Carlsbad Decrees

The Carlsbad Decrees were a set of reactionary restrictions introduced in the states of the German Confederation by resolution of the Bundesversammlung on 20 September 1819 after a conference held in the spa town of Carlsbad, Bohemia. They banned nationalist fraternities ("Burschenschaften"), removed liberal university professors, and expanded the censorship of the press. They were aimed to quell a growing sentiment for German unification.

The meeting of the state's representatives was called by the Austrian Minister of State Prince Klemens Wenzel von Metternich after the liberal Burschenschaft student Karl Ludwig Sand had murdered the conservative writer August von Kotzebue on 23 March 1819, and an attempt had been made by apothecary Karl Löning on the life of Nassau president Karl von Ibell on 1 July 1819. In the course of the European Restoration Metternich feared liberal and national tendencies at German universities which might conduct revolutionary activities threatening the monarchistic order. At this time, the two outrages cited were a welcome pretext to take action.

The Carlsbad Decrees had consequences not only for the rights of the member states but also for the independent Academic Jurisdiction that had partially been in existence for centuries. An important instrument for the application of the Decrees for these and other purposes was the Mainzer Zentraluntersuchungskommission.

An essential attribute of the decrees was that the reactionary German Confederation understood liberal and nationalistic ideas as sedition and persecuted those spreading these ideas as demagogues. This persecution of demagogues, Demagogenverfolgung, was especially vigorous in Prussia.

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