'The Old Forms are Breaking Up, ... Our New Germany is Rebuilding Itself': Constitutionalism, Nationalism and the Creation of a German Polity during the Revolutions of 1848-49
2010; Oxford University Press; Volume: CXXV; Issue: 516 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/ehr/ceq276
ISSN1477-4534
Autores ResumoBY May 1848, the German fatherland was ‘creaking and shaking’, but it was unlikely to disintegrate, wrote the liberal publicist and Kiel historian Johann Gustav Droysen in a retrospective Christmas memorandum.1 ‘The old forms’—the German Confederation, estates and governments—were ‘breaking up’ as a consequence of ‘the enormous force of the increasingly heartened German people’: ‘From the truth of our German being, from the “primordial spirit” of the united German people, from the sovereignty of the nation, our new Germany is rebuilding itself.’2 Freedom, it had become apparent during the course of 1848, could assume ‘wild forms’, terrifying even those who were ‘mad about it’, but it would be contained and controlled by the imperative of national unity, which had been at the very origin of the revolution.3 For this reason, Droysen, who had been a dominant figure in the Committee of the Seventeen and had shaped the events leading to the creation of the Frankfurt Parliament, remained confident that a new national political structure could be established to replace the old order through the enactment of a constitution. Despite the fact that it had ‘raged from palace to palace in the month of March’ and had ‘stirred up the otherwise dumb and dull masses’, the revolution was both legal, receiving the sanction of the Bundestag and drafting its own liberal constitution, and legitimate, embodying the national will.4 ‘The magic word of German unity drowned out the wildest roar; where it rang out there was an immediate … joyful confidence, a good conscience resulting from a just desire’, wrote Droysen: ‘In this spirit of unity the constitution-granting Reichstag convened.’5 Although the extent and content of a future German nation-state were matters of dispute, the liberal deputy was optimistic that the nationalism of revolutionaries would limit the excesses of the left and overcome the opposition of the reactionary right. Even at the end of the year, after the reimposition of counterrevolutionary governments in Prussia and Austria, a constitutional and national revolutionary settlement still seemed possible. This study examines the stabilising effect of nationalism on the politics of the revolution, issuing in the new national polity outlined in the Reichsverfassung (Reich constitution) of 28 March 1849.
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