Prussia was second to Austria in terms of its political power in the Confederation.
Metternich the Austrian Chancellor controlled the Congress; he was a reactionary conservative and would prove to be a huge obstacle in achieving unification. He halted the progress of political nationalism but was unable to hinder the growth of cultural nationalism.
Cultural nationalism started to become more widespread during the war with Napoleon. Germans were unified against one enemy and started to focus less on their differences and more on their similarities. Writers and people like Beethoven and the Grimm brothers gave Germans a feeling of being German, an identity. However a lot of people were not concerned with nationalism and continued on with their lives as they had done before. Some Germans (usually the more educated middle classes) were concerned with their future and the idea of nationalism. But the greatest changes in the way Germany would come from the economy not from these idealists.
The industrial revolution gave Prussia a very strong economy. However due to a complicated tax system between the German states in 1815 trade was difficult and so the economy could not grow as fast as it may have. In 1818 Prussia looking to become more powerful decided to abolish these taxes and make trading simpler. The tax was made so that it was cheaper to buy things made in Prussia than those imported into it. Prussia's economy grew rapidly and by 1830 other states seeing it's success had joined. It was named the Zollverein (customs union) and was to be a huge step towards unification and was described as "The might lever of German unification." By 1836 25 German states with a combined population of 26 million people had joined and were prospering under the Zollverein e.g. Prussia 1818, Anhalt 1821, Saxony 1831, Bavaria 1814.
What looked to be the start of a unified Germany never succeeded in bringing all the.