The German Question, Part Forty-Four

Somewhat updated Word History, 8/22/2015


"The Customs Union" (Zollverein)

While the various German states bickered, or even worse, fought, with each other at times, a number of these states did, at times, show that they could work together. Tolls were a common means for rulers of the states to enrich themselves. Many centuries ago, a fair number of the castles of the German lands were not only built for protection, but their strategic locations also gave local rulers the means to halt travelers and traders to extract tolls from them. As the centuries passed, more Germans became involved in making (manufacturing) items. These manufacturing areas, as well as the existing agricultural regions, often placed heavy tolls on certain goods in order to force outside competitors, including those from other German states, to raise their prices, thus protecting their own product industries.

After Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna, the various German states had hundreds of tolls. The newly expanded Prussia, ruled by the Hohenzollern family, implemented measures to eliminate, or reduce, tolls within Prussia and the Hohenzollern holdings outside of Prussia itself, but to continue tolls on most outside goods coming into their territories. Other smaller German states formed alliances to do likewise. The primary exception to all of this was Austria, which sought to maintain its tolls in order to protect its agricultural and industrial areas. Gradually, other German states, mainly in the central German lands, joined the Prussian customs union, but eventually even many of the southern states joined too. Austria remained outside the "Zollverein," as it came to be called by the 1830s (see Word History, below), as not only did the Austrians want to protect certain industries, the Prussian leadership of the "Zollverein" wanted Austria excluded, in spite of calls from some other members to admit Austria.* The "Zollverein" is important in German history, because it was a prelude to Prussian leadership to unite Germany into a modern nation, with the exclusion of Austria; the "Small Germany" solution to German unity.

* Remember, if you've been following this series, a serious rivalry had developed between Austria and Prussia for dominance of German affairs and potential leadership in any unified Germany.

WORD HISTORY:
Toll-This is the noun form meaning "tax, duty, payment, fee" ("toll," as in "sound, especially of a bell," has a different history, and I'll hopefully get to it eventually). It "seems" this word goes back to Indo European "teleh" (see further below for other possibility), which had the notion of "lifting, weighing." This gave Greek, an Indo European language related to English further down the family tree, "telos," which meant "tax" (remember, in ancient times payments were often "weighed" for a specific amount, whether it was gold, silver, salt, or any other item). This later gave Greek "teloneion," a "toll house," which was then borrowed into Latin as "telonium," but in Late Latin (about 200 to 700 A.D.) it was altered into "tolonium," still meaning "toll house/custom house." It is "assumed" that the term was borrowed into Germanic, and that Old Germanic did not have a form of this word on its own, but there is a "possibility" that Old Germanic did indeed have such a form, which would make "toll" related to "tell," which originally meant "to count" ('toll'= tax, fee, so the connection to "count" is obvious, and that is why English still has "teller," usually applied to a bank employee). Old English had both "toln" and "toll," Old Frisian had "tolen," Old Norse (North Germanic) had "tollr," Old High German had "tol," which in modern German became "Zoll," Low German Saxon has "Toll," Dutch has "tol," Danish "told," Icelandic "tollur," Norwegian "toll" and Swedish "tull." I did not find a form in West Frisian.