Try the uprising as students in Frankfurt
Frankfurters took to the barricades long before 1848. It will be 175 years next year since the first freely elected parliament in Germany met in the Paulskirche. This meeting came at the end of a good three years in which revolutionary thoughts increasingly broke the spell – in the Vormärz years, i.e. the years before the March Revolution of 1848.
Even at this time, Frankfurt played an important role for the entire country. And especially a doctor from Frankfurt.
It is Wednesday, April 3, 1833, when a popular uprising breaks out in Frankfurt. At around 9.30 p.m. the revolutionaries attacked the Konstablerwache and the Hauptwache. After freedom protests, fraternity members are imprisoned there, they want to free them. And what’s more: “Their goal was to start a revolution,” says historian Markus Häfner from the Institute for City History. It should be the overthrow in all of Germany towards democratic freedom.
First and foremost is the doctor Gustav Bunsen, born in Frankfurt in 1804 as the son of a mint councillor. His cousin Robert Wilhelm discovers the Bunsen burner. While studying in Würzburg and Heidelberg, Gustav Bunsen joined student fraternities. As champions of the idea of the nation state, they were at the forefront of the freedom struggles. Captured in the Polish War of Independence in 1830, the physician joined the “Press and Fatherland Association” in Frankfurt, an association of liberals and democrats, and belonged to its leadership circles. This association, which also advocates the free press, like many others, is banned by the German Confederation, which is geared towards restoration. The club radicalized underground.
The basis for some citizens’ anger goes back further. In 1815, the Congress of Vienna wanted to put a stop to any revolutionary tendencies – it was the great restitution after the French Revolution of 1789 and the Napoleonic Wars from 1792. Instead of creating a strong German nation-state, the European map was redrawn and the principalities operated .
Their rather loose association, the German Confederation, was based in Frankfurt. The envoys of the member states met in the Bundestag in the Palais Thurn und Taxis, which was then a much larger complex than it is today. Preserving this supposedly calming order and thus feudal rule was probably in the interests of a majority of the population: they were fed up with upheaval, change and war.
“Frankfurt war nun no longer a free imperial city,” remembers Markus Häfner. After all, the metropolis with around 40,000 inhabitants at the time received the status of a “free city” – something that only happened four times in the German Confederation. The city consisted only of today’s city center, roughly within the plant ring including Sachsenhausen – roughly today’s North Sachsenhausen. Höchst or even Bockenheim were still independent and belonged to principalities.
Progressively free, the bourgeoisie directs the fate of the city itself: since 1816 with an elected senate. “Frankfurt was seen as a nest for liberals,” explains Häfner. But what was considered very liberal and liberal at the time “cannot be compared with today’s democracy”.
Only about ten percent of the population are allowed to vote for the municipal bodies: 6,000 men who have citizenship because they can support themselves and their families independently. “It was a society of notables, but no longer a patrician society,” explains the historian. Women, Jews, day laborers and immigrants are left out.
In many of the principalities there are no such democratic approaches as in Frankfurt. But it is initially poverty and hunger that lead to uprisings – for example against customs duties that have to be paid when crossing borders. On September 25, 1830, farmers, craftsmen and traders protested at the toll riot on the Mainkur. A year later, the Sperrbatzen riots followed as a protest against the closing times of the city gates.
Economic freedom is becoming a desire of the broader population. During the Vormärz, everyday life WILL be shaped by the beginnings of industrialization as well as the poverty it causes. Frankfurt builds a modern water supply in 1834, and in 1835 the first steam-powered factories appear. In 1838 the first steamboat docked on the Main, and in 1839 the first railway line was opened to Höchst. Food prices continue to rise, and the lower classes and artisans become poorer.
At the same time, resistance to the homely Biedermeier style developed in culture. Authors of Young Germany express their desire for freedom: poets such as Heinrich Heine, the Darmstadt writer Georg Büchner, for example, or Ludwig Börne, born in the Frankfurt ghetto in 1786, with his “Letters from Paris”. Revolutionary writings such as Büchner’s “Der Hessische Landbote” go into full confrontation with the censorship: “Peace to the huts! War on the palaces!” he demands.
There is no such thing as a free press: “Every publication was still officially censored,” explains Häfner. This system without freedom of speech had cemented the Carlsbad decisions of 1819. They also banned the revolutionary black-red-gold flag. “Of course, that made them the colors of the freedom fighters.”
In 1832 the authoritarian state became too much for even 220 citizens in Frankfurt: they petitioned for more freedom of the press. The rebellion is driven all over the country by the June revolution in France against the monarchy and immediately before the Hambach Festival at the end of May. 20,000 to 30,000 opposition citizens had gathered there – many historians consider it the beginning of the Vormärz. The princes react: They want to stifle the revolution with exceptional laws. Political associations and many newspapers are banned, and tumult laws are passed. Frankfurt also applies the laws.
However, this drives the resistance further – and finally leads to the guard storm. To this end, the revolutionaries had networked at gatherings such as those at Hambach Castle. As the political center of the German Confederation, Frankfurt is the place of choice for protests. The Republican conspirators worked out their plan in the old town restaurant “Zum Rebstock” belonging to Friedrich Stoltze’s father. The poet, who was only 16 at the time of the guard storm, reports on the 50th anniversary of the “Frankfurt assassination attempt”: “They wanted a Germany united in freedom.”
Supporters from Mannheim and Giessen travel to the Wachensturm. Gustav Bunsen had also traveled through the country in advance of the coordination talks and had even set up an arms depot. That evening, in his apartment on the corner of the Konstablerwache, he armed the insurgents with muskets and bayonets.
Bunsen in the lead, the young men storm the main guard station coming from the Katharinenpforte. They not only call for freedom, equality and revolution, but also in good Frankfurter language: “Ferschte zum Land ennaus!” They can free all political prisoners.
But the freedom fighters did not instigate the revolution: Many Frankfurters followed the storm of the 33 men with sympathy, but they did not join in – contrary to what the revolutionaries had hoped. Additionally alerted troops suppress the uprising during the night, there are injured and dead.
The insurgents are taken prisoner, and their supporters are also recorded in a black book. Many are sentenced to long terms in prison, some are only released through amnesty. Gustav Bunsen hid in his brother Georg’s apartment and after a few weeks left his homeland in the summer of the same year: he emigrated to the United States.
There, the urge for freedom drives him to join a volunteer commando in the Revolutionary War in Texas three years later. According to historian Bernd Häußler, on the night of February 27, 1836, he was shot during a firefight with the Mexican army near the village of San Patricio. On the same day, Gustav Bunsen succumbed to his findings. According to Häußler, a tombstone there commemorates the revolutionary Frankfurt doctor.
But the even more massive political persecution, which also began in Frankfurt after the storming of the guards, allowed the germ of displeasure to sprout further in the population. “That achieves the opposite,” says Markus Häfner. More than ever, the Democrats are exchanging ideas and networking. They also use clubs such as the gymnastics community founded by August Ravenstein in 1833, the forerunner of the Frankfurt gymnastics club in 1860. Or the Monday circles founded in 1845: Outwardly sociable or sporty, they offered the bourgeois-liberal opposition space for exchange, explains the historian. In Frankfurt, too, the republican urge for freedom is becoming more and more established in the population.
third part
In the third episode of our series, Prof. Ralf Roth historically classifies the situation around 1848 in an interview.