CENTRAL EUROPE IN 1770

The Hohenzollernruled Prussia; the Habsburgs ruled Austria, Bohemia, Hungary, Croatia, Lombardy, & Belgium

“The Flute Concert of Frederick the Great at Sans Souci”

King Frederick II, “the Great,” ruled from 1740 to 1786

Frederick the Great at the Battle of Hochkirch, 1760

(Painting by Adolph von Menzel, 1856)

PRE-INDUSTRIAL SOCIAL STRUCTURE:The Three French Estates of 1788--Clergy,

Nobility, and Commoners—had become secularized in Germany after the Reformation

NOBLES 2-3%East-Elbian Junkers manage knightly estates; western seigneurs collect local taxes

BURGHERS 20-30%

Ca. 5% in cities with over 20,000 people, based on long-distance trade, dominated by patrician merchants

Ca. 20% in small towns with under 20,000 people, based on local trade, dominated by artisanal guilds

PEASANTS 70-80%

Serfdom prevails east of the Elbe; perhaps half of western peasants own enough land to support their families.

POPULATION IN MILLIONS

COUNTRY 1700 1750 1800 1850

Europe 115.0 140.0 187.0 266.0

Germany (1914 borders)

16.0 18.0 24.0 31.0

Prussia 5.1 6.4 9.0 18.0

Austrian Empire (born in 1806)

-- -- 23.0 30.7

Germany experienced a crisis of over-population by the 1790s

• Serfdom still prevailed east of the Elbe River

• In artisanal guilds, more and more journeymen never became masters

• Pauperism spread in the countryside

THE FRENCH IMPACT ON GERMANY

1789: Outbreak of French Revolution widely applauded by German intellectuals

1792: Austria and Prussia invade France but are stopped at Valmy.

1793/94: French Reign of Terror

1795-1800: Prussia reverts to neutrality as France conquers the Rhineland and Italy

1805: Napoleon conquers Austria

1806/07: Napoleon conquers Prussia and reorganizes Germany in alliance with Bavaria, Baden, & Saxony

1812/13: Napoleon’s defeat in Russia sparks the German “War of Liberation”

Largely untrained French volunteers defeated the invaders:

“Kellerman at Valmy,” September 20, 1792

The French Convention, “Decree Proclaiming the Liberty

and Sovereignty of All Peoples,” December 1792 “The National Convention, faithful to the principles of the

sovereignty of the people, which do not permit it to recognize any of the institutions which bring an attack upon it, decrees:”

“In the countries which are or shall be occupied by the armies of the Republic, the generals shall proclaim immediately, in the name of the French nation, the sovereignty of the people, the suppression of all the established authorities and existing imposts and taxes, the abolition of the tithe, of feudalism, of seigneurial rights, or real and personal servitude, of the privileges of hunting and fishing, of corvées, of nobility, and generally of all privileges.”

“They shall announce to the people that they bring them peace, assistance, fraternity, liberty, and equality, and that they will convoke them directly in primary or communal assemblies, in order to create and organize an administration and a provisional judiciary.”

“There shall be made a list of the expenses which the French Republic shall have incurred for the common defense, and the French nation shall make arrangements with the government which shall have been established for that which may be due.”

The foreign invasions and

counter-revolutionary uprisings of

1793/94

Napoleon took power in

1799 and exploited Prussia’s

neutrality to invade Italy:“Napoleon at

the St. Bernard Pass”

(1801)

Europe after the Peace of

Amiens (1802/03)

Prussia remained neutral when Napoleon conquered Austria in 1805:

“The Battle of Austerlitz, 2 December 1805”

Prussia then suffered devastating defeats at Jena and Auerstedt in 1806

Napoleon’s Entry into Berlin

through the Brandenburg Gate, 1806:

Most Berliners appeared to admire their conqueror

Napoleon meets Tsar Alexander I at Tilsit, June 1807: Russia agreed to join the “Continental System”

Nicolas Gosse, “Napoleon Receives the Prussian Queen

Luise in Tilsit,” 6 July 1807

(painted in 1837):Here King Frederick William III is reduced to the role of onlooker

Europe in 1812

The Wedding of Prince Jerome Bonaparte and Princess Frédérique Catherine of Württemberg, 1807:

Jerome now became “King of Westphalia”

Much of Germany now adopted French law

and institutions

Baron Karl vom Stein(1757-1831),Chancellor of

Prussia, 1806/07

THE PRUSSIAN REFORMS LAUNCHED BY STEIN & HARDENBERG IN 1807

Abolition of serfdom (but the lords get most of the land)

Municipal self-government (but with 3-class suffrage)

Educational reform: careers open to talent (Wilhelm von Humboldt promotes the Gymnasium to foster a classical humanist education)

Military reform: careers open to talent (Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Clausewitz)

The Austrian government insisted, however, that any concession to the principles of revolutionary France would destroy the foundations of stable government and international peace; it expanded the police instead.

Johann Gottlieb Fichte delivered his “Addresses to the German Nation” in Berlin in the winter of

1807/08

*** “The German speaks a language which has been alive ever since it first issued from the force of nature, whereas the other Teutonic races [e.g., Franks] speak a language which has movement on the surface only but is dead at the root.” *** “Only the German... really has ein Volk…, and he alone is capable of real and rational love for his nation.”*** “The divine has appeared in das Volk…. Hence, the noble-minded man will... sacrifice himself for his people…. In order to save his nation he must be ready even to die that it may live.”

[“Das Volk” could be translated as “nation”, “people”, or “race”.]

“Napoleon Exhorts the Bavarian and Württemberger Troops at Abensberg,” 1809

The Destruction of the Grande Armée in Russia in 1812

General Yorck von Wartenburg Addresses the Provincial Estates of East Prussia, 5 February 1813

Students of the University of Jena march off with the Lützow Free Corps in 1813 (painted in 1909)

“The East Prussian Landwehr Takes the Field in 1813”(the Prussian army swelled from 42,000 to 280,000 men in 1813)

In theory, these units imitated the “demo-cratic” principles of the French National Guard.

Eleonore Prohaska, “Potsdam’s Joan of Arc,” mortally wounded in September 1813

The “Battle of the Nations,” Leipzig, October 16-10, 1813

Europe following the Congress of Vienna in 1815

The Congress of Vienna, 1815: Wellington, Hardenberg (seated), Metternich (standing), Castlereagh, & Talleyrand

KEY DECISIONS BY THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA

FRANCE:Restore the Bourbon Dynasty, but with a “Charter of Liberty”

ITALY:Build up the “Kingdom of Sardinia” as a barrier to French expansion

PRUSSIA:Loses half its Polish holdings, gains 2/5 of Saxony and Rhineland-Westphalia

GERMANY:The German Confederation replaces the Holy Roman Empire

Ignore any claim to “national self-determination” in favor of “dynastic legitimacy” and the “balance of power.”

After 1815 the “Concert of Europe” claimed the right to intervene in any country that experienced revolution.

THE GERMAN CONFEDERATION OF 1815

Prince Metternich

(1773-1859):He advocated

the “Concert of Europe” and

annual congresses of

the Great Powers

Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Medieval City on a River (ca. 1815)

The Wartburg Festival, October 1817:The Burschenschaften meet to support German unity

The Murder of August Kotzebue by Carl Sand, Mannheim, March 1819

THE CARLSBAD DECREES OF SEPTEMBER 1819

1. A police inspector will be appointed for each university.

2. All university & school teachers will be fired if they “propagate doctrines subversive of existing government institutions.”

3. The Universal Students’ Union (Allgemeine Burschenschaft) will be suppressed, “since the very conception of the society implies the utterly unallowable plan of permanent fellowship and constant communication between the various universities.”

4. No periodical or daily newspaper will go to press “without the previous knowledge and approval of the state officials.”

5. Each German state is responsible to all the other states “for every publication appearing under its supervision in which the honor or security of other states is infringed or their constitution or administration attacked.”

Meeting of the Thinkers’ Club (cartoon, ca. 1825)“The important question to be discussed in today’s meeting:

How long will we be allowed to go on thinking?”

Jean-Baptiste Regnault, “Liberty or Death!” (1794).

Anonymous, “Robespierre,

guillotining the executioner after having guillotined all the French.”

In April-June 1794 Robespierre

conducted such broad purges that most Convention

delegates came to fear they might be

next.

THE REVOLUTION DEVOURS ITS CHILDREN:Danton riding to the scaffold, April 1794; Robespierre, July

1794