Johann Carl Bertram Stüve and the Problem of German Unification in 1848–1849
This article examines the views and policies of the Hanoverian minister Johann Carl Berthram Stüve during the 1848 revolution in Germany. Although Stüve was one of the most prominent representatives of German liberalism in 1848, unlike many liberals who supported and even led the revolutionary processes, he was sceptical of the activities of the Frankfurt National Assembly almost from the start. Stüve was committed to the principles of legality and the inviolability of the rights of the individual German states, and he saw in the policy of the revolutionary parliament a danger of interference in the internal relations of the German monarchies without taking account of their specific features, and in the creation of the provisional imperial government of Archduke Johann – the exclusion of the monarchs and their governments from the discussion of the future German constitution. Paradoxically, Stüve, who carried out liberal modernisation in Hanover, showed almost conservative opposition to the revolutionary forces in the German question and sought to limit the implementation of their decisions in Hanover, counting on the support of other governments, especially Prussia. This course did not characterise Stüve as a conservative opponent of the revolution, but it did set him increasingly at odds with other German liberals. As a result, Hanover, unlike the southern German states, adopted a policy of passive resistance to the revolutionary bodies and their work on the German constitution as early as 1848.
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Sources
Acten-Stücke der neunten allgemeinen Stände-Versammlung des Königreichs Hannover. Erste Diät (1848) [Documents of the ninth general assembly of the Kingdom of Hanover. First diet], Helwing’s court bookstore, Hanover, Germany (in Germ.).
Stüve, G. (ed.) (1903), Briefwechsel zwischenStüve und Detmold in den Jahren 1848 bis 1850 [Stüve-Detmold Correspondance in 1848-1850], Hahn bookstore, Hanover-Leipzig, Germany (in Germ.).
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The article is prepared in the State Academic University for the Humanities as a part of the state project of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation (theme FZNF-2023-0003 «Traditions and values of the society: mechanisms of formation and transformation in the context of global history», no. 1022040800353-4-6.1.1;5.9.1).