Room 3b

THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 THE STRUGGLE FOR UNITY AND FREEDOM

In Germany, national and liberal hopes were perceptibly heightened when Frederick William IV ascended the Prussian throne on 7 June 1840. As early as September, however, he made it clear that he was unwilling to transform Prussia into a constitutional monarchy. At the traditional ceremony in Königsberg, where the provincial estates of East and West Prussia paid homage to the new king, they appealed to the monarch to issue a constitution as promised in 1815, but he firmly rejected any "constitutional laws written on paper." The long dispute reached a climax on 3 February 1847 in the midst of an economic crisis when Frederick William IV summoned all the provincial estates to Berlin for the first United Diet to seek their approval of a new state loan. In his opening address from the throne on 11 April, he again rejected the idea of a constitution, saying that it would be intolerable to him for "a written piece of paper to force itself, like some second providence, between our Lord God in heaven and this land, to rule us with its paragraphs and, through them, to replace the ancient sacred loyalty." Deeply imbued with the sense of divine right, the king refused to grant the United Diet (Vereinigter Landtag) constitutional rights as a national Prussian legislative assembly even during its sessions and completely resisted the "mania for constitutional reform." As a result, most of the 613 representatives of the estates rejected all of the king's demands. Otto von Bismarck, who had been attending the sessions of the United Diet since 8 May 1847 as a substitute for a member who had fallen ill, was appalled by the defiance that the Prussian estates showed their king. Bismarck accused the opposition of forging "weapons out of the right to approve loans in order to extort concessions from the government."

The liberals and democrats made far-reaching demands, especially in southern Germany. At a meeting chaired by Gustav Struve and Friedrich Hecker in Offenburg (Baden) on 12 September 1847, the southern German democrats called for the repeal of the Carlsbad Decrees, the "equalization of the imbalance between capital and labor," and a progressive income tax, among other things. These demands by the democrats were countered with more moderate goals by liberals like Carl Theodor Welcker, Friedrich Daniel Bassermann, Heinrich von Gagern, and David Hansemann in Heppenheim on 10 October. Clearly influenced by Rhenish entrepreneurs, the "Heppenheimers" were more preoccupied with economic issues. They argued for the expansion of the Customs Union and favored the path leading to a unified Germany without Austria (Kleindeutschland) in the question of national unity. Democrats and liberals called for a national parliament, a constitution, freedom of the press, freedom of association, freedom of assembly, and freedom of conscience. This in itself was a major attack on the traditional structures of the political system, the more so because a constitutional nation-state meant sacrificing the sovereign monarchical rights and excluding all foreign states from the German Confederation.

When the spark of revolution leaped from France to Germany in 1848, the liberals recommended themselves to the broad masses as pioneers of political and social reforms and simultaneously to the rulers as guarantors of law and order. It was largely due to the liberals that the key "March Demands" (Märzforderungen) were met in the southern German states in the first wave of the revolution. In Berlin, bloody barricade fighting broke out, but then the Prussian king put himself "at the head of the national movement," reshuffled his government, and accepted the demand for a constitution and a unified German nation-state. When on 21 March he rode through Berlin wearing the German colors and proclaiming that Prussia would henceforth merge with Germany, the revolution seemed to have succeeded in Prussia as well.

Like many other landed aristocracy, the thirty-two-year-old Bismarck temporarily considered marching on Berlin with his peasants in mid-March 1848 to intervene in the political events. Deeply disillusioned by the renunciation of monarchical rights by Frederick William IV, the convinced royalist was less concerned with supporting the king than with restoring the traditional rights of the Prussian monarchy. To feel out the situation, Bismarck arrived in Potsdam on 20 March, where he managed to work his way through to General Karl von Prittwitz, the commander of the Berlin troops. The general rejected any idea of taking military action against Berlin, but he did encourage Bismarck to inquire about the willingness of the army corps in Magdeburg and Stettin to do so. Despite the notification of the commanding general in Magdeburg that he would have Bismarck arrested for high treason because of his "counterrevolutionary intrigues," Bismarck met with the wife of Crown Prince William on 23 March (the prince himself had fled to London) and appealed to her in vain for permission to prepare a military response in the name of the successor to the throne.

Bismarck did not give up until 25 March, when the king told officers of the royal guard that he had never felt as safe as when he was under the protection of his civilian defense force (Bürgerwehr). Instead of counting on military suppression of the revolution, the factional royalists set about furthering their cause through the written word. At assemblies, with pamphlets, and through the founding of a conservative newspaper, Kreuz-Zeitung, they tried to rally counterrevolutionary forces. Above all, they sought to foment discontent by exploiting the failure of liberal policy toward the Poles, which had not managed to harmonize the building of a Polish nation-state with the interests of the German population living in the Grand Duchy of Posen. Although there was a strong response to the conservatives and their warnings against "forfeiting national interests," they were nonetheless fighting a losing battle in the struggle against a constitution. When the United Diet met again on 2 April and thanked the king for his willingness to introduce a constitution, only two representatives dissented: Bismarck-Schönhausen and Thadden-Trieglaff.

Given the revolutionary mood, the Diet of the German Confederation in Frankfurt was convinced of the necessity of thorough reform. As early as 10 March it had charged seventeen "men of public trust" with the task of drawing up a constitution. On 30 March this "Committee of Seventeen" (Siebzehnerausschuss) was also requested to prepare elections for a national assembly to frame a constitution. Without a mandate from the rulers of the German states, liberals and democrats had met in Heidelberg as early as 5 March and resolved to call public hgures to a Pre-Parliament (Vorparlament) that was to prepare the election for national representation. On 31 March 574 members of the Pre-Parliament gathered in the Paulskirche (Chuch of St. Paul) in Frankfurt and commenced their work. It had a direct effect on the German Confederation's electoral law of 7 April, for in addition to the territory of the Confederation, East and West Prussia, the Grand Duchy of Posen, and the Duchy of Schleswig were to elect the German National Assembly. The deputies were elected directly in Frankfurt, Hamburg, and Bremen, as well as the Electorate of Hesse, Württemberg, Schleswig, and Holstein but indirectly in all other states of the Confederation. A special difficulty arose in the Slavic parts of Austria. The leader of the Czech national movement, Frantisek Palacky, expressly declined to participate in the elections for a German national parliament and underlined the affiliation of Bohemia and Moravia to the multinational Austrian state.

The most important task of the National Assembly, which had been meeting in Frankfurt since 18 May, was to work out a constitution for the whole of Germany (Reichsverfassung). To underscore their own sovereignty and to have their own executive organ, the deputies elected an imperial vicar (Reichsverweser) on 29 June - casting 436 of 548 votes for the popular Archduke Johann of Austria. With the Diet of the German Confederation congratulating him on his election, the imperial vicar was officially recognized as the highest official of Germany, as was his cabinet formed on 15 July. Having no command over troops of its own, however, the imperial government and the National Assembly depended largely on the benevolence of Austria and Prussia. When Prussia, acting in her own interests, signed a cease fire with Denmark in Malmö on 26 August 1848, the National Assembly, the imperial government, and large segments of the nationally minded public lodged sharp protests, but on 16 September the Frankfurt National Assembly ultimately saw itself compelled to accept Prussia's action by a vote of 257 to 236. This "defection" cost the National Assembly much of its reputation. Only two days later the radical left in Frankfurt precipitated a second wave of revolution under the slogan "against the 257 traitors of the people." In this phase of the revolution social aspects were placed in the fore, as shown by the second uprising in Baden, the prelude to which was Gustav von Struve's proclamation of the "German Social Republic" in Lörrach on 21 September. In less than a week, however, this revolt had also been crushed. Counterrevolution was on the march. The reactionary forces in Vienna demonstrated their victory by summarily executing Robert Blum on 9 November. Just one day later the troops withdrawn from Schleswig-Holstein marched into Berlin on orders from General von Wrangel. There was little resistance to the state of siege declared on 12 November. Some of the liberals' demands were met in the constitution imposed upon them by the king on 5 December.

When the Frankfurt National Assembly passed the basic rights of the German people on 23 December, the struggle between the forces had already been decided. Austria, Prussia, Hanover, and Bavaria refused to recognize the basic rights. In apparent independence, the National Assembly continued deliberating on the constitution until March 1849. But the constitution that was passed on 28 March, after more than two hundred sessions, could no longer avert the failure of the revolution, either. The Prussian king rejected the hereditary imperial crown proffered him by the Frankfurt National Assembly and refused to accept the imperial constitution. The fact that a sizeable majority of the second chamber, the Prussian House of Deputies, had favored it was already meaningless by that point. To be sure, twenty-eight German states had officially supported the constitution, but in addition to Prussia the most important states opposing the constitution that resulted from the work in the Paulskirche were Austria, Saxony, Hanover, Württemberg, and Bavaria. When, on 4 May, a slim ma jority of the National Assembly called upon all German governments and parliaments to recognize the constitution, the final step of the revolution began the "campaign for the imperial constitution" (Reichsverfassungskampagne). In Dresden the Saxon and Prussian military was ruthless after the Saxon provincial diet had voted to introduce the imperial constitution. Although the insurrection in Dresden collapsed on 9 May after a six-day battle, democrats and republicans in the Palatinate and Baden simultaneously renewed the battle, which became especially fierce after nearly all the regular troops of the Grand Duke of Baden joined the rebels. Leading about fifty thousand soldiers, the Prussian crown prince marched to Baden in June and bloodily put down the last disturbances.

Heidemarie Anderlik and Burkhard Asmuss