Hambach Festival

[1] National and liberal ideas were strongly advocated by student fraternities (Burschenschaften), the first of which, the Urburschenschaft, was founded in Jena, Thuringia in 1815 and had adopted the Black-Red-Gold colours of the Lützow Free Corps forces, who had fought against the Napoleonic troops.

Suppressed by the 1819 Carlsbad Decrees, the German democratic movement gained new momentum by the French July Revolution of 1830 as well as by the November Uprising in Russian Congress Poland, sparking unrests in Saxony, Hanover, Hesse, Brunswick and even in the Prussian capital Berlin.

The insurgents witnessed the implementation of the French constitutional July Monarchy and the Belgian Revolution, but also the suppression of the Polish National Government of Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski by Russian troops.

[5][6][7] Gustave Koerner, who was present, described in his memoirs one highlight of the festival in this manner: From various platforms eloquent speeches were made by Doctor Siebenpfeiffer, Wirth, Scharpff, Henry Brueggemann, and others, representing the sad condition of Germany, its insignificance in the council of European nations, its depression in trade and commerce, all owing to the want of national union, the division into thirty-eight States, large and small, with their different laws, different weights and measures, different currencies, and most of all to the custom-house lines surrounding every State.

It was an exciting moment, when, at the close of his speech, he called upon the assembly to hold their hands up and to swear the oath which the delegates of the three Swiss cantons, on the height of the Ruetli, swore, as given in the glorious language of Schiller in his "Tell".

After a deep silence tremendous cheers arose, and Brueggemann was taken down in triumph by an electrified multitude.The main demands of the meeting were liberty, civil and political rights as well as national unity and popular sovereignty against the European system of the Holy Alliance.

The poet Ludwig Börne, who followed his invitation by the representatives of the banned press association, described his mixed emotions, when Heidelberg students gathered in a clamorous torchlight procession in his honour, declaring him a national hero.

Nevertheless, of the four main organizers of the meeting, three (Philipp Jakob Siebenpfeiffer and the attorneys Schüler and Geib) fled the country, a fourth (Johann G. A. Wirth) chose to stay and was sentenced to two years in prison.