Eli5: why does the country Liechtenstein exist? It’s an incredibly small country in Europe, why isn’t it just part of Switzerland or Austria?

Question

Eli5: why does the country Liechtenstein exist? It’s an incredibly small country in Europe, why isn’t it just part of Switzerland or Austria?

In: 6939

Answer 1

Switzerland annexing Liechtenstein was never even on the table.

After the Napoleonic war was over the german states formed a confederation called the Deutscher Bund (which means German confederation). This included modern Germany, Austria and Liechtenstein but also german states in what’s now Luxemburg, Czech republic, Slovenia and also parts of what is today Poland, France, Italy, Hungary and Slovakia. Also, parts of Prussia are not a part of the bund but are germanic. That includes territories that are today parts of Poland, Russia and Lithuania (basically the coastline all the way to Klaipeda, that used to be called Memel, in modern Lithuania).

Aaanyway, the big contenders for who was going to be the dominant power in the Bund were Prussia and Austria. For a long time it looked like Austria was going to be the leader, but then a guy named Otto von Bismarck comes along and starts to play political 4D chess, so one by one the german states become aligned with Prussia and by the 1890s most of those state have become incorporated into the Germanic Empire (with the Prussian king becoming the germanic emperor). There are three exceptions. Austria (because Prussia couldn’t unify germany with their main political rival in it), Luxemburg (because Luxemburg is a financial powerhouse and inconveniently exposed to many of Germany’s rivals. It’s also not feeling those germanic vibes and would rather stay independent) and Liechtenstein.

The reason why Liechtenstein was never incorporated is because Liechtenstein is on the very edge of the Germanic Bund and borders Switzerland and…Austria. So rather than Liechtenstein becoming a politically inconvenient exclave (territory with no land connection to the main state) of Germany it was more convenient that it continued as a tiny Germanic microstate, a germanic state that is neutral and neither aligned with Germany or Austria.