Göttingen Seven
Above: Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm
Middle: Wilhelm Eduard Albrecht,
Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann,
Georg Gottfried Gervinus
Below: Wilhelm Eduard Weber,
Heinrich Georg August Ewald
The Göttingen Seven were a group of Göttingen professors who protested in 1837 against the repeal of the liberal constitution introduced in 1833 in the Kingdom of Hanover . The seven professors were therefore dismissed; three of them were also expelled from the country.
Involved
The names of these seven professors from Georg-August-Universität were:
- Wilhelm Eduard Albrecht , constitutional lawyer
- Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann , historian
- Heinrich Ewald , orientalist
- Georg Gottfried Gervinus , literary historian
- Jacob Grimm , legal scholar and Germanist and his brother
- Wilhelm Grimm , legal scholar and Germanist
- Wilhelm Eduard Weber , physicist
history
After the 123-year personal union between Great Britain and Hanover had ended, Ernst August I ascended the throne in the Kingdom of Hanover in 1837 . Immediately after his accession he raised his relatively liberal constitution, which four years earlier came into force in constitutional law , to November 1, 1837 again. On November 18 of that year, the Göttingen Seven submitted a written protest .
At the end of November 1837, the prorector and the four deans , without having a mandate from the university, gave the king in the Rothenkirchen hunting lodge an address with which the university “renounced all community with the seven” and reviled their attitudes.
On December 12, 1837, Ernst August I dismissed the professors and even expelled three of them - Friedrich Dahlmann, Jacob Grimm and Georg Gottfried Gervinus - from the country (cf. exile ). These were then received in 1840 by the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV , who partially rehabilitated the politically persecuted. At the same time, there was a great solidarity effect in the population, who paid the three deportees their salary from donations. At this point at the latest it became apparent that liberalism as a mass movement could no longer be suppressed by resolutions and ordinances.
The protestation, the protest letter, spread throughout the German Confederation and promoted a liberal outlook. Jacob Grimm later justified his decision to protest in a justification:
“History shows us noble and free men who dared to speak the full truth before the face of kings; authority belongs to those who have the courage to do so. Often her confession has borne fruit, sometimes it has corrupted her, not her name. Even poetry, the reflection of history, does not fail to weigh the actions of princes according to justice. Such examples loosen the subject's tongue wherever the need arises and comfort every exit. "
Jacob Grimm held a place of honor in the Frankfurt National Assembly in 1848, Albrecht, Dahlmann and Gervinus were co-authors of the legislative initiatives. The reputation of Göttingen University suffered for a long time from the dismissal of these excellent teachers.
Commemoration
In 1987 a memorial plaque for the "Göttingen Seven" was installed in the auditorium of the Georg-August University in Göttingen .
In 1988 the Lower Saxony state parliament in Hanover unveiled a memorial plaque for the seven professors in the foyer of the Leineschloss . In 1998, the bronze monument of the Göttingen Seven was erected on a forecourt to the Lower Saxony State Parliament ( ⊙ ) on Platz der Göttinger Sieben , which was created by the Italian artist Floriano Bodini (1933-2005).
In Göttingen , the central campus of the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen also bears the name Platz der Göttinger Sieben . Since 2011 there has been a sculpture here, designed by Günter Grass and donated by him and his publisher Gerhard Steidl , to commemorate the Göttingen Seven . In the entrance hall of the State and University Library (SUB) of the university at Platz der Göttinger Sieben there is a small model of the Bodini monument.
On November 2, 2012, a German 55-cent commemorative stamp was issued to mark the 175th anniversary of the seven men’s discharge.
On November 19, 2015, a previously highly controversial memorial in memory of the Göttingen Seven was unveiled on the forecourt of the Göttingen train station . It consists of a replica of the base of the Ernst August monument at Hanover Central Station. The equestrian figure of the king is missing. “ To the father of the state his Göttingen seven ” is on one side. The name of the artist Christiane Möbus is under the names of the seven professors on the other side of the base.
literature
- Ulrich Hunger: The Georgia Augusta as a Hanover State University. From their foundation to the end of the kingdom . In: Ernst Böhme, Rudolf Vierhaus (Hrsg.): From the Thirty Years War to the Anschluss with Prussia - The rise as a university town (1648–1866) . Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 2002, ISBN 3-525-36197-1 , p. 197 ff . ( Göttingen. History of a university town . Volume 2).
- Jörg H. Lampe: Political developments in Göttingen from the beginning of the 19th century to March . In: Ernst Böhme, Rudolf Vierhaus (Hrsg.): From the Thirty Years War to the Anschluss with Prussia - The rise as a university town (1648–1866) . Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 2002, ISBN 3-525-36197-1 , p. 45-137, especially 91 ff . ( Göttingen. History of a university town . Volume 2).
- Miriam Saage-Maaß: The Göttingen Seven - Democratic champions or national heroes? V&R unipress, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-89971-368-8 .
- Georg Weber : The Göttingen Seven and the catchphrase of "limited subject understanding" . In: Deutsche Revue 13th vol. (1888) 4th vol., Pp. 311–322. ( Digitized version )
Individual evidence
- ↑ B. Jacob Grimm: Wisdom from the language. Steinkopf Verlag, Stuttgart 1966. In it: My discharge. Pp. 62-66.
- ↑ a b N.N. : The state monument "The Göttingen Seven" in front of the state parliament building , ed. by the President of the Lower Saxony State Parliament, Department for Public Relations, Minutes, December 2005, new edition January 20, 2009; downloadable as a PDF document
- ^ Sculpture of the Göttingen Seven by Günter Grass on the website of the city of Göttingen
- ↑ Press release of the Federal Ministry of Finance of October 30, 2012 ( Memento of the original of September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed December 24, 2014.
- ↑ Heidi Niemann: Do you understand this monument? –Göttingen reveals controversial base. In: Göttinger Tageblatt online. Göttinger Tageblatt GmbH & Co. KG, November 19, 2015, accessed on November 20, 2015 .
Web links
- Wilhelm Bleek : The upright seven in: ZEIT Story No. 4/2012 on time online