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The first Wartburg Festival (German: Wartburgfest) was a convention of about 500 Protestant German students, held on 18 October 1817 at the Wartburg castle near Eisenach in Thuringia. The former refuge of reformer Martin Luther was considered a national symbol and the assembly a protest against reactionary politics and Kleinstaaterei .
After the German "Wars of Liberation" against Napoleon and the French occupation, many people were bitter about dreams of German national unity shattered after the 1815 Congress of Vienna. Democratic reforms were stalled, and governments had cracked down on press freedom and rights of association.
On 12 June 1815 several corporated students at the University of Jena founded the Urburschenschaft organization in order to encourage German unity at the university. Many of them had participated as voluntary soldiers on the fields against Napoleon, e.g. in the Lützow Free Corps, the black-red-gold colour scheme of which was adopted for the Flag of Germany. The German students demonstrated for a national state and a liberal constitution condemning the "reactionary" forces in the newly recreated states of the German Confederation. At least, a constitution for the German state of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach including articles on freedom of speech, press and assembly was amended by Grand Duke Karl August in 1816.
On the occasion of the three-hundredth anniversary of Martin Luther's nailing of his ninety-five theses on 31 October 1517 and to commemorate the fourth anniversary of the bloody Battle of Nations at Leipzig, the Burschenschaft student fraternities from the Jena and Halle universities agreed to organize a "national festival" at the Wartburg. The castle was chosen as a meeting place as it had been a refuge for Luther after he had been banned and was declared vogelfrei by Emperor Charles V in 1521. Inasmuch as he had translated the Bible there and thus set a standard for the German language, it became a symbol of German nationalism. Hundreds of students from Berlin, Breslau, Erlangen, Gießen, Göttingen, Greifswald, Heidelberg, Kiel, Königsberg, Leipzig, Marburg, Rostock und Tübingen joined the festivities. Jena professors such as Dietrich Georg von Kieser, Lorenz Oken, Heinrich Luden, and Jakob Friedrich Fries were also among the participants.
At the meeting in the Wartburg knights' hall, speeches were held about Martin Luther as a freedom fighter and the way to national unity. Followed by the Christian hymn Now Thank We All Our God as sung by the victorious Prussian troops after the 1757 Battle of Leuthen and a final blessing, the convention resembled a Protestant church service. The men eventually gathered for a festive meal and gave several toasts to the fallen of the Liberation Wars, Scharnhorst, Schill and Körner.
Invitations to Austrian universities had been blocked by the government of State Chancellor Metternich; the event itself was also used as a justification for further suppression of liberal forces, such as the Carlsbad Decrees of 1819. In 1832, the Hambacher Fest was held in similar manner. A second festival at the Wartburg was held during the Revolutions of 1848 in the German states.
After the end of the official festivities and referring to Martin Luther's burning of the papal bull Exsurge domine in 1520, followers of "Turnvater" Friedrich Ludwig Jahn arranged a book burning with the burning of mocked books symbolizing a number of reactionary literary works, and symbols of Napoleon's foreign rule like a corporal's cane. [1] This act was used in 1933 as a justification for the Nazi book burnings.
The symbolically burnt books comprised:
The national flag of Germany is a tricolour consisting of three equal horizontal bands displaying the national colours of Germany: black, red, and gold. The flag was first sighted in 1848 in the German Confederation. The flag was also used by the German Empire from 1848 to 1849. It was officially adopted as the national flag of the German Reich from 1919 to 1933, and has been in use since its reintroduction in Federal Republic of Germany in 1949.
The Wartburg is a castle originally built in the Middle Ages. It is situated on a precipice of 410 metres (1,350 ft) to the southwest of and overlooking the town of Eisenach, in the state of Thuringia, Germany. It was the home of St. Elisabeth of Hungary, the place where Martin Luther translated the New Testament of the Bible into German, the site of the Wartburg festival of 1817 and the supposed setting for the possibly legendary Sängerkrieg. It was an important inspiration for Ludwig II when he decided to build Neuschwanstein Castle.
August Friedrich Ferdinand von Kotzebue was a German dramatist and writer who also worked as a consul in Russia and Germany.
Karl Ludwig Sand was a German university student and member of a liberal Burschenschaft. He was executed in 1820 for the murder of the conservative dramatist August von Kotzebue the previous year in Mannheim. As a result of his execution, Sand became a martyr in the eyes of many German nationalists seeking the creation of a united German national state.
The Frankfurter Wachensturm on 3 April 1833 was a failed attempt to start a revolution in Germany.
Freyburg is a town in the Burgenlandkreis district, in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. It is situated on the river Unstrut, 9 km northwest of Hanseatic Naumburg, 63 km from Leipzig and 231 km from Berlin. It is part of the Verwaltungsgemeinschaft Unstruttal. On 1 July 2009 it absorbed the former municipalities Pödelist, Schleberoda, Weischütz and Zeuchfeld. Freyburg consists of the Ortsteile (divisions) Dobichau, Freyburg, Nißmitz, Pödelist, Schleberoda, Weischütz, Zeuchfeld and Zscheiplitz.
Heinrich Luden was a German historian.
Eduard Heyck was a German cultural historian, editor, writer and poet.
The Göttinger Hainbund was a German literary group in the late 18th century, nature-loving and classified as part of the Sturm und Drang movement.
Freiherr Karl Albert Christoph Heinrich von Kamptz was a German jurist and Prussian Ministers of Justice from 1832 to 1842.
Saul Ascher was a German writer, translator and bookseller.
Karl Friedrich Heinrich Marx was a German physician and college lecturer. Despite sharing the same name, he was not related to Karl Marx, the founder of Marxism.
Eisenach Charterhouse is a former charterhouse, or Carthusian monastery, in Eisenach in Thüringia, Germany, founded in 1378 and suppressed in 1525.
Christian Theodor Ludwig Lucas, also known as Ludwig Lucas or C. T. L. Lucas, was a German writer and pedagogue.
Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Rußwurm was a German-Estonian pedagogue, ethnologist and historian.
Karl Gustav Jung was a German-Swiss medical doctor, political activist, professor of Medicine at the University of Basel, administrator and freemason.
Friedrich Johannes Frommann was a German publisher, bookseller and politician.
Friedrich Gustav von der Leyen was a German philologist who specialized in Germanic studies.
Albert Woldemar Hollander (1796–1868), was a German educator and pedagog.
Ludewig Gottlieb Carl Nauwerck was a German journalist, orientalist and member of the Frankfurt Parliament.
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