Sedan day

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Brandenburg Gate on Sedan Day 1898 (text on the banner: "What a turn through God's guidance")

The Sedan Day (also Day of Sedan or Sedanstag ) was a day of remembrance, of the German Empire was celebrated (1871-1918) annually by 2 September. He commemorated the surrender of the French army on September 2, 1870 after the Battle of Sedan , in which Prussian , Bavarian , Württemberg and Saxon troops had won the decisive victory in the Franco-German War near the French city of Sedan . After the surrender of his army, the French Emperor Napoleon III. personal captivity of the Prussian King Wilhelm I left.

On the occasion of this day, from 1871, victory monuments were erected in central places throughout the German Empire and mostly inaugurated with solemn ceremonies on the day before Sedan Day.

The call for a national holiday

Sedan Day 1895 in Frankfurt am Main , in front of the Hotel zum Schwan , the place where the peace treaty was concluded in 1871

In the course of the founding of the empire in Versailles in 1871, the number of voices calling for a common national holiday increased in Germany , and it made sense to propose the date of the imperial proclamation on January 18 as a day of remembrance.

As early as the spring of 1871, a committee of personalities from ecclesiastical-Protestant and liberal circles sent a petition to Kaiser Wilhelm I with the request to name a day that could be celebrated as the foundation day of the Reich. However, the Kaiser declined January 18, since this date was also the day of the first Prussian royal coronation, which should not be overshadowed by a German holiday. Instead of prescribed celebrations, it was hoped that - similar to the memory of the Battle of the Nations near Leipzig - the memory of the events of the war would be preserved through spontaneous commemorations within the population.

In June 1872 the Westphalian pastor Friedrich Wilhelm Bodelschwingh made another attempt and suggested September 2nd, the date of Napoleon III's surrender. in Sedan , which was so closely connected with the founding of the empire, as the date for a thanksgiving and peace festival.

For the 25th anniversary of Sedan in 1895, the city of Brehna in the province of Saxony donated a silver
medal to war veterans

Until 1873, Sedan Day became more and more a public holiday compared to a spring festival that was also considered annually on Foundation Day of the German Empire (January 18, 1871) or celebrations for the conclusion of peace in Frankfurt (May 10, 1871), such as the magistrate of Berlin favored, by. However, it never achieved an official character, as Wilhelm I did not want to declare it an official holiday. He also never had the meaning of the "Imperial Parade" or the celebrations on the occasion of the Emperor's birthday . However, since Sedan Day had been celebrated at schools and universities by order of the Prussian Ministry of Culture since 1873, it had at least the character of an official day of remembrance of the Franco-German War. The war memorial was inaugurated on this day in many German cities and villages .

The meaning and content of the celebrations for Sedan Day

Historic newspaper advertisement from 1911
Sedan Day in Schüttorf , 1895
The awards of honor of the Sedan Festival 1916 in the office of the Lübeck medical column

Since the beginning of the Sedan celebrations, opinions differed as to what content the celebrations should have. The inauguration of the Berlin Victory Column, decorated with cannons captured from the Franco-German War, on September 2, 1873, clearly emphasized the military component of the unification of the empire, especially among the guests - members of the imperial family, a large number of German princes and military delegations from all over the world Rich - the uniforms clearly dominated. This aspect was underlined by the military parade of the Guard Corps held annually by Kaiser Wilhelm I from 1873 onwards on the occasion of Sedan Day . For Wilhelm I, September 2nd was and remained primarily a day of honor for the army , especially the Prussian army . Although the parades did not take place every year on September 2nd for scheduling reasons, the symbolic reference to Sedan Day was retained in the following years and only took a back seat under Kaiser Wilhelm II , after he had postponed the parades to mid-August.

But there were also civilian approaches to designing the Sedan celebrations. The Rhenish-Westphalian Provincial Committee for Inner Mission suggested what it meant by a “typically German” festival for the entire people: the eve of September 2nd would be celebrated with the singing of patriotic songs, bonfires and bells. The Sedan day itself was to begin with the parades of the veterans and officers, accompanied by the local authorities, through festively decorated streets to the church, where eulogies, prayers of thanks and sermons were to be held. The midday meal should be eaten in the family circle and in the afternoon celebrations in the open air with music bands, celebratory speeches, the singing of old and new patriotic songs as well as all kinds of popular amusements. The evening ended, festively illuminated, again with family celebrations. In some cities - especially in Leipzig , Coburg , Braunschweig , Worms and Stettin - not only the military clubs, such as the veterans' associations, but also the gymnastics clubs were included in the celebrations.

An elementary school pupil describes the process of a school Sedan celebration in Bargteheide in Holstein in an essay from September 12, 1912:

“Our Sedan celebration
This year our Sedan celebration was celebrated in a particularly beautiful way. The celebration that usually takes place at school was canceled this year. We had a special afternoon celebration. In a closed train we marched, in front of our pipe and drum corps, to the gymnastics playground. The boys had come from the surrounding villages to take part in the competitions. Gymnastics exercises were demonstrated. We girls had to play in a circle and make a dance. In the evening there was an hour of dancing. At the end we sang: “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles”, and so the beautiful celebration was over. The Battle of Sedan was not the most formidable, but it was the most significant because Napoleon was captured. Sedan Day is therefore the most important day. "

Around 1890 the Sedan Day experienced a change in its meaning. Until then it was mainly an annual military victory celebration on the occasion of the Battle of Sedan, but now the unification of the empire was more and more in the foreground. One reason for this was the generation change within the imperial dynasty. Wilhelm I still saw himself first and foremost as King of Prussia , and for him Sedan Day was the memory of a Prussian victory that resulted in the establishment of an empire whose crown he had only reluctantly accepted. However, his grandson Wilhelm II , who had ruled from 1888, felt himself to be a German emperor , and as such he promoted this national component of the Sedan celebrations. At the same time, the day was primarily a military jubilee for him too, and he never tired of appealing to discipline and the fulfillment of military duties. In addition, he tried to mythologize the Battle of Sedan and promote the personality cult around his grandfather, as the timely inauguration of several Kaiser Wilhelm monuments, around 1894 in Königsberg and 1896 in Breslau , shows.

The development of an all-German identity also played an increasingly important role among the people, with the growing distance in time to the events of 1870/1871. The population now felt too much as German and had internalized the existence of an empire for Sedan Day to remain a purely Prussian victory celebration. A move in this direction was the proposal of the Central Committee for Popular and Youth Games of 1894, which, however, was never implemented. This intended to emphasize the component of the unification of the empire more strongly during the celebrations and to organize a kind of "national Olympia " on the occasion of the Sedan Day.

The definition of meaning was made more difficult by the political events of the turn of the century. During the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion in China , German and French troops fought side by side for a common goal. It seemed doubtful whether, under these circumstances, it was still appropriate to celebrate a day which, by its name, glorified the former victory of one brother-in-arms over the other and in France repeatedly painful memories of the defeat and the cession of Alsace-Lorraine aroused and was able to promote the revanchism there. In fact, interest in Sedan Day decreased sharply in Germany at the turn of the century, even when attempts were made to keep memories of the events alive by publishing so-called “Sedan books” that described and glorified the course of the war at that time. Only on round anniversaries, such as the 25th anniversary in 1895 or the 40th anniversary in 1910, was it possible to revive the idea of ​​the Sedan celebrations at short notice. While the day of 1897 was mentioned as a public holiday in ten federal states in the Gotha court calendar , this classification is completely absent for 1915, and events were held in only six states. However, the outbreak of the First World War also plays a major role here.

The Sedan Day ended on August 27, 1919, when the Interior Ministry of the Weimar Republic declared that there would be no more Sedan celebrations because they no longer corresponded to the circumstances of the time. In 1921, some Berlin local groups of the DNVP registered Sedan celebrations again, which were then banned by the police chief. Here and there attempts to resuscitate may have taken place well into the 1920s, for example in Tübingen in 1925 by a veterans' association and there in 1926 as a thematic concert by the battalion band.

When a replica of the Kaiser Wilhelm monument, destroyed in 1945, was erected at the Deutsches Eck in Koblenz on Sedan Day in 1993, it only attracted attention in France.

Resistance to Sedan Day

Initially, the Sedan Day could not prevail throughout the German Empire.

In Bavaria, people often preferred to commemorate the Battle of Wörth , in which mainly Bavarian troops were involved, or first of all celebrated May 10th, the day of the Peace of Frankfurt . In addition, “particular counter-tendencies” stood in the way of the spread of the Sedan celebrations, as it was difficult to make friends with the new empire. In the realm of Alsace-Lorraine , consideration for the French population prohibited an expansion of the celebrations, and in Baden the local war clubs initially only celebrated the battles of Belfort and Nuits , in which Baden troops had played a prominent role. It also becomes clear which strong role the personal relationship, especially of the veterans, played to the war of 1870/71 and the respective battles. The Grand Duke of Baden therefore - probably representing the skepticism of all southern German states about Prussian dominance and the lack of national dimension of this date - advocated January 18, the founding day of the German Empire, as a uniform national holiday.

In addition to regional resistance, there was also strong political resistance. The Catholic population of the Reich boycotted the Sedan Day celebrations in protest against the “ Kulturkampf ” promoted by Otto von Bismarck in the 1870s . The Bishop of Mainz, Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler , even forbade bells to ring on September 2nd in 1874. For him, the Sedan Day symbolized less the victory of Germany over France and the national unity that followed, but rather the defeat of the Catholic Church against Bismarck and national-liberal Protestantism.

The Social Democrats were also hostile to Sedan Day, on the one hand in protest against the " Socialist Laws " introduced in 1878 , on the other hand because the celebrations were directed against France. For the Social Democrats of "put jingoism " and indeed the glorification of war and militarism - also in view of the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine - a breach of the propagated by its internationalism . Is demonstrative they therefore committed March 18 as a day of Uprising of the Paris Commune . In 1895 the protest culminated in a telegram to the French comrades in which they spoke out against “war and chauvinism” and offered them “greetings and a handshake”. It didn't help that in the same year, due to the “silver year of remembrance”, the workers and employees in the state-owned companies and the state administration companies as well as in some private companies (such as the Essen Krupp -werke) had a day off (albeit unpaid) was granted. Wilhelm II reacted sharply to the social democratic protests. This was followed by the confiscation of leaflets and the arrests of editors on charges of lese majesty . Even in the years that followed, up to the abolition of Sedan Day in August 1919, it was never entirely possible to integrate the workers into the celebrations, so that Sedan Day always remained a holiday, especially for the bourgeoisie loyal to the emperor, the nobility, the military and the Prussian civil servants.

literature

  • Florentine Gebhart: Memory of the Sedan Festival in the 1870s. In: Leaves from the picture book. Berlin 1930, pp. 51-54; Reprint in: Jens Flemmin (Ed.): Sources on the everyday history of Germans from the Middle Ages to today. Volume 7. 1871-1914. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1997, ISBN 3-534-11496-5 , pp. 61-64; freely available as PDF .
  • Jörg Koch: Sedantag , in: That you don't forget history. State commemorative and public holidays from 1871 to the present day. Wbg Academic, Darmstadt 2019, ISBN 978-3-534-40186-4 , pp. 44-60.
  • Jörg Koch: The Sedantag , in: Ders .: Of heroes and victims. Cultural history of German war memorial. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 2013, pp. 51–64, ISBN 3-534-26281-6 .
  • Thomas Rohkrämer: The militarism of the "little people". The war clubs in the German Empire 1871–1914 . (= Contributions to military history; vol. 29). Oldenbourg, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-486-55859-5 (plus dissertation, University of Freiburg im Breisgau, 1989).
  • Fritz Schellack: National Holidays in Germany 1871 to 1945. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main a. a. 1990, ISBN 3-631-42524-4 (also dissertation, University of Mainz 1989).
  • Jakob Vogel: Nations in lockstep (= critical studies on historical science , vol. 118). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1997, ISBN 3-525-35781-8 (also dissertation, FU Berlin, 1995).
  • Rüdiger Wulf: "Hurray, today is a happy day, the Emperor's cradle festival!" School celebrations for the Emperor's birthday and the Emperor's Sedan Day. In: Jochen Löher and Rüdiger Wulf (eds.): “Feartbar der Erbfeind!” Patriotic education in the schools of the Empire 1871–1918 (= series of publications of the Westphalian School Museum Dortmund, vol. 3). Westfälisches Schulmuseum, Dortmund 1998, pp. 57–95.
  • State Main Archive Koblenz, State Archive Administration Rhineland-Palatinate: 100 Years Ago - The Sedan Day on September 2nd, 1899 ( online ).
  • Directory of the fighters from 1848/49, 1864, 1866 and 1870/71 living in Düsseldorf at the Sedan Festival in 1895. Bagel, Düsseldorf 1895 ( digitized version ).
  • Sedan celebration on September 1, 1895 - presented to their veterans from 1848/1849, 1864, 1866 and 1870/71 by the city of Düsseldorf . Bagel, Düsseldorf 1895 ( digitized version ).
  • Twenty-five years of jubilee on Sedan Day - Monday, September 2, 1895, starting at 8 o'clock in the evening, in the Kaisersaal and in the garden (eventual knight's hall) of the Municipal Tonhalle - a patriotic festival evening with the friendly cooperation of the Municipal Men's Choir (conductor, Mr. Music Director Georg Kramm) - Orchestra: in the hall: the municipal orchestra (conductor Mr. R. Zerbe), in the garden: the Nehl'sche Kapelle (conductor Mr. W. Nehl) Bagel, Düsseldorf 1895. ( digitized version ).

Web links

Commons : Sedantag  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Wiktionary: Sedantag  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on March 28, 2006 .

Remarks

  1. Quoted from 100 years old school building in Bargteheide 1887–1987 ( Memento from May 10, 2016 in the Internet Archive ).
  2. According to information from the Internet project Weg der Steine
  3. In the district of Neustadt an der Aisch, for example, the Sedan Day, which was first celebrated on September 4, 1870, remained an important day in the Neustadt festival calendar for four decades . See Max Döllner : Development history of the city of Neustadt an der Aisch until 1933. Ph. C. W. Schmidt, Neustadt a. d. Aisch 1950, OCLC 42823280 ; New edition to mark the 150th anniversary of the Ph. C. W. Schmidt publishing house, Neustadt an der Aisch 1828–1978. Ibid 1978, ISBN 3-87707-013-2 , p. 643.