German revolutions of 1848–1849
The German revolutions of 1848–1849, the opening phase of which was also called the March Revolution, were initially part of the Revolutions of 1848 that broke out in many European countries. They were a series of loosely coordinated protests and rebellions in the states of the German Confederation, including the Austrian Empire. The revolutions, which stressed pan-Germanism, liberalism, and parliamentarianism, demonstrated popular discontent with the traditional, largely autocratic political structure of the 39 independent states of the Confederation that inherited the German territory of the former Holy Roman Empire after its dismantlement as a result of the Napoleonic Wars. This process began in the mid-1840s.
The middle-class elements were committed to liberal principles, while the working class sought radical improvements to their working and living conditions. As the middle- and working-class components of the Revolution split, the conservative aristocracy defeated it. Liberals were forced into exile to escape political persecution, where they became known as Forty-Eighters. Many emigrated to the United States, settling from Wisconsin to Texas.
Events leading up to the revolutions
The groundwork of the 1848 uprising was laid as early as the Hambacher Fest of 1832, when public unrest began to grow in the face of heavy taxation and political censorship. The Hambacher Fest is also noteworthy for the Republicans' adoption of the black-red-gold colours used on today's national flag of Germany as a symbol of the Republican movement and unity among German-speaking people. The song "Fürsten zum Land Hinaus!" originated from the festival, and quickly garnered popular support for the abolition of monarchy and establishment of a republic.Activism for liberal reforms spread through many of the German states, each of which had a distinct revolution. It was also inspired by the street demonstrations led by workers and artisans in Paris, which took place through 22 to 24 February 1848 and resulted in the abdication of King Louis-Philippe of France and his exile to Britain. In France the revolution of 1848 became known as the February Revolution.
The revolutions spread from France across Europe; demonstrations against the government erupted soon thereafter in both Austria and Germany, beginning with large protests on 13 March 1848 in Vienna. This resulted in the resignation of Prince von Metternich as chief minister to Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria and his exile in Britain. Because of the date of the Vienna demonstrations, the protests throughout Germany are usually called the March Revolution.
Afraid of suffering the same fate as Louis-Philippe of France, some German monarchs acquiesced to the revolutionaries' demands, at least temporarily. In the south and west, large popular assemblies and mass demonstrations took place. They demanded freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, written constitutions, arming of the people, and a parliament.
Austria
In 1848, Austria was the predominant German state. After the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire, which had been dissolved by Napoleon in 1806, it was succeeded by a similarly loose coalition of states known as the German Confederation at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Austria served as President ex officio of this confederation. The Austrian chancellor Klemens von Metternich dominated Austrian politics from 1815 until 1848.On 13 March 1848, university students mounted a large street demonstration in Vienna, and it was covered by the press across the German-speaking states. After the important but relatively minor demonstrations against Lola Montez in Bavaria on 9 February 1848, the first major revolt of 1848 in German lands occurred in Vienna on 13 March 1848. The demonstrating students in Vienna had been restive and were encouraged by a sermon of Anton Füster, a liberal priest, on 12 March 1848 in the university chapel. The student demonstrators demanded a constitution and a constituent assembly elected by universal male suffrage.
Emperor Ferdinand and his chief advisor Metternich directed troops to crush the demonstration. When demonstrators moved to the streets near the Hofburg, the troops fired on the demonstrating students, killing several of them. The new working class of Vienna joined the student demonstrations, developing an armed insurrection. The Diet of Lower Austria demanded Metternich's resignation. With no forces rallying to Metternich's defense, Ferdinand reluctantly complied and dismissed him. The former chancellor went into exile in London.
Ferdinand appointed new, nominally liberal, ministers. The Austrian government drafted a constitution in late April 1848. The people rejected it, as it denied the majority the right to vote. The citizens of Vienna returned to the streets on 26 and 27 May, erecting barricades to prepare for an army attack. Ferdinand and his family fled to Innsbruck, where they spent the next few months surrounded by the loyal peasantry of the Tyrol. Ferdinand issued manifestos on 16 May and 3 June that gave concessions to the people. He converted the Imperial Diet into a Constituent Assembly to be elected by the people. Other concessions were less substantial, and generally addressed Germany's reorganization and unification.
Ferdinand returned to Vienna from Innsbruck on 12 August. The working-class populace hit the streets again on 21 August to protest high unemployment and the government's decree to reduce wages. On 23 August, Austrian troops opened fire on unarmed demonstrators and shot several of them.
In late September, Ferdinand, who was also King Ferdinand V of Hungary, sent Austrian and Croatian troops to Hungary to crush a democratic rebellion there. On 29 September, the Austrian troops were defeated by the Hungarian revolutionary forces. On 6 and 7 October, the citizens of Vienna had demonstrated against Ferdinand's actions in Hungary, resulting in the Vienna Uprising. As a result, Ferdinand fled Vienna on 7 October and took up residence in the fortress town of Olomouc in Moravia. On 2 December, he abdicated in favour of his nephew Franz Joseph.
Baden
had a liberal constitution from 1811 until reaction resulted in Grand Duke Louis I revoking the constitution in 1825. In 1830, Leopold became Grand Duke. His reign brought liberal reforms in constitutional, civil and criminal law, and in education. In 1832 Baden joined the Prussian Customs Union. After news broke of revolutionary victories in February 1848 in Paris, uprisings occurred throughout Europe, including Austria and the German states.Baden was the first state in Germany to have popular unrest, despite Baden being one of the most liberal states in Germany. After the news of the February Days in Paris reached Baden, there were several unorganized instances of peasants burning the mansions of local aristocrats and threatening them.
On 27 February 1848, in Mannheim, an assembly of people from Baden adopted a resolution demanding a bill of rights. Similar resolutions were adopted in Württemberg, Hesse-Darmstadt, Nassau, and other German states. The surprisingly strong popular support for these movements forced rulers to give in to many of the Märzforderungen almost without resistance.
The March Revolution in Vienna was a catalyst to revolution throughout the German states. Popular demands were made for an elected representative government and for the unification of Germany. Fear on the part of the princes and rulers of the various German states caused them to concede in the demand for reform. They approved a provisional parliament, which was convened from 31 March 1848, until 4 April 1848, in St. Paul's Church in Frankfurt am Main, charged with the task of drafting a new constitution, to be called the "Fundamental Rights and Demands of the German People." The majority of the delegates to the provisional parliament were constitutional monarchists.
Baden sent two democrats, Friedrich Hecker and Gustav von Struve, to the provisional parliament. In the minority and frustrated with the lack of progress, Hecker and Struve walked out in protest on 2 April 1848. The walkout and the continuing revolutionary upsurge in Germany spurred the provisional parliament to action; they passed a resolution calling for an All-German National Assembly to be formed.
On 8 April 1848, a law allowing universal suffrage and an indirect voting system was agreed to by the assembly. A new National Assembly was selected, and on 18 May 1848, 809 delegates were seated at St. Paul's Church in Frankfurt to convene the Frankfurt Parliament. Karl Mathy, a right-center journalist, was among those elected as deputy to the Frankfurt National Assembly.
Disorder fomented by republican agitators continued in Baden. Fearing greater riots, the Baden government began to increase the size of its army and to seek assistance from neighboring states. The Baden government sought to suppress the revolts by arresting Joseph Fickler, a journalist who was the leader of the Baden democrats. The arrests caused outrage and a rise in protests. A full-scale uprising broke out on 12 April 1848. The Bavarian government suppressed the revolutionary forces led by Hecker with the aid of Prussian troops at the Battle on the Scheideck on 20 April 1848, ending what became known as the Hecker uprising.
In May 1849, a resurgence of revolutionary activity occurred in Baden. As this was closely connected to the uprising in the Palatinate, it is described below, in the section titled, "The Palatinate".
The Palatinate
When the revolutionary upsurge revived in the spring of 1849, the uprisings started in Elberfeld in the Rhineland on 6 May 1849. However, the uprisings soon spread to the Grand Duchy of Baden, when a riot broke out in Karlsruhe. The state of Baden and the Palatinate were separated only by the Rhine. The uprising in Baden and the Palatinate took place largely in the Rhine Valley along their mutual border, and are considered aspects of the same movement. In May 1849, the Grand Duke was forced to leave Karlsruhe, Baden and seek help from Prussia. Provisional governments were declared in both the Palatinate and Baden. In Baden conditions for the provisional government were ideal: the public and army were both strongly in support of constitutional change and democratic reform in the government. The army strongly supported the demands for a constitution; the state had amply supplied arsenals, and a full exchequer. The Palatinate did not have the same conditions.The Palatinate traditionally contained more upper-class citizens than other areas of Germany, and they resisted the revolutionary changes. In the Palatinate, the army did not support the revolution, and it was not well supplied. When the insurrectionary government took over in the Palatinate, they did not find a fully organized state or a full exchequer. Arms in the Palatinate were limited to privately held muskets, rifles and sporting guns. The provisional government of the Palatinate sent agents to France and Belgium to purchase arms but they were unsuccessful. France banned sales and export of arms to either Baden or the Palatinate.
The provisional government first appointed Joseph Martin Reichard, a lawyer, democrat and deputy in the Frankfurt Assembly, as the head of the military department in the Palatinate. The first Commander in Chief of the military forces of the Palatinate was Daniel Fenner von Fenneberg, a former Austrian officer who commanded the national guard in Vienna during the 1848 uprising. He was soon replaced by Felix Raquilliet, a former Polish staff general in the Polish insurgent army of 1830–1831. Finally Ludwik Mieroslawski was given supreme command of the armed forces in the Palatinate, and Franz Sznayde was given field command of the troops.
Other noteworthy military officers serving the provisional government in the city of Kaiserslautern, were Friedrich Strasser, Alexander Schimmelpfennig, Captain Rudolph von Manteuffel, Albert Clement, Herr Zychlinski, Friedrich von Beust, Eugen Oswald, Amand Goegg, Gustav Struve, Otto Julius Bernhard von Corvin-Wiersbitzki, Joseph Moll, Johann Gottfried Kinkel, Herr Mersy, Karl Emmermann, Franz Sigel, Major Nerlinger, Colonel Kurz, Friedrich Karl, Franz Hecker and Herman von Natzmer. Hermann von Natzmer was the former Prussian officer who had been in charge of the arsenal of Berlin. Refusing to shoot insurgent forces who stormed the arsenal on 14 June 1848, Natzmer became a hero to insurgents across Germany. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison for refusing orders to shoot, but in 1849, he escaped prison and fled to the Palatinate to join its insurgent forces. Gustav Adolph Techow, a former Prussian officer, also joined Palatinate forces. Organizing the artillery and providing services in the ordnance shops was Lieutenant Colonel Freidrich Anneke. He was a member of the Communist League and one of the founders of the Cologne Workers Association in 1848, editor of the Neue Kolnische Zeitung and a member of the Rhenish District Committee of Democrats.
Democrats of the Palatinate and across Germany considered the Baden-Palatinate insurrection to be part of the wider all-German struggle for constitutional rights. Franz Sigel, a second lieutenant in the Baden army, a democrat and a supporter of the provisional government, developed a plan to protect the reform movement in Karlsruhe and the Palatinate. He recommended using a corps of the Baden army to advance on the town of Hechingen and declare the Hohenzollern Republic, then to march on Stuttgart. After inciting Stuttgart and the surrounding Kingdom of Württemberg, the military corps would march to Nuremberg and set up camp in the state of Franconia. Sigel failed to account for dealing with the separate Free City of Frankfurt, the home of the Frankfurt Assembly, in order to establish an All-German character to the military campaign for the German constitution.
Despite Sigel's plan, the new insurgent government did not go on the offensive. The uprising in Karlsruhe and the Grand Duchy of Baden was eventually suppressed by the Bavarian Army. Lorenz Peter Brentano, a lawyer and democrat from Baden, headed its government, wielding absolute power. He appointed Karl Eichfeld as War Minister. Later, Eichfeld was replaced as War Minister by Rudolph Mayerhofer. Florian Mördes was appointed as Minister of the Interior. Other members of the provisional government included Joseph Fickler, a journalist and a democrat from Baden. Leaders of the constitutional forces in Baden included Karl Blind, a journalist and a democrat in Baden; and Gustav Struve, another journalist and democrat from Baden. John Phillip Becker was placed in charge of the peoples' militia. Ludwik Mieroslawski, a Polish-born national who had taken part in the military operations during the Polish uprising of 1830–1831, was placed in charge of the military operation on the Palatinate side of the Rhine River.
Brentano ordered the day-to-day affairs of the uprising in Baden, and Mieroslawski directed a military command on the Palatinate side. They did not coordinate well. For example, Mieroslawski decided to abolish the long-standing toll on the Mannheim-Ludwigshaven bridge over the Rhine River. It was not collected on the Palatinate side, but Brentano's government collected it on the Baden side. Due to the continued lack of coordination, Mieroslawski lost battles in Waghausle and Ubstadt in Baden. He and his troops were forced to retreat across the mountains of southern Baden, where they fought a last battle against the Prussians in the town of Murg, on the frontier between Baden and Switzerland. Mieroslawski and the other survivors of the battle escaped across the frontier to Switzerland, and the commander went into exile in Paris.
Frederick Engels took part in the uprising in Baden and the Palatinate. On 10 May 1848, he and Karl Marx traveled from Cologne, Germany, to observe the events of the region. From 1 June 1848, Engels and Marx became editors of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Less than a year later, on 19 May 1849, the Prussian authorities closed down the newspaper because of its support for constitutional reforms.
In late 1848, Marx and Engels intended to meet with Karl Ludwig Johann D'Ester, then serving as a member of the provisional government in Baden and the Palatinate. He was a physician, democrat and socialist who had been a member of the Cologne community chapter of the Communist League. D'Ester had been elected as a deputy to the Prussian National Assembly in 1848. D'Ester had been elected to the Central committee of the German Democrats, together with Reichenbach and Hexamer, at the Second Democratic Congress held in Berlin from 26 October through 30 October 1848. Because of his commitments to the provisional government, D'Ester was unable to attend an important meeting in Paris on behalf of the German Central Committee. He wanted to provide Marx with the mandate to attend the meeting in his place. Marx and Engels met with D'Ester in the town of Kaiserslautern. Marx obtained the mandate and headed off to Paris.
Engels remained in the Palatinate, where in 1849 he joined citizens at the barricades of Elberfeld in the Rhineland, preparing to fight the Prussian troops expected to attack the uprising. On his way to Elberfeld, Engels took two cases of rifle cartridges which had been gathered by the workers of Solingen, when those workers had stormed the arsenal at Gräfrath. The Prussian troops arrived and crushed the uprising in August 1849. Engels and some others escaped to Kaiserslautern. While in Kaiserslautern on 13 June 1849, Engels joined an 800-member group of workers being formed as a military corps by August Willich, a former Prussian military officer. He was also a member of the Communist League and supported revolutionary change in Germany. The newly formed Willich Corps combined with other revolutionary groups to form an army of about 30,000 strong; it fought to resist the highly trained Prussian troops. Engels fought with the Willich Corps for their entire campaign in the Palatinate.
The Prussians defeated this revolutionary army at the Battle of Rinnthal, and the survivors of Willich's Corps crossed over the frontier into the safety of Switzerland. Engels did not reach Switzerland until 25 July 1849. He sent word of his survival to Marx and friends and comrades in London, England. A refugee in Switzerland, Engels began to write about his experiences during the revolution. He published the article, "The Campaign for the German Imperial Constitution." Due to the Prussian Army's ease in crushing the uprising, many South German states came to believe that Prussia, not Austria, was going to be the new power in the region. The suppression of the uprising in Baden and the Palatinate was the end of the German revolutionary uprisings that had begun in the spring of 1848.