1848 by Mike Rapport

Author:Mike Rapport
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2010-11-30T16:00:00+00:00

It was clearer than ever that real power lay not with the Frankfurt parliament and the liberal administration but with the separate states - and the monarchs - who could still command the obedience of their armed forces.

Meanwhile, the revolution was tearing itself apart. As in France, German politics became increasingly polarised as liberals were more willing to look to authoritarian solutions for the defence of law and order. On the left, the reasonable, patient Blum despairingly wrote to his wife that, were it not for the disgrace of abandoning his fellow democrats, he would be inclined to withdraw from politics altogether and watch events unfold from a comfortable distance. Schurz commented that the right-wing deputies sat in parliament ‘with smiles of triumph on their lips’.89 Although some of the radicals had been willing to assume leadership of the Frankfurt uprising, the majority of their colleagues had tried to persuade the crowd to disperse and, once the fighting started, worked hard to find a peaceful settlement. It availed them little: like their French counterparts, they were blamed for the violence. Fanny Lewald, visiting Frankfurt and watching the proceedings of the parliament a month later, noted the strength of ‘party hatred’, and she was saddened by how the politicians ‘are without faith, how they call the others bad and irresponsible and deny each other any political insight’. She also noted that conservatives coldly spoke of the ‘bullet solution’.90 Clotilde Koch-Gontard, a daughter of one of Frankfurt’s leading industrialists, who hosted salons and dinners for the moderate liberal deputies, wrote on 23 September that she was disillusioned with the revolution. She condemned the liberals and conservatives for their ‘German stubbornness and pettiness’, but was convinced that the left was looking for trouble: ‘The armistice was only a pretext. Even without it, civil war would have broken out, and we have it, so much must be clear to us. This Left cannot justify its sins against Germany.’91

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