Struve coup

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Republican Government Gazette No. 1 on behalf of the "Provisional Government" Gustav Struve

The Struve Putsch , also known as the second Baden uprising or the second Baden shield elevation , is a regional, southern Baden element of the German Revolution of 1848/1849 , in the narrower sense of the revolution in the Grand Duchy of Baden . It began with the proclamation of a German republic on September 21, 1848 by Gustav Struve in Lörrach and ended with his arrest on September 25, 1848 in Wehr .

prehistory

Historical context

After the failed Hecker procession in May 1848, both Friedrich Hecker and Gustav Struve and many other republicans had fled to nearby Switzerland. After the victory of the liberal Swiss cantons against the Catholic conservative Sonderbund (see Sonderbund War 1847), the German republicans in Switzerland not only expected refuge near the border with Germany, but also political support. However, Switzerland wanted to remain neutral and avoid a conflict with the German supremacy, Prussia, especially since the relationship was already strained by the proclamation of the republic in Neuchâtel, which was then Prussian , and Prussian troops were at times feared.

Other republicans had sought asylum in France and now experienced there - after the suppression of the June workers' uprising in Paris - the division between the bourgeoisie and workers, which deepened the rifts between the moderate liberals and the republicans in Germany.

On the Schleswig-Holstein question , there was a conflict between Prussia and the Frankfurt National Assembly over the Treaty of Malmö (1848) . On September 5, 1848, the National Assembly rejected the armistice by 238 votes to 221, but ratified it on September 16. On September 18, there was therefore an uprising in Frankfurt ( September Revolution 1848 ) against the compliant National Assembly and the dominance of Prussia, which was bloodily suppressed by Prussian and Austrian troops.

Between the Heckerzug and the Struve Putsch

On April 25, 1848, Struve first went to Rheinfelden and from there via Basel and Hüningen to Strasbourg. However, the French government complied with the demand of the German Confederation and expelled the refugees from the border area. He moved to Paris via Châlons-en-Champagne , where he saw the June uprising developing. On June 18, however, he was back in Strasbourg and moved from there to Birsfelden . From July 21st, Struve published the weekly German audience in Basel. The publication of a revolution plan soon led to his expulsion from the canton of Basel-Land. At the beginning of August, the Struves moved to Rheinfelden in the Aargau. While Hecker left Switzerland at the beginning of September and traveled via Strasbourg to Le Havre - where he boarded a ship to the United States - Struve continued the agitation for a German republic.

Trigger for the coup

According to Struve's own testimony, the news about the street fight of September 18 in Frankfurt was the decisive trigger for the second Baden revolution. "In the event of victory, they wanted to share in the fruits of the same, in the event of defeat they wanted to prepare a diversion for their friends in Frankfurt and, under the circumstances, open up a place of refuge in Germany." After Struve, there were also numerous requests from Germany to strike again . However, there were also doubts and warnings among the refugees in Switzerland about a poorly prepared and hasty action. For this attitude z. B. Theodor Mögling , who considered a new action two days after the suppression of the uprising in Frankfurt to be inappropriate. He even raised the charge against Struve: "We had a much broader, more comprehensive plan, which Struve completely spoiled for us with his ill-conceived coup." Nevertheless, Mögling and his followers took part in the action after Struve had started it on September 21. Opponents of the Republicans also spread that Struve was forced to take action simply for economic reasons, since he could not get a livelihood in Basel.

Prosperity, education and freedom for all

“Prosperity, education and freedom for all” was the slogan of the Struve Putsch. The "Plan for the Revolutionization and Republicanization of Germany" published by Gustav Struve and Karl Heinzen in 1848 can be seen as Struve's actual government program. The drafting took place within the framework of the Central Committee of Republican Refugees in Strasbourg. The focus was on the abolition of monarchies; German unity was only sought within the framework of a republic. In addition to the demands for civil rights and freedoms (e.g. freedom of the press, jury courts), social demands were also made. Article 7 demanded: “The disproportion between labor and capital is to be balanced out by the effectiveness of a special labor ministry which controls usury, protects labor and, in particular, ensures it an appropriate share of the profits from labor.” In parts the program already shows a considerable level of detail, z. For example, the system of the required progressive income tax has already been described fairly precisely. From today's perspective, the program would be able to reach a consensus for large parts of the population, at that time it meant not only high treason for monarchists, but was also unacceptable for large parts of the bourgeoisie, who wanted an all-German constitutional monarchy with some civil liberties.

The coup

Gustav Struve

After Struve had obtained the certainty on the evening of September 20, 1848 that the Lörrach vigilantes would support him, he informed his like-minded colleagues in Lörrach of his intention to cross the border from Riehen to Stetten the following day at 4 p.m. Among his companions were u. a. Moritz Wilhelm von Löwenfels, Karl Blind , Friedrich Neff , Pedro Düsar, Max Fiala and Josef Spehn. The group was unarmed when crossing the border and was not hindered by the Baden customs officials. In Stetten there was a union with the local vigilante group. They moved on to Loerrach , where the armed vigilantes had occupied the most important points in the city by the afternoon and arrested the grand ducal officials. Struve arrived in Loerrach around 6 p.m. From the balcony of the town hall he proclaimed the German republic. He proclaimed martial law. All men aged 18–40 capable of arms were called to arms. In place of Johann Philipp Becker , who had not yet arrived , Moritz Wilhelm von Löwenfels took over the military leadership. Wilhelm Liebknecht received the order from Säckingen to collect more Republicans and join them at Struve the following day. However, he was soon arrested near Säckingen and taken to Freiburg. Karl Blind acted as secretary of the provisional republican government and Friedrich Neff was supposed to provide the necessary financial means by requisitioning the public coffers. Struve expected that prominent members of the left in the Frankfurt National Assembly would soon be at his headquarters and that his government could be placed on a broader personnel basis. The Struve Putsch was arguably a controversial act among the Republicans, but it was by no means a purely local matter and not an act of a few. Evidence of this is also the numerous - and apparently coordinated - acts of sabotage on the railway systems between Heidelberg and Schliengen, which were intended to hinder the transfer of troops to the Baden Oberland.

Lettering on the balcony of the old town hall in Loerrach

Due to the compulsory mobilization of the municipalities' military mobilization (the Hecker procession had only relied on volunteers), Struve expected to be able to mobilize a force of 10,000 men. The Struve column moved on September 23 from Lörrach via Kandern and Schliengen to Müllheim . The two columns (Struve - Rheintal and Mögling - Wiesental) were supposed to meet at Horben in front of Freiburg in order to then take the city. On September 24th, the column advanced on Staufen , where the battle for Staufen broke out on the same day , which ended with the breakup and flight of the troops.

Friedrich Neff did not move to Staufen with the main column, but gathered more influxes to the troops in Müllheim; with these, about 2,000 men, he moved the main column over to 13:00 Hügelheim after. After they received the news of the defeat in Staufen there, part of this procession had already dispersed. Neff wanted to go with the remaining 1,500 men via Sulzburg to Todtnau , where they could join the Wiesentäler column. On September 25, however, he led his column back to Müllheim. There he met August Willich , who had joined the troops too late from his French exile and who also did not have any noteworthy associations with him. Willich tried again to lead the undisciplined remnants to Sulzburg, but this was no longer possible because the troops fled immediately in the face of Baden troops. Since Müllheim was also threatened by troops in the meantime, the troops finally dispersed and their leaders fled to Switzerland. On September 26th, Muellheim was occupied by troops. Everywhere the grand ducal officials were again released and in office. In the following days, the entire Oberland was occupied by Baden troops, who had also arrived in the meantime. Struve's hope that the uprising would spread to other areas was not fulfilled. Only in Rottweil , Württemberg , was there a people's assembly organized by Gottlieb Rau on September 24th , and on September 25th an armed group of about 1,000 men set off for Stuttgart . After the defeat of the irregulars near Staufen became known, however, this train also broke up again.

Karl Blind

The Mögling-Doll column from Wiesentäler

Theodor Mögling and Friedrich Doll came to Lörrach on September 22nd and formed a second department in the Wiesental, which took its headquarters in Schopfheim on the evening of September 22nd and advanced via Zell im Wiesental (September 23rd) to Todtnau (September 24th), where she was already about 1,500 strong. The cooperation between the two groups was disrupted from the start, and Doll did not accept his removal by Struve. On September 24th, Mögling first received news that Struve wanted to put him and Doll before a court martial in Freiburg, but this only caused amusement. That evening Struve and his companion arrived at Möglings quarters in Todtnau. While Mögling and his supporters immediately came to the conclusion, due to the lost battle, that the - in their opinion - rash undertaking had to be abandoned immediately, Struve wanted to return to Loerrach to rally the troops.

Arrest and sentencing of Struve

Towards the end of the battle for Staufen, Struve fled with his wife Amalie , her brother, Pedro Düsar, and Karl Blind via the Münstertal and Schönau to Todtnau , where they found the headquarters of the Freischar Mögling-Doll on September 24th. Struve wanted to go back to Lörrach to reorganize his group. The Schopfheimer vigilantes, which were hostile to him, blocked his way and finally took him prisoner in Wehr on September 25th to hand him over to the Oberamtmann von Säckingen .

The prisoners were taken to Müllheim the following day, where they were supposed to come before the court martial. In Binzen , the prisoners were threatened by the population because they were found to be complicit in the death of the hamlet musicians.

The court martial declared that it was not responsible, as the arrest (September 25, 1848) took place before the state of war was announced (September 26, 1848). This presumably saved him from being shot and has now been brought to Freiburg.

On March 30, 1849, a jury court in the Basler Hof in Freiburg sentenced Gustav Struve and Karl Blind to a sentence of eight years in prison for attempted high treason, which was converted into five years and four months of solitary confinement. The judgment did not allow an appeal, but a nullity appeal, which was also submitted by the lawyer of the convicted, Lorenz Brentano . On April 2, the prisoners were transferred to Rastatt . Only when the mutiny had already begun in the Rastatt fortress , Struve and Blind were brought to Bruchsal on the night of May 11th to May 12th . At the beginning of the third uprising in Baden, he was freed from the Bruchsal prison on the night of May 13th to 14th.

Struve himself judged his trial in Freiburg as a good agitation platform and was of the opinion that he and Blind had prepared the third Baden uprising in May 1849 with the principles put forward there. However, there were also a number of Republicans who did not see Struve's work as beneficial to their cause. Mögling formulated this point of view in a letter to Emma Herwegh : “I'm just glad that the Baden government caught the Struve, this is a real stroke of luck for us, because Struve would have done us even more damage. In this way he uses us as martyrs, but cannot harm us. "

I would like to wallow in grief - the Struve Putsch in the public eye

Song of the Struwwel Putsch

The Palatinate dialect poet Karl Gottfried Nadler published a mocking poem under the pseudonym Johann Schmitt under the title: A beautiful new song from the world-famous Struwwel-Putsch . Nadler had already published the peep box song from the great Hecker . Mockery and scorn were a means of the ruling circles and their followers to brand the Republican Struve and his ideas. Unlike the popular Hecker, the phrenologist and vegetarian Struve offered many points of attack to marginalize him. Another approach was to portray him as a socialist and thus use him as a specter for the liberal citizens. The socialists, for their part, also showered Struve with ridicule. A third approach to character assassination was the assumption that Struve and the revolutionaries had enriched themselves with the money from the requisitioned public coffers. It is undisputed that these coffers were requisitioned and that salaries and wages were also paid to the revolutionaries from them. A personal enrichment of individual persons is not proven. In the case of Struve, who came from a noble family who dropped open careers as a diplomat and judge in order to pursue his revolutionary ideals, the motivation for enrichment makes no sense.

Switzerland's attitude

In September 1848 Franz Raveaux came to Switzerland as an envoy of the provisional German central authority . On October 4, 1848, in Bern, he handed over a protest note in which the most striking violation of international law obligations by Switzerland was criticized, as this did not prevent the preparations for the Struve Putsch in Switzerland. The strictest punishment of the guilty officials and authorities, the disarming of the refugees and a ban on staying near the border were demanded. Since the use of suitable aids was also threatened, this note sparked great outrage throughout Switzerland across all party lines. Switzerland sharply rejected the form and content of the note and stated that there had been no armed incursion from Switzerland to Baden, but that the uprising had broken out in Baden itself.

In June 1849 Raveaux was one of those who fled to Switzerland.

Canton of Basel-Stadt

The mayor of Basel, Felix Sarasin, had the border with the Grand Duchy of Baden occupied by Basel militia and police units on the evening of September 21 - especially in the rural communities of Kleinhüningen, Riehen and Bettingen, as the local population strongly sympathized with the Baden Republicans. No armed persons or arms transports were allowed from the canton of Basel-Stadt to Baden. People were disarmed and arms supplies confiscated. It can be assumed that some weapons reached Baden from Basel shortly before the start of the coup and that only one shipment with a few boxes crossed the border afterwards. Between March and September 1848, however, there were considerable arms deliveries from Basel to Baden, although from Basel's point of view this was completely legal and also included deliveries to Baden authorities.

On September 22nd and 23rd, royalist refugees from Baden came to Basel, where they were taken in and protected from being stalked by the revolutionaries. Shortly after the battle for Staufen, members of the revolutionary administration came to Basel, which they left for Liestal the following day . On September 25th, volatile irregulars came to Basel in large numbers, and to disarm them, the border guards were reinforced by an additional army. The gathering of rioters in Hüningen, France, was watched vigilantly, as a border violation was feared on the partly Swiss Schusterinsel. Due to the gathering of armed German irregulars in Hüningen, Basel now occupied its border with Alsace .

The German factory workers and craftspeople living in Basel were predominantly revolutionary. Germans who did not join the revolutionary movement were harassed by the revolutionary elements - so-called Swabian hunts took place on September 26th , which were suppressed by the Basel police. On September 26th, Löwenfels came to Basel with the rest of the group and was disarmed; this happened on September 27th with a group under Thielmann.

Basel attached great importance to maintaining neutrality and, after the Struve Putsch, expelled all the German refugees involved from the canton, around 200 people. On the other hand, Basel did not provide the Baden authorities with any administrative assistance in pursuing the insurgents, nor did they provide any information about them.

Canton of Basel-Land

In the canton of Basel-Land , the German republicans enjoyed greater popular support than in the canton of Basel-Stadt, and the government had to take this into account. The Basel government council asked the federal government for strict guidelines in order to be able to hide behind the federal government from the radicals led by Emil Frey in the cantonal parliament. The federal government dispatched Jakob Robert Steiger to ensure that the cantons bordering Germany adhered to the measures set by the federal government with regard to refugee policy. "The endeavors of the canton of Basel-Land around 1848 were to get rid of them in the most elegant way possible." The government of the canton of Basel-Land then decided on September 26th to send all refugees inland or to France.

The attitude of France

The February Revolution of 1848 in France was also supported by many refugees from Poland and Germany, and there was now the expectation that the provisional French government under Alphonse de Lamartine would export the revolution. However, the Second French Republic did not want to mess with the neighboring countries and behaved neutrally. Lamartine was even accused of passing on information about the intentions of the German refugees to the German princes. He wanted to hinder the movements of the German Democratic Legion in May 1848. After the failed Hecker uprising, Struve, Hecker and Heinzen founded a central committee for German refugees in Strasbourg in April 1848, which distributed aid and carried out agitation in Germany. After the June uprising in 1848 , the situation for the German refugees in France became even more difficult. The military dictatorship of Louis-Eugène Cavaignac suppressed the socialists. In early August 1848, the central committee was accused of recruiting volunteers and its members were expelled from Strasbourg.

France did not give the Baden revolutionaries any support, but left them free in the border area around Hüningen . There was a gathering of armed German revolutionaries under the leadership of August Willich and Johann Philipp Becker , who on September 25 also undertook an advance into Baden territory, which, however, was immediately stopped by imperial troops at Auggen . On September 27th, another 600 irregulars crossed Schusterinsel into Baden and reached Weil ( Leopoldshöhe ). After they were satisfied that the uprising had no more support, they withdrew to France. Only on September 29th, 400 men of the French military entered Hüningen and began to transport the irregulars into the interior of the country - on October 2nd there were no more irregulars in Hüningen.

See also

literature

  • Gustav Struve : History of the three popular uprisings in Baden . Verlag von Jenni, Sohn, Bern 1849. (changed reprint: Verlag Rombach, Freiburg i.Br. 1980, pp. 118–145)
  • Moritz Wilhelm von Löwenfels, Friedrich Neff , G. Thielmann: The second republican uprising in Baden: together with some revelations about the republican coffers remaining. Basel 1848, pp. 31–39, urn : nbn: de: bsz: 31-12154
  • Theodor Mögling : Letters to his friends. Solothurn 1858. Google book search
  • Amalie Struve : Memories from the Baden freedom struggles. Hamburg 1850. (Reprinted in: Heftiges Feuer. Rombach, Freiburg im Breisgau, 1998, ISBN 3-7930-0877-0 )
  • Johann Baptist Bekk : The movement in Baden from the end of February 1848 to the middle of May 1849. Mannheim 1850, pp. 183-200. Bavarian State Library (PDF)
  • Paul Siegfried : Basel during the second and third Baden uprising in 1848/49 . 106th New Year's Gazette of the GGG . Basel 1928.
  • Eduard Kaiser: From the old days. Memories of a Markgräfler's life. Lörrach 1910. (Reprint: Weil am Rhein 1981, pp. 258–266)
  • Alfred Grosch: The first jury trial in Baden, negotiated in Freiburg i. Br. From March 20 to 30, 1849 . In: Schau-ins-Land , Volume 41, 1914, pp. 95-108, Freiburg University Library
  • Emil Stark: All about the Struve Putsch of September 1848 [Staufen] . In: Schau-ins-Land, Volume 76 (1958), pp. 110–119, Freiburg University Library
  • Friedrich Rottra: The procession of irregulars from the Oberland and its end in the battle in Staufen on September 24, 1848. In: Das Markgräflerland Heft 3/4 1973, p. 131–152 digitized version of the Freiburg University Library
  • Paul Nunnenmacher: The end of the Second Baden Revolution in Staufen. In: Das Markgräflerland , Volume 2/1999, pp. 65–67 digitized version of the Freiburg University Library

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gustav Struve - Karl Heinzen: Plan to revolutionize and republicanize Germany , Birsfelden / Basel: JU Walser 1848; the essential points of the plan are printed in the footnote in G. Struve pp. 106–110
  2. s. G. Struve p. 116.
  3. s. Mögling p. 134.
  4. s. Eduard Kaiser: From the old days. Memories of a Markgräfler's life. 1815–1875 , Lörrach 1910, reprint Weil am Rhein 1981, p. 259.
  5. in Google Book Search
  6. this probably also included the vigilante group in Loerrach and their officer Markus Pflüger ; In his memoirs, Struve does not mention any names with regard to the later political persecution of the Republicans
  7. ^ Moritz Wilhelm von Löwenfels (1820–1902) from Vallendar near Koblenz, former Prussian lieutenant and teacher of mathematics and French
  8. s. Löwenfels, p. 18.
  9. Norbert Möller: The role of the railway in the Baden Revolution of 1848/49 . In: Badische Heimat , volume 3/1997, pp. 362–63
  10. ^ Friedrich Christian Doll from Kirn
  11. a law regulating the right to stand was only enacted on September 23, 1848 and published in the government gazette on September 24. The martial law was not announced until the evening of September 25th and had not yet been announced when Struve and Blind committed rebellious acts in Staufen. s. Bekk p. 195/196
  12. ^ Moritz Wilhelm von Löwenfels: Gustav Struve's life, based on authentic sources and notes communicated by himself . Helbig et al. Scherb, Basel 1848, p. 26. (digitized version)
  13. Legal proceedings against Gustav Struve u. Karl Blind before the jury court in Freiburg, Freiburg 1849, p. 100. (online in the Google book search)
  14. s. Struve p. 136.
  15. ^ Theodor Mögling to Emma Herwegh, Strasbourg, December 4, 1848. In: Marcel Herwegh (Ed.): Letters from and to Georg Herwegh. Munich 1898, p. 257. (online in the Internet Archive)
  16. online; accessed on September 30, 2013
  17. s. Wikisource
  18. In September 1848 the second insurrection began, of which our Caesar and Socrates were our Gustav in one person. He used the time during which he was allowed to set foot on German soil again to give the Black Forest farmers haunted ideas about the disadvantages of tobacco smoking. ; Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels: The great men of exile. In: Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels - works. Volume 8, 3rd edition. (Karl) Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1972, p. 269. (unchanged reprint of the 1st edition 1960, Berlin / GDR) (online)
  19. s. Siegfried p. 42.
  20. s. Siegfried p. 35.
  21. s. Siegfried p. 37.
  22. s. Siegfried p. 38.
  23. s. Siegfried, p. 46.
  24. the refugees
  25. Martin Leuenberger: Free and equal ... and strange. Refugees in the Basel area between 1830 and 1880. Verlag des Kantons Basel-Landschaft, Liestal 1996, ISBN 3-85673-242-10 , p. 115.
  26. s. Struve p. 90.
  27. ^ Carl Helmut Steckner: Strasbourg and the Baden Revolution . In: The Ortenau. 78th Annual Volume, 1998, pp. 552-554.