It is common knowledge among historians of Germany that the nationalist right frequently and loudly argued that the Weimar Republic, throughout its fourteen-year existence, was fundamentally “un-German,” foreign in inspiration, and resting on a foundation of internationalist political thought.Footnote ¹ Indeed, in the opinion of many on the more traditionally minded right, such as the Deutsche Volkspartei (DVP) and the Deutschnationale Volkspartei (DNVP), monarchy corresponded most closely to Germany's historical development and German national character as a form of state.Footnote ² In large part due to Weimar's ultimate demise at the hands of the conservative and radical right, these sentiments have received the lion's share of scholarly attention. Curiously, however, the republican response to these charges remains less well explored.

This article examines an important aspect of republican Geschichtspolitik deployed in support of both the Weimar state and its foundational political ideas.Footnote ³ It highlights the strongest pro-republic civic association of the entire Weimar period, the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold, and the stories its activists told themselves and the other Germans about German history. Specifically, this article focuses on Reichsbanner narratives of the Revolution of 1848/49 and its importance for the pursuit of a democratic nation-state with a free citizenry. Directed toward the broader Weimar public, these narratives asserted the historical legitimacy of the Weimar state, advertising what republicans saw as a foundational tradition for the republic. Simultaneously, Reichsbanner narratives of 1848/49 countered the historical claims of the political right, including the liberal and conservative right's celebration of the dynastic houses' role in German history. The Reichsbanner's mythologizing of 1848/49 as a moment of essentially democratic self-assertion on the part of the German people played a crucial role in the formation of a specifically republican political culture. And while the Reichsbanner frequently honored the legacy of the Frankfurt National Assembly in the Paulskirche, it also enthusiastically celebrated the heroic, revolutionary violence of March 1848 and the 1849 effort to defend the revolution's gains against Prussian-led counterrevolution. The resulting Myth of the Barricades, to bundle these events into a single symbol, provided republicans with a clear set of heroes and martyrs to honor and from which to draw inspiration.

During the Weimar Republic, politically active Germans engaged in what some termed a “Bürgerkrieg der Erinnerungen” as members of every political milieu called upon and mobilized the past in support of their competing visions of Germany's present and future. As Robert Gerwarth observed, “intense public competition for suitable historical traditions was the norm in Weimar, not the exception” since “the highly fragmented nature of German society ensured that the search for historical identity led to a fundamental public controversy in which various traditions were constructed and invoked in order to legitimize present-day policies and to determine Weimar's place in history.”Footnote ⁴ This last point was especially important for those who sought not to destroy Germany's first liberal democratic political order, but to defend it. In the words of one observer from the republican paramilitary veterans' association, the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold, “It is a continuously recurring assertion in the fight against the republic that the democratic Volksstaat possesses no tradition in German history” and was therefore an imposed system based on foreign models of governance. Yet, the author continued, “one must completely misjudge the driving forces of German development in the past century to come to such an opinion.”Footnote ⁵ The best means of fighting such claims, wrote another Reichsbanner commentator, was to educate the public about “the great struggles over people's rights and the democratic Volksstaat” in the German past.Footnote ⁶

The Reichsbanner's narration of 48ers' heroism, especially in relation to the revolutionary violence on the barricades of March 1848 and the 1849 campaign to defend the Frankfurt Constitution, served several clear purposes. First, it demonstrated that Germans had once been willing to fight for democratic self-rule in opposition to the reigning dynastic houses; Germans did have a democratic past, therefore the republic rested on an appropriately “national” historical tradition. Second, the Reichsbanner wielded its Geschichtsbilder of 1848/49 as a weapon against the monarchical tradition cherished by many on the liberal and conservative right, in an attempt to delegitimate both the history of dynastic rule, particularly that of the Prussian Hohenzollerns, and the idea that German national character best conformed to monarchical rule. Third, though not frequently, Reichsbanner narratives of 1848/49 served as a warning to republicans against accommodation with the conservative right and complacency about the security of the republic. Fourth, narratives of heroic revolutionary violence throughout 1848/49—heroes who fought on the barricades and martyrs who died there and in front of Prussian firing squads—upheld role-models for inspiring and preparing Reichsbanner members for the possibility of literally fighting and dying for the republic. And lastly, the transformation of 1848/49 into heroic myth and the commemoration of those who fought and died for the revolution served as the underpinning of an incipient political religion for the Reichsbanner by fostering an emotional identification with the heroes of 1848/49 and an emotional response to the Myth of the Barricades when it was made manifest. This article therefore investigates an important part of republican efforts to provide their political identity with meaning and tell themselves stories about who Germans were and where they might be going as a people.Footnote ⁷

To the extent that scholars have directed their attention to republicans' efforts to legitimate Weimar democracy through the “invention of traditions,” they have remarked on their attempt to align the republic with the legacy of the Revolution of 1848/49, most clearly symbolized through the adoption of the black-red-gold tricolor as an official emblem of state.Footnote ⁸ For some, prominent historians among them, republicans' desire to associate the republic with 1848/49 symbolized their very weakness and the Weimar state's fundamental lack of legitimacy. In Peter Gay's view, the revolutionaries of 1848 “with their black-red-gold flag, their well-meaning speeches, and their decisive failure” were “pallid and uninspiring” historical figures. They were, especially in comparison with the heroes of the political right, poorly suited for inspiring public enthusiasm for the new liberal democratic order. Hans Mommsen, in his account of Weimar Germany, even questioned republicans' own dedication to the political myths they sought to mobilize, asserting plainly, and with no supporting evidence, that “self-conscious appeal to the idealist traditions of Weimar and the revolutionary traditions of 1848–49 did not embody a genuine political commitment even for the parties of the Weimar Coalition,” underscoring their failure to work toward a “psychological break with [the] imperial past.”Footnote ⁹

More recent scholarship addressing Weimar Germany's republican political culture generally provides a more positive evaluation of the legacy of 1848/49 and its importance for republicans, but is not without its shortcomings. Work by scholars such as Manuela Achilles, Bernd Buchner, Robert Gerwarth, Daniel Bussenius, and Walter Schmidt acknowledges and provides some analysis of the importance of 1848/49 for republicans' understanding of themselves, the republic, and the place both held in Germany's history. To the extent that these works explore the place of 1848/49 in republican Geschichtspolitik, however, they tend to emphasize its importance as a national myth, i.e., as the first attempt to create a unified German nation-state, providing little insight into the workings of 1848/49 as a democratic myth. Indeed, several historians argue that the liberal-democratic aspects of the classic national movement of the Vormärz and the Revolution of 1848/49 held little importance for republican Geschichtspolitik and were overshadowed by the großdeutsch legacy. Bussenius makes the most strongly worded argument for this position, claiming that republicans reduced the legacy of 1848/49 to the “idea of unity.” The liberal and democratic aspects of the 1848 tradition, in his opinion, played a “completely secondary role” in the Geschichtspolitik of the Social Democrats, left liberals, members of the Catholic Center Party, and indeed, even the Reichsbanner.Footnote ¹⁰

Examining the role that the myth of 1848/49 played in the historical narratives and Geschichtspolitik promoted by the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold allows us to see a fuller picture of Weimar's republican political culture, but also disproves some existing preconceptions about the nature of republicans' commitment to it. The Reichsbanner certainly celebrated 1848/49 as an attempt at großdeutsch unification and honored the memory of the Frankfurt National Assembly, but it also placed the memory of 1848/49 as a revolutionary struggle for freedom and democracy center stage in many of its efforts to narrate German history as a set of republic-supporting myths. For the true believers of the Reichsbanner, the barricade fighters of March 1848 and the participants in the campaign to save the Frankfurt Constitution against Prussian-led counterrevolution were not “pallid and uninspiring,” but quite the opposite. They were heroes to hail, martyrs to mourn, and examples to follow.

While a number of republican civic associations in Weimar Germany existed, such as the Deutscher Republikanischer Reichsbund and the Republikanischer Richterbund, the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold was the largest, most active, and had the most significant impact on public life. From its founding in early 1924 to its eventual dissolution in 1933, it presented itself as a pro-republic veterans' organization that would act to defend and promote the republic, its supporters, its symbols, and republican ideals, including a republican view of the German past.Footnote ¹¹ Indeed, the Reichsbanner, according to Deutsche Demokratische Partei (DDP) Reichstag representative Ludwig Haas, acted as a symbol in its own right, visibly embodying republican strength and will.Footnote ¹² Integral to the Reichsbanner's self-image was its proclaimed role as the “shield and sword of the republic,” ready to defend the democratic state against its enemies, both foreign and domestic.Footnote ¹³ Indeed, the association's members loudly and frequently asserted their willingness to stand against the putschist ambitions of the radical left and, especially, right, sometimes quite strongly. As one short notice announced, “We warn you [i.e., Weimar's opponents]! The German democratic republic will only fall if it is defeated through bloody civil war and with it the German Reich!”Footnote ¹⁴ The Reichsbanner's “holiest task,” according to one commentator, was to defend republican freedom. As such, Haas argued, its members, indeed all republicans, must be willing to give their lives to defend the republic. “German Republic,” Karl Bröger wrote in his “Gelöbnis,” “we all swear. The last drop of [our] blood belongs to you!”Footnote ¹⁵

The association grew quickly after its entrance into public life, reaching a membership of more than three million by the end of 1926, according to its chairman, Otto Hörsing, and retaining, following historian Karl Rohe's estimations, at least a million active members throughout its existence.Footnote ¹⁶ In its first years, veterans comprised the vast majority of Reichsbanner members, some ninety percent by Benjamin Ziemann's estimation, but as time progressed the number of veterans relative to nonveterans decreased, especially after the founding of the Reichsbanner's youth group, the Jungbanner. Still, by Ziemann's estimation, nonveterans never made up more than a third of the total membership rolls.Footnote ¹⁷ Officially, all members of a state-supporting party, generally meaning anyone from the Catholic Center Party, the DDP, or the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD), could join the Reichsbanner; however, members of the SPD, the social democratic Allgemeiner Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund (ADGB), and their sympathizers dominated its rolls. Despite this and its close relationship to the SPD and ADGB in the early 1930s, the Reichsbanner's proclaimed “nonpartisan” nature was not simply a charade. Members of the DDP and adherents of the Center Party's left wing were active within the Reichsbanner at the leadership level. The Reichsbanner also received substantial support from members of the Catholic youth organization, the Windhorstbund, as well as Catholic workers in the Rhineland, Upper Silesia, and the Ruhr industrial area. In these areas, Catholic workers apparently provided the majority of members for some local Reichsbanner groups.Footnote ¹⁸ It is also clear that at any given point, a significant number of Reichsbanner members were not enrolled in any political party or union, something the association's leadership lamented.Footnote ¹⁹

The Reichsbanner saw and advertised itself as the “heirs to the fighters of 1848,” continuing their tradition of democratic nationalism,Footnote ²⁰ so much so that the Reichsbanner created a “regular cult around 1848,” though one centered, Bussenius asserts, primarily around the ideal of a Greater Germany.Footnote ²¹ In all, as Karl Rohe, author of the still definitive work on the association, argues, “No other movement during the Weimar years, apart perhaps from the DDP, did as much to popularize the ideal of 1848 as the Reichsbanner Schwarz Rot Gold.”Footnote ²² Seen through the lens of the Reichsbanner's militant republicanism, 1848/49 was a high point in the development of a liberal democratic Greater Germany, an attempt at creating a democratic nation-state that failed due to the dynastic princes' particularism and desire to retain near absolute control over their states. The emergence of the Prussian-led Kleindeutschland of 1870/71 was at best “a very imperfect [mangelhaft] fulfillment of the 1848 ideal of unity,” as well as 48ers' democratic dreams despite the presence of a parliament elected by universal male suffrage, due largely to the lasting importance of the dynastic houses and its half-absolutist constitutional structure.Footnote ²³ At its worst, the Kaiserreich was an authoritarian Zwangsstaat forced upon the German people from above, more a Greater Prussia or confederation of princes than a unified nation-state. Some Reichsbanner commentators argued that the Kaiserreich had no place in the republic's historical lineage and was instead a “withered side branch on the tree of our people.”Footnote ²⁴ Only the republic, in the Reichsbanner view of things, had succeeded in founding “what had been sought in Frankfurt in 1848: the German people's state.”Footnote ²⁵

The Myth of the Barricades

Given the Reichsbanner's militant posturing, it is unsurprising that narratives of heroic revolutionary violence and sacrifice in the face of overwhelming odds during 1848/49 played an important role in Reichsbanner collective memory. This celebration of heroic violence and sacrifice in 1848/49 played the same role for the Reichsbanner as narratives of heroic violence and sacrifice during World War I did for the conservative and radical right. If Weimar's right-wing opposition mobilized a “Myth of the War Experience” for the purpose of attacking the republic and encouraging an uncompromising political militancy and willingness to act within its own ranks, then a contrasting “Myth of the Barricades” provided Reichsbanner members with an example of courage and selflessness on behalf of democracy, seizing their imaginations and encouraging them to defend the Weimar state, even at the risk of their own personal well-being. Said another way, if, as Benjamin Ziemann argues, the Reichsbanner rejected a valorization of the front experience during World War I, offering nothing but criticism of right-wing narratives of soldiers' “heroic courage and readiness to sacrifice” and “enthusiastic voluntary wartime participation,” they presented virtually the same tropes in their depictions of the revolutionary violence of 1848/49.Footnote ²⁶

Certainly the Reichsbanner quite willingly celebrated nonviolent action as heroic. For example, Reichsbanner accounts hailed Ludwig Uhland, despite his support for constitutional monarchy, for his devotion to the cause of a democratic Greater German nation-state and his work in the Frankfurt National Assembly through to its ultimate dissolution. Uhland was, according to one account, a “champion like no other” for “unity, freedom, and fatherland.”Footnote ²⁷ The image of Uhland as hero derived not from his taking up arms against the Old Regime, but rather from his dedication to the goals of the democratic national movement. On multiple occasions, Reichsbanner members approvingly quoted his declaration in the Paulskirche that no one could rule Germany who had not been first “anointed with a full drop of democratic oil.”Footnote ²⁸ Similarly, Reichsbanner narratives hailed Ferdinand Freiligrath as a hero for his devotion to a democratic Germany rather than his active participation in revolutionary violence on behalf of a democratic people's state. Befitting his status as “the poet of the revolution,” Reichsbanner public events and the association's press frequently incorporated and featured several of Freiligrath's poems and songs, especially his work “Schwarz-Rot-Gold,” written the day before the March 18, 1848, insurrection in Berlin.Footnote ²⁹ The Reichsbanner also celebrated others, such as Wilhelm Löwe, who presided over the Stuttgart Rump Parliament of 1849, for actions unrelated to direct military struggle. Even such heroic figures as Karl Schurz and Robert Blum received praise for their engagement in peaceful political activity in the public sphere immediately before and during the revolution.Footnote ³⁰ The crux of heroism then was the willingness to devote oneself to political struggle on behalf of the people, selflessness, the cultivation of a sense of duty toward the greater good, and active engagement in the public life of the polity, all in the face of failure, resistance, or repression. Reichsbanner accounts most often associated the mythic heroism of the 48ers with physical struggle and the Myth of the Barricades, however.

Of the revolutionary struggle's two key moments—the initial March revolts and the extended attempt to stave off counterrevolution—the Myth of the Barricades and its celebration of heroic, revolutionary violence were most closely associated with the popular insurrections of March 1848, with a focus on events in Berlin. The heroism of all those who mounted the barricades in March 1848 derived not simply from the fact that they had fought on said barricades, but that the March insurgents, as Reichsbanner historical narration claimed, took up arms for a unified and democratic Germany. In the Reichsbanner's version of events, during the heady days of March the German people had finally stood up against decades of oppression and broken promises of the establishment of at least limited constitutional government with some measure of popular representation made by a number of dynastic princes. One Reichsbanner author described the revolution's outbreak as a “time of struggle for the oppressed” as “thousands climbed the barricades in Munich and Vienna, in Berlin and Mannheim, ready to risk their lives for democracy and the rule of the people.”Footnote ³¹ Accounts heralded the fighting of March 1848, particularly the March 18 insurrection in Berlin, as having “burst the chains” of the princes' “police and bureaucracy.” “A world truly collapsed,” as a virtual Volksgemeinschaft of middle-class Bürger, students, and workers “took muskets in hand, mounted the barricades,” and fought the regular army.Footnote ³²

Reichsbanner commentators hailed the people armed as a collective force who, in the revolution's opening acts, wrested political power from the princes, if only temporarily. Referring to the fighting in Berlin, Peter Graßman, chairman of the ADGB, spoke before a Reichsbanner assembly marking the eightieth anniversary of the Berlin insurrection and described to his audience how “the people,” provoked by the violent dispersal of a peaceful demonstration, “banded together, stormed weapons shops, defended themselves against the Soldateska, and won. The king was forced to yield.”Footnote ³³ Indeed, this moment appears in many Reichsbanner depictions of 1848/49 as a historic opportunity to rid German lands of dynastic rule. As Eduard David declared in a speech during the Reichsbanner's 1928 national Constitution Day celebration, held in Frankfurt, “monarchical [landesväterlichen] thrones in Vienna and Berlin, in Munich, Dresden, [and others] swayed under the pulse-like shocks of the March Days.” The absolutist system, built according to one account on the ruins of ancient German democracy, appeared to have been broken.Footnote ³⁴ The eventual convening of the Frankfurt National Assembly further attested to the initial success of the early revolution in Reichsbanner narration. But the 48ers' victory is perhaps best symbolized by Geschichtsbilder of Prussian king Frederick William IV, being forced, by his own admission, to grovel before revolutionaries, and agreeing in the moment to a Prussian representative body, while proclaiming the intention to merge Prussia with a united Germany.Footnote ³⁵

The central place held by those who died on the barricades, the Märzgefallenen (“March fallen”), particularly those in Berlin, demonstrates their importance in Reichsbanner political culture. In historian Sabine Behrenbeck's formulation, “the greatest and most admirable hero's act consists of risking and sacrificing, when necessary, his life for a good cause (the common good).” Heroes prove the worth of their cause through their willingness to risk their own well-being and existence. “Heroic death means a qualitative leap within hero worship: the hero's life can now be deemed complete, the hero is deified, and a heroic cult arises as a feature of sacred heroism.”Footnote ³⁶ True to Behrenbeck's observation that through their death heroes gain even more symbolic stature, the Märzgefallenen acted as a powerful symbol in Reichsbanner public life and featured prominently in their Geschichtspolitik. The insurgents who perished during the revolution's first act, one writer exclaimed in a clear example of instrumentalized history, died “for the German republic!”Footnote ³⁷ Their enthusiastic faith and willingness to die “not for any prince, but for people and fatherland,” was upheld as a “living connection” between the men of the Reichsbanner and the barricade fighters of March 1848, lionizing not only the 48ers for their sacrificial courage, but advertising the Reichsbanner's own virtues as defenders of the republic.Footnote ³⁸ Reichsbanner locals held commemorations for those who died in the first weeks of the Revolution of 1848/49 in cities throughout Germany, with the Friedhof der Märzgefallenen in the Friedrichshain district of Berlin providing a focal point for the Cult of the Märzgefallenen. While Social Democrats, and to a lesser extent left liberals, annually assembled at the Friedrichshain cemetery during the Kaiserreich and the early years of the republic, the Reichsbanner took the clear lead in commemorating the Märzgefallenen from 1924 onward.Footnote ³⁹

Much as the political right validated the black-white-red tricolor of the Kaiserreich as the flag under which German soldiers had fought and died during World War I, the Reichsbanner validated the republican black-red-gold as the banner under which Germans fell in the struggle against an oppressive Old Regime. The importance and emotional pull of the Märzgefallenen was such that the Reichsbanner and other republicans used the term Märzgefallenen to describe those killed resisting the Kapp Putsch in 1920, most notably in Thuringia.Footnote ⁴⁰ Similarly, on multiple occasions, Reichsbanner commentators drew a connection between those who died on the March barricades and the men who perished in World War I, with one suggesting March 18 as a day for remembering the war dead, explicitly conflating the legacy of “those who died for their fatherland and the fighters who had already earlier lived, suffered, and fought for freedom and the people's rights.”Footnote ⁴¹ The fact that, after 1925, commemorations of Friedrich Ebert were often held on or around March 18 provides further evidence for the importance of the Märzgefallenen as an axial symbol in Reichsbanner political culture.Footnote ⁴²

Through their “glorious deeds,” the “March fighters [of 1848]” proved themselves worthy of emulation and provided an example for everyone who “had sworn fidelity to the black-red-gold flag.”Footnote ⁴³ But their experience also carried a warning to Weimar's supporters. While Reichsbanner accounts universally applauded the heroic violence of March 1848, some commentators also willingly criticized the revolutionaries for not seizing the opportunity to overthrow the dynastic houses completely. Philipp Scheidemann argued at the founding of a Reichsbanner local group in Charlottenburg, “the people were victorious over the soldiers, but relinquished their victory [through their own actions]” when they offered Friedrich William IV the throne of a united Germany.Footnote ⁴⁴ Reichsbanner commentators presented the unwillingness on the part of many revolutionaries, particularly, as Hermann Wendel charged, those among the middle classes, to carry the revolution further and establish a republic, as a tragic mistake that allowed the dynastic houses the necessary time and space to organize and carry through a successful counterrevolution.Footnote ⁴⁵

Reichsbanner accounts presented this decision on the part of most 48ers to attempt reconciliation and accommodation with the princes, and the resulting divisions this produced among revolutionaries, as a clear warning to Weimar republicans against reconciliation and accommodation with the monarchist “reaction” of the Weimar present. Many Reichsbanner activists expressed deep ambivalence about the inclusion of the liberal and conservative right in the state. They feared, not without some justification as evidenced by the von Papen government, that the monarchist right would use republican institutions against the republic itself or to reshape the republic to the benefit of old elites and corresponding detriment of working-class Germans. The parallels between 1848 and the Weimar period, as seen in 1928 right before elections to the Reichstag, were strong enough to be drawn. In Scheidemann's words, “Today as well, in the years 1918 to 1928, the political reaction has become more powerful through conflicts among the republican segments of society. Today, too, a former imperial general stands at the head of the republic and representatives of parties that openly work against the republic sit in the government.”Footnote ⁴⁶

While the March barricade struggles undoubtedly received the proverbial lion's share of their mythmaking attention, Reichsbanner commentators also took a keen interest in those who fought against the steadily rising tide of monarchist counterrevolution, particularly during the last round of abortive uprisings in support of the Frankfurt Constitution after its rejection by Prussia at the end of April 1849. If the insurgents of March 1848 were responsible for clearing a path for the Frankfurt National Assembly and the first attempt at creating a unified nation-state, those who fought in Dresden, Baden, and the Pfalz during the campaign for the Reich Constitution, stretching from May into July 1849, were celebrated as heroes in Reichsbanner historical narration for desperately seeking to defend democratic progress against overwhelming, Prussian-led reactionary force. At this time of renewed conflict, “Resolute men [sought] to fight against the reinvigorated princes.”Footnote ⁴⁷

For example, the conflict in Dresden was fought, in the opinion of Reichsbanner activist and SPD journalist Hermann Wendel, to protect the gains made in the Paulskirche. “In May 1849 the revolutionary embers that appeared to have already sunk into ashes, once again flamed into bright fervor. In this month, the German man proved once again that he was ready to fight and fall on the barricades for the ideal of political freedom.”Footnote ⁴⁸ In Dresden, according to Wendel's description, the “masses . . . took up arms” and “encased [the city] in more than a hundred barricades,” despite, he argued, the republican distaste many of those “who stood behind the barricades with musket in hand” felt for the constitutional monarchy outlined in the Frankfurt Constitution.Footnote ⁴⁹

Similar to events in Dresden, the campaign that followed in Baden in June and July 1849 to defend the constitution was led, according to one account, by “champions of freedom who wanted the best for their people.”Footnote ⁵⁰ Reichsbanner narratives of this, the final stage of the conflict between the revolutionaries of 1848/49 and the forces of the dynastic states, noted how the Badenese army, influenced by democratic ideals, defected to the ranks of the insurgents, who were themselves made up of a large number of volunteer formations and militias. Their resistance against monarchical forces was quickly overcome and not always heroic in nature, as Hermann Wendel admitted, referring to multiple “scenes of panic” on the part of insurgents. But Reichsbanner Geschichtsbilder, not surprisingly, emphasized the laudable. Wendel, after mentioning the weaknesses of the Badenese military campaign for the Frankfurt Constitution, made certain to list its multiple successes and drew attention to instances of heroic valor, including one battle where “four companies with four cannons” defeated “an entire Army corps” as well as a further encounter during which “on one barricade, a beautiful girl, Mathilde Hitzfeld, waved the black-red-gold flag in a rain of bullets.” Wendel sought to convince his readers that these acts proved that “dedication and self-sacrifice could be found under black-red-gold to at least the same extent as under the princes' standards.”Footnote ⁵¹

Reichsbanner mythmaking framed the dead of March 1848 as martyrs of a purely heroic variety, who voluntarily sacrificed themselves for a Germany governed for and by the German people, while those who died in the fight against counterrevolution were depicted not only as heroic martyrs, but as victims of the dynastic houses' brutality. If, as Behrenbeck maintains, most heroic myths contain an “antagonist, the antihero who embodies the principle of evil, doom, [and] destruction,” then the Reichsbanner's Myth of the Barricades presented the dynastic rulers, particularly Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia, and their armies in this role. In this sense, Reichsbanner Geschichtspolitik mobilized the memory of the revolutionary martyrs and their treatment by forces of monarchist counterrevolution for their effort to delegitimate the monarchical Old Regime.Footnote ⁵² These “martyrs of freedom,” as Wilhelm Hollbach, a Reichsbanner activist associated with the Frankfurter Zeitung, called them, faced either execution or long years of imprisonment after the defeat of the uprisings in Saxony, Baden, and the Pfalz. Their heroic resistance, according to Reichsbanner descriptions, earned them only the most savage cruelty from monarchical authorities. After the suppression of the revolt in Saxony, for example, those who managed to flee into the mountains or woods were said to have been “hunted like wild animals by Uhlans [light cavalry] and rabid peasants.” In Dresden, the “stirred-up Soldateska indiscriminately slaughtered fighters, prisoners, and innocent bystanders,” including throwing insurgent prisoners into the Elbe River. Those insurgents not killed by victorious dynastic forces were taken to Waldheim Prison, where they were “maliciously tortured.”Footnote ⁵³

Overall, Reichsbanner accounts portrayed the final repression of the 48ers as filled with instances of inhumanity that commentators depicted as both a means of reasserting the authority of the dynastic states and revenge for the revolution's initial successes.Footnote ⁵⁴ Reichsbanner accounts blamed Prussia for the most severe repression, which took place after the fall of Fort Rastatt. Hermann Wendel, in an article entitled “Die für die Freiheit starben,” detailed the workings of the Prussian military tribunals, describing them as motivated by a “desire to kill,” handing out death sentences to those who had actually fought against the Prussian army as well as to those who had held “purely civilian office.” Among those thus martyred were “professors and day laborers, officers and hosiery workers, lawyers and cobblers, doctors and domestic servants, teachers and master butchers, pharmacists and tavern-keepers, writers and foundry workers, students and goldsmiths, as well as a Catholic priest and a protestant pastor.”Footnote ⁵⁵ The point is clear. Hohenzollern power had been used against the German people itself.

Wendel also named many of those executed, describing their last words and moments so as to emphasize the valor of the revolutionaries and the inhumanity of the princes' soldiers. In one instance, the son of a Prussian civil servant rejected the offer of clemency his father had managed to obtain for him and faced his firing squad defiantly, shouting “I die for freedom. Shoot well, my brothers!” In another dramatic scene, as narrated by Wendel, the pregnant wife of a young teacher was “roughly pushed back when she wanted to hug her husband goodbye” after he was sentenced to death for his participation in the Baden uprising. Her husband, for his part, bravely asked to be shot that same day rather than waiting in a cell, and was later, Wendel notes, executed by lantern light. Multiple examples of a similar nature served to illustrate further the essential heroism of those who fought for German democracy and essential cruelty of those who sought only to repress them.Footnote ⁵⁶

The suppression of the 48ers, following Reichsbanner Geschichtsbilder, thrust Germany into a period of “darkest reaction.”Footnote ⁵⁷ For the Reichsbanner, this represented but one in a long series of princely betrayals of the people and the idea of a unified nation-state. In their view of the past, the various dynastic houses, particularly the Hohenzollerns, had never championed the nation, either as a unified country or a self-determining people. Rudolf Bovensiepen perhaps best summarized this argument, when he wrote in 1926 that:

Individual Heroes and Martyrs

The attention paid to specific individual 48ers, particularly those from the republican left of the time, complemented the Reichsbanner account of popular participation in the struggle for a democratic nation-state.Footnote ⁵⁹ Narratives that identified and focused on individual heroes generally followed the same contours as celebrations of collective heroism and sacrifice; however, they offered those engaged in mythmaking a greater chance to seize their audience's imagination by providing them with readily recognizable champions who personified the values imbedded in the Reichsbanner's militant republicanism. Reichsbanner activists did not confine themselves to the celebration of a few famous and readily recognized figures. Indeed they considered it important to demonstrate the extensive reach of 1848/49. A significant part of Reichsbanner Geschichtspolitik worked to remind republicans and the broader public of a number of thinkers and activists who had been nearly forgotten over the course of time or whose legacy and importance had been downplayed in history classes during the Kaiserreich. In practice this generally meant the commemoration of Vormärz figures and 48ers of regional and local importance, particularly through articles in Das Reichsbanner, but also through graveside memorial assemblies, caring for long-neglected grave sites, and the unveiling of physical memorials, including, in one case, following a custom from previous centuries, the planting of a linden tree.Footnote ⁶⁰

Reichsbanner historical narration on the Revolution of 1848/49 often contained references to particular 48ers as heroes and martyrs, some of them almost completely forgotten. For example, an article in Das Reichsbanner commemorated August Peters, who wrote under the pen name Elfried von Taura. It described how in 1849 he abandoned his position as the editor of a moderate democratic newspaper in Saxony to fight against the princes' military campaign to restore monarchical authority fully throughout the German lands. Captured after the fall of Fort Rastatt and sick with typhus, he was imprisoned first in Baden and then in Saxony's Waldheim Prison for his actions. Certainly Peters was not a martyr in as direct a fashion as those executed by Prussian soldiers. Still, as the Reichsbanner stressed, he suffered for his beliefs, in part because imprisonment kept him separated for years from his love, Luise Otto, a “champion for democracy and women's rights,” who herself stood as an example of heroic perseverance, remaining true to Peters throughout his period of incarceration. Das Reichsbanner clearly presented Peters to its readership as an example to follow and described him as someone who not only “spoke about his convictions, but someone who proved them with action,” particularly when he joined the armed defense of the Frankfurt Constitution.Footnote ⁶²

Still, the lion's share of Reichsbanner attention to individual 48ers was devoted to a few crucial figures, namely Karl Schurz and Robert Blum, who were seen as “champions” of the republic. Reichsbanner literature celebrated them for their active participation in nonviolent political organization, in public life, and their devotion to liberal democratic ideals. But both were also heralded, as in the case of August Peters, for their willingness to take up arms and to risk their lives in defense of these very ideals. Karl Schurz, a “hero of the republic,” as one article in Das Reichsbanner proclaimed him, was celebrated for both his passionate devotion to liberal democratic ideals and his willingness to confront danger in their defense. Reichsbanner commentators celebrated his active participation in Bonn's democratic circles during the Revolution of 1848/49 and credited him with taking a leading role in organizing students for the revolution and editing a local democratic newspaper until 1849. In that year, following the Reichsbanner account of his life, he took up arms and fought against the Prussian army, helping to defend Fort Rastatt, the last bastion of pro-Frankfurt Constitution armed force, until its ultimate fall, after which he managed to escape via a hidden passage and flee to Switzerland.Footnote ⁶³

But, Reichsbanner Geschichtsbilder emphasized, Schurz's willingness to fight for democracy did not end there. Instead, these accounts stressed how, shortly after the final defeat of the 48ers, he engaged in a successful swashbuckling adventure to free his friend and mentor, Gottfried Kinkel, from Spandau prison, where Kinkel had been sent by Prussian authorities after being captured fighting Prussian troops in Baden. Reichsbanner commentators further underscored Schurz's continuing dedication to freedom and democracy after 1848/49 when they described how he took an active part in the American abolitionist movement after emigrating to the United States and later took up arms once again during the American Civil War “in order to fight for the cause of freedom.” Schurz was perhaps an ideal mythical hero for Reichsbanner Geschichtspolitik. He represented not only the willingness to fight and risk one's life for democratic and egalitarian politics, but also the willingness to engage in the more mundane daily political struggle of peacetime. “As a true representative of the 1848er, the men of German idealism,” Karl Schurz had, “an enduring monument . . . in the hearts of German republicans.”Footnote ⁶⁴ In fact, one representative of the Reichsbanner's central committee, speaking at a commemoration of Schurz in his hometown of Liblar, vowed that the association's members “would fight in the spirit of Karl Schurz against servility and the subservient mindset and for civic freedom and social progress.”Footnote ⁶⁵

If, in the Reichsbanner vision of the past, Schurz represented the freedom fighter as both activist and adventurer, then Robert Blum exemplified the freedom fighter as activist and embodiment of defiant resistance. Reichsbanner historical accounts accorded Blum with more attention than virtually any other figure from the classic democratic national movement of the Vormärz and 1848/49. That the Reichsbanner wished to associate itself with Blum was underscored by one author's claim that “he would play a leading role in the Reichsbanner, if he were alive today.”Footnote ⁶⁶ Reichsbanner accounts heralded Blum for his humble origins among the common people, which, in Reichsbanner eyes, accounted for his embrace of democratic politics and his opposition to monarchical authority. They also celebrated his importance as a leader of democratic nationalist politics in Saxony and as an organizer of and representative to the Frankfurt National Assembly. For the Reichsbanner, Blum embodied democratic progress not only through his ideas and actions, but also through his very nature as a “man of the people” in whose breast “the longing of the Vormärz middle class for freedom and unity burned . . . as an eternally bright flame.”Footnote ⁶⁷

Still, Blum's participation in the October 1848 defense of revolutionary Vienna against Habsburg forces under Windischgrätz and his subsequent execution received the most attention from Reichsbanner mythmakers, marking him as someone whose example the militant republicans of the Reichsbanner wished to advertise among their own ranks and to the broader German public as a “hero of freedom.”Footnote ⁶⁸ In the Reichsbanner narrative of events, Blum traveled to Vienna in October 1848 to bring Viennese revolutionaries messages of support from the Paulskirche's left-wing delegates, but ended up joining the resistance to Habsburg counterrevolution in the conviction that the fate of the whole German revolution would be decided there. This belief, in Hermann Wendel's opinion, “pointed him to the place in which he belonged: on the front line at the head of a volunteer company, defending the revolution with arms against armed counterrevolution.” Other accounts also credited him with not only participating in the fighting, but also playing a key role in the organization of Vienna's defenses until they were finally overcome by the Habsburg army's overwhelming strength.Footnote ⁶⁹

Following the collapse of revolutionary Vienna, Habsburg authorities arrested Blum and eventually executed him. It is here that Blum truly became a mythic hero in Reichsbanner Geschichtsbilder. He had risked death for his ideals and, according to one Reichsbanner story, “scorned flight” after the fall of revolutionary Vienna, remaining in his hotel room until he was arrested.Footnote ⁷⁰ Reichsbanner stories about Blum dwelt particularly on his death. He is presented as bravely facing his firing squad, baring his chest and boldly proclaiming in his final moments that he died for nothing less than freedom.Footnote ⁷¹ Blum as hero and martyr was mythic in stature and proof of Germans' willingness to fight and die for democracy. But the Reichsbanner could also use Blum in his incarnation as a martyr to attack the legacy of Germans' monarchical past.

If Prussian authorities' treatment of those who had fought for the Frankfurt Constitution had revealed, following Reichsbanner Geschichtsbilder, their vindictiveness and their willingness to suppress the German people in defense of their own power, then Blum's treatment at the hands of the Habsburg military did much the same for Austria's ruling house. Reichsbanner commentators accused Habsburg officials of ignoring Blum's parliamentary immunity as a representative of the National Assembly and indeed deliberately using his execution as an open rebuke to its claim to legitimate authority. In the Reichsbanner's court of opinion, the Austrian monarchy stood accused of using brute force against the will of the sovereign people, i.e., the nation. By this formulation, which could be extended to the Hohenzollerns, the Habsburgs were not German and were indeed traitors to the nation, as evidenced by their execution of Blum and, by association, the suppression of the revolutionaries in Vienna. But Reichsbanner mythmakers did not hold the Habsburg state solely responsible for Blum's murder. Commentators placed blame for Blum's death squarely on the shoulders of dynastic Germany as a whole. As a result, in Wendel's view, atonement for the shedding of Blum's blood only came on November 9, 1918, with the collapse of the Kaiserreich.Footnote ⁷²

The Means of Remembrance

The Reichsbanner expressed its professed connection to the revolutionaries of 1848/49 in a variety of ways. As should already be clear, its members actively promoted the memory of 1848/49 in their writings and speeches. Local branches of the association also organized evening lectures for their members, sometimes including slide shows, to help further educate their membership about 1848/49. But aside from public pronouncements on the heroic revolutionaries of barricades made by its authors and speakers, the Reichsbanner also promoted the 1848/49 legacy and their status as guardians of this legacy through a set of commemorative practices.

The Reichsbanner frequently, though not solely, held its ceremonies honoring 48ers and marking particular events of the revolution at grave sites and memorials, which were sometimes maintained by local Reichsbanner groups. Commemorations of 48ers generally took the same form as the Reichsbanner's commemorations of the war dead, as described by Benjamin Ziemann. Attendees would often march in organized ranks both to and from the site of the commemorative ceremony. There they would hear a series of musical pieces, choral and instrumental, along with readings of poetry by 48ers and short speeches all organized around a keynote speech. Speeches not only described the person or people being honored, the ideals they struggled for, and the events they took part in, but also frequently called upon the assembled Reichsbanner members to continue their legacy of struggle against “reaction” into the Weimar present. At some point in the ceremony, if held at a grave site or memorial, activists would lay wreaths decorated with black-red-gold ribbons on the graves of or at the foot of monuments to the heroic 48ers they honored. Frequently, when conditions allowed, the Reichsbanner incorporated torchlight parades into these proceedings, which almost certainly helped to foster a near religious atmosphere for participants as well as a striking outward appearance for any audience on hand.Footnote ⁷³ In some memorial events, the Reichsbanner stationed an honor guard at or near the grave site of the 48ers to be commemorated. This was often the case with the annual commemorative ceremonies at the Friedhof der Märzgefallenen, but also held true in other instances, such as the fiftieth anniversary commemoration of Ferdinand Freiligrath's death during which a Reichsbanner honor guard stood watch over his grave for an entire day.Footnote ⁷⁴

The Reichsbanner also expressed its claim on the legacy of 1848/49 through material means. On occasion this meant sponsoring commemorative plaques or other physical markers celebrating the memory of the heroes of 1848/49, in other words, creating stages for future memorial activity. On March 20, 1927, for example, the Reichsbanner local in Calbe unveiled a plaque attached to the house in which Wilhelm Löwe, the president of the Stuttgart Rump Parliament of 1849, had lived. The memorial plaque was intended “to keep the memory of this fighter, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for his participation in the movement for German freedom and who was forced to spend a decade in exile, alive for future generations.”Footnote ⁷⁵ Similarly, in another case, members of the association looked back to ancient and medieval practices for inspiration, planting a linden tree to mark and honor the memory of one lesser-known 48er, Ludwig Würkert from the Saxon town of Leisnig.Footnote ⁷⁶

The most unique physical means by which the Reichsbanner asserted its revolutionary democratic inheritance was through the use of living bodies, as demonstrated in the case of Wolfgang Freiligrath. Freiligrath, the last surviving son of Ferdinand Freiligrath, had worked in the village of Külz im Hunsrück as a farmer, hunter, and fisher until he was too old and infirm to continue this life path. Having lost his savings during the postwar inflation, the impoverished Freiligrath sought financial assistance and gained a small monthly pension of fifty RM from Reich and Prussian state authorities, with each taking responsibility for half of the total pension.Footnote ⁷⁷ For the Reichsbanner, Freiligrath was a living connection to his father. Accordingly, the association's leaders gave him a place of honor at a number of Reichsbanner events held within traveling distance of his home, including an assembly in Mainz on August 30, 1925, as well as the fiftieth anniversary commemoration of his father's death and the Reichsbanner's national Constitution Day celebration in Frankfurt am Main in 1928. Freiligrath's presence lent considerable symbolic weight to Reichsbanner public ceremonies, thus adding a corresponding degree of legitimacy to the association's proclaimed status as the inheritor of 1848/49's heroic democratic legacy.Footnote ⁷⁸

Far more often than through the dedication of memorials or the honoring of 48ers' living descendents, the Reichsbanner physically demonstrated its ties to 1848/49 with the collection and display of flags that had actually been present during the revolution, or in some cases even earlier moments in the history of the classic national movement. As relics, these flags then became an important part of Reichsbanner political rituals when they were available. Within its first year of existence, the association's national leadership called upon local Reichsbanner groups to search actively for historic flags. One article in Das Reichsbanner urged the association's members to find “flags and other mementos from the time of 1848” and stated that, when possible, “attempts must be made to bring them into the possession of the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold, the heirs in spirit to the 1848 movement.”Footnote ⁷⁹ The numerous mentions made in the Reichsbanner press of historical flags' presence at Reichsbanner events throughout Germany attests to the success of this project.Footnote ⁸⁰

Historic flags played an integral role in the association's public festivals: Constitution Day celebrations, national assemblies, locally and regionally sponsored flag consecrations, Reichsbanner “republican days,” and at commemorations of the war dead, meriting special mention in reports on these events and in accompanying photographs in the Reichsbanner press.Footnote ⁸¹ The Illustrierte Reichsbanner Zeitung especially showcased photos of historic flags in use. Over the course of 1925, for example, photos printed included a montage depicting flag bearers at the Reichsbanner's 1925 national gathering in Magdeburg arranged around a central image of three flags from 1848 as well as a photo depicting the Bremen Reichsbanner local accepting a donated 1848 flag.Footnote ⁸² Historic flags received pride of place in Reichsbanner public performance: during the Magdeburg Reichsbanner's 1924 Constitution Day celebration, more than 300 black-red-gold flags were flown during the event's central march, including “two that were present during the revolutionary struggles of 1848.”Footnote ⁸³ The flags themselves were veterans, further drawing a connection between them, the 48ers who had originally flourished them on the barricades, and the republican veterans of the Reichsbanner. Similarly the 1929 national Reichsbanner Constitution Day celebration in Berlin included a section of flag bearers composed of representatives from the Pfalz, Gau Magdeburg-Anhalt, and Greater Breitenbach who carried, respectively, a flag from the Hambach Fest in 1832, an 1848 banner associated with 48er Wilhelm Löwe, and an 1813 Bürgerwehr flag. But historic banners also made appearances in far more modest circumstances, as during a 1925 flag consecration in the fishing village of Greetsiel in East Frisia.Footnote ⁸⁴ The historic 1848 flag used in Greetsiel was even the focus of an article describing how in late 1924 the village's protestant pastor transferred the flag, which carried the embroidered inscription “To the Bürgerwehr from the women and maidens of Greetsyl [sic] 1848,” from his possession to that of the newly formed local Reichsbanner group. Das Reichsbanner reported that “Our comrades in Greetsiel made the transfer of the old flag the center point of a republican fest that [many] far outside the borders of East Frisia took notice of. It therefore provides a wonderful example of how one should honor the aged symbols of the democratic fighters of 1848.”Footnote ⁸⁵

By using historic flags in its rituals, the Reichsbanner asserted its claims to the heritage of the entire classic national movement on behalf of both the republic and its membership, while at the same time made this political heritage visible to the public. That this claim was accepted by the majority of Reichsbanner members can be assumed. But flags from the nineteenth century appealed to more than just the intellect. If reports from the republican press are to be believed, the appearance of historic flags during a procession or festival often invoked a strong emotional response from both participants and observers. They acted as relics that added an emotive, near religious aura to events. The flags could also themselves be seen as both heroes and martyrs, i.e., veterans of previous struggles on behalf of the German people. An account of the review parade conducted during the Reichsbanner's 1927 national Constitution Day celebration in Leipzig noted that “the old 48er flags, shot-through [zerschossenen] and weathered, once again . . . were greeted silently and full of reverence, and many an eye was moist before these witnesses to a failed popular struggle.” Similarly, according to the Berliner Tageblatt's report on the 1929 Reichsbanner Constitution Day celebration in Berlin, there were “storms of enthusiasm [when] troops with the old 48er flags march by. They stride and march with pride and lift the black-red-gold in the wind.”Footnote ⁸⁶