Interlude

vormärz

pp. 119-126

in: Robbie Shilliam, German thought and international relations, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009

Abstract

The 1820s' depression exacerbated the diminishing hold on the means of production that some peasantry had managed to retain with agrarian reforms (Berdahl 1988: 265). In Eastern Prussia, the hunger march became a regular occurrence, and the whole of Germany was captivated by the desperate plight of the Silesian weavers (Gailus 1994: 173; Beck 1995: 169). This condition of dearth was perceived by contemporaries to be fundamentally unprecedented: it seemed permanent and systemic, and could not be attributed merely to a natural famine or to an idle peasantry (Marquardt 1969: 82). Moreover, with resurgent republicanism across the Rhine emanating from the July Revolution, the fear of the Pöbel haunted the land as much as hunger (see for example, McClelland 1971: 63; Berdahl 1988: 309). Anti-Manchesterism was progressively blended ever more finely with anti -Jacobinism: Stein and Hardenberg's previous concerns over mass peasant migration to industrializing towns remained center stage in political debates (Gagliardo 1969: 218). Frederick himself even issued a decree condemning the flight of capital from agriculture to stock exchange speculation (Brose 1993: 237).