... was the title of a panel discussion at the Aula of the University about 175 years Revolution of 1848/49. Due to illness, Dr. Thalhofer could not participate.
During the discussions, Red Baron took some notes, but I rather like to concentrate in my blog on some personal reflections regarding some remarks made by the panel members.
The panel members agreed that the revolution of 1848/49 is a foundation of our democracy today, but a discussion arose about whether it should be considered a milestone. Doesn't an unsuccessful revolution not have an endpoint, and isn't a milestone a point on a continuous path to a goal? Can't or shouldn't a milestone also be a signpost?
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| 1871 |
One reason the revolution of 1848 failed was that too much was to be achieved too soon and at once: popular sovereignty and German unity. Thus, classifying the revolution in a European context is impossible. Only in Italy was an appreciation of the revolution with the idea of unity.
Foreign interference in Germany, especially from the French side, was expressly undesirable. One did not want to see the arch-enemy on this side of the Rhine. This sealed the fate of the German Democratic Legion* in Paris led by Georg Herwegh, which tried to come to the aid of the revolutionaries in Baden.
*Although composed of politically exiled German workers and craftsmen. Read more in German.
Were the people of Baden particularly eager revolutionaries? If one regards the length of the uprising from September 12, 1847, the meeting of the friends of the constitution at the Salmen Inn in Offenburg to July 23, 1849, with the surrender of the Federal Fortress of Rastatt, which was occupied by freedom fighters and besieged by Prussian troops, this is a good argument.
But Johann Philipp Becker, a participant in the Hambach Festival and later chief of the Baden People's Army, gives further exciting aspects in his book Geschichte der Süddeutschen Mai-Revolution von 1849:
The Allemannic territory between the Black Forest, the Vosges, and the Alps, torn apart by German civil wars and French intrigues*, has already been dominated by different states and forms of government for two centuries. Nevertheless, in the German Baden, the French Alsace, and the Swiss border cantons, there is a similarity of dialect, customs, habits, and occupations, which will last longer than the political separation of these countries...
*again, the hereditary enemy
... This is why Baden is as flooded by French ideas and swayed by the Paris revolutions as it is educated by the neighboring Swiss republic cantons, whose freedom guarantees their prosperity. These influences help to understand democratic forms of government and spur one to imitate them ...
... The revolution, however, finds more Girondists in Baden than Jacobins; citizens, as well as peasants, have hitherto had more affection than a passion for the republic and for freedom, and one cannot deny that most of them would like to reach the republic by peaceful means without revolution. However, since the circumstances proved to them the impossibility of this, they also agreed to the revolution, admittedly without knowing its consequences and sacrifices to the full extent. On the whole, the people offered sufficient material to capable revolutionaries ...
The failure of the 1848/49 revolution had a decisive influence on the development of the democracy movement in Germany, and so today, the events are still seen through the lens of the victors of the time, i.e., as an honest attempt to change something that was doomed to failure due to the circumstances prevailing.
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The farmer's wife welcomes
her drunken husband: - Are you back from the people's assembly? - Yes, wife! - Well, on what did you agree? Is there now freedom, or is there still order? |
Another reason for the failure, at least in Germany, was the lack of
"orderly" structures. They did only exist in Baden, also in Freiburg, in
the form of local people's associations at the beginning of 1849, i.e.,
too late.
Since the peaceful revolution in the GDR, which led to Germany's reunification, the word revolution is less negatively loaded today. Still, it was a "dirty" word in German at the time, given the events in France. In Prussia, when in the spring of 1848, the people went onto the barricades in Berlin, the officials spoke of the "events" of March 18.
Already in his opening statement, Heinz Siebold mentioned the social question as a crucial element of the revolution of 1848/49. The plight of the many peasants and the still few industrial workers was a potent trigger of the uprisings.
This aspect was somewhat neglected in the discussion, although the social
question remained a driving force until the end. On July 18, 1849, five days
before the surrender of the Rastatt fortress,
Ernst Elsenhans
wrote in Der Festungsbote - the newspaper he edited - the essay
Was ist und was will die soziale Demokratie? (What is and what is the
aim of social democracy?). For more,
read this blog.
So what is democracy? Some basics, such as freedom of the press, independence of the courts, and free secret elections, are non-negotiable, but we must not rest on the success of a working democracy in Germany. Democracy is to be constantly re-evaluated; each new generation has to rethink it and define it for itself.
The panel members agreed: Democracy was worth striving for in 1848/49, and today, it must be protected. Professor Jung used the example of the so-called September Revolution, a popular uprising in Frankfurt in 1848.
After the National Assembly in the Paulskirche had agreed to an armistice between Denmark and Prussia - albeit only grudgingly - many people were disappointed that the war would not continue. Discontent with the parliament's decision led to a spontaneous uprising. The National Assembly was harassed, two deputies were murdered, and the Paulskirche had to be protected by federal troops*. Jung immediately drew a historical line to the attack on the Capitol in Washington on January 6, 2022.
*Read more in German
And democracy must be able to resist because even in countries of the European Union, paths to dismantling democracy begin with the censorship of the press, the restriction of the independence of the courts, and, so far not yet, the targeted influence on elections.
So Jan Merk concluded, "Today, we don't realize how quickly we can lose things we take for granted." Indifference to democracy, he said, is a great danger.
So what is democracy? Some basics, such as freedom of the press, independence of the courts, and free secret elections, are non-negotiable, but we must not rest on the success of a working democracy in Germany. Democracy is to be constantly re-evaluated; each new generation has to rethink it and define it for itself.
The panel members agreed: Democracy was worth striving for in 1848/49, and today, it must be protected. Professor Jung used the example of the so-called September Revolution, a popular uprising in Frankfurt in 1848.
After the National Assembly in the Paulskirche had agreed to an armistice between Denmark and Prussia - albeit only grudgingly - many people were disappointed that the war would not continue. Discontent with the parliament's decision led to a spontaneous uprising. The National Assembly was harassed, two deputies were murdered, and the Paulskirche had to be protected by federal troops*. Jung immediately drew a historical line to the attack on the Capitol in Washington on January 6, 2022.
*Read more in German
And democracy must be able to resist because even in countries of the European Union, paths to dismantling democracy begin with the censorship of the press, the restriction of the independence of the courts, and, so far not yet, the targeted influence on elections.
So Jan Merk concluded, "Today, we don't realize how quickly we can lose things we take for granted." Indifference to democracy, he said, is a great danger.
*
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