Gottlieb Rau

Gottlieb Rau (born January 15, 1816 in Dürrwangen near Balingen , † October 2, 1854 in New York City ) was a German industrialist, publicist , politician and republican agitator in the German Revolution of 1848/1849 .

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Rau was born as the son of a farmer near Balingen ( Württemberg ). There he was a student of the Latin school, one of his classmates was Georg Herwegh . By marriage in 1839 he came into the possession of a glass factory in Großerlach , which he moved to Gaildorf in 1843 after the death of his wife . In 1845 he began to write leading articles for economic policy for the opposition-democratic daily newspaper " Der Beobachter " in Stuttgart . In it he advocated state support for the Württemberg industry . Specifically, he called for a trade ministry "that is informed about culture and trade conditions in the whole world".

In 1846 he ran unsuccessfully for the Württemberg state parliament in the Urach constituency . During the March Revolution in 1848 , Rau organized popular assemblies in Gaildorf which were very popular and demanded the abolition of all basic and feudal charges without compensation. In April 1848 he joined the democratic association in Stuttgart. On April 6th, at a people's assembly in Stuttgart, he called for the overthrow of the monarchy and the introduction of the republic : “The people can no longer bear the splendor of royal and imperial crowns at the sight of starved corpses. (...) The republic is the means of providing the people's needs with the fastest and most effective remedy. ”At the end of April 1848, Rau ran for a seat in the German National Assembly in the Schwäbisch Hall constituency ; he was clearly defeated by Wilhelm Zimmermann, who was politically close to him .

In May 1848, Rau founded Die Sonne in Stuttgart , the first republican daily newspaper in the Kingdom of Württemberg , which appeared until mid-1849. At the Congress of Democratic Associations in Frankfurt am Main in June, he was elected alongside Julius Froebel in the five-member central committee, which moved its headquarters to Berlin . Fröbel describes Rau in am one of the memories as “democrats with the most childlike disposition”.

When the revolutionary movement gained momentum again in autumn 1848 ( Struve Putsch ), Rau planned an armed march to a popular assembly in Cannstatt to force the introduction of the republic in Württemberg. He himself agitated on September 24th in front of an audience of 4,000 in Rottweil , from where the next day around 1,000 men, some of them armed, set off in the direction of Stuttgart. In the wake of the failure of Gustav Struve's attempt at uprising in Baden and because support from other parts of the country largely failed to materialize, the militant march broke up on September 26th in Balingen . Because many participants drowned their disappointment in schnapps, it is popularly known as the plum campaign .

Rau was arrested and imprisoned at Hohenasperg fortress . According to a reporter, he was sentenced in 1851 to 13 years imprisonment in the "largest political process since the existence of the jury courts in Württemberg". The glass factory, which was left behind by his imprisonment, went bankrupt.

In 1853 Rau was pardoned and left for America. In New York he opened a hotel that became the first stop in the New World for many German emigrants and refugees.

Works

• The state of the country as it was, how it is and how it should be , Stuttgart 1847.

literature

• Klaus-Peter Eichele: Dream and fiasco of Gottlieb Rau. Life and time of the revolutionary and glass manufacturer from Gaildorf . Tübingen 1991.
• Hans Maier: The high treason trials against Gottlieb Rau and August Becher after the revolution of 1848 in Württemberg . Centaurus, Pfaffenweiler 1992. ISBN 3-89085-666-7
• Paul Sauer: Gottlieb Rau and the revolutionary uprising in Württemberg in September 1848 . Publishing house of the Swabian Alb Association , Stuttgart 1998. ISBN 3-920801-44-X .

Web links

• Literature by and about Gottlieb Rau in the catalog of the German National Library