Hambacher Fest

The Hambacher Festival was a German national democratic festival celebrated from 27 May to 30 May 1832 at Hambach Castle near Neustadt an der Haardt in present-day Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. The event was disguised as a non-political county fair. It was one of the main public demonstrations in support of German unity, freedom and democracy during the Vormärz era.

At the time of the 1815 Congress of Vienna, Hambach Castle with the historic Palatinate region on the west bank of the Rhine was part of the Kingdom of Bavaria. It had however been occupied by French Revolutionary troops during the War of the First Coalition in 1794 and incorporated into the French First Republic in 1801. After Napoleon's defeat, the new Bavarian authorities maintained some constitutional rights, but the local population nevertheless suffered from high taxes and increasing censorship.

National and liberal ideas were strongly advocated by student fraternities (Burschenschaften), the first Urburschenschaft was founded in Jena, Thuringia in 1815 and adopted the Black-Red-Gold colours of the Lützow Free Corps forces, who had fought against the Napoleonic troops. A corresponding flag was already carried along the procession to the Wartburg Festival in 1817. Suppressed by the 1819 Carlsbad Decrees, the German democratic movement gained new momentum by the French July Revolution of 1830 as well as by the November Uprising in Russian Congress Poland, sparking unrests in Saxony, Hanover, Hesse, Brunswick and even in the Prussian capital Berlin. The insurgents witnessed the implementation of the French constitutional July Monarchy and the Belgian Revolution, but also the suppression of the Polish National Government of Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski by Russian troops. About 10,000 emigrants fled Poland in the so-called Great Emigration to France via the German states; they were well received especially in Saxony, Baden and Bavaria, where several pro-Polish patronage associations (Polenvereine) arose.

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