Title

Koblenzer Adresse 1817

Description

Joseph Görres’ 'Koblenzer Adresse' was a privately organised address, unlike those initiated by city councils at the time. Görres started collecting signatures on 18 October 1817 to present them to the Staatskanzler in time for King Wilhelm’s visit to the Rhinelands in the winter of 1817/18. The petition states that it joins the city petitions of Trier and Cologne to appeal to the King and hold him to account for his promise given upon signing the Treaties at the congress of Vienna in 1815. The demands are the restoration of estates and of the ancient German constitution. It directly calls for the realisation of Article 13 of the Bundesakte (German Federal Act), which granted the creation of a German constitution at Vienna.

Another interesting aspect is how the participants are protrayed in this petition: 'sich aber nicht bloss als Buerger der Preußischen Monarchie sondern auch als Deutsch betrachten' ('consider themselves not just citizens of the Prussian Monarchy but as Germans'). This quite clearly shows the disparity between growing German nationalism fostered through overflowing patriotism in the Rhinelands and the Prussian government.

A subsequent letter (LHK 402 171 p.21) is from March 1818 expressing the Prussian King Frederick William III's disapproval of the Rhineprovince's president von Ingersleben’s inactivity surrounding the petition. It was, namely, far from a normal plea to the King, to which every subject had a right, but rather a down-right prompt for action which was seen as unseemly behaviour.

Görres' and his address initiative were subject to wide criticism, which some scholars suggests established a first spark of public sphere and debate in the Rhineland. Görres published a written account about the presentation of his address to

Contributor

Isabelle Riepe

Date

1817-10-18

Subject

constitutionalism

nationalism

petitions

practices

Spatial Coverage

Koblenz, Germany

Temporal Coverage

1810s

Bibliographic Citation

LHK 402, 171 pp.1-4

Karl-Georg Faber, Die Rheinlande zwischen Revolution und Restauration (Probleme der rheinischen geschichte von 1814 bis 1848 im Spiegel der zeitgenössischen Publizistik) (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1966)

Heinz-Günther Borck, Andrea Grosche, Dieter Kerber und Michael Koelges (Begleitpublikation zur Ausstellung des Bundesarchivs in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Landeshauptarchiv und dem Stadtarchiv in Koblenz), „... ein freies Volk zu sein!“ - Die Revolution von 1848/49, (Koblenz: Verlag der Landesarchivverwaltung Rheinland-Pfalz, 1998)