German Confederation

The German Confederation (German: Deutscher Bund) was a loose association of Central European states created by the Congress of Vienna in 1815 to organize the surviving states of the Holy Roman Empire, which had been abolished in 1806.

Romanticism, nationalism, and Liberalism in the Vormärz era

Although the forces unleashed by the French Revolution were seemingly under control after the Vienna Congress, the conflict between conservative forces and liberal nationalists was only deferred at best. The era until the failed 1848 revolution, in which these tensions built up, is commonly referred to as Vormärz, "pre-March," in reference to the outbreak of riots in March 1848.

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This competition entailed the forces of the old order competing with those inspired by the French Revolution and the Rights of Man. The sociological breakdown of the competition was roughly one side engaged mostly in commerce, trade and industry and the other associated with landowning aristocracy or military aristocracy (the Junker) in Prussia, the forces behind the Habsburg empire in Austria, and the conservative backers of the particularist, small princely states and city-states in Germany.

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Meanwhile, demands for change from below had been fermenting since the influence of the French Revolution. Throughout the German Confederation, Austrian influence was paramount, drawing the ire of the nationalist movements. Metternich considered nationalism, especially the nationalist youth movement, the most pressing danger, which might not only repudiate Austrian preponderance of the Confederation, but also stimulate nationalist sentiment within the Austrian Empire itself. As a multi-national polyglot in which Slavs and Magyars outnumbered the Germans, the prospects of Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Polish, Serb, or Croatian sentiment along with middle class liberalism was certainly horrifying.

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The Vormärz era saw figures like Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and Johann Gottfried von Herder promulgate Romantic nationalism. Others promulgated these ideas among the youth. Father Friedrich Jahn's gymnastic associations exposed middle class German youth to nationalist ideas, which were took the form of the nationalistic college fraternities known as the Burschenschaften. The Wartburg Festival in 1817 celebrated Martin Luther as a proto-German nationalist, linking Lutheranism to German nationalism, helping to arouse religious sentiments for the cause of German nationhood. The festival culminated in the burning of several books and other things that were to symbolize reactionary attitude, one of them being a book by the German writer August von Kotzebue. In 1819, after he was accused of being a spy for imperial Russia, another multi-national empire desperately trying to hang on to the old order as it existed before the French Revolution, he was murdered by the theological student Karl Ludwig Sand — who was exectued for the crime. Metternich swiftly and harshly reacted, using this pretext to persuade the Confederation Diet to issue the Carlsbad Decrees of 1819, which dissolved the Burschenschaften, cracked down against the liberal press, and seriously restricted academic freedom.

Related Topics:
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe - Johann Gottlieb Fichte - Johann Gottfried von Herder - Friedrich Jahn - Burschenschaft - 1817 - Martin Luther - Burning of several books - Reactionary - August von Kotzebue - Russia - Karl Ludwig Sand - Carlsbad Decrees - Academic freedom

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