People's assembly in Kosen

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Site plan with the beech hall southwest of Kösen
Drawing of the beech hall near Kösen (A. Menzel 1864)
Conference President Koberstein

The people's assembly in Kösen was a major political event in the form of a rally by the constitutional associations in the Buchenhalle near Bad Kösen in the revolutionary year of 1848 . 5000 citizens of the conservative educated middle class, mostly from the Ernestine states (Thuringia) of Germany, took part in the event on July 9th .

The aim of the meeting was the introduction of a constitutional monarchy as a form of government for a united German Empire and, on the way there, the political support of the governor Johann von Österreich, elected on June 29, 1848 . The chosen conference location was in central Germany and thus geographically and politically favorable outside the Ernestine countries in Prussia . It was easily accessible via the Kösener train station on the Thuringian Railway . Over 600 people traveled from Weimar alone by special trains. The Buchenhalle near Kösen was a natural open-air theater in a high beech forest on the outskirts of the then up-and-coming spa town of Kösen, which was easily accessible on foot from the train station with the sounds of the band.

The Kösener train station: place of the final dinner in 1848 (Photo: 2007)

The meeting started with good weather at noon under the meeting presidency of August Koberstein , who at the nearby Prince's School Schulpforta worked and politically as Chairman of the Constitutional Association of Naumburg (Saale) committed, with the 1815 Ernst Moritz Arndt created Bundeslied Are we united at the good hour and the opening speech of the conference president. Other speakers at the rally were:

The speakers at the assembly agreed that the Republicans represented a danger to Germany and should be fought politically. The meeting adopted a resolution of the German Association of Leipzig from the previous day going in this direction . The trigger was the protest of 92 members of the Republican Party in the Frankfurt National Assembly against the election of the Reich Administrator.

The meeting closed with cheers for the Reichsverweser, the President of the National Assembly Heinrich von Gagern and the Princely School Schulpforta. The assembly then sang the patriotic song Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland (What is the German Fatherland) and again cheered the constitutional association in Weimar.

Around four, the delegates had a meal at the Kösener train station, the other participants in the rally were divided among restaurants and pubs in Kösen and its vicinity in the Saale valley, so that the meeting turned into a general festival.

literature

  • Holger Thuß : Freedom and order: the constitutional party in the Thuringian states in the years 1848-1850. Dissertation, Jena 2006, p. 133 ff. Digital version (PDF; 6.6 MB)

Individual evidence

  1. Extra sheet to the Privileged Jenaische Wochenblatt No. 16 of July 15, 1848
  2. s: General German Kommersbuch: 48