There was widespread disappointment in Berlin when it became clear there would be nothing but cosmetic change. Once again people began to be prosecuted for minor infringements: Johann Jacoby, a regular at the liberal Siegel’s Konditorei, was arrested in February 1841 for publishing a pamphlet called Vier Fragen (Four Questions), which was mildly critical of the government. But Berlin was heating up. The Industrial Revolution was finally reaching the city, its population was growing and social problems like destitution, homelessness, rising disease and crime rates were putting pressure on the old system. The problem was made worse by a simmering economic crisis in the east which resulted in the 1844 revolt of the Silesian weavers and the famine in Silesia and East Prussia of 1847. When the new king refused all demands for fundamental reform the frustration amongst the intellectual elite and the political classes increased. They could never have started a revolution on their own – Berlin was no Paris or Warsaw or Vienna. But revolution was coming. Once again, the spark was ignited in France.
The turbulent year of European revolution started in Paris on 22 February 1848. The bourgeois king Louis-Philippe had infuriated the populace by prohibiting a banquet which had been planned in order to raise money for reforms. Within hours students, workers and the national guard were raging through the streets of Paris demanding an end to political repression. The king was forced to flee and France was declared a republic. News of the triumph spread rapidly through Europe: the patriotic movement had begun in Italy and the writer Massimo d’Azeglio proclaimed the ‘principle of open conspiracy’; Garibaldi was forced out of the country. The wave of violence spread east. The first uprisings in Baden and Saxony saw demonstrators demanding freedom of assembly and of the press, trial by jury and the creation of a people’s militia. Unrest spread rapidly through the rest of Germany and people used petitions, strikes, demonstrations and the fear of revolution to extract political reforms from the terrified rulers.9 By March Berlin was a tinderbox ready to explode. Berliners now gathered daily at the Zelten in the Tiergarten to hear speeches, read pamphlets and sign petitions for change.10 Then, on 13 March, the news broke that the revolution had reached Vienna and that the architect of the hated Carlsbad decrees, Metternich, had been forced to flee to England hidden in a laundry basket; Frederick William IV was convinced he had to act quickly to avoid the same fate. On the evening of 17 March he drafted a series of political reforms in order to appease his people. He also appointed the hard-line General von Prittwitz as military commander of Berlin.11
Sunday 18 March 1848 dawned peacefully in the city. A large crowd, including radicals, students, craftsmen and apprentices, gathered at the palace to hear the king speak; most were unarmed, although workers from the Borsig factory had brought axes with them. The municipal authorities had agreed to admit a deputation demanding a modern constitution, freedom of speech and of the press, the right of citizens to bear arms and the withdrawal of troops from Berlin. The group of representatives was received by the king that morning but was surprised to learn that he had already passed a law which granted freedom of the press, abolished censorship, called for a united Diet and the reorganization of the German federal constitution, and that he had drafted a modest constitution for Prussia itself. However, he had said nothing about withdrawal of the troops.12
Berlin was still very much a military city but the oppressive presence of a disproportionate number of soldiers had long been a source of friction between Berliners and the government. The people were tired of barracks and parade grounds and abusive officers in their midst; after the Napoleonic Wars they had demanded a military which represented the people – a people’s militia. They had a point. On that March day there were more than 20,000 troops on the streets, many of whom stood and jeered at the civilians in front of the palace. None of the citizens had guns nor any intention of fighting the Berlin garrison; they cheered the king when he appeared to announce the reforms. But when the speech ended, and still nothing had been said about the military, people began to chant: ‘Withdraw the troops! Withdraw the troops!’ The king was horrified.
Frederick William was willing to introduce some reforms but the call to banish the military challenged the very legitimacy of the Prussian monarch. In his eyes it amounted to a call for the king to renounce the very power on which his authority had rested since the Thirty Years War.13 He did not respond; indeed, in an attempt to appease the army he told the cavalry to ‘clean up’ the palace square. The order was misunderstood. Rather than simply clearing the area the troops began to ride towards the crowd brandishing their swords and pushing the people back into the side streets; Major von Falkenstein chased one group to the Breitestrasse while a second was pushed towards the Lange Brücke. Suddenly two rifle shots rang out. These were probably accidental but the crowd thought that the troops had opened fire. Cries of ‘Assassins!’ rang through the air and the people began to fight back. The army opened fire in earnest amidst screams from the public. The revolution in Berlin had begun.
Within minutes barricades were being put up throughout the city centre. The first, made out of two hackney coaches, an overturned carriage, the sentry box from the front of a bank and some old barrels, was constructed at the corner of Oberwallstrasse and Jägerstrasse. The barricade in Friedrichstrasse was made out of Mother Schmiddecke’s fruit stall; and the biggest of all, at the corner of Königstrasse on the Alexanderplatz, was put together out of blocks of granite. Republicans and socialists manned the barricades with students, craftsmen, workers, liberal intellectuals and destitute migrants from the east. Some had firearms but most were armed with makeshift weapons like pitchforks and bricks; a small brass cannon had also been found and loaded with marbles. The king refused to speak to the people, further increasing suspicions that he had been behind the order to shoot. Fighting intensified throughout the afternoon. Fierce battles were raging by nightfall.14 The violence was made worse by rumours that the military were tying prisoners in cellars and beating them with rifle butts. Berlin was ablaze; the artillery sheds at the Oranienburg Gate and the iron foundry went up in flames and all the customs houses were burning. Citizen Hesse took the reservist arsenal in Lindenstrasse and distributed weapons while women and children pelted the troops from windows and rooftops with paving stones and tiles. Over 230 people were killed in the fighting on the night of 18 March. The king feared a civil war. On 19 March, to the fury of the military, he ordered the troops to stop firing. In a dramatic gesture he rode up to the barricades and through the city draped in a flag bearing the black, red and gold colours of the revolution, and followed this with the famous speech ‘To my dear Berliners’, in which he called for the cessation of violence and the removal of the barricades in the ‘true old Berlin spirit’ of reconciliation. Negotiations began at the palace. This time, when the citizens demanded the withdrawal of troops from Berlin, the king obliged. He also promised a national assembly to debate the draft for a constitution and promised to find a solution to the national question.15
Berliners celebrated their successful revolution, and a huge funeral for the ‘March Heroes’ who had died in the fighting was planned. On 22 March a grand procession moved through Berlin, under trees and past buildings which had been draped with thousands of black banners paid for by the people of the city. Factory workers walked the route with professors, the mayor stood beside Alexander von Humboldt and Theodor Fontane, Poles and Italians marched together, each carrying their national flags, and Berlin societies and clubs sent representatives with ceremonial banners and wreaths. In all 20,000 people marched that day, and when they passed the palace the king and ministers stood on the balcony and bared their heads. The bodies were laid to rest with much ceremony at the Friedrichshain cemetery, and the graves would become a site of pilgrimage for liberals, social democrats and communists from that day on.16 The people basked in feelings of goodwill and loyalty to their king.
Despite its great promise the ‘Springtime of the Nations’ would turn out to be one of the great false dawns of Berlin history. King Frederick William IV’s order to send the army out of the city and his perilous ride through the streets of Berlin dressed in the flag had seemed genuine. The street fighters really believed that he had undergone a miraculous transformation – there would be no need to storm the palace or to see noble heads roll; the bloodshed and terror which had so shaken Europe during the French Revolution