Dresden May Uprising

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Attack on the barricades at Neumarkt (oil painting, Dresden City Museum )

The Dresden May Uprising from May 3 to 9, 1849, also known as the Dresden May Revolution, was an attempt to overthrow King Friedrich August II of Saxony and establish a Saxon republic as part of the imperial constitution campaign towards the end of the German Revolution of 1848/1849 . After the suppression of this uprising, the March Revolution in Saxony came to an end, just under three months before its final suppression in the states of the German Confederation through the surrender of the Rastatt fortress in Baden.

prehistory

Barricade fighters in Dresden in 1849

The year before, at the beginning of the March Revolution , in Saxony, as in many other states of the German Confederation and Central Europe , starting from the February Revolution in France in 1848 , there had been liberal and democratically motivated revolutionary unrest, alongside the liberalization of the German principalities also aimed at the national unification of the states of the German Confederation in a unified German Reich . An essential step in this direction was the demand for an all-German constitution , which was drawn up in the newly created, democratically elected National Assembly in the Paulskirche in Frankfurt .

The revolutionary uprisings in Saxony as in other principalities in 1848 initially resulted in the ruling princes giving in. The establishment of liberal March ministries , the lifting of censorship , the liberation from feudal burdens and other progressive measures had come about . Starting from the most powerful states in the Federation, Prussia and Austria , the counterrevolution gradually established itself as early as the summer of 1848 . The Frankfurt National Assembly had no means of its own to enforce its legitimacy . When, after long controversial debates, the National Assembly finally presented a constitution that provided for an all-German constitutional monarchy within a small German framework, i.e. without Austria, under Prussian leadership, King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia rejected the imperial dignity that had been proposed to him . The Prussian and Austrian MPs left the National Assembly after their governments declared their mandates to have expired. Even Friedrich August II. Of Saxony was one of the opponents of this Constitution and a Constitutional all-German monarchy . The constitution, and with it German unification , had initially failed.

In order to secure the most important liberal advances in the individual states, the imperial constitution campaign was launched in some states . In this context, radical democratic revolutions followed in some states, the May uprisings of 1849. In addition to Saxony, this was also the case in the Grand Duchy of Baden, for example (see also the Baden Revolution ). The Dresden May Uprising was the last attempt in Saxony to enforce the achievements of the March Revolution there.

course

Medal from the revolutionary time of a street battle in the Dresden May Uprising, obverse
Back of the medal with the dates of the uprising and the names of the initiators of the provisional government of Saxony, Tzschirner, Heubner and Todt
The provisional government in Dresden City Hall
Michail Bakunin, one of the main initiators of the Dresden May uprising, 1849

On May 3, 1849, the open uprising broke out in Dresden . Due to the deployment of the Saxon army in the Schleswig-Holstein War, there were only 1,800 men with six drawn guns in the city. The Dresden arsenal was stormed, the state parliament building occupied by armed members of the Turner movement . On May 4th, at 4:30 a.m., the King, Queen and all the ministers left the city and went to Königstein Fortress . The country was without a government; the authorities had not even been informed of the ministers' departure. Tzschirner , Heubner and Todt - members of the dissolved Saxon state parliament - appointed a "provisional government". The former Greek officer Heinze had been elected commander of all Saxon vigilante groups . The Russian revolutionary Mikhail Bakunin arrived in Dresden on the same day and took part in leading the uprising. Prussian and Saxon troops under Colonel Friedrich von Waldersee put down the rebellion in the days of the 7th, 8th and 9th May. The leaders Tzschirner, Heubner and Bakunin initially escaped. Likewise, Richard Wagner , who was the court conductor at the time and who was friends with Bakunin, who was involved in the uprising , and the builder Gottfried Semper, who was friends with Wagner, and the writer Friedrich Herman Semmig were also able to flee the city. The state of siege was declared for Dresden, but it was not enforced.

When a Prussian unit of eleven infantry battalions and two cavalry regiments of the Landwehr under Heinrich von Holleben arrived on the train in Dresden on May 10, the barricade fight had been over for hours and the revolutionaries had fled the city. Holleben crossed Saxony with his troops, with neither fighting nor mass arrests. On May 25, the association arrived at the Prussian fortress of Erfurt , from where it was relocated to the Neckar region to fight the Baden Revolution .

Bakunin was captured soon after the uprising in Chemnitz and later sentenced to death, pardoned to life imprisonment in 1851 and finally extradited to Russia , where he remained imprisoned for another 10 years until he fled.

Involved troops of the Saxon and Prussian armies

Saxon troops:

Prussian troops:

losses

The light infantry of the Saxon and Prussian armies suffered six deaths and twelve wounded. The total losses of the Saxon and Prussian troops are given as 31 dead and 94 wounded. Most of the dead among the insurgents were young men; they formed the core of the fighters. Of the 99 identified dead, around 40 were not from Dresden, 98 of the unknown dead were found. Of the 114 wounded, only 67 were from Dresden. The total number of dead and wounded on the side of the people's fighters was thus 343 people. Schuster speaks of around 250 dead and 400–500 wounded.

Commemoration

Memorial plaque at the Albertinum of the Dresden May Uprising

Three bronze plaques by Martin Hänisch commemorate the May Uprising in Dresden . They are located on Tzschirnerplatz on the east side of the Albertinum (former Dresden armory ), at the seat of the Provisional Government at Altmarkt 25 (former location of the town hall ) and at the location of the barricades at Schloßstraße  7.

See also

literature

Literary adaptations

Web links

Commons : Dresdner Maiaufstand  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hugo Dinger: Richard Wagner's intellectual development. Attempt to present Richard Wagner's worldview, taking into account its relationship to the philosophical directions of the Young Hegelians and Arthur Schopenhauer . EW Fritzsch, Leipzig 1892, p. 226.
  2. ^ Friedrich von Waldersee : The fight in Dresden in May 1849 . ES Mittler & Sohn, Berlin 1849, pp. 5, 74, 77f., 80.
  3. ↑ a b c Captain Knight and Noble Lord v. Berger: History of the King. Saxon. Prince Georg Rifle Regiment No. 108
  4. ↑ Schuster Part III p. 65
  5. ^ Art in public space , information brochure of the state capital Dresden, December 1996
  6. ^ Pseudonym of Friederike Ernestine Wolfhagen (1812–1878).