Room 2

PRE-1848 (VORMÄRZ)

Otto von Bismarck had just turned seventeen years old when he came to Göttingen in May 1832 to study law, as his ambitious mother wished. The close relations between Hanover and England recommended Göttingen, for many Englishmen and Americans studied at the only university in the Kingdom of Hanover, Georgia Augusta. The hope was that interaction in that setting could help the young Bismarck in his professional advancement. But he did little in Göttingen for his studies or his later career. Politics did not seem to have interested him much at this time either. While he enjoyed his newly won freedom as a student, more than twenty thousand citizens of national and liberal persuasion, including many students, gathered at the ruins of the castle at Hambach on 27 May 1832 to demonstrate for the political revival of Germany.

Students anticipated other social groups in articulating their displeasure over what was felt to be the unsatisfactory "reorganization" of Germany at the Congress of Vienna. Pro-unification students, vast numbers of whom had fought against Napoleon's army in the Lützow volunteer corps, came together in Jena and founded the first student association (Urburschenschaft), the aim of which was proclaimed in its slogan: "Honor, Freedom, Fatherland." Their initial flag of red and black adorned by a plain gold braid was replaced a year later by a new one of red-black-red bunting with gold fringe and a gold oak branch. This flag of Jena's student association was carried on 18 October 1817, when about five hundred students gathered at the Wartburg castle, famous as having been the temporary refuge of Luther, to celebrate the threehundredth anniversary of the reformation and the anniversary of the Battle of the Nations at Leipzig and to demonstrate for national unification. One of the standard bearers was the theology student Karl Ludwig Sand. Black-red-gold cockades also appeared for the first time at the Wartburg rally.

But there were chauvinistic undertones there as well. A group around "Father" (Turnvater) Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, the initiator of the gymnastics movement, burned "reactionary," "un-German" books and tracts like the Acts of the Confederation and the Napoleonic Code, the latter of which remained the basis of civil law in the Rhineland. It was not the anti-French resentment that was a thorn in the side of the rulers in the German Confederation, but the demands for a united nation-state and for liberal constitutions. They were regarded as a direct attack on the existing political order. Then, on 23 March 1819, Karl Ludwig Sand murdered August von Kotzebue, a playwright in the service of the Russian government, because of his criticism of the student associations and their nationalist yearnings. Metternich instigated a harsh reaction by the German Confederation: the Carlsbad Decrees (Karlsbader Beschlüsse), which banned the student associations, tightened surveillance of the universities, and restricted press freedom. The idealization of Sand, who was beheaded in 1820, shows just how widespread the disaffection with the reactionary "Metternich System" was. Fragments of his scaffold were venerated like relics, lithographs depicting the stations of his life and numerous portraits expressed utter repudiation of the German Confederation's policies of repression.

Initially confined to student associations and academic circles, the protest became general with the advent of the July Revolution in France in 1830. In September spontaneous demonstrations for higher wages and lower bread prices took place in Lüneburg, Hildesheim, and Hanover. In Göttingen, with a population of about ten thousand, protest escalated to outright rebellion. On 8 January 1831 armed citizens and students stormed the town hall and formed a civil guard as well as a provisional local council that was intended to present all grievances to the king, who lived in London. The rebels capitulated when a strong force moved on Göttingen a week later. The radical commander of the civil guard, Johann Ernst Arminius Rauschenplatt, managed to flee Göttingen. Despite the capitulation, though, the citizens of Göttingen did achieve a measure of success. The chief minister of state was dismissed, and the Kingdom of Hanover received a new constitution in 1833. In 1837 the "Göttingen Seven" staged their memorable protest against repeal of this constitution after Ernst August ascended the throne as king.

The constitutional struggle in the Electorate of Hesse was especially significant. Deplorable economic conditions had precipitated serious unrest and plundering in 1830. Having just returned from Vienna, where he had vainly tried to have his widely hated mistress elevated to the rank of a princess, Elector William II responded to the menacing situation by promising to convene the estates of the realm to deliberate on a constitution. The disturbances spread anyway, with peasants storming palaces and burning records on tithes and levies. In Hanau the customshouse was destroyed as a symbol of the elector's prohibitive tariffs and economic policies. In Frankfurt, the Diet of the German Confederation thereupon unanimously called for the electoral government in Hesse to counter the threat energetically and prepared to intervene militarily. The conflict with the German Confederation was brought to a head on 5 January 1831, when the elector of Hesse signed a liberal constitution establishing ministerial responsibility in the land. To the Diet, however, this was tantamount to a surrender of the monarch's sovereign rights, which were unconditionally guaranteed by Article 57 of the Vienna Final Acts. Only two days after the constitution had been signed, a new conflict erupted with the estates when the elector felt it necessary to move to Hanau with his mistress because of the disapproval of the population in Kassel. The provincial diet gave the elector the choice of either returning to the capital - Kassel - or abdicating. The elector tried to defuse the conflict by designating his son, prince Frederick William, as coruler.

In addition to the desire for national unity, the demand for civil liberties became ever stronger. In the states of southern Germany that had constitutions, liberals and republicans formed numerous press associations (Press-Vereine). One that went down in history was the "Association for the Press and the Fatherland." Founded in Zweibrücken (in the Palatinate) by Philipp Siebenpfeiffer and Johann Georg August Wirth in January 1832, its actual goal was to work toward the "restoration of German national unity under a democratic-republican constitution." By September 1832 the press association had more than 5,000 members. Monthly rates were intended to help avert the financial ruin of newspapers threatened by censorship. As confiscation of opposition newspapers increased, the press association proceeded more and more to use rallies and public gatherings as the means of making their political point. The association's branch in Neustadt scheduled a rally that was to take place in front of the castle ruins in Hambach on 27 May 1832 and published a call in all the liberal newspapers of southern Germany. More than 20,000 men and women of all stations came from the German Confederation, England, France, and even Poland. They hoisted a black, red, and gold flag bearing the inscription "Germany's Rebirth" and flew the Polish colors next to it to proclaim their political message for all to see. Unlike the rally at the Wartburg castle in 1817, where the traditional black costume of the Old Germans had dominated the picture, the first visions of a "confederated European republic" were developed at the Hambach rally of 1832. Anti-French sentiments such as Wirth's were apparent in Hambach as well, however.

The clarity of the reactionary response from those in power left nothing to be desired. In a letter dated 10 June 1832, Metternich wrote that "every state is bound to perish with popular representation in the modern sense, freedom of the press, and the political associations." He urged the member states of the German Confederation to take draconian measures against the "demagogic machinations." The rights of the provincial diets were curtailed the same month, as were freedom of speech and freedom of the press. A week later, the Diet of the German Confederation decreed new measures against the freedom of association, the right of assembly, the press, and universities. Most of all, however, it was forbidden to show the "German colors." Police persecution, dismissals from office, and prison sentences of up to several years for the principal speakers of the rally at the Hambach castle further exacerbated the political conflict. The activities of the opposition increasingly moved underground and into adjacent states, especially France and Switzerland.

Emigration surged in 1833 after approximately fifty radicals failed in their attempt to incite a general revolution by storming the main guard and constabulary in Frankfurt. Because a small number of Polish freedom fighters had been involved in this "Frankfurt Plot," the German Confederation finally had a welcome excuse to act against the widespread enthusiasm for Poland, which the government authorities saw as nothing other than a deliberate and provocative show of support for rebels. To hunt down "demagogues" more efficiently, the German Confederation created a new "central bureau of investigation" for itself in Frankfurt in June 1833. Existing until August 1842, it investigated more than 2,100 persons. Once put on record by this agency's widely spun network of collaborators and informers, the persecuted had little choice but to flee abroad. They included many disciples of the "Young Germany" movement writers like Georg Büchner, who expounded on theses of social revolution in his Der Hessische Landbote and many journeymen who were convinced that democratic change was necessary. These people had to emigrate to Switzerland, where they often joined together in political associations.

On 15 April 1834 radical forces primarily from Italy, Germany, and Poland founded "Young Europe" in Switzerland and fought for a "confederated European republic." The centers of the reactionaries, Vienna and Berlin, met this challenge with renewed suppression and persecution. Despite despotic state censorship, however, the ideals of the French Revolution - freedom, equality, and brotherhood could not be repressed. The struggle for constitutional rights, political democracy, and German nationhood continued until the Revolution of 1848.

Heidemarie Anderlik and Burkhard Asmuss