ECONOMICS AND POLITICS, 1830-1848

1819 Assassination of Kotzebue; Carlsbad Decrees

1830/32

Revolution in France & Belgium; Great Reform Act in Great Britain

1834Zollverein unites all German states between Hamburg and Austria in a customs union

1836-43

Karl Marx earns doctorate in Hegelian philosophy at Berlin; edits the Rhenish Gazette 1842/43

1844 Revolt of the Silesian hand-loom weavers

Feb. 1848

King Louis Philippe overthrown in Paris; France founds a Second Republic

March 1848

Revolution spreads to Vienna, Berlin, and many other German capitals

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?”

Censorship proved difficult to enforce:“The Reading Room” (Dresden, 1840)

Eugene Delacroix, “Liberty Leading the People” (1830)

The Hambach Festival of May 1832:“We swear to be a nation of true brothers…/ We

swear to be free, as were our sires/ And sooner die than live in slavery.”

The Frankfurt Uprising of April 3, 1833

“Open your eyes!” (ca. 1845)

“Noble & priest shall oppress us no more/Far too long have they made our backs sore….”

--French cartoon, 1789

G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831) published his

Philosophy of Right in 1821

Karl Marx (1818-83): In Trier at age 18

EVEN AFTER RENOUNCING POLITICAL LIBERALISM, THE PRUSSIAN GOVERNMENT EMBRACED ECONOMIC

LIBERALISM AND PUSHED THROUGH PAINFUL REFORMS:

Free choice of occupation (guilds lost the power to restrict entry into a trade)Free choice of residence (towns lost the power to restrict poor relief to natives)Free trade (internal tariffs should be abolished, and external tariffs lowered)Strict enforcement of property rights in the countryside (landowners empowered to prevent poaching and “enclose” the village commons)

But the state defended the lords’ “residual feudal rights,” such as the monopoly over pressing grapes, forging iron, milling grain, and brewing beer.

The Zollverein formed by Prussia in 1834

Prussia’s vigorous highway building persuaded Bavaria to join, but Hanover & Hamburg did not….

The Potsdam Railroad Station, 1838

The beginnings of Germany’s railroad network (1840)

In 1842 Prussia imposed a 33% tax on RR stock dividends over 5% to subsidize lines earning under 3.5%.

The German rail network in 1847

1840: 469 km1847: 4,306 km Price competition grew fierce wherever the RR arrived.

Continental Industrialization, ca. 1850: Coal was the most important raw material in the age of

steam

Harkort Steam Engine Factory, Burg Wetter on the Ruhr, 1834

Blast furnaces at the new Königshütte Ironworksin Prussian Silesia, ca. 1830

LARGE-SCALE FACTORY INDUSTRY WAS STILL RARE:The Pre-Industrial Working Class in Prussia

(as percentage of the total labor force)

1822 1846 1861

Factory workers 2.5% 3.9% 5.3%

Miners 0.4% 0.8% 1.5%

Journeymen 6.4% 8.6% 9.6%

Day laborers 20.1% 21.1% 16.1%

Farmworkers 17.8% 15.9% 13.2%

Servants 1.9% 2.5% 3.3%

All wage-earners 49.1% 52.8% 48.9%

But handicraft trades were transformed by falling prices and new commercial practices (a cobbler’s

shop, ca. 1850)

King Frederick William IV of Prussia (r. 1840-59) paid more attention to medieval architecture

than to economic problems.

“The Seizure” (1847): Bad harvests spread hardship

among family farmers throughout Germany in the 1840s

See the graph in Blackbourn, p. 85….

K. W. Hübner, “The Silesian Weavers,” 1844:Merchants reacted to falling linen prices by reducing the

price paid the weaver for each bolt of cloth….

The Silesian weavers revolted in 1844, sacking the homes of many merchants (a look back by Käthe

Kollwitz in 1897)

“Hunger and Despair”

“Government Assistance”

(Satirical leaflet,

early 1848)

Fiscal crisis induced Frederick William IV to convene Prussia’s first “United Diet” [Landtag] in April 1847

The young Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels believed that Germany would now experience the “bourgeois revolution” that broke out in England in the 1640s and France in 1789

“Lamartine before City Hall, 25 February 1848.”The Paris crowd now proclaimed a “Second Republic,” led by

this Romantic poet and the socialist Louis Blanc.But rural voters elected a more conservative legislature in April.

The spread of popular uprisings in 1848:Governments were overthrown from Paris to

Bucharest

Feb 22: ParisFeb 27: Baden

(Offenburg Program)

Mar 13: Vienna

Mar 15: Budapest

Mar 18: BerlinMar 18: MilanMar 19:

MunichJune 9:

Bucharest

J. Albrecht, “The First

Victims of the Revolution:

Scene Outside the Landhaus

in Vienna, March 13,

1848”

“A Cavalry Attack at the Municipal Armory,” March 13, 1848

“The Fall of Metternich on the Evening of March 13, 1848”

J.C. Schoeller, “Caricature of Metternich’s Flight,” 1848

“The National Guard of the Suburb of Döbling,” Vienna, 1848

Barricade fighting on the Breite Strasse

in Berlin, March 18, 1848

Two apprentice locksmiths defend a

barricade against royal troops, Berlin,

March 18, 1848

Berliners celebrate on the barricades on the evening of March 18, 1848 (royal palace in background)