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Baden between Revolutions: State-Building and Citizenship, 1800–1848

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Loyd E. Lee
Loyd E. Lee
Affiliation:
State University Of New YorkNew Paltz
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Extract

Arising from the French revolutionary upheaval and the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire, nineteenth-century Baden, as a political and administrative structure joined to a social body, had few continuities with an earlier past. Though a Napoleonic progeny, its successful transition to modern statehood started as an act of dynastic and bureaucratic will, imposed upon a recalcitrant or disinterested population. Remarkably, the new creation struck roots within its inhabitants which are still evident today. Beyond doubt the Zähringen monarch and the grand duchy's officialdom were estranged from large segments of the population at midcentury, as the revolutionary events of 1848–49 show. Nonetheless, a sense of Badenese citizenship and patriotism had become widely institutionalized by 1848.

Type
Symposium State-Building in the “Third Germany”
Information
Central European History , Volume 24 , Issue 2-3 , June 1991 , pp. 248 - 267
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 1991

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References

The research for this essay was made possible by a grant from the NYS/UUP Professional Development and Quality of Working Life Committee.

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18. Heunisch, Beschreibung des Grossherzogtums Baden (1833), 57.

19. Wirtz, “Widersetzlichkeiten,” 175.

20. Hömer, Wahlen, 27.

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25. The two Sons of Grand Duke Karl died in childhood and his brother Grand Duke Ludwig (1818–1830) had no children. In 1830 the succession passed to Leopold (1830–1852), Karl and Ludwig's half-brother.

26. Fischer, “Statt und Gesellschaft Badens,” 162–63, and Elisabeth Fehrenbach, “Das Scheitern der Adelsrestauration in Baden,” 251–64 in Weis, Eberhard, Reformen im rheinbündischen Deutschland (Munich, 1984).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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28. See Lee, Politics, 71–72. Treichel, Der Primat der Bürokratie, argues persuasively for civil servants as an elite distinct from both the nobility and the burgher classes in Nassau, 431–34. The same could be said for Baden.

29. For Baden see Lee, Politics, 60–84; for southwest Germany as a whole see Wunder, Bernd, Privilegierung und Disziplinierung: Die Entstehung des Berufsbeamtentums in Bayern und Württemberg (1780 bis 1815) (Munich and Vienna, 1978).Google Scholar

30. No one included women; I know of no occasion throughout this period where the question of women's citizenship rights was raised.

31. Weinacht, Paul-Ludwig, “Staatsbürger: Zur Geschichte und Kritik eines politischen Begriffs,” Staat 8 (1979): 41–64.Google Scholar

32. Grossherzoglich Badisches Regierungsblatt, 17 June 1808, article 6.

33. Cf. Treichel, Der Primal der Bürokratie. In the case of Nassau, however, civil servants failed to generate the depth of loyalty to the state that occurred in Baden. The critical factor seems to have been the difference between the self-government reforms which characterized Baden.

34. Heunisch, A. J. V., Das Grossherzogthum Baden (Heidelberg, 1857), 296.Google Scholar

35. See especially Walker, Home Towns, throughout for south and west Germany, and Lee, Politics, especially chapters 2 and 4.

36. Walker has called these groups the “movers and doers,” Home Towns, 119ff.

37. Heunisch, Das Grossherzogthum Baden (1857), 296.

38. Huber, , Dokumente, 1:157, Article 7.Google Scholar

39. “…im Wahldistrict als Bürger angesessen sind,” ibid., 161, Article 36. Article 37 required that representatives be Christian; otherwise the constitution said nothing about the rights or the lack of rights of Jews.

40. No roll call was taken, but the 1831 diet had twenty-five state employees among its sixty-three members. On other issues where roll calls were taken, civil servant representatives supported liberalized community organization. See Lee, Politics, Tables 2, 3, and 4, 252–54.

41. See in particular, Nolte, Paul, “Gemeindeliberalismus. Zur lokalen Entstehung und sozialen Verankerung der liberalen Partei in Baden 1831–1855,” Historische Zeitschrift 252 (1991): 57–93 and the several examples he cites.Google Scholar

42. Lee, Politics, Table 2, 252. Hörner, Wahlen, Table 49, 284 shows similar results and trends, though he includes pastors and priests among the civil servants and omits the 1835 legislative period. There were so many civil servants because they were about 7 percent of the approximately 7000 individuals with sufficient property or income to serve. More importantly, they received their salaries during the legislative periods (which in the 1830s was several months every other year) and they were professionally interested in affairs of state, while most other citizens were not oriented to state politics. The system of deference also worked to their benefit, though as suggested below, this lasted only until alternative statewide foci of public opinion formed to challenge their strategic role. Not surprisingly, officials were also the most frequently reelected representatives; Hörner, Wahlen, 289.

43. Verhandlungen der Ständeversammlung, 1831, vol. 107, 97.Google Scholar

44. Lee, Politics, 249–55.

45. von Hippel, Wolfgang, Friedrich Landolin Karl von Blittersdorff (1792–1861): Ein Beitrag zur badischen Landtags- und Bundespolitik im Vormärz (Stuttgart, 1967), especially 98–131Google Scholar, and Lee, Politics, 179–213.

46. Nolte, “Gemeindeliberalismus,” especially 64–65. For the German Panhellenic movement, see Hauser, Christoph, Anfänge bürgerlicher Organisation. Philhellenismus und Frühliberalismus in Südwestdeutschland (Göttingen, 1990).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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48. Wilson, C. R., “Seedbed of Protest: Social Structure and Radical Politics in Ettlingen, Grand Duchy of Baden, 1815–1850” (Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins University, 1981).Google Scholar

49. Canevali, Ralph Chester, “Revolution in Baden, 1848–1849: The Role of Political Associations” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1984).Google Scholar

50. Real, Die Revolution in Baden. This is especially true of Lorenz Brentano, 115ff.

51. Citizens' business with the state probably tripled between 1820 and 1840; Lee, Politics, 22.

52. Lee, Loyd E., “The German Confederation and the Consolidation of State Power in the South German States, 1815–1848,” Consortium on Revolutionary Europe, proceedings, 1985 (Athens, GA, 1986), 332–46.Google Scholar

53. See for example, Koziol, Klaus, Badener und Württemberger: zwei ungleiche Brüder (Stuttgart, 1987)Google Scholar and the lively interest in exhibitions and publications on Baden history, for which see articles and reviews in recent issues of the Zeitschrift für die Geschichte des Oberrheins.