Freedom festival
The Freedom Festival was a political celebration organized in Hamburg on July 14, 1790, on the anniversary of the storm on the Bastille , on the initiative of the businessman Georg Heinrich Sieveking . It was in the time before the Dammtor located Harvestehude instead. There are contradicting information about the exact location. On the one hand, the garden of the Sievekings house is given, while other descriptions give the garden restaurant of the Klosterkrug on Harvestehuder Weg . A celebration in honor of the French Revolution was possible here, as Hamburg and in particular the neighboring Danish Altona were considered cities at the end of the 18th century in which the liberal bourgeoisie professed freedom of thought and advocated the ideas of the Enlightenment .
The festival was held on the same day as the Federation Festival in Paris and was the focus of general public attention. It was mentioned both in reports by contemporaries and in numerous accounts of the influence of the French Revolution on Germany. Particularly noteworthy was the guest list - around 80 people took part - with well-known personalities from Hamburg and Altona society who felt connected to the revolution through a philanthropic attitude towards life. In addition to Sieveking, the hosts were the publisher Piter Poel and the merchants Conrad Johann Matthiessen and Caspar Voght . Well-known guests included the poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock , the writer Adolph Freiherr von Knigge , the financial scientist Friedrich Ferdinand Alexander zu Dohna-Schlobitten , the civil servant and writer Friedrich Wilhelm Basilius von Ramdohr , the doctor Johann Albert Heinrich Reimarus , his wife Sophie and the Daughter Christine, the Altona doctor Johann August Unzer , the merchant's wife Magdalena Pauli , the canon Friedrich Johann Lorenz Meyer and the pedagogue and publicist Johann Georg Büsch .
Georg Heinrich Sieveking
Caspar Voght
Friedrich Klopstock
Adolph Knigge
Johann Reimarus
The course of the festival was described in detail by those involved in letters:
“Everything that lives from legal people in Hamburg who are warm to freedom was present - no nobleman except me, Count Dohna and Ramdohr from cell, and no prince servant was invited. All women's rooms were dressed in white and wore white straw hats with the national band [...]. We also had music. A choir of virgins, who were musical, sang a song made for it, of which the refrain was repeated by all of us. We stayed together from 10 a.m. all day. The three most beautiful young women collected for the poor. Klopstock read two new odes. With the firing of the canons, music and loud cheers, health was drunk, among other things: 'to an early succession in the abolition of prince despotism' pp. "
One of the highlights of the celebration was Klopstock's lecture of two revolutionary ods , which were received with enthusiasm. Another highlight was the song written by Sieveking, which was sung by a choir based on the melody Ode to Joy and taken up by those involved.
“ Free Germans, sing the hour that
broke the chains of bondage,
swear faithful to the great league,
after our sister France!
Your hearts are altars
To honor the high freedom!
- Chorus:
Let us be happy,
free, free, free and pure of heart! "
The festival and the song were reported not only in the German but also in the French press. On July 22, 1790, the newspaper Adreß-Comtoir-Nachrichten published the text. In the following years the enthusiasm of the Hamburg circle diminished. In 1793 Georg Heinrich Sieveking publicly distanced himself from the further, bloody course of the revolution in France.
See also
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Ernst Christian Schütt: Citizens celebrate revolution. In: Chronicle Hamburg. 2nd updated edition. Bertelsmann Lexikon Verlag, Gütersloh / Munich 1997, ISBN 3-577-14443-2 , p. 172.
- ↑ Hans-Werner Engels: “Freye Germans! sings the hour ... “On July 14th, 1790 Hamburg's elite celebrates a freedom festival ; Available as a PDF file , accessed April 18, 2011.
- ↑ a b quoted from: Hans-Werner Engels: “Freye Germans! sings the hour ... “On July 14th, 1790 Hamburg's elite celebrates a freedom festival , p.