Festung Rastatt 1849
The acerbic nationalism and arrogant feeling of cultural
superiority of the Frankfurt parliament of 1849 is singularly unattractive, but
is far removed from later manifestations of German national sentiment. No claim
was made for Alsace or for areas in the Baltic outside the bounds of the
Confederation, where there were substantial German populations. Furthermore,
the Frankfurt parliament was mindful that minority rights within the new
Germany should be respected. On the other hand there was a lot of heady talk of
Germany as the future European superpower that would turn its mighty army
against the barbarous Slavs as the newborn nation had its baptism of fire. Much
of this was little more than hot air, over – compensation for Germany ‘ s
pathetic weakness; but it betrayed a disturbing cast of mind. Monsters were
slumbering in Germany that only the keenest of minds such as the poet Heinrich
Heine and the novelist Gottfried Keller were able to detect.
The Frankfurt parliament was plagued not only by the
national question but also by the social problems of a society in the process
of fundamental change. An artisans ‘ congress was held in Frankfurt in an
attempt to put pressure on the parliament. Politically the artisans were mostly
liberal democrats, but economically they were arch – conservatives. They were
anti – capitalist and anti – industrial. They hankered after the pre –
industrial society of guilds and proud master craftsmen. They called for an
ordered brotherhood under a protective and interventionist state.
The working classes were also active in 1848. Workers ‘
associations (Arbeitervereine) sprang up all over Germany. At the end of August
a national congress organized by Stefan Born, at that time a disciple of Karl
Marx, was held in Berlin at which an umbrella organization called the Workers ‘
Brotherhood (Allgemeine Deutsche Arbeiterverbrüderung) was formed. It was a
reformist rather than a revolutionary organization, which stood for working –
class solidarity, the formation of unions and cooperatives, and, above all, for
education. It called for ” social democracy, ” by which was meant
fair wages and justice for all in a humane and caring society. Obviously there
were widely differing views on how these ideals could be realized, but there
was general agreement when Born denounced ” dreamers who foam with rage
” and urged a moderate and pragmatic approach. The intellectual giants of
the socialist movement, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, ignored the workers ‘
associations, and their Communist League played no role in the revolution. They
had precious few followers and their articles in the Rheinische Zeitung failed
to resonate among the nascent working class.
Meanwhile, the forces of the counter – revolution prepared
to strike back. In Prussia the ” camarilla ” around the crown prince
was tirelessly active. The Gerlach brothers, Ernst and Leopold, founded an
ultra – conservative newspaper soon to be known as the ” Iron Cross ”
(Kreuzzeitung) because of the medal printed above its title: Neue Preußische
Zeitung. This was to become the authoritative voice of Prussian conservatism.
The Junkers formed an association to further their interests, meeting in what
came to be known as the Junker parliament, to discuss matters of common concern.
The army was solidly behind the counter – revolution and longed to seek revenge
for the humiliation it had suffered in March. Its attitude was succinctly
expressed in the title of an influential pamphlet: Soldiers Are the Only Remedy
for Democrats.
The radicals had been crushed in April in Baden, but they
were still active in the Paul’s Church, where they continued to demand the
creation of a republic based on popular sovereignty. They railed against the
conservatives and the liberals, issuing jeremiads about the horrors of the
counter – revolution. Disillusioned with parliamentary procedures, they hoped
to push the revolution forward by extra – parliamentary activism. They called
for a second and more radical revolution in which the will of the people would
be directly expressed by means of a Jacobin dictatorship. Some 200 delegates
representing radical associations from throughout Germany as well as some
delegates to the Paul’s Church, met in Frankfurt in mid – June under the
chairmanship of Julius Fr ö bel, the nephew of the founder of the kindergarten
movement. They decided to form a national republican movement with a distinctly
totalitarian flavor based in Berlin. They gained considerable support from the
disaffected lower orders, who were yet to feel the effects of an economic
upturn. But it was the acceptance of the Malmö armistice by the Frankfurt
parliament that brought matters to a head. On September 18 a radical mob
stormed the Paul’s Church, which was defended by Austrian, Prussian, and
Hessian troops. Eighty people were killed on both sides, including the
conservative deputies General von Auerswald and Prince Lichnowsky, whereupon
the Archduke John placed the city under martial law. It was a richly
significant scene: the Frankfurt parliament could only continue to exist as
long as it was still tolerated by Austria and Prussia.
The violence in Frankfurt, particularly the brutal murder of
two deputies, discredited the radicals in the eyes of most Germans. The
subsequent uprising in Baden, led once again by Hecker and Struve, who blamed
the rich and the Jews for the failure of the revolution, had precious little
popular support. It was quickly suppressed by the minuscule Baden army.
Elsewhere in the southwest there were murmurs of discontent, but little
violence.
Moderate liberals, terrified by the prospect of further
violence, felt obliged to join forces with the conservatives to combat the
radicals. They thus stopped the revolution in its tracks. The vast majority of
Germans agreed with them in prioritizing law and order at the expense of
freedom and due process. The radicals refused to give up the struggle. At the
second Democratic Congress, held in Berlin at the end of October, they
pronounced the Frankfurt parliament illegitimate and demanded new elections.
But by this time the counter – revolution was virtually complete in Vienna and
in Berlin, leaving the radicals hopelessly divided among rival factions.
Frederick William IV hoped to reach some compromise
agreement with the National Assembly over the constitutional question. By
insisting on its sovereign rights, the Berlin parliament, a somewhat more
radical body than the Paul’s Church, was in direct conflict with the king.
There was constant pressure from the radical democratic working classes and the
unemployed leading to frequent clashes with the bourgeois citizens ‘ militia.
Prince William, the ” Grapeshot Prince, ” returned to Berlin in June
as a delegate to the National Assembly, thus rendering the atmosphere
increasingly tense. On June 14 the mob stormed the Berlin arsenal, the citizens
‘ militia was unable to control the situation and the army had to be called in
from Potsdam. The reactionaries called for the dismissal of the National
Assembly, but the king felt this would be too drastic a move.
On July 26 the National Assembly published a draft
constitution. It was a moderate liberal document but one that was unacceptable
to conservatives and the left alike. It called for the army to be bound by the
constitution. In the struggle over this central issue the moderates in the
Assembly found themselves caught between the reactionaries and the radicals.
The king took a step in the direction of the reactionaries and then a step back
in the direction of compromise. The Assembly ‘s position began to harden as it
called for parliamentary control over the judiciary and police, the abolition of
aristocratic titles along with all orders and titles, plus the ending of the
king ‘ s claim to rule by the grace of God. There were sporadic outbursts of
violence as the mob grew restless. The moderate reforming minister president,
General Pfuel, seeing his hopes for compromise dashed, resigned at the end of
October. His place was taken by Count von Brandenburg, who favored a little
Germany with the Prussian king as emperor. The arch – reactionary Otto von
Manteuffel was minister of the interior. The National Assembly was promptly
adjourned but refused to move. General Wrangel marched his troops into Berlin
and proclaimed martial law. The National Assembly and the citizens ‘ militia
were disbanded. The reaction was in full command. Not a shot was fi red, not a
drop of blood spilt. On December 5 the king granted a constitution which, to
the extreme annoyance of the conservatives, bore a distinct resemblance to that
proposed by the National Assembly. It was a shrewd move. It eased the tensions
and bought time. The line to Frankfurt was not broken, the German question left
open.
Although the counter – revolution was near complete,
discussions continued in Frankfurt over the constitution. It was finally voted
upon on December 20, but the cardinal issues of whether Germany should include
Austria and who should be the head of the new nation – state were left open. It
was a moderate liberal document that upheld principles of equality before the
law, civil rights, and the abolition of all remaining vestiges of the feudal
system. It was resolutely liberal on economic issues. Radicals were
disappointed that it did not address the social question, that it was not more
robustly democratic, that the influence of the churches was not to be curbed,
and, a favorite demand, that the Jesuits were not to be turfed out of Germany.
The new Germany was to be a federal state, but the framers of the constitution
could find no solution to the problem of overcoming the disparities between the
component states. Should the smaller entities be annexed or the large states
like Prussia be divided up into smaller federations? Although the existing
situation was highly unsatisfactory, it was decided to leave things as they
were and hope for the best. There were to be two houses of parliament, a House
of the People (Volkshaus) which would be democratically elected and a House of
the States (Staatenhaus) in which the individual states would be represented.
The suffrage question was not settled until the beginning of March 1849. Many
liberals voted for universal direct manhood suffrage in the confident hope that
this would make it impossible for the Prussian king to accept the imperial
crown.
There were few republicans in the Frankfurt parliament, and
even those who inclined towards a republican solution realized that it would be
impossible to abolish all the existing monarchies within the Confederation.
They favored what came to be called a ” republican monarchy. ”
Monarchs should exist by the grace of the people represented in parliament, not
by the grace of God. Their model was the Glorious Revolution of 1688. But who
was to be emperor? Should he be elected as in the old empire? Should parliament
elect an emperor who would then establish a hereditary dynasty? Should Austria
and Prussia takes turns in appointing an emperor, or should one or other ruling
house rule in perpetuity? All this was highly theoretical, as was most of the
discussion in the Paul’s Church. In the last resort the answer to the German
question lay in the outcome of the struggle within and between Prussia and Austria.
The majority of delegates to the Paul’s Church assumed that
the Habsburg empire was on the point of disintegration and that therefore
German Austria and Bohemia would willingly join in the new Germany. Austria
would then work out some form of personal union with what was left of the multi
– national empire. This was a hopelessly unrealistic position. Austria could
not possibly be both part of a German great power and remain a great power
outside the new Reich. A greater Germany would have necessitated the
dismemberment of the Habsburg empire. With the counter – revolution in Austria
nearly complete on November 27, 1848, Metternich’s protégé and successor,
Prince Schwarzenberg, proclaimed the indivisibility of the empire, thus putting
paid to any hopes for a greater German solution. In March the following year he
proposed that the entire Austrian empire should be included in the new Germany.
This was totally unacceptable since Germany would then be dominated by Austria,
a state in which the vast majority of the population was not even German.
The kleindeutsche solution was now the only possible answer
to the dilemma. Its leading advocate was Heinrich von Gagern, who became
minister president in mid – December, but the liberal Austrian Schmerling and
his groß deutsche supporters were still numerous and hopeful that the Austrians
might be persuaded to change their minds. German nationalists, among them many
on the left, felt that Austria could not possibly be excluded. They imagined
that it could well do without its non – German provinces. South German
Catholics detested Protestant Prussia and identified with their Austrian co –
religionists. Many feared that a Little Germany would provoke Russia and
Austria to intervene, leaving the country under the knout.
Prussia, on the other hand, might be reactionary and
militaristic, but at least it was a thoroughly German state and had gone
through an impressive series of reforms. It was a rational state, at least in
the Hegelian sense, the architect of the Zollverein, soberly Protestant,
certainly not a threat, even prepared it seemed to ” dissolve into
Germany. ” Schwarzenberg ‘ s intransigence led to a mass desertion from
the groß deutsche cause, and even Schmerling defected in March. By now it was a
case of either a Little Germany or none at all. On the 28th of that month
Frederick William IV of Prussia was elected emperor of the Germans, with 290
votes in favor of the motion and 248 abstentions.
The ruling elite in Prussia favored acceptance, provided that
the franchise was changed, provision made for an absolute veto, and the
election accepted by the princes; but Frederick William was adamantly opposed.
He saw himself as a king by the grace of God and refused to accept a crown that
was made of ” muck and mire, ” a ” dog collar with which they
want to chain me to the revolution of 1848. ” It was an unthinking and
intensely emotional response, but subsequent events make it seem unlikely that
even a compromise solution would have had much of a chance of success.
Heinrich von Gagern still hoped that a compromise was
possible, but it was rejected both by Frederick William and the majority in the
Paul’s Church. The Frankfurt parliament now began a gradual process of
dissolution. Austria and Prussia withdrew their delegations, Saxony and Hanover
followed suit. A rump parliament of intransigent radicals moved to Stuttgart,
where they were soon chased away by a contingent of the Württemberg army. There
were isolated outbursts of violence in protest against the reactionary course.
Barricades were erected in Dresden and were graced with the presence of such
luminaries as the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, Richard Wagner, who was in Dresden
as director of the Semper Oper and had just finished his opera Lohengrin, the
great architect Gottfried Semper, whose magnificent opera house had been opened
in 1841, and the socialist Stefan Born. Prussian troops were called in to crush
the uprising, and fierce fighting ensued. Rebels managed to install a temporary
government in the Palatinate. A colorful assortment of radicals from all over
central Europe rushed to its support. Once again the disorganized and ill –
disciplined radicals were no match for the Prussian army, and the uprising was
soon suppressed. In the Rhineland Friedrich Engels was able to put the
relationship between theory and praxis to the test in a series of riots that
were soon mastered by the citizens ‘ militia.
Defeated barricade fighters, mercenaries, and idealists now
rushed to Baden for a last – ditch stand. Here the Prussian army took somewhat
longer to repress the revolt, but the final outcome was never in any doubt.
Fair weather seemed to grace the Fortress of Rastatt on 20
July 1849. Carl Schurz, a young officer in the rebellious nationalist army
holding the town, hurried to his post atop the highest tower of the citadel.
Raising a telescope in one quick movement to his eye, Schurz began a routine
observation of the surrounding country. To the east he saw the valley of the
Rhine with its fertile fields and vineyards. An occasional church tower jutted
upwards against the backdrop of the high hills and ridges that hid Baden-Baden
from view. To the south he surveyed a flowering valley bordered by the Black
Forest. To the north a plain stretched into infinity. Westwards Schurz spied
the blue outlines of Alsace’s distant mountains. “How beautiful is
nature,” he thought, “in all its loving, generous goodness.”
A short journey away to the north brought one to Bonn, the
town of his university days. It was there, sixteen months earlier, that news of
the fall of French King Louis Philippe had reached his ears. With the rest of
the students he had gathered in the square, convinced that the political
tremors from France would inevitably shake the earth throughout Germany. No one
could concentrate on lectures. Instead, they flocked to pubs and raised glasses
to the coming day of democratic rights in a mighty new German Empire. And
during that first revolutionary spring it had all come to pass-as if in a dream…
Reality nudged the young man’s shoulder. He must lower his
telescope and do his duty. The nearby picket lines and encircling campsites of
Prince William’s Prussian soldiers contrasted starkly with the natural beauty
and bounty of the distant Rhineland. Cavalry patrols and horse artillery
scurried about like spiders weaving sticky webs around their prey. Schurz and
his six thousand compatriots knew they were trapped-and the Prussians among them
knew they would be executed for treason if captured. But somehow emboldening
rumors always made the rounds: General Sigel’s rebel troops had defeated the
Prussians in the Badenese highlands and would soon lift the siege; another
revolution had broken out in France that would soon spread east to liberate
Germany; the Hungarians had overwhelmed a combined Austro-Russian army and
would soon join hands with beleaguered rebel soldiers in Baden. One day they
heard cannon fire coming closer and closer to the fortress. Schurz and the
other officers rushed to the tower to see Sigel’s advancing columns with their
own eyes, but the cannon fire soon yielded to a demoralizing silence.
The only person to enter Rastatt on 20 July, a Prussian
envoy, brought the depressing news that Sigel had been chased into Switzerland
and that no other rebel troops remained on German soil. The besieged were
allowed to send one scout outside the walls to ascertain the sobering truth of
this message. Having seen Sigel’s armaments stacked ignominiously on the
Badenese side of the Swiss border, the downcast scout returned.
On 23 July the last of Germany’s rebellious citizens laid
down their weapons on the glacis and filed out of the gate. Prince William
turned his back on the forlorn column of “traitors.” All Prussians
found in this force met the fate they expected. Schurz was not among the
corpses, having escaped through a sewage canal to freedom and later fame in the
United States.
The revolution that began with such fury, hope, and apparent
success in March 1848 was over.
There followed a
series of treason trials and summary executions. Every tenth man captured in
the fortress town of Rastatt was shot. The brutality of the Prussians in Baden
left a lasting trauma and bitter hatred and there was a fresh wave of
emigration, mainly to the United States
