Carlsbad resolutions

The Karlsbad resolutions were the result of the ministerial conferences from August 6 to 31, 1819 in Karlsbad , in which the most influential states in the German Confederation took part.

background

The conferences discussed measures to monitor and combat liberal and national tendencies in Germany after Napoleon . Karlsbad was in Bohemia , which belonged to the Austrian Empire . As a health resort, the city was well suited to portray the secret meeting as a rather random private gathering of diplomats and ministers and thus to hide it from the public. The resolutions were made under the aegis of the Austrian Foreign Minister and later State Chancellor Klemens Wenzel Lothar von Metternich . The basis of the resolutions was the Teplitz puncture between the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia agreed on August 1, 1819 in the North Bohemian city of Teplitz .

The reason for the Karlsbad resolutions was the fear of revolution that prevailed at various German courts at the time. The trigger and justification for the Karlsbad resolutions was the murder of the writer and Russian consul general August von Kotzebue on March 23, 1819 by Karl Ludwig Sand , a theology student and student fraternity from Erlangen / Jena . The immediate trigger, however, was the Hep-Hep riots of August 2, 1819, which saw supra - regional outbreaks of anti-Jewish violence for the first time since the Middle Ages .

content

Although they deeply interfered with the rights of the individual states of the German Confederation , the Karlsbad resolutions were unanimously confirmed by the Bundestag in Frankfurt on September 20, 1819 - in what, according to Thomas Nipperdey, was "more than questionable urgent procedure"; With four laws, the executive order, the university law, the press law (press law) and the investigation law, they brought about the prohibition of public written freedom of expression and fraternities , the surveillance of universities , the closure of the gymnasiums ( gymnastics lock from 1820 to 1842), the censorship of the Press as well as dismissal and professional bans for liberal and nationally minded professors who conveyed their attitude to their students. The press law in particular prevented or hindered the dissemination of concepts, ideas and thoughts that were rebellious at the time, but are considered progressive from today's perspective. The central regulation stipulated that all publications under 20 sheets , i.e. H. 320 pages were subject to prior censorship; more extensive writings had to undergo post-censorship. The Mainz Central Investigation Commission was introduced

consequences

Since there was no federal obligation to publish the text of the law in the member states, it was not published in some member states and did not formally come into force in them. B. in Kiel was the source of many legal problems.

The Karlovy Vary resolutions interfered not only with the rights of the member states, but also with the independent academic jurisdiction , some of which had existed for centuries. The Mainz Central Investigation Commission served to implement the Karlsbad resolutions .

An essential quality of the decisions is that the reactionary German Bund liberal and national ideas as sedition understand and support these ideas as demagogues pursued. This demagogue persecution took place particularly intensively in the Kingdom of Prussia and in the Electorate of Hesse . Affected by persecution and imprisonment were B. Ernst Moritz Arndt , Karl Marx , Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben , Hans Ferdinand Maßmann , Franz Lieber , Christian Sartorius , Georg Büchner , Fritz Reuter , Friedrich Ludwig Jahn , Karl Theodor Welcker and Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker , but also in the then Danish Schleswig- Holstein living Uwe Jens Lornsen . ETA Hoffmann , who from 1819 to 1821 was a member of the Prussian Immediate Commission for the investigation of treasonous connections and other dangerous activities , satirically described the procedure of the authorities in his story Meister Floh . As a result, he got himself into trouble with the censorship and the disciplinary authority. As a result of the Hambach Festival , the demagogue persecution was renewed again in 1832. It was not until the German Revolution of 1848/49 that the Carlsbad resolutions were abolished by the Bundestag on April 2, 1848.

The so-called demagogue persecutors included Karl von Abel , Heinrich von Prieser and Carl Ernst von Preuschen .

literature

Manfred Brümmer: State versus University. The University of Halle-Wittenberg and the Karlsbad Decisions 1819–1848 . Böhlau, Weimar 1991, ISBN 3-7400-0172-0 .
Eberhard Büssem: The Karlsbader Resolutions of 1819. The final stabilization of the restorative policy in the German Confederation after the Vienna Congress of 1814/15 . Gerstenberg, Hildesheim 1974, ISBN 3-8067-0510-0 (also dissertation at the University of Munich from 1972).
Andreas C. Hofmann: German university politics in the Vormärz between centralism, ›transstate‹ and »ideologies of statehood« (1815/19 to 1848) , Phil. Diss. Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München 2014, complete, around a few figs. Version, Univ.bibl. Munich 2015/16, ISBN 978-3-00-050740-3 , http://edoc.ub.uni-muenchen.de/19647 , here v. a. Cape. 2.
Ernst Rudolf Huber : German constitutional history. Since 1789 . Part 1: Reform and Restoration. 1789 to 1830 . Checked reprint of the 2nd improved edition. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart a. a. 1990, ISBN 3-17-002501-5 , pp. 732-734.
Gerhard Lingelbach: Demagogue persecution . In: Albrecht Cordes , Heiner Lück , Dieter Werkmüller , Ruth Schmidt-Wiegand (eds.): Concise dictionary on German legal history. 2nd, completely revised and enlarged edition. Volume I, Schmid, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-503-07912-4 , pp. 945-946.
Rudolf Stöber: German press history. Introduction, systematics, glossary . UVK Medien, Konstanz 2000, ISBN 3-89669-249-6 , pp. 133-135 ( Uni-Papers series 8).

Web links

Commons : Karlovy Vary Resolutions - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Wikisource: The Minutes of the Carlsbad Congress of 1819 - Sources and full texts

Karlovy Vary Resolutions - University Law (original text)
Carlsbad Resolutions - Press Act (original text)
Karlovy Vary Resolutions - Investigation Act (original text)
Harald Lönnecker: Karlsbader resolutions from: Lexicon on Restoration and Vormärz. German history 1815 to 1848, ed. v. Andreas C. Hofmann, in: historicum.net. History on the Internet (June 17, 2011)
Andreas C. Hofmann: Heavy storm clouds on the political horizon. A classification of the Karlsbad resolutions in Bavarian foreign policy from 1815 to 1820 Originally published in: aventinus.geschichte.uni-muenchen.de, republished as: aventinus bavarica No. 7 (Winter 2006)
Jutta Duhm-Heitzmann: August 31, 1819 - End of the "Karlsbader Conference" WDR ZeitZeichen (podcast).

Individual evidence

^ Rudolf Stöber: German press history. Introduction, systematics, glossary . Konstanz 2000, p. 134.
↑ Hartmut Bossel: Chance, Plan and Delusion . Chronicle of the developments that changed our world. Books on Demand, 2010, ISBN 978-3-8423-3524-0 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).

[1] Rudolf Stöber: German press history. Introduction, systematics, glossary . Konstanz 2000, p. 134.

[2] Hartmut Bossel: Chance, Plan and Delusion . Chronicle of the developments that changed our world. Books on Demand, 2010, ISBN 978-3-8423-3524-0 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).