Debates about the Recent Past

Abstract

Early in 1849 numerous authors began to reflect on the revolution which they had just witnessed. Events of the magnitude which Germany had experienced demanded to be recounted and explained. Since Germany was well endowed with historians, many of whom had participated directly in political life, the challenge to make sense out of the recent past was quickly taken up. In scrutinizing contemporary history, the intellectuals hoped to prepare themselves and their countrymen for the struggles of the future. A consideration of their historical thoughts on the revolution is therefore essential to an understanding of their analyses of and programs for the political and social world which they inhabited in the 1850’s. Most authors focused on the history of liberalism, especially on events which had occurred in the Frankfurt Parliament; and when men discussed the failure of the revolution they almost always meant the defeat suffered by the moderates. They usually saw no way that the radical revolutionaries, disruptive and threatening (or brave and hopeful) though their efforts had been, could possibly have surmounted the obstacles which faced them. Still, the presence of these other malcontents — men such as the followers of Gustav von Struve and Friedrich Hecker in Baden or the streetfighters of Berlin, whose aims and methods had been far more radical than those of the largely moderate parliamentarians who sat at Frankfurt — had to be dealt with too. The ways in which the major groups of intellectuals portrayed the relations between liberals and radicals varied greatly, but they all revealed the imprint of ideology on history.