The German revolutions of 1848–1849, the opening phase of which was also called the March Revolution, were initially part of the Revolutions of 1848 that broke out in many European countries. They were a series of loosely coordinated protests and rebellions in the states of the German Confederation, including the Austrian Empire. The revolutions, which stressed pan-Germanism, demonstrated popular discontent with the traditional, largely autocratic political structure of the thirty-nine independent states of the Confederation that inherited the German territory of the former Holy Roman Empire after its dismantlement as a result of the Napoleonic Wars. This process began in the mid-1840s.
The Forty-eighters (48ers) were Europeans who participated in or supported the Revolutions of 1848 that swept Europe. In the German Confederation, the Forty-eighters favoured unification of Germany, a more democratic government, and guarantees of human rights. Although many Americans felt very sympathetic to them, many Forty-Eighters were Freethinkers who were more influenced by post-1789 republicanism in France and shared its traditional hostility towards tolerating religious practice or Classical Christian education, than by the American Republic's traditional belief in freedom of religion. Disappointed at their failure to permanently change the system of government in the German States or the Austrian Empire, and sometimes ordered by local governments to emigrate because of their involvement in the revolution, they gave up their old lives to live abroad. They emigrated to Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. They included Germans, Czechs, Hungarians, Italians, among many others. A large number were respected, politically active, wealthy, and well-educated, and found success in their new countries.
Gustav Struve, known as Gustav von Struve until he gave up his title, was a German surgeon, politician, lawyer and publicist, and a revolutionary during the German revolutions of 1848–1849 in Baden, Germany. He also spent over a decade in the United States and was active there as a reformer.
Franz Sigel was a German American military officer, revolutionary and immigrant to the United States who was a teacher, newspaperman, politician, and served as a Union major general in the American Civil War. His ability to recruit German-speaking immigrants to the Union armies received the approval of President Abraham Lincoln, but he was strongly disliked by General-in-Chief Henry Halleck.
Friedrich Franz Karl Hecker was a German lawyer, politician and revolutionary. He was one of the most popular speakers and agitators of the 1848 Revolution. After moving to the United States, he served as a brigade commander in the Union Army during the American Civil War.
Louis Blenker was a German revolutionary and American soldier.
The Baden Revolution of 1848/1849 was a regional uprising in the Grand Duchy of Baden which was part of the revolutionary unrest that gripped almost all of Central Europe at that time.
The Grand Duchy of Baden was a state in south-west Germany on the east bank of the Rhine. It existed as a sovereign state between 1806 and 1871 and as part of the German Empire from 1871 until 1918.
The Palatine uprising was a rebellion that took place in May and June 1849 in the Rhenish Palatinate, then an exclave territory of the Kingdom of Bavaria. Related to uprisings across the Rhine river in Baden, it was part of the widespread Imperial Constitution Campaign (Reichsverfassungskampagne). Revolutionaries worked to defend the constitution as well as to secede from the Kingdom of Bavaria.
Federal elections were held in all the 38 states of the German Confederation on 1 May 1848 to elect members of a new National Assembly known as the Frankfurt Parliament. The ballot was not secret, and elected 585 members, mostly from the middle class.
The Storming of Freiburg took place on 24 April 1848 during the Baden Revolution. Units of the VIII Army Corps of the German Confederation stormed the town of Freiburg im Breisgau, which was occupied by republican volunteers (Freischärlern).
The Freischar was the German name given to an irregular, volunteer military unit that, unlike regular or reserve military forces, participated in a war without the formal authorisation of one of the belligerents, but on the instigation of a political party or an individual. A Freischar deployed against a foreign enemy was often called a Freikorps. The term Freischar has been commonly used in German-speaking Europe since 1848. The members of a Freischar were called Freischärler. As early as 1785 Johann von Ewald published in Kassel his Essay on Partisan Warfare, which described his experiences with the rebels in the North American colonies.
The Battle on the Scheideck, also known as the Battle of Kandern took place on 20 April 1848 during the Baden Revolution on the Scheideck Pass southeast of Kandern in south Baden in what is now southwest Germany. Friedrich Hecker's Baden band of revolutionaries encountered troops of the German Confederation under the command of General Friedrich von Gagern. After several negotiations and some skirmishing a short battle ensued on the Scheideck, in which von Gagern fell and the rebels were scattered. The German Federal Army took up the pursuit and dispersed a second revolutionary force that same day under the leadership of Joseph Weißhaar. The Battle on the Scheideck was the end of the road for the two rebel forces. After the battle, there were disputes over the circumstances of von Gagern's death.
Emma Herwegh was a German salonnière and woman of letters who participated in the 1848 uprisings, undertaking at least one secret quasi-diplomatic mission on behalf of the Legion of German Democrats. She is known to posterity in particular, partly because she married the poet and activist Georg Herwegh, and partly because she was an exceptionally prolific letter writer.
Elise Blenker was the wife of Louis Blenker, a German revolutionary officer of the years 1848/1849. Elise was also actively involved in various actions of the German revolutions of 1848–49 in the Palatinate and in Baden.
Amalie Struve was a democratic radical participant in the 1848 March Revolution. She is also remembered as an early feminist and author.
The Battle of Günterstal took place on 23 April 1848 during the Baden Revolution at Jägerbrunnen not far from the village of Günterstal. Here government troops stopped a vanguard of the militants who were advancing towards the city of Freiburg im Breisgau under Franz Sigel.
The Baden Army was the military organisation of the German state of Baden until 1871. The origins of the army were a combination of units that the Badenese margraviates of Baden-Durlach and Baden-Baden had set up in the Baroque era, and the standing army of the Swabian Circle, to which both territories had to contribute troops. The reunification of the two small states to form the Margraviate of Baden in 1771 and its subsequent enlargement and elevation by Napoleon to become the Grand Duchy of Baden in 1806 created both the opportunity and obligation to maintain a larger army, which Napoleon used in his campaigns against Austria, Prussia and Spain and, above all, Russia. After the end of Napoleon's rule, the Grand Duchy of Baden contributed a division to the German Federal Army. In 1848, Badenese troops helped to suppress the Hecker uprising, but a year later a large number sided with the Baden revolutionaries. After the violent suppression of the revolution by Prussian and Württemberg troops, the army was re-established and fought in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 on the side of Austria and the southern German states, as well as in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 on the side of the Germans. When Baden joined the German Empire in 1870/71, the Grand Duchy gave up its military sovereignty and the Badenese troops became part of the XIV Army Corps of the Imperial German Army.
The German Democratic Legion was a volunteer unit formed by exiled German craftsmen and other emigrants in Paris under the leadership of the socialist poet Georg Herwegh, which set out for the Grand Duchy of Baden at the beginning of the German Revolution of 1848 to support the radical democratic Hecker uprising against the Baden government. A week after the military defeat of the uprising, the German Democratic Legion was also defeated and wiped out by Württemberg troops on April 27, 1848 in the battle of Dossenbach.
The Heppenheim Conference or Heppenheim Assembly was a meeting of 18 leading southern and western German liberal politicians on October 10, 1847, at the inn Zum halben Monde in Heppenheim, Bergstraße. A key outcome of the discussions at the Heppenheim conference was the demand for the creation of a German nation-state and the granting of civil rights. These demands can be seen as the program of the moderate bourgeois-liberal forces in the run-up to the March Revolution. At the same time, the meeting paved the way for the Frankfurt National Assembly.
