ABSTRACT
In 1871 the National Liberals, and to a lesser extent the Progressives, were still the natural parliamentary allies of Bismarck and cooperated closely in creating the administrative and legal infrastructure of the new Reich by supporting bills for a national coinage, a new commercial code, the setting up of a central bank and the introduction of a uniform legal procedure. The Conservatives were uncertain and divided in their reaction to the formation of a modern secular state and suspicious that Bismarck had become ‘the lackey of Liberalism’ (Gall, 1986, 2: 11). The Zentrum , which was founded in December 1870, attracted the south German Catholics, the Poles and the other nationalist minorities, and was inevitably particularist in sympathy and a strong defender of the rights of the German states.
