A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4

W >> Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks >> Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4




In Saxony, the progress of enlightenment had long rendered the people
sensible of the errors committed by the old and etiquettish
aristocracy of the court and diet. As early as 1829, all the
grievances had been recapitulated in an anonymous printed address,
and, in the beginning of 1830, on the venerable king, Antony (brother
to Frederick Augustus, deceased 1827), declaring invalid the
settlement of his affairs by the Estates, which evinced a more liberal
spirit than they had hitherto done, and on the prohibition of the
festivities on the 25th of June, the anniversary of the Augsburg
Confession, by the town council of Dresden and by the government
commissioner of the university of Leipzig from devotion to the
Catholic court, a popular tumult ensued in both cities, which was
quelled but to be, a few weeks later, after the revolution of July,
more disastrously renewed. The tumult commenced at Leipzig on the 2d
of September and lasted several days, and, during the night of the
9th, Dresden was stormed from without by two immense crowds of
populace, by whom the police buildings and the town-house were
ransacked and set on fire. Disturbances of a similar nature broke out
at Chemnitz and Bautzen. The king, upon this, nominated his nephew,
Prince Frederick, who was greatly beloved by the people, co-regent;
the civic guard restored tranquillity, the most crying abuses,
particularly those in the city administration, were abolished, and the
constitution was revised. The popular minister, Lindenan, replaced
Einsiedel, who had excited universal detestation.

In the electorate of Hesse, the period of terror occasioned by the
threatening letters addressed to the elector was succeeded by the
agitation characteristic of the times. On the 6th of September, 1830,
a tumultuous rising took place at Cassel; on the 24th, the people of
Hanau destroyed every custom-house stationed on the frontier. The
public was so unanimous and decided in opinion that the elector not
only agreed to abolish the abuses, to convoke the Estates, and to
grant a new constitution, but even placed the reins of government
provisionally in the hands of his son, Prince William, in order to
follow the Countess Reichenbach, who had been driven from Cassel by
the insults of the populace. Prince William was, however, as little as
his father inclined to make concessions; and violent collisions
speedily ensued. He wedded Madame Lehmann, the wife of a Prussian
officer, under the name of the Countess von Schaumburg, and closed the
theatre against his mother, the electress, for refusing to place
herself at her side in public. The citizens sided with the electress,
and when, after some time had elapsed, she again ventured to visit the
theatre, the doors were no longer closed against her, and, on her
entrance, she found the house completely filled. On the close of the
evening's entertainment, however, while the audience were peaceably
dispersing, they were charged by a troop of cavalry, who cut down the
defenceless multitude without distinction of age or sex, December 7,
1830. The Estates, headed by Professor Jordan, vainly demanded
redress; Giesler, the head of the police, was alone designated as the
criminal; the scrutiny was drawn to an interminable length and
produced no other result than Giesler's decoration with an order by
the prince.

In Hesse-Darmstadt, where the poll-tax amounted to 6_fls_. 12_krs_.
(10_s_. 4_d_.) a head, the Estates ventured, even prior to the
revolution of July, to refuse to vote 2,000,000_fls_. (£166,666 13_s_.
4_d_.) to the new grandduke, Louis II. (who had just succeeded his
aged father, the patron of the arts), for the defrayment of debts
contracted by him before his accession to the ducal chair. In
September, the peasantry of Upper Hesse rose _en masse_ on account of
the imposition of the sum of 100,000_fls_. (£8,333 6_s_. 8_d_.) upon
the poverty-stricken communes in order to meet the outlay occasioned
by the festivities given in the grandduke's honor on his route through
the country; the burdens laid upon the peasantry in the mediatized
principalities, more particularly in that of Ysenburg, had also become
unbearable. The insurgents took Budingen by storm and were guilty of
some excesses toward the public officers and the foresters, but
deprived no one of life. Ere long convinced of their utter impotence,
they dispersed before the arrival of Prince Emilius at the head of a
body of military, who, blinded by rage, unfortunately killed a number
of persons in the village of Södel, whom they mistook for insurgents
owing to the circumstance of their being armed, but who had in reality
been assembled by a forester for the purpose of keeping the insurgents
in check.

In this month, September, 1830, popular disturbances, but of minor
import, broke out also at Jena and Kahla, Altenburg, and Gera.

In Hanover, the first symptoms of revolution appeared in January,
1831. Dr. König was at that time at the head of the university of
Osterode, Dr. Rauschenplatt of that of Göttingen.[1] The abolition of
the glaring ancient abuses and the removal of the minister, Count
Munster, the sole object of whose policy appeared to be the
eternalization of every administrative and juridical antiquity in the
state, were demanded. The petty insurrections were quelled by the
military. König was taken prisoner; most of the other demagogues
escaped to France. The Duke of Cambridge, the king's brother,
mediated. Count Munster was dismissed, and Hanover received a new and
more liberal constitution.

While these events were passing in Germany, the Poles carried on a
contest against the whole power of Russia as glorious and as
unfortunate as their former one under their leader, Kosciuszko. Louis
Philippe, king of the French, in the hope of gaining favor with the
northern powers by the abandonment of the Polish cause, dealt not a
stroke in their aid. Austria, notwithstanding her natural rivalry to
Russia, beheld the Polish revolution merely through the veil of
legitimacy and refused her aid to rebels. A Hungarian address in favor
of Poland produced no result. Prussia was closely united by family
ties to Russia. The Poles were consequently left without external aid,
and their spirit was internally damped by diplomatic arts. Aid was
promised by France, if they would wait. They accordingly waited: and
in the interim, after the failure of Diebitsch's attempt upon Warsaw
and his sudden death, Paskewitch, the Russian general, unexpectedly
crossed the Vistula close to the Prussian fortress of Thorn and seized
the city of Warsaw while each party was still in a state of
indecision. Immense masses of fugitive Polish soldiery sought shelter
in Austria and Prussia. The officers and a few thousand private
soldiers were permitted to pass onward to France: they found a warm
welcome in Southern Germany, whence they had during the campaign been
supplied with surgeons and every necessary for the supply of the
hospitals. The rest were compelled to return to Russia.

The Russian troops drawn from the distant provinces, the same that had
been employed in the war with Persia, overran Poland as far as the
Prussian frontier, bringing with them a fearful pestilence, Asiatic
cholera. This dire malady, which had, since 1817, crept steadily
onward from the banks of the Ganges, reached Russia in 1830, and, in
the autumn of 1831, spread across the frontiers of Germany. It chiefly
visited populous cities and generally spared districts less densely
populated, passing from one great city to another whither infection
could not have been communicated. _Cordons de santé_ and quarantine
regulations were of no avail. The pestilence appeared to spread like
miasma through the air and to kindle like gas wherever the assemblage
of numbers disposed the atmosphere to its reception. The patients were
seized with vomiting and diarrhoea, accompanied with violent
convulsions, and often expired instantaneously or after an agony of a
few hours' duration. Medicinal art was powerless against this disease,
and, as in the 14th century, the ignorant populace ascribed its
prevalence to poison. Suspicion fell this time upon the physicians and
the public authorities and spread in the most incredible manner from
St. Petersburg to Paris. The idea that the physicians had been charged
to poison the people _en masse_ occasioned dreadful tumults, in which
numbers of physicians fell victims and every drug used in medicine was
destroyed as poisonous. Similar scenes occurred in Russia and in
Hungary. In the latter country a great insurrection of the peasants
took place, in August, 1831, in which not only the physicians, but
also numbers of the nobility and public officers who had provided
themselves with drugs fell victims, and the most inhuman atrocities
were perpetrated. In Vienna, where the cholera raged with extreme
virulence, the people behaved more reasonably.

In Prussia, the cholera occasioned several disturbances at
Koenigsberg, Stettin, and Breslau. At Koenigsberg the movement was not
occasioned by the disease being attributed to poison. The strict
quarantine regulations enforced by the government had produced a
complete commercial stagnation, notwithstanding which permission had
been given to the Russian troops, when hard pushed by the insurgent
Poles, to provide themselves with provisions and ammunition from
Prussia, so that not only Russian agents and commissaries, but whole
convoys from Russia crossed the Prussian frontier. The appearance of
cholera was ascribed to this circumstance, and the public discontent
was evinced both by a popular outbreak and in an address from the
chief magistrate of Koenigsberg to the throne. The Prussian army,
under the command of Field-Marshal Gneisenau, stationed in Posen for
the purpose of watching the movements of the Poles, was also attacked
by the cholera, to which the field-marshal fell victim. It speedily
reached Berlin, spread through the north of Germany to France,
England, and North America, returned thence to the south of Europe,
and, in 1836, crept steadily on from Italy through the Tyrol to
Bavaria.

The veil had been torn from many an old and deep-rooted evil by the
disturbances of 1830. The press now emulated the provincial diets and
some of the governments that sought to meet the demands of the age in
exposing to public view all the political wants of Germany. Party
spirit, however, still ran too high, and the moderate
constitutionalists, who aimed at the gradual introduction of reforms
by legal means, found themselves ere long outflanked by two extreme
parties. While Gentz at Vienna, Jarcke at Berlin, etc., refused to
make the slightest concession and in that spirit conducted the press,
Rotteck's petty constitutional reforms in Baden were treated with
contempt by Wirth and Siebenpfeiffer, by whom a German republic was
with tolerable publicity proclaimed in Rhenish Bavaria. Nor were
attempts at mediation wanting. In Darmstadt, Schulz proposed the
retention of the present distribution of the states of Germany and the
association of a second chamber, composed of deputies elected by the
people from every part of the German confederation, with the federal
assembly at Frankfort.

The Tribune, edited by Dr. Wirth, and the Westboten, edited by Dr.
Siebenpfeiffer, were prohibited by the federal diet, March 2, 1832.
Schuler, Savoie, and Geib opposed this measure by the foundation of a
club in Rhenish Bavaria for the promotion of liberty of the press,
ramifications of which were intended by the founders to be extended
throughout Germany. The approaching celebration of the festival in
commemoration of the Bavarian constitution afforded the malcontents a
long-wished-for opportunity for the convocation of a monster meeting
at the ancient castle of Hambach, on the 27th of May. Although the
black, red and gold flag waved on this occasion high above the rest,
the tendency to French liberalism predominated over that to German
patriotism. Numbers of French being also present, Dr. Wirth deemed
himself called upon to observe that the festival they had met to
celebrate was intrinsically German, that he despised liberty as a
French boon, and that the patriot's first thoughts were for his
country, his second for liberty. These observations greatly displeased
the numerous advocates for French republicanism among his audience,
and one Rey, a Strasburg citizen, read him a severe lecture in the
Mayence style of 1793.[2] There were also a number of Poles present,
toward whom no demonstrations of jealousy were evinced. This meeting
peaceably dissolved, but no means were for the future neglected for
the purpose of crushing the spirit manifested by it. Marshal Wrede
occupied Spires, Landau, Neustadt, etc., with Bavarian troops; the
clubs for the promotion of liberty of the press were strictly
prohibited, their original founders, as well as the orators of Hambach
and the boldest of the newspaper editors, were either arrested or
compelled to quit the country. Siebenpfeiffer took refuge in
Switzerland; Wirth might have effected his escape, but refused. Some
provocations in Neustadt, on the anniversary of the Hambach festival
in 1833, were brought by the military to a tragical close. Some
newspaper editors, printers, etc., were also arrested at Munich,
Wurzburg, Augsburg, etc. The most celebrated among the accused was
Professor Behr, court-councillor of Wurzburg, the burgomaster and
former deputy of that city, who at the time of the meeting at Hambach
made a public speech at Gaibach. On account of the revolutionary
tendency manifested in it he was arrested, and, in 1886, sentenced to
ask pardon on his knees before the king's portrait and to
imprisonment, a punishment to which the greater part of the political
offenders were condemned.

The federal diet had for some time been occupied with measures for the
internal tranquillity of Germany. The Hambach festival both brought
them to a conclusion and increased their severity. Under the date of
the 28th of June, 1832, the resolutions of the federal assembly, by
which first of all the provincial Estates, then the popular clubs, and
finally the press, were to be deprived of every means of opposing in
any the slightest degree the joint will of the princes, were
published. The governments were bound not to tolerate within their
jurisdiction aught contrary to the resolutions passed by the federal
assembly, and to call the whole power of the confederation to their
aid if unable to enforce obedience; nay, in cases of urgency, the
confederation reserved to itself the right of armed intervention,
undemanded by the governments. Taxes, to meet the expenses of the
confederation, were to be voted submissively by the provincial
Estates. Finally, all popular associations and assemblies were also
prohibited, and all newspapers, still remaining, of a liberal
tendency, were suppressed.

The youthful revolutionists, principally students, assembled secretly
at Frankfort on the Maine, during the night of the 3d of April, 1833,
attacked the town-watch for the purpose of liberating some political
prisoners, and possibly intended to have carried the federal assembly
by a _coup-de-main_ had they not been dispersed. These excesses had
merely the effect of increasing the severity of the scrutiny and of
crowding the prisons with suspected persons.


[Footnote 1: Also the unfortunate Dr. Plath, to whom science is
indebted for an excellent historical work upon China. He became
implicated in this affair and remained in confinement until 1836, when
he was sentenced to fifteen years' further imprisonment.]

[Footnote 2: All national distinctions must cease and be fused in
universal liberty and equality; this was the sole aim of the noble
French people, and for this cause should we meet them with a fraternal
embrace, etc. Paul Pfizer well observed in a pamphlet on German
liberalism, published at that period, "What epithet would the majority
of the French people bestow upon a liberty which a part of their
nation would purchase by placing themselves beneath the protection of
a foreign and superior power, called to their aid against their
fellow-citizens? If the cause of German liberalism is to remain pure
and unspotted, we must not, like Coriolanus, arm the foreign foe
against our country. The egotistical tendency of the age is,
unhappily, too much inclined (by a coalition with France) to prefer
personal liberty and independence to the liberty and independence
(thereby infallibly forfeited) of the whole community. The supposed
fellowship with France would be subjection to her. France will support
the German liberals as Richelien did the German Protestants."]



CCLXX. The Struggles of the Provincial Diets


The Estates of the different constitutional states sought for
constitutional reform by legal means and separated themselves from the
revolutionists. But, during periods of great political agitation, it
is difficult to draw a distinctive line, and any opposition, however
moderate, appears as dangerous as the most intemperate rebellion. It
was, consequently, impossible for the governments and the Estates to
come to an understanding during these stormy times. The result of the
deliberations, whenever the opposition was in the majority, was
protestations on both sides in defence of right; and, whenever the
opposition was or fell in the minority, the chambers were the mere
echo of the minister.

In Bavaria, in 1831, the second chamber raised a violent storm against
the minister, von Schenk, principally on account of the restoration of
some monasteries and of the enormous expense attending the erection of
the splendid public buildings at Munich. A law of censorship had,
moreover, been published, and a number of civil officers elected by
the people been refused permission to take their seats in the chamber.
Schwindel, von Closen, Cullmann, Seyffert, etc., were the leaders of
the opposition. Schenk resigned office; the law of censorship was
repealed, and the Estates struck two millions from the civil list. The
first chamber, however, refused its assent to these resolutions, the
law of censorship was retained, and the saving in the expenditure of
the crown was reduced to an extremely insignificant amount. In the
autumn of 1832, Prince Otto, the king's second son, was, with the
consent of the sultan, elected king of Greece by the great maritime
powers intrusted with the decision of the Greek question, and Count
Armansperg, formerly minister of Bavaria, was placed at the head of
the regency during the minority of the youthful monarch. Steps having
to be taken for the levy of troops for the Greek service, some
regiments were sent into Greece in order to carry the new regulations
into effect. The Bavarian chambers were at a later period almost
entirely purged from the opposition and granted every demand made by
the government. The appearance of the Bavarians in ancient Greece
forms one of the most interesting episodes in modern history. The
jealousy of the great powers explains the election of a sovereign
independent of them all: the noble sympathy displayed for the Grecian
cause by King Louis, who, shortly after the congress of Verona, sent
considerable sums of money and Colonel von Heideck to the aid of the
Greeks, and, it may be, also the wish to bring the first among the
second-rate powers of Germany into closer connection with the common
interests of the first-rate powers, more particularly explains that of
the youthful Otto.[1] The task of organizing a nation, noble, indeed,
but debased by long slavery and still reeking with the blood of late
rebellion, under the influence of a powerful and mutually jealous
diplomacy, on a European and German footing, was, however, extremely
difficult. Hence the opposite views entertained by the regency, the
resignation of the councillors of state, von Maurer and von Abel, who
were more inclined to administrate, and the retention of office by
Count Armansperg, who was more inclined to diplomatize. Hence the
ceaseless intrigues of party, the daily increasing contumacy, and the
revolts, sometimes quenched in blood, of the wild mountain tribes and
ancient robber-chiefs, to whom European institutions were still an
insupportable yoke. King Otto received, on his accession to the
throne, in 1835, a visit from his royal parent; and, in the ensuing
year, conducted the Princess of Oldenburg to Athens as his bride.

In Wurtemberg, the chambers first met in 1833, and were, two months
later, again dissolved on account of the refusal of the second chamber
to reject "with indignation" Pfizer's protestation against the
resolutions of the confederation. In the newly-elected second chamber,
the opposition, at whose head stood the celebrated poet, Uhland,
brought forward numerous propositions for reform, but remained in the
minority, and it was not until the new diet, held in 1836, that the
aristocratic first chamber was induced to diminish socage service and
other feudal dues twenty-two and one-half per cent in amount. The
literary piracy that had hitherto continued to exist solely in
Wurtemberg was also provisionally abolished, the system of national
education was improved, and several other useful projects were carried
into execution or prepared. A new criminal code, published in 1838,
again bore traces of political caution. The old opposition lost power.

In Baden, the venerable grandduke, Louis, expired in 1830, and was
succeeded by Leopold, a descendant of the collateral branch of the
counts of Hochberg. Bavaria had, at an earlier period, stipulated, in
case of the extinction of the elder and legitimate line, for the
restoration of the Pfalz (Heidelberg and Mannheim), which had, in
1816, been secured to her by a treaty with Austria. The grandduke,
Louis, had protested against this measure and had, in 1817, declared
Baden indivisible. Bavaria finally relinquished her claims on the
payment of two million florins (£166,666 13_s_. 4_d_.) and the cession
of the bailiwick of Steinfeld, to which Austria moreover added the
county of Geroldseck. The new grandduke, who was surnamed "the
citizen's friend," behaved with extreme liberality and consequently
went hand in hand with the first chamber, of which Wessenberg and
Prince von Furstenberg were active members, and with the second, at
the head of which stood Professors Rotteck, Welcker, and von Itzstein.
Rotteck proposed and carried through the abolition of capital
punishment as alone worthy of feudal times, and, on Welcker's motion,
censorship was abolished and a law for the press was passed. The
federal assembly, however, speedily checked these reforms. The
grandduke was compelled to repeal the law for the press, the Freiburg
university was for some time closed, Professors Rotteck and Welcker
were suspended, and their newspaper, the "Freisinnige" or liberal, was
suppressed in 1832. Rotteck was, notwithstanding, at feud with the
Hambachers, and had raised the Baden flag above that of Germany at a
national fete at Badenweiler. This extremely popular deputy, who had
been presented with thirteen silver cups in testimony of the affection
with which he was regarded by the people, afterward protested against
the resolutions of the confederation, but his motion was violently
suppressed by the minister, Winter. The Baden chamber, nevertheless,
still retained a good deal of energy, and, after the death of Rotteck,
in 1841, a violent contest was carried on concerning the rights of
election.

In Hesse-Darmstadt, the Estates again met in 1832; the liberal
majority in the second chamber, led by von Gagern, E. E. Hoffmann,
Hallwachs, etc., protested against the resolutions of the
confederation, and the chamber was dissolved. A fresh election took
place, notwithstanding which the chamber was again dissolved in 1834,
on account of the government being charged with party spirit by von
Gagern and the refusal of the chamber to call him to order. The people
afterward elected a majority of submissive members.

In Hesse-Cassel the popular demonstrations were instantly followed by
the convocation of the Estates and the proposal of a new and
stipulated constitution, which received the sanction of the chambers
as early as January, 1831; but, amid the continual disturbances, and
on account of the disinclination of the prince co-regent to the
liberal reforms, the chamber, of which the talented professor, Jordan
of Marburg, was the most distinguished member, yielded,
notwithstanding its perseverance, after two rapidly successive
dissolutions, in 1832 and 1833, to the influence of the (once liberal)
minister, Hassenpflug, and Jordan quitted the scene of contest.
Hassenpflug's tyrannical behavior and the lapse of Hesse-Rotenburg
(the mediatized collateral line, which became extinct with the
Landgrave Victor in 1834), the revenues of which were appropriated as
personal property by the prince elector instead of being declared
state property, fed the opposition in the chambers, which was,
notwithstanding the menaces of the prince elector, carried on until
1838. Hassenpflug threw up office.

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