Bernhard Lizius

Carl Bernhard Lizius (born October 23, 1812 in Aschaffenburg , † 1870 in England ) was a revolutionary who was arrested on April 3, 1833 at the Frankfurt Wachensturm . The Lizius song is about its outbreak in October of the same year. From 1849 publisher in Frankfurt am Main.

family

Bernhard Lizius was the first-born son of Kapellmeister Christoph Franz Lizius (1789–1863) and his wife Katharina born. Sodi (1790–1868) and grandson of the Mainz cathedral music director Caspar Josef Lizius (1760–1824). After attending elementary school and high school, he enrolled at the Aschaffenburg Lyceum in November 1830 . Although he does not seem untalented, he was not a diligent student. He often missed lectures and was even punished with arrest in 1831. Bernhard was more interested in the freedom movement that came from France than in his studies .

He is the brother of Caroline Lizius (1824–1908) from the beauty gallery of King Ludwig I in Nymphenburg Palace.

revolutionary

On May 27, 1832, the Hambach Festival took place in the Palatinate , which is considered the climax of the early liberal bourgeois opposition in the Restoration and Vormärz. On the same day there were similar festivals in other places, such as the Gaibacher Festival , where there were serious revolutionary outbreaks. In Aschaffenburg, too, the students went on a “May excursion” to the Erbig mountain, drank beer and sang songs that soon took on the tone of the Marseillaise . Speeches in the spirit of the Hambach Festival were also given. The main speaker was Bernhard Lizius. The action was not without consequences and led to a lengthy investigation by the Würzburg government. But Lizius was not deterred and in the same year visited the Lamboy Festival in Hanau with 11 comrades, again under the guise of an excursion , at which there were also revolutionary riots that had to be contained by the police. Before he could be placed under arrest by his Lyceum one more time, Lizius resigned on June 19 and moved to the winter semester as cand. Jur. to Würzburg. Bernhard Lizius joined the Franconian fraternity in 1832, to which the organizer of the Hambach Festival Joseph Wirth also belonged. In 1832 he also became a member of the old Würzburg fraternity Germania .

The Frankfurt Wachensturm

With the idea that if they took control of the city of Frankfurt and the Bundestag there, they would soon have all of Germany in their hands, fraternity members traveled from all over Germany and carried out the Frankfurt Wachensturm on the evening of April 3, 1833 . The main guard and the constable guard were taken by surprise with the sound of a storm , but when they tried to seize the armory and the weapons there, they were overwhelmed, blown up and taken prisoner by the federal militia . There were a total of 8 dead and 24 wounded among students and soldiers.

Bernhard Lizius was arrested and locked up in the Konstablerwache on the Zeil . But he evaded his conviction for high treason and fled, the first of all students. He managed to smuggle a file and rope into the cell; he filed through the iron bars of his cell window and lowered himself into the street. The police only noticed his escape when it was brilliantly successful. Since they had the damage, they didn't have to worry about the mockery: the Frankfurt writer Johann Wilhelm Sauerwein wrote a poem that was soon sung all over the city to the tune "I am the Doctor Eisenbarth ". The police was personified in one of their guards, Jakob Philipp Schnitzspahn (1796 to 1864). Only after strict prohibitions did the song fall silent, but the main stanzas of the song can still be heard in Frankfurt today.

Spy and publishers

After his escape from pre-trial detention, Bernhard Lizius hid in Frankfurt for a few days and then escaped to Switzerland via the French Alsace.

In 1836 Lizius was recruited as a secret agent for the Mainz Information Office , which performed espionage services for Prince Metternich . He delivered reports to the Mainz office from 1836 to 1848. The code name of Lizius was Dr. Shepherd'. His republished spy reports are dated from Strasbourg and Paris . Kassandrus writes that Metternich helped escape from custody. He spied on Karl Marx , Friedrich Engels , Bakunin , Moses Hess , Karl Grün , German Mäurer , Georg Herwegh , Georg Fein and others. a. After the revolution of 1848/1849 he founded the "Verlag C. Bernhard Lizius" or "Verlag Carl Bernhard Lizius" in Frankfurt am Main, which can be shown to have published books from 1849 to 1853, as can be seen on the title pages of the publications.

He later tried unsuccessfully to continue his studies and then went to England, where he is said to have died in London in the early 1870s. Allegedly he was married to the French woman Robbe von Courville and had 3 children, but he is officially missing.

The Lizius song

Now, Schnitzspahn, stretch your legs! The case is empty, the mouse is gone. Oh police, how much trouble. Do you the Studio Lizius. The caution was certainly very great; But the inquisit breaks free Break bars, boxes - and with rope He lets himself down on the Zeil.

Who knows how long he's been gone Only then did the sentry notice. The rope was still in the old place; However, the hang of the gallows was gone. Now the police came up And they all said: Ei, ei, ei! The detectors said nothing more. The rope that hung was empty.

Only leaves the long rope hanging! What is it? - He'll be back soon. In the fog and in the dark. Didn't he go very far. Egg, egg; it takes too long. It seems he's walking a long way. He almost seems like the son of hell. It's over mountains and valleys. Oh, Schnitzspahn, retract your legs And let the rest of the way be! Whom you pursue with a lot of cunning, Has arrived in France.

literature

• Karl Glossy : Literary secret reports from the Vormärz. With an introduction and comments . Konegen 1912 (separate print from the yearbook of the Grillparzer Society, vol. XXI-XXIII)
• Theodor Josef Scherg: Lizius, Bernhard - [born] in October 1812 in Aschaffenburg - when? Where? how? (lost) cand. jur., revolutionary. In: Dahlbergs Hochschulstadt Aschaffenburg, Aschaffenburg 1951, pp. 202–206
• Profile of Bernhard Lizius, in: Mittheilungen zur Transport der Sicherheitspflege, Volume XV. (1833), pp. 6820-6821
• City sheet of the Frankfurter Zeitung of December 12, 1926, "The Lizius Song" by Prof. Dr. CR Müller
• Hans Adler (ed.): Literary secret reports. Metternich agents' logs. Vol. 1 1840-1843 . With a foreword by Walter Jens . Information press CW Leske, Cologne 1977 ISBN 3-434-00297-9
• Hans Adler (ed.): Literary secret reports. Metternich agents' logs. Vol. 2 1844-1848 . With a contribution by Dieter Langewiesche . Information press CW Leske, Cologne 1981 ISBN 3-434-00354-1
• Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume I: Politicians. Volume 3: I-L. Winter, Heidelberg 1999, ISBN 3-8253-0865-0 , pp. 296-297.

Web links

• Published books from the Carl Bernhard Lizius publishing house , Frankfurt am Main HeBIS union catalog

Individual evidence

1. ^ Resident register in the Aschaffenburg city archive: Lizius family, Franz
2. ^ Cologne registry office, December 11, 1908, no. 1290, death certificate Caroline von Stobäus b. Lizius
3. ↑ The Hessian Landbote 1834
4. ↑ Archive link ( Memento from March 30, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
5. ↑ "Lizius would have to examine the following objects before anyone else." Metternich's instructions to Joseph Clannern Ritter von Engelskirchen. Vienna October 29, 1842 (partial reprint in: Hans Adler. Vol. 1, pp. 169–170 here 170).
6. ↑ Hans Adler. Vol. 1, p. 41 f.
7. ↑ Hans Adler Vol. 1, p. 193 f.
8. ↑ Hans Adler. Vol. 1, pp. 51 ff., 145,147,214 and 224.
9. ↑ Hans Adler. Vol. 2, pp. 17,23,30,47 f., 56 f., 85,88,89,97,100,106,118 f., 121 f., 123,157 and 163 f.
10. ^ Kassandrus, NB: The exposure of the reactionary activities from the Congress of Vienna to the Frankfurt Wachensturm. Aspects for a defense of the liberal-democratic movement, Giessen 1987
11. ↑ Here Caspar Josef Lizius is wrongly stated as his father and not as his grandfather.