The Compromise (CYOAH! Redux)

After several weeks of negotiations, the emperor and chancellor, all parliamentary parties, the heads of the member states and further representatives from all religious groups as well as representatives of most social movements involved in the conflicts sign the Imperial Compromise ("Reichsausgleich").

Its main points: The Imperial Compromise establishes inner peace, shapes Germany over the next decades and attracts interest across the continent and beyond.
 * The unified Civil Law Code, containing all the controversial provisions about women`s rights, along with new laws guaranteeing free and unlimited access to education and employment for everyone regardless of sex or creed as well as protecting union members and the role of trade unions in trade disputes, is introduced in 31 of the 38 member states. The "seven dissenters" (Münster, Westfalen, Paderborn, Fulda, Eichsfeld, Württemberg and Bavaria) keep their respective civil law systems and are excepted from the above-mentioned new public laws. (The group of 31 will come to be known as the "Parliamentary loyalists", the seven dissenters as "the emperor`s loyalists".)
 * No side will attempt to destabilise the other in any way. To enforce this, all member states agree on the establishment of a permanent bureau for the co-ordination of their sovereign police forces. Parliaments and heads of state are to hold similar round tables in cases of public unrest.
 * Universal suffrage is extended to women at federal elections and in the Parliamentary-loyalist states, but not in elections for the parliaments of the seven dissenter states.
 * A progressive income tax is levied federally, with its revenue split according to constitutional provisions into parliament`s and emperor`s budgets. To secure the churches` financial fundament, church taxes in concordance with federal income tax shall also be levied by the states and directly transferred to all enregistered confessions. Enregistered confessions agree not to act aggressively against each other in any way; a meta-synode is to be held in case disputes must be settled.
 * The Reichswehr must not intervene in inner-German conflicts

Liberal Germany celebrates social progress and the success of social movements in reshaping the polity. The images of the protesting and triumphing "Women of ´93" become ingrained and are later idolised and stylised in art, literature and popular films. Millions of working, well-educated women follow in their footsteps. The working class has another set of heroes, too. Strengthened trade unions and improved social security will turn the parliamentary-loyalist German states into egalitarian, highly cohesive societies with increasingly high living standards (like OTL 20th century Scandinavia) which make parliamentary-loyalist Germany`s working class the envy of proletarians world-wide and improves the attractiveness of the social-democratic reformist agenda considerably in the wake of labour struggles across the world at the beginning of the 20th century.

Conservative Germany suffers de-urbanisation and de-industrialisation, as both highly-qualified families who seek good education for their daughters, too, and workers lured by higher wages move to the parliamentary-loyalist states. But it eventually recovers from the defeat in the ´93 Revolution they had never intended to ignite, as constitutional provisions provide the emperor`s loyalist states with more than their fair share of income tax money. Eventually, they take over the role Switzerland played in OTL, with a grey area financial industry (after all, Southern germany has a long tradition of banking...) that absorbs money from launderers and tax evaders all over the world. Financial industry, traditional crafts and agriculture become the economic foundation of the emperor-loyalist states.

Germany`s contractualised inner division keeps it pretty much out of foreign affairs, with continually left-leaning parliaments and the emperor never agreeing on what kind of foreign policy agenda to pursue. (Germany only signs free-trade and  mutual assistance agreements with such minor - and also isolationist - players as Belgium, Denmark and Sweden.)

This has deep impacts on the continent`s development. In contrast to OTL and its ambitious, aggressive and uncautious Germany, this Reich never causes Europe to slide into a World War - and, as a consequence, keeps all its 1886 territories. If in OTL, Europe was a powder keg, this timeline`s isolationist Germany is like constant rain which keeps said powder always wet and unable to ignite.

The 1893 Revolution has not only cushioned continental conflicts; it also inspires social and national movements elsewhere to orient towards forming broad coalitions and pushing reformist agendas.

Successful national independence movements lead to the peaceful creation of the countries of Norway and Ireland in the 1910s and India, Burma, Laos, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines in the 1920s. Within the German Empire, the Polish, Kashubian and Sorbs achieve autonomy in 1904, establishing member states no.s 39, 40 and 41 (all parliamentary-loyalist) at the detriment of Brandenburg-Prussia.

Other independence movements become violent, yet succeeded:

More successful social revolutions start in China, where Germany and the US do not intervene against the Boxers, and continue in Russia, where the Czar is dethroned in 1905 and a republic installed.
 * The assassination of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo does not lead to World War I, but to a war between Austria-Hungary on one side and Russia and Romania as well as insurgents from within Austria-Hungary on the other side, in which Austria-Hungary eventually dissolves, creating the independent countries of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia. Russia annexes Galicia and Romania annexes Transilvania. In the last weeks of the war, Italy also joins the campaign against Austria, annexing Southern Tyrol and the Adriatic shore. (After more than a decade of violent Tyrolean insurgence, though, a referendum is held and South Tyrol rejoins Austria.)
 * The Arabian revolt leads to the dissolution of the Ottoman empire and the creation of a large, united state of Arabia, reaching from OTL Egypt to Iraq and from OTL Yemen to Syria, as well as to the establishment of a Turkish republic. Later rebellions in Libya, Algeria and Morocco lead to the incorporation of these regions into Arabia, too, at the detriment of Italy, France and Spain.

/// to be continued ///

Salvador79 (talk) 14:13, February 12, 2014 (UTC)

Turn The Other Cheek (CYOAH! Redux)