The Rhine Crisis of 1840 has traditionally been understood as an important moment in the rise of German nationalism, when France's appeals for conquests on the Rhine were answered by the Germans in a negative way, surprising in its strength and extent. The defense of this “most German river” united people from various parts of the German Confederation as well as the various social classes, and support for the defense of the Rhine became a matter of national duty and honor. According to widespread opinion still shared by the majority of historians, the Rhine Crisis (Rheinkrise) was a national experience of crucial importance that transformed German nationalism into a mass and more aggressive movement.Footnote ²

The principle problem regarding this assessment is that, even if the crisis seemed to present an important chapter in the rise of German nationalism, its evaluation as a powerful impulse for the quantitative as well as qualitative change in the German national movement is based upon very limited data: its impact on the German public has been researched to a rather limited extent, both in a territorial as well as qualitative sense. Moreover, a few of the excellent scholarly contributions on this topic written in recent years convincingly dispute the idea that the Rhine Crisis constituted a turning point in the rise of German nationalism. The young German historian Johannes Honsell analyzed the consequences of the crisis for Bavaria in an excellent diploma thesis based on the greatest number and variety of primary sources used by any historian so far. He proved convincingly that, in Bavaria, the crisis was not a transitional point leading to mass or even more chauvinist nationalism, and that although Bavarians uniformly opposed France's territorial aspirations, no surge of German nationalism occurred among them. Instead, they remained loyal to their king, native country, and the German Confederation.Footnote ³ In 2013, American historian James M. Brophy published a similarly revisionist article in the Journal of Modern History, in which he also questioned the correctness of the traditional evaluation of the crisis as a crucial point in the rise of German nationalism. He pointed out that the traditional interpretation of German nationalism's shift to a more chauvinistic and aggressive movement is not tenable, at least in the Rhineland, and that such a progress represented just one of the alternatives within an incoherent ideology characterized by various streams of opinion, among which the chauvinistic position was by far not the only one.Footnote ⁴

This article attempts to support the recent revisionist scholarly findings on the significance of the Rhine Crisis for the rise of German nationalism by analyzing its impact on a so far unresearched territory of the German Confederation: the Western part of the Austrian Empire. This choice was made for two principal reasons. First, more than seven million “Austrian Germans” lived there in late 1840, and since the traditional thesis of the crucial importance of the crisis in the rise of German nationalism covers all Germans, the German-speaking Austrians also deserve attention. Second, scholarly research has predominantly been dedicated to constitutional southwestern Germany, a region with a more or less free press, a fact that enables easier analysis of public opinion. As this paper also attempts to prove, however, such research is also feasible for countries with more autocratic regimes, even if it is more difficult. Consequently, the Rhine Crisis is not only a goal in itself but also a means for the second aim of this article: to present an analysis of public opinion in the Austrian Empire to an extent not yet undertaken, and to show that the absence of a more or less nationalist answer to the crisis did not only or primarily result from state repression. In making this argument I make another revisionist claim: that the Austrian Empire, despite the unquestionable existence of the repressive apparatus, was no “European China” as has been claimed. Its inhabitants were able legally to obtain a sufficient amount of trustworthy information about world affairs and to discuss them in public without fear of punishment, as also happened during 1840.

It is evident that to be able to answer the question whether and to what extent the Rhine Crisis contributed to the spread of German nationalism and intensified its chauvinistic element in the Austrian Empire, it is necessary to overcome several important methodical problems. First of all, one must define this “nationalism.” What is always necessary to keep in mind is the fact that though the aim of German nationalism was always the same—a Germany unified upon the national principle—due to its qualitative and quantitative progress from the early nineteenth century it was not a unified movement, and various ideological groups gradually emerged. The German nationalists held liberal, democratic, religious, or chauvinist views, and often a mixture of these. One also cannot underestimate the prevailing romantic “nationalism” of the conservatives, including some German rulers, who generally revered the German Confederation and who supported the existing political status quo. Since the principle aim of this paper is not to deal with deep methodological or theoretical deliberations about German nationalism, its definition will intentionally be very simple: “German nationalism” will be used without any pejorative connotation as a synonym for a national movement with a political agenda that sought the transformation of the confederation into a constitutional and more centralized nation-state on the territory where this nation lived. The term “Germany” will be applied for the whole of the German Confederation, which means a territory considerably exceeding the borders of the present Federal Republic of Germany.

The second and no less important methodological issue is connected with the use of relevant primary sources. The approach of historians dealing with the public response to the Rhine Crisis has usually studied selected newspapers, pamphlets, parliamentary debates, and cultural-political outputs—the political songs. Other primary sources have been used scarcely or not at all. Such an approach has limited most investigations to the attitudes of the educated classes or, better said, to those members of society who were active in public discussions; this is rather deceptive for the evaluation of public opinion, since it merely reveals the opinions of a minority group whose attitudes were not necessarily shared by the majority. Moreover, the significance of some sources, especially political songs with a Rhine motif, has been greatly exaggerated for the research of the nationalist response to the crisis. These songs, including the most well-known one, Rheinlied (Song of the Rhine) by Nikolaus Becker, were directed to the defense of the federal territory but not connected to the dream of changing the political structure of Germany. For this reason they cannot also serve as unequivocal proof of any comprehensive nationalist movement within German society in late 1840. The same can be said about the Germans' willingness to defend the Rhineland against the French, or their invectives against France and the French nation: neither may necessarily be connected with German nationalist feelings and, therefore, cannot be automatically regarded as manifestations of these sentiments. The convincing force of Brophy's and Honsell's arguments is intensified by the application of a significant number of primary sources generally omitted by other historians dealing with the Rhine Crisis in the past; Honsell brings to light police reports, whereas Brophy emphasizes the significance of folk culture.

To be able to reach convincing conclusions about reactions to the Rhine Crisis, it is necessary to research various kinds of primary source and in considerable numbers, including Austrian and foreign newspapers, travelogues, diaries, the correspondence of foreign diplomats residing in Vienna and other foreigners visiting Austria in late 1840, political poetry, products of popular culture, and by far the most important source of information: police reports on public opinion—so-called situation reports (Stimmungsberichte)—studied in the archives in Vienna, Prague, and Brno (Brünn).Footnote ⁵ Regarding all these primary sources, what is important is not only what they contain but also what is missing in their content. If, for example, a Frenchman visiting Bohemia in September and October 1840 did not mention in his private letters any anti-French and German-nationalist sentiments expressed by the general public, to a certain degree this is also evidence of little nationalist upheaval in this part of the German Confederation.

In connection with the research of the public response to the crisis in the Austrian Empire, the use of a comparative method must also be emphasized for two main reasons. First, since the situation reports were written by state bureaucrats with certain interests and for specific aims, the comparison of their contents from all the Western provincial capitals where they were created is all the more necessary in order to avoid erroneous simplifications. Second, a comparative method will also be applied when the situation in the Western part of the Austrian Empire is compared with that in Bavaria. Given their similar internal conditions—the Bavarians were religiously and culturally close to the Austrians, both were traditionally loyal to their rulers, and in both countries the expression of political views was considerably limited by censorship—such comparison with the reaction of the Bavarians to the Rhine Crisis will lead to a better understanding of the Austrian public's response. In short, as this article also attempts to prove, it is above all necessary to base the study of public opinion upon the more solid foundations of a combination of various primary sources and methodical approaches before any conclusion can be reached about the impact of the Rhine Crisis on nationalistic tendencies in Germany.

The structure of the article conforms to the problems it has to overcome. Following a brief account of the background to the crisis, the first part is dedicated to the situation in Bavaria, for the reason mentioned in the preceding paragraph. The second part focuses on the ability of the Austrians to obtain impartial news about foreign events and the extent of their interest in them. The final part analyzes the response of the Austrian Germans to the war scare of late 1840 and the reasons why the crisis had neither a short-term nor a long-term impact on the rise of German nationalism among them.

The Rhine Crisis was a product of the Turko-Egyptian War of 1839–41, in which the sultan clashed with his powerful Egyptian pasha, Muhammad Ali, and was saved from the latter's excessive territorial demands only by the intervention of Great Britain, Russia, Austria, and Prussia, who on 15 July 1840 signed the London Convention for the Pacification of the Levant. According to the London Convention's stipulations, the four signatory powers were to force Muhammad Ali, either by diplomatic or military measures, to yield and to reconcile himself to hereditary tenure in Egypt. Since diplomatic means proved to be insufficient, owing to the pasha's intransigence, the British, Austrians, and Turks deployed troops to Syria in September to pursue the pasha's troops back to Egypt and to force him to limit his power to this Ottoman province, both of which were accomplished before the year ended. Since France decided not to act against Muhammad Ali, who was regarded by many French as their ally, and remained apart from the 1840 London Convention, the other powers acted without its support and approval. This, however, amounted to a serious diplomatic defeat for France. The French government, led by Adolphe Thiers and backed by King Louis Philippe, started preparations for war with the aim of forcing the signatories of the convention to make some concessions to Muhammad Ali and thereby to France. The French public even talked about the necessity to avenge its allegedly injured national dignity by force, and the press eagerly invoked the war that was to be crowned by the seizure of France's so-called natural frontiers: the Rhine and the Alps. Since the signatory powers did not give in to French threats, Louis Philippe decided to reduce the tension by accepting the resignation offered by his prime minister in October 1840. Though the great powers remained divided until the signature of the London Straits Convention on 13 July 1841, Thiers's political downfall and the constitution of a new French ministry virtually ended the whole affair at the end of 1840.Footnote ⁶

Whereas armed conflict in Europe was averted, a war of words broke out between the French and the Germans over possession of the left bank of the Rhine. This debate also seized Bavaria, where the influence of the crisis on the rise of German nationalism can be judged to have been entirely insignificant. Opinions motivated by pan-German feelings almost did not exist in this country, or their content was cultural-romantic rather than political in nature. Becker's song, for example, was indeed sung in Bavaria, and the sources make clear that performances took place in Munich and at concerts in Regensburg and Augsburg. Since, however, the singing of this particular song cannot be directly connected to German nationalism, its popularity proves very little in this respect. Moreover, this popularity never reached a mass scale, including in the Palatinate (Pfalz), and its author did not find in Bavaria as many followers of the Rhine lyrics as was the case in Baden or Prussia's Rhine Province. While celebrations of Prussian King Frederick William IV's birthday in mid October 1840 illustrated the popularity of these lyrics in Prussia, at the Oktoberfest in Munich there were no signs of this kind. Much as in other parts of Germany, the singing of Becker's song had ceased completely in Munich by the end of 1840. Moreover, during the whole crisis local people were suffused with Bavarian patriotism, as reflected in the fact that their country was represented at public events by the white–blue and not the red–black–gold color combination. The Bavarians welcomed the unity of German states and people against France, but this had nothing in common with a demand for political unification in one state upon the national principle.Footnote ⁷

Despite the fact that Bavaria numbered among the states that had constitutions, censorship of the press also existed here, namely of articles with political content concerning domestic as well as foreign affairs. Any political discussion in late 1840 was thus carried out in basically moderate terms, and a negligible number of written reactions to the crisis have been preserved. Proof of the dominance of Bavarian patriotism over German nationalism must thus be primarily sought in the lack of nationalist expressions at Bavarian universities and public events. Even if the hostile French rhetoric was criticized and the desire to conquer Alsace and Lorraine was also expressed in this south German state, both lacked vitriolic anti-French invectives, in Bavaria as well as in the Palatinate. When France was labeled as the enemy, this label was not connected with words like “hereditary” or “mortal.” Diplomats and army officers who visited the Bavarian troops at Nuremberg noticed that their absolute willingness to defend Germany was in no way accompanied by a hatred of France. One can briefly say that the attitude of the Bavarians toward France was moderate and also that it had improved by 1841.Footnote ⁸

With little exaggeration, it is possible to claim that the attitude of the Bavarian nation was personified in that of King Ludwig I, who demonstrated strong feelings of pan-German solidarity in compliance with his poetic-romantic nature. Ludwig I was a supporter of the federative element that, as the majority of the Germans agreed, was deeply rooted in the German nation since the time of the Holy Roman Empire and lived on in the German Confederation. In the case of the king, his unwillingness to give up his own sovereignty on behalf of a greater national unit naturally played an important role, but the same dislike of political centralization also existed among his subjects. When Ludwig I realized his romantic ideas in the Walhalla monument that was opened in October 1842 to honor famous German personalities, reaction showed not only that a considerable number of Bavarians perceived Bavaria and not Germany as their homeland, but also that they much preferred the former to the latter. Some of them even criticized the Walhalla monument as a pointless waste of money on something that had very little in common with Bavaria and its history. With regard to the king's speech on the need for Germany's unity, given during Walhalla's opening, Ludwig I noted that this unity “must be achieved and preserved not by exciting the imagination but by holding down the principles, by safeguarding the common interests giving temporary preference to these before particular and personal ones”Footnote ⁹ —an obvious allusion to Ludwig I's dislike of any concessions in federal affairs. In short, no mass nationalist enthusiasm exploded in Bavaria because of the Rhine Crisis.Footnote ¹⁰

The Austrian Empire was, like Bavaria, a predominantly Catholic region with a generally conservative population loyal to their land and to their monarch, Emperor Ferdinand I. Austria's population in 1840 numbered around 7.5 million German-speaking people, particularly in its western part,Footnote ¹¹ and it has never been excluded by historians from the thesis about the significant impact of the Rhine Crisis on German nationalism, even if no research has ever actually been made on Austrian attitudes during the course of the crisis. The traditional claim about Austrian attitudes is actually based on one primary source only: a diplomatic report in which the Prussian envoy in Vienna, Count Mortimer von Maltzan, claimed that in Austria,

This single account is naturally insufficient to evaluate how more than seven million people reacted to the crisis, especially given Maltzan's personal opinions. He was one of the hawks in Potsdam who sought to exploit the crisis to increase Prussia's influence over Germany, and this certainly seemed to influence the character of his report.

Earlier in the year, Maltzan's subaltern, Heinrich von Bockelberg, expressed another important opinion shared by other foreign diplomats: that the Austrians had not previously cared about foreign events.Footnote ¹³ This was a typical mistake in judgment caused by a confusion of “interest” and “reaction.” The Austrians did not react to foreign events as strongly as, for example, the French did, and their political system naturally precluded such reactions; but this in no way meant that they had no interest in the affairs of the world. Moreover, despite the existence of a strong repressive apparatus, one can no longer agree with the traditional view of Austria as a “European China” whose subjects were separated by a kind of Great Wall from the rest of the world. At least for incoming information about events abroad, such an evaluation would be too harsh.Footnote ¹⁴

Foreign news was presented to the population under the supervision of the Viennese chancellery in the Österreichischer Beobachter (hereafter: ÖB). From this newspaper the news was adopted, mostly in abbreviated form, by regional newspapers. What was not contained in the ÖB usually could not be found in any other Austrian newspapers. Besides this source controlled by the government, Austrians could gain access to information from abroad through the foreign press, pamphlets, and books, either officially allowed or prohibited but still available in great numbers in the monarchy due to smuggling. From the former the most important source was the Allgemeine Zeitung published in Augsburg (hereafter: AZ); this newspaper was by far the most read in the Austrian Empire.Footnote ¹⁵

Given the uniformity of the Austrian press, it is sufficient for a historian to investigate the content of the ÖB to see what the people could ascertain about foreign events from it, and this appears to have been quite a lot indeed. Even if a sterile paraphrasing of events dominated, and analyses and polemics were sporadic and mostly adopted from foreign newspapers, a reader could find very detailed news from around the world reported with surprising frankness, at least for the conditions of a “European China.” Within a normal issue of eight pages it was possible to find news of various kinds, from political negotiations and wars to social protests, assassinations, and revolutions. Long passages from parliamentary debates in France and Great Britain and pieces of diplomatic correspondence were also reprinted. The credibility of the information was generally good: the newspaper tried to appear impartial, and the falsification of news was not its usual habit. Censorship was evident primarily in accentuating news that was agreeable to the chancellery and sidelining that which was not.Footnote ¹⁶ When comparing the content of the newspaper with the facts connected with the Rhine Crisis or the Eastern Question in 1840, one can agree with the claim of British traveler Peter Even Turnbull, who, in a book published in the same year, attempted to assess impartially conditions in the monarchy. Regarding the local newspapers, he asserted, “of all that passes in foreign countries, they are allowed to render a tolerably fair and full account.”Footnote ¹⁷ As for the foreign newspapers legally distributed in Austria, their number was considerable, and not all of them were in praise of the empire: some of them were allowed only with great reluctance on the part of the state authorities. The AZ, the most widely read and popular among all social classes, was able to offer an extraordinary quality of news service owing to the considerable number of reporters it had throughout Europe. It ranked as foremost among all German newspapers in this respect.Footnote ¹⁸ Unlike the ÖB, the AZ dedicated a great deal of space to polemics and analysis, particularly in a special supplement to each issue (Beilage zur Allgemeinen Zeitung), which increased its attraction even more. Its content was not always favorable to Austria, which led to disputes between the editor's office and the chancellery, and sometimes the former had to yield, since the Austrian Empire was a very important market; but it never became Metternich's mouthpiece, as German historian Heinrich von Treitschke claimed.Footnote ¹⁹

One can summarize that for the alleged “European China” the Austrians were pretty well informed—and in many respects impartially—about foreign events by the local as well as the foreign press, insofar as it was allowed.Footnote ²⁰ Moreover, they could also take advantage of prohibited foreign newspapers, sometimes even with the consent of the state authorities, which in special cases permitted their legal subscription. However, these exceptions were rare and mostly granted to institutions or readers' associations. This was how the Viennese Juridisch-Politischer Leseverein (Legal-Political Association of Readers) obtained endorsement for the subscription of the liberal and sharply anti-Austrian Leipziger Zeitung in 1843 and Die Grenzboten, Le Constitutionnel, and Le Siècle in the following year. If approval was not given, smuggling ensued. During the period under research, smuggling was extensive and allowed the penetration of a considerable number of prohibited journals, books, and pamphlets into Austrian territory.Footnote ²¹ That it was sometimes not necessary to use sophisticated measures is evident from the letter of French citizen Michel Chevalier, who crossed the Austrian border in western Bohemia in September 1840. When a customs officer asked him whether he had anything to declare, Chevalier answered negatively together with a small bribe, which made the officer allow him to continue without inspecting his luggage. Chevalier, who had already experienced the conditions of some other borders of the federal states, wrote to France indicating that customs officers in other countries had not behaved toward him with such benignity: “Oh, Austrian customs house! You are by far the most ridiculous of all customs offices!”Footnote ²² Owing to this behavior and the inventiveness of the smugglers, it was not difficult to transport literary contraband into the monarchy, where it was possible to procure almost all prohibited titles. The insufficient state control is evident from the roundup in the Juridisch-Politischer Leseverein in 1844 that disclosed sixty-two of them.Footnote ²³

Other sources of information were those people who could travel abroad and foreigners; consequently, places with a greater concentration of the latter could stimulate debates about world events—which explains why the Opium War between Great Britain and China was often debated in the well-known west Bohemian spa town of Carlsbad.Footnote ²⁴ Another important impetus for similar debates came from reading circles or informal meetings in pubs, cafés, wine bars, or simply in private homes where members of high society gathered. The discussions encompassed intellectuals as well as merchants and students. Concurrent with the rapid increase in literacy, the demand for books and newspapers multiplied, and in 1840 there was a large reading population in Austria whose members generally came from the nobility and the educated classes in towns, though it was also possible to find them in the rural areas. The debates were free and, much like the reading of the prohibited press, were actually not associated with any penalty. The prohibited literature was often read in public and ordinarily discussed in reading circles, as well as in the apartments of the intellectuals and the salons of the nobility, which were often attended by the high functionaries of the state, including Metternich himself. A certain “broadmindedness” of the governmental authorities is evident from the above-mentioned roundup in the Juridisch-Politischer Leseverein that disclosed a considerable number of prohibited titles: nothing happened to its members, it was possible for the association to continue to exist, and it even continued to fight with the bureaucrats for the purchase of usually prohibited foreign newspapers—and not without success. In connection with the German nationalist movement, it is possible to introduce two examples of tolerance on the part of the state. The first is the moderate reaction of the state authorities to the contacts between the Masons in the west Bohemian town of Asch with democratic German nationalist Robert Blum. The existence of the connection between this “radical” and the emperor's subjects reveals the trickling of information between the monarchy and the world, the mild rebukes by the local authorities, and the moderation of the repressive apparatus that in no way can be compared with the authoritarian and totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century. The second example is the outspoken proposal of the inhabitants of the same town to erect a statue of Baden liberal Karl von Rotteck, whose books were strictly forbidden in Austria.Footnote ²⁵

Austrians were not only able to obtain a great deal of information about foreign events, but they also paid significant attention to them and debated them, as is confirmed from the police's situation reports. In early 1840, public attention was attracted by a considerable number of these events, including the Opium War, the British war with Afghanistan, the so-called Sulphur War between Great Britain and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, the Russian campaign against Khiva, and the French fighting in Algeria.Footnote ²⁶ This attention was not only from the nobility, educated people, and merchants in the towns, but also from people in rural areas. As Turnbull noticed during his visit to the country, he was frequently questioned about the situation in Great Britain by men who knew a lot about the conditions abroad.Footnote ²⁷ This interest can also be ascertained from the content of some periodicals, for example, the Czech magazine Dennice: Spis zábawný a ponaučný, published in Prague and edited by Bohemian national pioneer Jakub Josef Dominik Malý. In 1840 it published profiles of Abdelkader El Djezairi and Muhammad Ali and an article about the British–Russian competition in Afghanistan.Footnote ²⁸ One could hardly expect that these exotic topics would be included if the corresponding inquisitiveness about them did not exist in the public and, therefore, the willingness to pay for relevant information. As Malý himself stated in his description of Muhammad Ali—surprisingly admiring of the Egyptian pasha at a time when Austria was his political adversary—this article was written in response to the significant interest of the public in the Turko-Egyptian conflict.Footnote ²⁹

The attention paid by the Austrians to world affairs is also evidenced by the anonymous author of the pamphlet Über die Presse in Österreich (On the Press in Austria) published in 1843:

What is likewise important in this short quotation is the mention of the ignorance of events in Austria. This was true because, first, the Austrian newspapers reported mainly on governmental regulations, appointments of civil servants, announcements of public organizations, and on the life of the Habsburgs and important dignitaries. Second, foreign newspapers including the AZ contained very little information about the situation in the Austrian Empire. Consequently, if an Austrian wanted to know more about the world outside his village, town, or region, it was easier for him to gather information through the press about the Opium War than about the affairs in the slightly more remote parts of his own country. The Viennese could thus learn in detail from the ÖB the contents of parliamentary debates in distant Paris and London but not about those of the Hungarian Diet in much closer Pressburg (now Bratislava), which were not transmitted by the same newspaper.

One must agree with the conclusion of British historian Alan Sked that during the pre-March period (Vormärz), the Austrians read and talked about what they wanted to without fear of punishment.Footnote ³¹ A considerable number of them were interested in events occurring abroad, and they could obtain trustworthy information and discuss it freely. This naturally also applied to the Rhine Crisis, which was by far the most important affair of 1840, with dangerous potential for Austria, whose population was more than sufficiently informed about its progress. The ÖB did not conceal from Austrians the text of the London Convention,Footnote ³² the armament of France,Footnote ³³ the debates in the French press about war and peace, the fortification of Paris, the hostile invectives against the signatory powers and the German Confederation,Footnote ³⁴ Louis Napoléon's failed attempt at a coup d’état,Footnote ³⁵ or the warlike manifestations in French cities—including the singing of the “La Marseillaise.”Footnote ³⁶ Nor did it obscure the course of diplomatic negotiations, the texts of many diplomatic dispatches—including those later shown to be of crucial importance for the outcome of the crisis, such as Thiers's note of 8 OctoberFootnote ³⁷ —the riots of Parisian workers, the appeals for electoral reform in France,Footnote ³⁸ Marius Darmès's attempt on the king's life, or much other information.Footnote ³⁹ To the events in Germany the ÖB paid less attention than to those in France, Great Britain, or the Ottoman Empire.Footnote ⁴⁰ The amount of news from the confederation increased in October but almost exclusively related to the activities of German states, namely the prohibition of the export of horses.Footnote ⁴¹ As for the war of words between the French and the Germans, several reactions of the latter were reprinted from such German journals as the AZ, Frankfurter Oberpostamtszeitung, Frankfurter Journal, Kölner Zeitung, and Münchner politische Zeitung.Footnote ⁴² It is not insignificant that the ÖB acquainted its readers with the Bavarian king's complimentary letter of 27 October to German nationalist Ernst Moritz Arndt, something rather surprising, considering Arndt's political-nationalist activities, which had been so unpleasant for the Viennese government since the Napoleonic Wars.Footnote ⁴³ Fortunately for the Austrians who wished to learn more about the German–French debates and the situation within the confederation in late 1840, the content of the AZ could fully satisfy their interest.

The Rhine Crisis generated a great deal of attention in Austrian society, in fact much as had the whole conflict in the Ottoman Empire since 1839.Footnote ⁴⁴ The situation reports of the Austrian police prove that the press articles were read attentively, including the reprinted diplomatic correspondence of European cabinets, and were often discussed in private as well as in public. The fear of war was mitigated by Thiers's fall, but the crisis—in the East as well as in the West—was still closely observed and a quick and peaceful solution desired.Footnote ⁴⁵ When on the turn of 1840 the sultan refused to grant Egypt to the pasha's hereditary tenure, it was regarded in Vienna as a “dark omen.”Footnote ⁴⁶ The dangers that could result for Austria from the Rhine Crisis as well as from the conflict in the Near East were regarded by the populace as imminent, and the development of events was observed not only by the educated townspeople but also by the lower classes both in towns and the country; the official documents from that period explicitly mentioned several times the interest in foreign affairs on the part of the lower social groups, who were otherwise usually immune to them. For example, the police report on the situation in Lemberg during September 1840 announced that “for the general public the Eastern Question seems to overshadow the other affairs. The news [rumors] about an insurrection in Paris, an expulsion of the [French] king, and a violent death of the sultan have even found echo among the lower classes.”Footnote ⁴⁷ This interest can also be supported by the logical conclusion that precisely these lower classes in the towns as well as in rural areas were very sensitive to the deterioration of their living standards, owing to the economic regression, war taxes, and the levies of young men, that would particularly affect them if a war broke out in Europe.Footnote ⁴⁸

Regardless of the level of interest in the course of the Rhine Crisis and the accompanying wave of German patriotism or nationalism in some federal states, among the German-speaking Austrians there was no movement in Austria itself that might resemble such patriotism and actually nothing that could be connected with German nationalism. The Austrians naturally noticed the threat to the Rhine posed by France, with which they disagreed, and they appreciated the unity that originated within the confederation among the rulers as well as their subjects, because it discouraged this great power from war and gave her little hope for success if she started one. That is why the Austrians were gratified by the German princes' willingness to agree on the military operations and the prohibition of the export of horses.Footnote ⁴⁹ However, when the imminent danger of an all-European conflagration evaporated with Thiers's fall, police reports recounted that the Austrians unambiguously supported a conciliatory policy toward France on the part of Austria and Prussia and regarded the armament of the two countries, as well as of the whole confederation, albeit almost invisible, as pointless and counterproductive.Footnote ⁵⁰ During the first half of 1841, they focused their attention almost exclusively on the situation in France and the fading dispute between the sultan and the pasha, or the much discussed issue of the Ottoman Christians in Palestine and Lebanon; Germany or even a German nationalist movement were not discussed at all.Footnote ⁵¹ Much like in Bavaria during the whole crisis there was a noticeable absence of any anti-French feeling. No hostile expression against France has been found, and it is documented that although the Viennese agreed with the determined attitude of the Germans against France in the case of war, they deprecated the articles in the foreign press reviling her. In Vienna during December 1840 “as much as the enthusiasm in the German Rhineland was shared [by the Viennese], so little did they approve of the articles coming from England and defaming the French.”Footnote ⁵²

With Bavaria the situation in Austria had another identical feature: Becker's song did not reach mass popularity. With the exception of Maltzan's above-quoted dispatch, no testimony proving the contrary has been found in any sort of studied documents, and certainly nothing about its singing in public. One can presume that the song actually was sung, but definitely not on a large scale as it was in the Rhineland or Prussia.Footnote ⁵³ It can also be taken for granted that the relevant information would surely have been recorded in the situation reports or official police correspondence of the police president, Count Josef von Sedlnitzky, who was always extremely vigilant about any displays of German nationalist feelings. For example, the police could hardly fail to mention any demonstration of nationalist sentiments by the participants of a gathering of German agronomists in Brünn from 21 to 27 September 1840, but nothing “suspicious” took place.Footnote ⁵⁴ As for the intercepted personal letters of Michel Chevalier, who spent the first half of the autumn in Bohemia, they offer a detailed analysis of the country and its people but nothing about German patriotism or anti-French attitudes.Footnote ⁵⁵

There are three other important sources proving the thesis that the Rhine Crisis had neither a short- nor long-term influence on the rise of German nationalism in the Austrian Empire. The first one is a recent book written by Czech historian Milan Řepa, dedicated to the subject of the Moravian Germans, in which the crisis is not mentioned at all, simply because this affair was not important to the formation of their national consciousness and was not even mentioned by them in the documents studied by Řepa.Footnote ⁵⁶ The second pertains to the production of popular items like poems by unknown authors, calendars, and caricatures, hand-drawn or printed. The fact that none on the topic were found can serve as proof, as does the absence of any mention of German patriotism in Chevalier's letters. The third source is of course the lyrics and political pamphlets of the Austrian writers in the 1840s. The motif of the Rhine, the Rhine Crisis, or the hatred of France was almost nonexistent in their poems.Footnote ⁵⁷ The notional exception confirming the rule was offered by two young men: poet Johann Perthaler and the captain of the Austrian army Karl Moering. For the former the Rhine Crisis was doubtless a stimulus for his German national engagement, as it is evident from these verses:

Much like Arndt, Perthaler was more a chauvinist than a liberal or democrat because he prioritized not political reforms but the unification of Germany, which, as he was convinced, was threatened by the French in the west and the Russians in the east. Moering, who later became known as the publisher of the Sibyllinische Bücher aus Österreich (Sibylline Books from Austria) and as a deputy in the German National Assembly in Frankfurt am Main in 1848, reacted to the crisis by writing (in French) the poem “Vienne, 25 Juin 1841” (Vienna, 25 June 1841), which attacked Alfred de Musset's anti-German poem “Le Rhin allemand” (The German Rhine). Against these sporadic examples, a mass of disinterested Austrian writers stood together with Moritz Hartmann, who inclined to the German nationalist movement and longed to incorporate Bohemia into the future great German Reich, but who, in contrast to Perthaler and Moering, responded to the poetic war of words for the “free Rhine” for aesthetic rather than for political reasons. Hartmann lacked the hostility of some nationalist poets and even rejected Becker's song and praised the literary quality of Musset's without attacking its content. In this he joined the ranks of German liberals and democrats who did not cease dreaming about the united German fatherland and, simultaneously, the preservation of good relations with France.Footnote ⁵⁹

As for political pamphlets, the topic of the Rhine Crisis played a marginal role among Austrian authors and was scarcely even mentioned by them, and these scarce mentions came predominantly from those living outside the monarchy.Footnote ⁶⁰ It was, as expected, reflected by chauvinistic German nationalist Franz Schuselka, who in his Deutsche Worte eines Österreichers (German Words of an Austrian) in 1843 extolled the Rhine Crisis as the stimulus for a German aversion to France that was even stronger than during the 1813 Wars of Liberation. However, it is impossible to say whether or to what extent his own chauvinist pan-German opinions were actually influenced by the events of late 1840, since he had formed them earlier.Footnote ⁶¹ In Ignaz Kuranda's magazine Die Grenzboten with the subtitle Blätter für Deutschland und Belgien (Pages for Germany and Belgium) published as of 1841, the influence of the crisis is more obvious. The obvious anti-French bias is visible not only in the effort to contribute to the rapprochement of the Germans and Belgians and thus thwart the French–Belgian negotiations about the customs union, but also in the pan-German argumentation on behalf of this rapprochement—when, as Kuranda openly stated in the introduction to the first issue, written in Brussels on 28 September 1841, the Germans were united with the Belgians by their mutual Germanic roots, not only with the Flemings but also with the Walloons.Footnote ⁶² In the first volume, it is also possible to find the anti-French attacks typical for some German nationalists, when, for example, in the article about Alsace and Flanders, the author regarded the surrender of the former to France long before as the display of “treachery and cowardice.”Footnote ⁶³

If one accepts the conclusion that the Rhine Crisis was in no way a constitutive element in the rise of German nationalism in the Austrian Empire and that it even had no influence on this process, then it is of course useful to question the reason for this situation, to help understand why the crisis had no significance. One possible—and predictable—answer is that the silence was caused by a repressive apparatus that did not allow the least display of solidarity among the Germans in the autumn of 1840—in other words, the fear of the German-speaking Austrians of a hostile reaction on the part of the Viennese cabinet. Regardless of how logical this argument seems to be, more detailed investigation reveals it to be wrong or at least insufficient. The authorities were not hostile to manifestations of German patriotism that lacked a potential threat to the existing political status quo.Footnote ⁶⁴ Metternich himself greatly appreciated the unity not only of the German princes but also of their subjects in their common willingness to defend the Rhine, where he had been born and for which he still had strong affection, not merely because of his Rhineland domain in Johannisberg. He even claimed that a new era had started for all of Germany in 1840 because it had realized its strength and was willing to proceed united.Footnote ⁶⁵ His positive attitude was attributed to the fact that the wave of patriotism was directed at German unity and not unification, which was entirely in conformity with his opinion that had directed his steps at the Congress of Vienna and continued to govern his actions until the very end of his life: that the unity that had materialized in the confederation corresponded with Germany's nature, history, and traditions and was the supporting pillar for ensuring European's peace.Footnote ⁶⁶ This was his “pacific, federalistic brand of German nationalism.”Footnote ⁶⁷ In February 1841 he wrote about the crisis:

Even in retrospect, Metternich assessed the wave of German patriotism during the crisis in a very positive way, and expressions like “the German sense [of nationality] has favorably arisen in consequence of recent events”Footnote ⁶⁹ or “in view of its effect on Germany the year 1840 is one of the most remarkable periods of modern times”Footnote ⁷⁰ have been preserved in a considerable number of written testimonies.Footnote ⁷¹ In October 1841, he welcomed the fact that, due to France, “Germany had roused itself from a long slumber.”Footnote ⁷² Metternich was so satisfied with the German patriotic spirit and the overall situation in Germany, in particular in its southern part, which he personally visited in early autumn of 1841 during his tour of several south German states, that after his return to Vienna he wrote to Marshal Joseph Radetzky von Radetz that

Metternich was so impressed with what he saw in Germany that he even started to press the Viennese cabinet to start rapprochement with Prussia's customs union; but the inner opposition, fearful that the changes would make Austrian manufacturers more exposed to foreign competition, frustrated this plan.Footnote ⁷⁴

As for Becker's song, Metternich assessed it in a positive way, because he saw in its content an obvious message for France that if it attacked the Rhineland, then it would have to fight the whole of Germany.Footnote ⁷⁵ Although no proof exists that, as Eugène Guichen claimed, Metternich allowed it to be printed and issued in Austria,Footnote ⁷⁶ the prince definitely opposed neither the circulation nor the singing of the song. If anything irritated him, then it was not the lyrical celebration of the Rhine in the Viennese streets but the singing of “La Marseillaise” in the Hungarian National Theatre in Pest. This incident occurred in late October, when some young men in the audience asked the band, which had recently visited France, to play it. When the musicians answered that they did not know the song, they were asked to learn it by the following day, at which point it was actually played by the orchestra and sung by some people in the audience. This angered Metternich considerably, and he criticized the local authorities for not preventing the event when it had been listed on the program in advance.Footnote ⁷⁷ Whereas the government tried to conceal this affair, its attitude toward the patriotic, sometimes even loud and hostile, appeals in Germany was mild, and it did not prevent the inhabitants of the monarchy from being informed about them, discussing them, and eventually manifesting support of them. Naturally, one could object that the Austrians, accustomed as they were to a lack of freedom, could scarcely appreciate this tolerance on the part of their government; but it must be remembered that if some of them openly supported the erection of a statue to Rotteck, it is highly unlikely that they would be afraid of showing their sense of an all-German unity in the way that was usual and tolerated in other German states, including Prussia, with a similar repressive apparatus in the autumn of 1840.

Given that the Austrians had sufficient information about affairs beyond the empire's frontier, and that their government did not prevent them from displaying solidarity with other Germans, it is necessary to search elsewhere for an explanation for the absence of any reaction containing a nationalist element. In fact, there were two important reasons. The first was the entirely marginal importance of the German national movement in Austria in 1840. Of course the government's repression was largely responsible for the fact that German nationalism had not become rooted in the monarchy as in some other parts of the confederation: Austria had developed in a different way from, for example, Prussia, where German nationalism had arisen during the Napoleonic Wars, or in constitutional southern Germany, which became an outpost of nationalism in the 1830s. The majority of Austrians were unaffected by the ideas of German nationalists and still predominantly perceived themselves as German only in the cultural sphere.Footnote ⁷⁸ In 1840 the words addressed by German nationalist Friedrich Schlegel from the Austrian capital to his wife twenty-one years earlier were still valid: “You speak of Germany. If only I were there and could live there! How could you ever arrive at the strange misconception that Vienna is situated in Germany or that it could have anything in common with Germany? Whole continents lie between them, and anything more contradictory scarcely exists.”Footnote ⁷⁹ It is naturally not possible to claim that no German nationalists lived in Austria in 1840. The supporters of a German nation-state, especially of a so-called greater Germany including the Habsburg Monarchy, were to be found here, but their number was negligible in comparison with some other parts of the confederation. The influence of the Rhine Crisis on the formation of their Weltanschauung seemed to have little significance, if any at all, and particularly concerned those who lived outside the monarchy. With regard to Austrian-German nationalism, the question of constitutional reform and the relationship with the Slavonic ethnic groups living in the empire was much more important, and it was these groups and not France whom they increasingly began to regard as a threat before 1848. This ethnic orientation of the Austrian-German nationalists is also connected with their geographical-strategic ideas, which are fully revealed in their political pamphlets, where attention was paid primarily to the Eastern Question, namely Austria's attitude toward the Ottoman territory in the Balkans. The German issue usually took second place, but the relations between the French and the Germans were still of negligible importance.Footnote ⁸⁰

The second reason for the absence of German nationalism in Austria was the people's strong affection for the emperor and his family. In this respect one can see an important parallel with the situation in Bavaria, where the people put their loyalty to their country and ruler first and allegiance to Germany after it, if at all. In Austria, this loyalty toward the Habsburgs was all the more important, in that unlike Bavaria, the government had failed during the Napoleonic Wars to infuse the population with something that can be labeled as “Austrian nationalism.” Since the Habsburg monarchy consisted of more historical political units inhabited by various ethnic groups, the people identified themselves more with their own land (for example, Bohemia) and their monarch than the whole state.Footnote ⁸¹ Or, to be more precise, for them the state was personified in the first place by this monarch. Consequently, the attachment of predominantly conservative Austrians to the monarchy was above all connected with their traditionally high esteem of an emperor, which was further augmented by the popularity of Austrian Emperor Francis I, who died in 1835, and his son Ferdinand I. Other members of the family, like Archdukes Johann and Charles, were also regarded in a similarly positive way. This can also be proven by their enthusiastic reception in the Bohemian Lands whenever they visited them.Footnote ⁸² For example, when the British chargé d'affaires in Vienna, Arthur Magenis, took part in the opening of the railway from Vienna to Prague in August 1845 and traveled in the same train as Archduke Francis Charles from the capital to the Bohemian capital, though he had anticipated a positive reception of the archduke by the people, he was still surprised by the immense enthusiasm prevailing among all social classes: “The reception of His Imperial Highness along the whole line to Prague, a distance of 300 English miles, was most enthusiastick, and on the newly opened portion, from Olmütz to Prague—165 English miles—it might correctly be termed a popular rejoicing.”Footnote ⁸³ The Habsburg family was so popular in the empire that republicanism was de facto unknown there, maybe with the exception of Lombardy–Venetia.Footnote ⁸⁴

The course of the conflict in the Near East in the final months of 1840 offered the Austrians an opportunity to intensify their affection for the Habsburg dynasty and simultaneously provided an outlet for their eventual aversion to France. Much like an international sport competition nowadays, the clash between the Austrians and Egyptians in Syria found a considerable audience in the monarchy. This conflict even had a star on whom observers could fix their attention and sympathies: young Archduke Frederick Ferdinand Leopold, the son of the popular Archduke Charles, who served during the Syrian campaign as a captain on the frigate Guerriera and also participated in the ground operations. During the successful assault on Sidon on 26 September, he stormed the citadel through a breach in its wall at the head of the Austrian landing force despite enemy fire. During the night of 3–4 November, under the cover of darkness, he entered Acre through a window in the abandoned wall and with his men seized the citadel without resistance. When the Egyptians learned of its capture during the night, they immediately capitulated. Due to the actions at Sidon and Acre, Frederick became a real European celebrity, decorated with orders from at least fifteen monarchs including Emperor Ferdinand I.Footnote ⁸⁵

Although the victory over Muhammad Ali was due to the strength of the British navy and the numerous Ottoman troops, it was Frederick's courage that became the object of interest, something that the Viennese court knew how to exploit for its own benefit. The Austrian newspapers did not leave their readers uninformed about the valor of the chivalrous prince whose military successes were debated in the whole western part of the empire, and his popularity reached immense proportions. The admiration for the deeds of the young archduke was intensified because of his youth, the traditional loyalty toward the Habsburgs, his father's glory, and the current animosity toward France.Footnote ⁸⁶ Especially the close family affinity between Frederick and Charles—the fact that the brave young man was a son of a no less heroic father, who had defeated Napoléon I at the Battle of Aspern—was the topic of numerous discussions in Austrian society expressing admiration of the imperial family. It even became a leitmotif of two poems written by Austrian conservative poet Moritz Gottlieb Saphir at the end of 1840. Both were dedicated to Archduke Charles under the joint title “Erzherzog Friedrich auf den Mauern von Saida” (Archduke Frederick on the Walls of Sidon).Footnote ⁸⁷ The poems ”Zuversicht” (Faith) and “Erfüllung” (Fulfillment) celebrated the father and his son. In the former, Charles is saying good-bye to Frederick before the departure to Syria, giving him his own sword, whose “blade reflects the Rhine.”Footnote ⁸⁸ This is an obvious reference to the Rhine Crisis but at the same moment also the only relevant one. Otherwise the two poems were written in a purely pro-Habsburg and pro-Austrian spirit. In both of them a fatherland is mentioned, but this is Austria and not Germany, as is obvious from the verses from the second poem describing the moment when Frederick draws his father's sword and shouts:

Although these stirring words were the product of the progovernmental author who was rewarded for it by Count Franz Anton von Kolowrat-Liebsteinsky with 200 gulden, its laudatory tone definitely reflects the positive public acceptance of Frederick's conduct in Syria.Footnote ⁹⁰ Besides the situation reports, this is proven by, first, the spontaneous, rousing, and long ovation of the audience in the Hofburg Theater, where Frederick appeared on 9 March 1841 in the imperial box, accompanied by his father and the emperor; and second, the increased interest in service in the Austrian navy among young men from the transalpine provinces of the monarchy after 1840—until that time the sailors were almost exclusively of Italian origin.Footnote ⁹¹

Owing to the Syrian campaign that entered its decisive phase at the same time as the Rhine Crisis reached its peak, the Austrians paid greater attention to the events in the Near East than in Germany. The absence of large numbers of organized German nationalists, the generally shared desire for peace, and the almost total loyalty to the Habsburgs, of whom Archduke Frederick enjoyed increasing popularity, notwithstanding the fighting of the Austrians in Syria against the troops of the French ally, created in Austria an atmosphere in which vague ideas about the political unification of the German nation and excessive hatred of France were entirely alien. This absence of the latter is also evident from Thiers's journey through Germany in the summer of 1841, aimed at visiting the important places connected with the life of Napoléon Bonaparte. Whereas in some German cities Thiers was welcomed by unfriendly crowds singing Becker's song, as in Nuremberg, or crowds being prevented from doing so by the police, as in Berlin, in Vienna the French ex-premier's visit provoked no negative reaction in public.Footnote ⁹²

Regarding the facts, the interpretation of the Rhine Crisis as a turning point in the rise of German nationalism is in no way tenable for the Austrian Empire, where nothing occurred during the Rheinkrise that would in the least support the traditional thesis about the qualitative and quantitative shift of German nationalism to a mass and more aggressive movement. With the exception of several German nationalists of Austrian origin who, however, had usually been nationalist before 1840, the people remained immune to this movement. Much like in other parts of the German Confederation, they also rejected France's aspirations on the Rhineland; but their solidarity had nothing in common with German nationalism.

Although no organized German nationalist movement had established itself in Austria before 1840 was definitely a result of the government's resistance to any movements whatsoever that might strive to undermine the existing political order; but the absence of any upsurge of German nationalism in late 1840 was principally because of other, more important factors. However, these certainly did not include a lack of information or the public interest in the course of events abroad: as noted, the people, mainly the educated classes, attentively observed affairs in more or less remote foreign countries in Europe as well as overseas and were supplied with a considerable amount of relevant information, and this happened even when the only news channels available to them were the Austrian and legally imported foreign newspapers, books, and pamphlets. Regarding the seriousness of the Rhine Crisis, the foreign news found considerable echo among not only the educated bourgeoisie but also the lower classes in both towns and rural areas. The reception of such news in Austria also proves that, despite the existence of strict censorship, the population was not divided from the rest of the world by an information barrier—that a great deal of relevant and, for the government, not always favorable information came through legal information channels and undoubtedly had a significant influence on the formation of public opinion. It is thus obvious how much the allegation about a “European China” is exaggerated and is the product of its time.

Similarly, the aversion of the Viennese cabinet to German nationalism played a limited role in late 1840. Regarding the French threat and the usefulness of the German national (not to be confused with a nationalist) movement in Vienna, much as in other confederation capitals, the patriotic expressions were not regarded as dangerous, and similar manifestations were not punished in the empire. Despite this tolerance on the part of the government, even more moderate expressions of German national consciousness did not occur, at least not on a mass scale.

If the Rhine Crisis had a negligible impact on the rise of German nationalism in the Austrian Empire, then the principal reasons for this state of affairs must necessarily be sought outside the repressive impact of the state apparatus. In this instance, they are to be found especially in the relatively small numbers of German nationalists in the territory of the monarchy, the people's prioritization of other issues, and—as the primary sources at hand as well as the comparison with the situation in Bavaria clearly prove—in the continuous strong loyalty of the Austrian people to their own country and ruler. The deeply rooted affection felt by the population for the Imperial House of Habsburg played a considerable role in this respect. This was intensified by Archduke Frederick's heroism on the Syrian coast, which increased his popularity and that of the Habsburgs in general among the Austrians and offered an outlet for their possible anti-French feelings.