Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels returned to Germany in spring 1848
to support the most democratic version of a “bourgeois revolution”
But ethnic divisions complicated the situation
Lajos Kossuth
(1802-1894),
who led the Hungarian
War of Independence
in 1848/49
German & Magyar revolutionaries had little sympathy for
the aspirations of Croats, Rumanians, Ukrainians, & Slovaks
The Second and Third Partitions of Poland, 1793-95
“Street Fighting on Rue Soufflot, Paris, June 25, 1848”
(3,000 Parisians died in the June Days, vs. 500 in February)
The dissolution of the National Workshops in June 1848
provoked desperation in working-class neighborhoods:
Daumier, “The Uprising”
Ernest Meissonier,
“The Barricade,”
aftermath of the
June Days of 1848,
when the Second
Republic
suppressed the
democratic clubs
Louis Napoleon
(1808-1873)
won 75% of the
vote in the
presidential election
of December 1848
and then gained
control of the army
and police
“Bohemian
weavers
destroy
machines”
in 1848
“Raging Assault by the Republicans on the German
National Parliament, September 18, 1848”
This riot began as
a protest against
the armistice with
Denmark; the
crowd demanded
a purge of
conservative
deputies from the
National Assembly
and lynched two
of them before
Prussian troops
restored order.
The new flag
and the
Goddess of
Liberty parade
through
Cologne
during the
short-lived
republican
uprising of
September
1848
The Radical Republicans
Friedrich Hecker & Gustav Struve in Baden
Croatian troops pour into Vienna, October 26-29, 1848:
4,000 men died, with casualties heaviest among the students
Carl Staffeck, “The Execution of Robert Blum,”
Vienna, November 9, 1848
“The Berlin Citizens’ Militia Opens Fire on
Demonstrating Workers,” October 16, 1848.
(From their dress we can tell that membership in the
Citizens’ Militia has been restricted to the bourgeoisie.)
General Wrangel agrees with the Citizens’ Militia on a
peaceful occupation of Berlin, 10 November 1848
“A New Method for Granting a Constitution,”
satirical cartoon, Berlin, December 1848
Constitution proposed by the Frankfurt Assembly in 1849
Frederick William IV receives a deputation from the
German National Assembly, Berlin, April 3, 1849.
He later wrote a
friend that this
offered crown bore
the “stench of the
revolution of 1848,
which was the
most stupid and
frivolous revolution
of this century,
even if it was by
no means, thank
God, the most
wicked….”
“I carved a pretty
crown for your
son, but now he
doesn’t want it!”
(Heinrich von
Gagern,
Germania, and
Frederick William),
cartoon from 1849
“The New Peter of
Amiens” (1849):
The founders of
the conservative
Kreuz-Zeitung,
Otto von Bismarck,
Ernst Ludwig von
Gerlach, &
Friedrich Julius
Stahl, depicted as
medieval
crusaders.
Prussian troops advance against the revolutionary army
of Baden (including Engels) near Rastatt, June 22, 1849
President Louis Napoleon, King Frederick William IV, and
Emperor Franz Joseph sweep out the revolutionaries (1849)
The revised Prussian constitution of January 1850
Trial of the eleven Cologne Communists in 1852