The Election of 1863
"Would you care for a drink, Otto?"
"Yes, thank you, Michael."
The outgoing Minister of the Interior and Chancellor of the Republic of Germany waited calmly for the election results. Michael von Hohenzollern had yielded the party leadership of the HUN to Hugo Unger, seeing an opportunity to secure the Chancellery for his own party. Otto von Bismarck remained the leader of the New Society, but was ineligible to serve as Chancellor again, content to serve as an elder statesman in the Reichstag. The Reichstag debates over the progress of the war with Tver had been fueled by the rebellion of French peasants against the war. By late January 1862, the last army was defeated, and an abortive uprising in Pomerania was swiftly crushed.
The average German was very pleased at the performance of the German army. He quietly accepted the tax hike and bore it with aplomb. Some of the more radical Germans were engrossed by an Englishman's work, Charles Darwin, who argued that man was descended from his brother animals and not by the grace of God. [1] Most Germans considered the words of Darwin to be heresy, and copies of his books were burned alongside those of "Plato" in bonfires throughout the country. A Gendarmerie parade throughout the country was met with cheers and gratitude, elevating the place of Germany in the world still farther. Stadtholders in the areas attacked by the uprising of the French rebellion reported a return to law and order.
But underneath the surface, tension remained. A cell of Hungarian separatists was quickly suppressed by swift police action, but during the arrest of one of the ringleaders, the Gendarmerie shot and killed a man who vaguely resembled Karl Marx. The result was a mass uprising, primarily concentrated in Italy, but with significant Jacobin presences in Eastern Europe.
A successful revolution in Danzig only bolstered the confidence of the Jacobins, who finally thought their time had come.
In Mecklenburg and Mazovia, demonstrations in support of the Jacobins were met by a determined police response; the international community lost no time mocking Germany for agreeing to liberate Tver but suppressing its own citizens.
The election season began on 3 July of 1862. As the polls opened, the Minister of War, Hals Gutfreund, walked to his office to check on the progress of the new ships and to see whether or not all of the soldiers interred in Castille had made it back to their duty stations on the French border. A heartbroken woman, who'd lost four sons in the fighting, silently wept in the street across from his office. Gutfreund, a kindly soul, offered her some money. The woman slapped the money out of his hand. A guard standing outside the War Ministry, at about 50 yards from the incident, only saw somebody attack his boss and shot her dead. In moments, riots flared up and engulfed the German capital.
Huge crowds of young people gathered in the capital to decry the war and the sacrifices for a people no German had ever met. Even larger crowds, filled with the grey uniforms of the German army, demonstrated in support of the conservatives who had led Germany in a victorious war against three vicious opponents. Hugo Unger wasted no time in campaigning on precisely that point: Germany had won the war! There was no better time to extend German influence still further, with the French and Polish armies crippled and the British unwilling or unable to act on their own.
Unger wasted no time shifting the blame for the horrendous casualties of warfare on the former Minister of Education, Carlo Brunelli. "Brunelli equipped our troops with terrible weapons, our ships with outdated cannon, and turned away business leader after business leader who offered his assistance. I have already instituted a plan to encourage experimentation in all German universities, and have offered a sizeable sum to any scientist that will give our fighting men an advantage over our enemies!"
Unger's speech had immediate impact. The city of Florence, long a bastion for anti-German propaganda, voted 10 to 1 to approve Unger's speech in the Reichstag and marched up and down their city streets, German flags held high.
However, that same speech also awakened the sleeping Liberals in Germany. Dr. Dominik Fellmann of the UAI, speaking before some of the wealthiest men in Germany, called for a period of peace and reconstruction before indulging in further imperialism. It was not the time to attack, but to defend: Germany's borders had never been more secure, and by building up German industrial capacity, the Republic would bury her opponents with German manufactured goods. He won quite a few liberal supporters that day.
The DDA had its own agenda in the election, with its new leader, Gerrit Aldo Servatius van Kloetinge. Kloetinge had never been a very vocal member of his party, usually content to toe the party line, but with Carlo Brunelli being burned in effigy throughout the Republic, the time to change leadership had come. He approved the message of Fellmann, but immediately rejected the idea of the government having anything at all to do with the economy. "It is government interference that keeps the natural brilliance of the German worker from shining through. The tariff Dr. Fellmann imposed on our people last year generated almost no government revenue but crippled countless smallholders. It is time for Germans to let the private sector establish her industry; give Herr Meier a rest!"
While Unger, Fellmann, and Kloetinge all effectively rallied support to their causes, the new leader of the Imperialists, Maximillian von Vandenburg, spent all of his time keeping up the members he already had. The new SDAP was very vocal in their utopian schemes to reshape Germany, rejecting all forms of armed aggression while at the same time championing government control of the means of production. The firebrand Heinrich von Gogh even offered support to nationalities seeking more autonomy in exchange for their support for his measures of government control. While the populace was deaf to his message, for the most part, only Gogh offered a genuine alternative to the tried and true methods of the older German parties.
As Bismarck and Hohenzollern clinked their glasses, they read the election results.
Bismarck was disappointed; while the New Society was still the largest party in the Assembly, that margin was narrower than ever before, as they fell under 30% of the vote for the first time in a few elections. The SDAP's initial showing was meager, but showed that they had some support among the people of Germany. The remaining parties all more or less maintained their numbers from the previous election. In the Conclave, the results were similar; the Conservative bloc lost votes, almost all of them moving to the SDAP as a ripple effect pulled Germany to the left.
It remained for the leaders of each party to sit down and settle a coalition to lead Germany for the next four years.
[1] The Darwinism invention fired in March; handy to get it out of the way! We got Nitroglycerin last update, as an FYI.
EDIT:
We can reform again, if we wish to do so. We have the option of
allowing all trade unions,
secret ballots, or
no reforms.