Vormärz

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Metternich about 1820, painting by Thomas Lawrence

Vormärz (German pronunciation:

March Revolution in the states of the German Confederation. The beginning of the period is less well-defined. Some place the starting point directly after the fall of Napoleon and the establishment of the German Confederation in 1815. Others, typically those who emphasise the Vormärz as a period of political uprising, place the beginning at the French July Revolution of 1830
.

Internationally known as the

radical, revolutionary calls for republicanism and universal suffrage
.

Culturally, this period is known as the Biedermeier era. As such it is seen as a conclusion of the Romanticist era.

Background

Upon

Prussian reforms, the movement towards a constitution and a parliamentary system
could be delayed, but not reversed.

Demonstrations grew increasingly visible and strident. Having founded one of the first national Urburschenschaften circa 1815, the students of Jena openly demonstrated at the Wartburg Festival, demanding a national pan-German state founded on a liberal constitution. When the 1819 assassination of August von Kotzebue by student activist Karl Ludwig Sand created appropriate pretext, the Bundesversammlung responded to the growing influence of the Burschenschaften by issuing the Carlsbad Decrees, which censored the press, curtailed academic study of liberalism, and restricted public discussion of such ideas as national unity and wider suffrage.

Though many activists like

Greater Poland Uprising of 1846, the trial against the insurgents around Ludwik Mierosławski at the Berlin Kammergericht gained large interest, and the defendants had to be pardoned by King Frederick William IV of Prussia during the March revolution due to public pressure. However, the liberal and democratic movement included a strong nationalistic element from the beginning, predominantly against the French "hereditary enemy
".

The states of the German Confederation reacted by increased suppression. In the failed

Gustav Körner and Ferdinand Lindheimer fled from Germany, mostly to the United States. On the other hand, the establishment of the Prussian-dominated Zollverein customs union, though formed to address economic concerns, was widely seen by national-liberal circles as a decisive step towards a (Lesser) German unification. In 1837 the Göttingen Seven
professors were dismissed for their protest against the abolition of the Hanover constitution.

The succession of the mentally handicapped Ferdinand I to the throne in 1835 made it possible for Metternich to have responsibility of the internal and external affairs of the Austrian Empire. Nationalism and the social developments in the empire created more tensions that would eventually erupt in the form of the March 1848 revolution. The emerging working class was looked at as a political problem, rather than a social one. The rise of liberalism would eventually be the downfall for Metternich and Ferdinand. Liberal ideals were coming from the upper aristocracy and the middle classes. The dissent of the middle class was extremely evident. In Hungary, the 1836-39 Diet saw few gains made, though these were significant to the peasant class. Along with the abolition of serfdom in Hungary, it no longer was a question of class but of the national position and the right of the authority of Vienna. The conflicting ideas would eventually come to a head in the March 1848 revolution.

Literary movement

Vormärz is also the name of a movement in

German Unification itself, and expanded male suffrage
.

References
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