Room 3c

THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 CONFLICT OF NATIONALITIES

In his well-known "Olmütz speech" delivered on 3 December 1850, Bismarck welcomed the fact that "the unfortunate war in Schleswig-Holstein, into which the rash and careless policies of 1848 have drawn us," was being ended. He himself emphatically insisted "on the preservation of the real rights of the people of Schleswig-Holstein," buthewas justas adamant in his rejection ofthe endeavor to assert their "alleged or true rights against the sovereign by revolutionary armed force." Whereas Bismarck saw the armed struggle fought by the people of Schleswig-Holstein against their sovereign, the Danish king, as an absolutely unjustifiable act of revolution, the German public understood the war as legitimate resistance to the dynastic aspirations of the Danish king.

The three-year war had erupted in 1848 over the dispute about which nation the Duchy of Schleswig belonged to. Like the duchies of Holstein and Lauenburg, Schleswig was tied with the Danish crown in personal union. Unlike Holstein and Lauenburg, it had never belonged to the German Confederation, but was an old Danish imperial fief. Owing to the nationalism welling up all over Europe, the question of Danish succession in the Duchy of Schleswig, in which Germans and Danes had lived peacefully together for centuries, provoked unprecedented emotions. The Danes reinforced their efforts to merge the Kingdom of Denmark and the Duchy of Schleswig into a nationstate stretching south to the Eider River. This desire of the "Eider Danes" to separate the Duchy of Schleswig from Holstein was opposed by the people of Schleswig-Holstein, who, being more partial to Germany, demanded that Schleswig be separated from Denmark. They invoked on the Treaty of Ripen of 1460, according to which the estates of both lands had determined that Schleswig and Holstein should never be divided (up ewig ungedeelt).

Not having long to live, the Danish King, Christian VIII, who was also Duke of Schleswig, Holstein, and Lauenburg, was urged by the Eider Danes to declare all possessions of his house to be indivisible. The Holstein estates, predisposed to Germany as they were, responded in December 1844 by agreeing upon the "Schleswig-Holstein Program," which proclaimed that Schleswig and Holstein were separate from Denmark, that the German law of succession (in the male line) was recognized in both duchies, and that the close tie between them must not be violated. On 8 July 1846 Christian intervened in the dispute with an "Open Letter" stressing that the Danish law of succession (in the female line) would be regarded as binding in Schleswig as well if his only son, Frederick, should die without issue. Whereas the Great Powers of Europe England, France, and Russia - sympathized with the Eider-Dane position of ChristianVIII and felt that a strengthening of Germany between the North Sea and the Baltic Sea would threaten their own political and economic interests, a storm of protest arose in Germany against the Open Letter. To liberals and democrats, it was unimaginable that Schleswig would not be attached to the German nation-state. German hereditary rulers, too, especially the monarchs of Prussia, Hanover, and Bavaria, took up the "Schleswig-Holstein issue," placing themselves at the head of the "national movement."

After Christian VIII died on 20 January 1848, his son and successor, Frederick VII, appointed a commission to deliberate on a draft for a liberal constitution for the entire Danish state. When the Eider Danes subsequently called for a joint constitution for Denmark and Schleswig, but a separate one for Holstein, the people of Schleswig-Holstein took to active resistance. On 18 March they passed a petition to be delivered to their duke, the Danish king, demanding especially that Schleswig be admitted to the German Confederation. But before this petition could be submitted in Copenhagen, Frederick VII had formed an Eider-Dane ministry, which decreed Schleswig's incorporation into the Danish state on 21 March. Three days later Orla Lehmann, the leading Eider Dane, sharply rejected the demands raised by the people of Schleswig-Holstein, also dismissing the proposal to have the communities in Schleswig vote on their national affiliation. Immediately after the formation of the Eider-Dane ministry became known in Schleswig on 23 March, the national-liberal leaders of the Schleswig-Holstein movement proclaimed a "Provisional Government" in Kiel. They consciously dispensed with a formal declaration of the duchies' independence and emphasized they wanted to lead the government in the name of the king because their sovereign was under the influence of the Eider-Dane party and had lost his freedom of political discretion. This manner of opposing the legitimate sovereign was unique in the Revolution of 1848-49. It started a war seen by Germans as a "revolt" for liberty; by Danes, as an illegal "insurrection."

The most pressing task of the Provisional Government was to ward off the Danish troops that had been marching into Schleswig since the "order of incorporation" of 21 March. On the morning of 24 March about four hundred volunteers under Prince von Noer, a member of the Provisional Government, managed to take the fortress of Rendsburg by surprise, capturing 13,000 rifles, numerous cannons along with ammunition, a war chest of 2.5 million talers. When the defenders of the fortress were given the chance of joining the Provisional Government or fighting for Denmark, the soldiers almost unanimously opted for the Provisional Government, with the officers equally unanimous for the Danish king. The soldiers manning the fortress of Rendsburg constituted the core of the "Schleswig-Holstein army," which attracted approximately 2,500 volunteers from all over Germany in 1848. The longer the war lasted, the clearer it became that not everyone, especially in Schleswig, was prepared to take up arms against the sovereign. Frequently, members of the same family fought as volunteers on opposing sides.

On 24 March, immediately after the barricade fighting in Berlin (see room 3b), the Prussian king, Frederick William IV, promised military support to the population of Schleswig-Holstein and stressed that he would "enter the duchies ... as the guardian of existing law and protect them with appropriate means against incursions and attacks." On 4 April the Diet of the German Confederation, too, approved the "defensive measures" that had meanwhile been taken by Prussia and the states of the Confederation's Tenth Corps. Peter Vedel, a lawyer living in Berlin, urgently warned his Danish countrymen against fighting a war against the German states. As he put it, how could the "disgrace" clinging above all to the Prussian "army of the barricades in Berlin be washed away better than in the blood of the hated Danes?" Vedel pressed for a peaceful settlement of the conflict between the nationalities. But Prussian troops crossed the Eider on 10 April to take Schleswig for the Provisional Government, with troops of the German Confederation following two days later. In view of the Confederation's intervention, the delegate whom the Danish king had appointed to represent Holstein and Lauenburg in the Diet of the German Confederation resigned, and on 22 April the Confederation accredited von Madai, a professor from Kiel who had been sent by the Provisional Government to represent Holstein in the Diet of the German Confederation. The Confederation thereby officially recognized the revolutionary government. After Prussian General von Wrangel also assumed command of the Confederation's nine-thousand man Tenth Corps on 21 April 1848, German troops succeeded in occupying the Duchy of Schleswig by the end of April. But when Wrangel crossed the Danish border and marched into Jutland, many volunteers ended their service. German troops were able to take the fortress of Fredericia, but a crossing to the strategically important islands was prevented by the Danish fleet, which had been systematically blockading German port towns since 1 May and thereby drastically exacerbating the already deepening food and economic crisis. In 1847, for example, 6.7 million talers' worth of goods were exported via Stettin; in 1848, export via Stettin amounted to only 1.5 million talers.

Nonetheless, it was not the naval war and its economic impact that moved Prussia to yield but rather the prospect of war with England and Russia, who threatened to honor the mutual assistance pacts they had signed with the Danish monarchy in 1720 and 1773. On 19 May the English foreign minister, Henry Palmerston, proposed that Schleswig be divided, with the Danish population being linked to Denmark; the German population, with Holstein. When Denmark and Schleswig and Holstein both rejected the idea, the Prussian government evacuated its troops from Jutland to signal its readiness to negotiate. Over the massive protest of the German public, the National Assembly, and the imperial government, Prussia concluded a seven-month cease fire in Malmö on 26 August 1848 in the name of the German Confederation, thereby abandoning the Provisional Government and unleashing a new wave of rebellion in Germany. Because no acceptable solution to the national conflict was found during the armistice, the Danish government annulled it on 26 February 1849. One week later the Danish army, which reinforcements had brought to a strength of 41,000 troops, crossed the Schleswig frontier and resumed the fight against the army of the German Confederation, which had also been reinforced considerably, and the troops of Schleswig-Holstein. On 4 April, right at the beginning of renewed hostilities, a victory over a Danish landing squadron at Eckernförde triggered almost indescribable jubilation, which was followed by stunned dismay when, on 6 July, the Schleswig-Holstein army was severely defeated at Fredericia. Militarily, the plight of Schleswig-Holstein became hopeless when Prussia showed little inclination to continue the fight against Denmark and arranged a second cease fire under Russian pressure on 10 July 1849. Only two thousand Prussian soldiers remained stationed south of a demarcation line running from Tondern to Flensburg. One year later, on 2 July 1850, Prussia concluded a peace treaty with Denmark in Berlin, with Prussia simultaneously signing in the name of the German Confederation, which had meanwhile regained its capacity to act.

The war was by no means over with Prussia's withdrawal, however. After Prussia's second "betrayal," thousands of volunteers filled with national spirit once again joined the army of Schleswig-Holstein, which lost around 2,800 men in the Battle of Idstedt on 25 July 1850, the most important clash of the war. Nevertheless, the Schleswig-Holstein army continued its hopeless struggle and attacked Friedrichsstadt, which was occupied by the Danes. A militarily senseless bombardment lasting from 26 September to 4 October only caused death and more misery. Despite the innumerable casualties, the war was not decided on the battlefield but rather on the diplomatic stage. In Olmütz on 29 November 1850, Prussia was pressured by the Great Powers of Europe into agreeing to move against her former allies in Schleswig and Holstein in joint action with Austria in order to establish "constitutional conditions." The conflict between the nationalities was thereby prorogued until the next war, that of 1864. The problem was not "solved" until 1920, when a plebiscite was held.

Burkhard Asmuss