Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps
- Chronological table
- Map 1 The German Confederation, 1815
- Map 2 The German Customs Union, 1834
- Introduction
- I Three weeks in March
- II The German nationalist movement's road to the creation of the Reich
- 2 The background: Europe's transformation from an agrarian society to a modern civilisation of the masses
- 3 The rise of a national culture
- 4 What has become of the German Fatherland?
- 5 The nationalist movement's passage from an elitist to a mass phenomenon
- 6 From Rhine Crisis to revolution
- 7 1848: the whole of Germany it shall be
- 8 On the road to a national economy
- 9 Speeches and majority decisions
- 10 Blood and Iron
- 11 Revolution from above and below
- III Documentary appendix
- Notes
- Bibliography and source material
- Notes to bibliography
- A critical bibliography of works in English
- Index
6 - From Rhine Crisis to revolution
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps
- Chronological table
- Map 1 The German Confederation, 1815
- Map 2 The German Customs Union, 1834
- Introduction
- I Three weeks in March
- II The German nationalist movement's road to the creation of the Reich
- 2 The background: Europe's transformation from an agrarian society to a modern civilisation of the masses
- 3 The rise of a national culture
- 4 What has become of the German Fatherland?
- 5 The nationalist movement's passage from an elitist to a mass phenomenon
- 6 From Rhine Crisis to revolution
- 7 1848: the whole of Germany it shall be
- 8 On the road to a national economy
- 9 Speeches and majority decisions
- 10 Blood and Iron
- 11 Revolution from above and below
- III Documentary appendix
- Notes
- Bibliography and source material
- Notes to bibliography
- A critical bibliography of works in English
- Index
Summary
If the events of 1830 and 1832 had already demonstrated that the influence of the national question spread far further than its former elitist public, ten years later on nationalism was finally established as a mass phenomenon. The breaking point was provided by the Rhine crisis of 1840, which was unleashed when the Thiers government in France attempted to compensate for the hard blow dealt to France's eastern policy and the ensuing crisis of nationalist fervour by instigating an aggressive eastern policy and propagating for the first time since 1815 the re-establishment of the Rhine as a ‘natural’ frontier.
The German reaction was very measured – to start off with. The cabinet ministers of the leading states in the German Confederation, headed by Prince Metternich, the Austrian Court and State Chancellor, conducted themselves wholly in the tradition of the Congress of Vienna by attempting to ‘denationalise’ the question of the Rhine frontier and to treat it as a matter involving all the European powers. Metternich in particular had reason to fear the nationalistic motives behind French policy, in which he could see the revolutionary principle directed against the European system of peace. German public opinion responded equally moderately on a purely academic and rhetorical level, as always when the national question was raised. The Rhineland newspaper reports about the debates in the Paris chambre des députés and about the signs of a French mobilisation were almost devoid of emotion, whereas the South German press was already engaged in a lively campaign against ‘our neighbour's treacherous intentions’, explaining in innumerable articles that France's demands for a new frontier affected not only Prussians, Badeners or Bavarians, but all Germans.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Course of German NationalismFrom Frederick the Great to Bismarck 1763–1867, pp. 64 - 69Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1991