leaders, including Klemens, prince von Metternich, persuaded the confederation’s princes to pass the repressive Carlsbad Decrees (1819), and in the 1830s Metternich led the federal assembly in passing additional measures to crush liberalism and nationalism. The formation of the Zollverein (a German customs union) in 1834 and the Revolutions of 1848 undermined the confederation. It was dissolved with Prussia’s defeat of Austria in the Seven Weeks’ War (1866) and the establishment of the Prussian-dominated North German Confederation.
