Everything about The Republic Of Mainz totally explained
The
Republic of Mainz was the first
democratic state on
German territory and was centered in
Mainz. A product of the
French Revolutionary Wars, it lasted from March to July 1793.
Context
During the
First Coalition against
France, the
Prussian and
Austrian troops that had invaded
France retreated after the
Battle of Valmy, allowing the French revolutionary army to counterattack. The troops of
General Custine entered the
Palatinate in late September, and occupied Mainz on
October 21,
1792. The ruler of Mainz,
Elector and
Archbishop Friedrich Karl Joseph von Erthal, had fled the city.
Jacobin club
On the next day, 20 citizens of Mainz founded a
Jacobin club, the
Gesellschaft der Freunde der Freiheit und Gleichheit (Society of the Friends of Liberty and Equality). Together with their filial clubs founded later in
Speyer and
Worms, they promoted the
Enlightenment and the French revolutionary ideals of
liberté,
egalité,
fraternité in Germany, aiming for a German republic to be established following the French model. Most of the founding members of the Jacobin club were professors and students of the
University of Mainz, together with the university librarian,
Georg Forster, some merchants and Mainz state officials.
Founding of the republic
By order of the French
National Convention, elections in the French occupied territories west of the
Rhine were held on
February 24,
1793. 130 cities and towns sent their deputies to Mainz.
The first democratically elected
parliament in Germany, called the
Rheinisch-Deutscher Nationalkonvent (Rhenish-German national convention) first met on
March 17,
1793, in the
Deutschhaus building in Mainz (nowadays the seat of the
Rhineland-Palatinate state parliament). The convent declared the represented territory (which extended to
Bingen in the west and to
Landau in the south) to be free and democratic, and disclaimed any ties to the
empire. The Convention's president,
Andreas Joseph Hofmann, proclaimed the Rhenish-German Free State (Rheinisch-Deutscher Freistaat) from the balcony of the Deutschhaus.
On
March 23 1793, it was decided to send delegates (among them Georg Forster and
Adam Lux) to
Paris and to request accession of the Mainz republic to France. The French national convention granted this on March 30.
End of the republic
Prussian troops soon after retook all the French-occupied territory except for the heavily fortified city of Mainz itself. After a long
siege in which much of the city was destroyed, Prussian and Austrian troops conquered the city on
July 22,
1793. The republic ended, and the Jacobins were persecuted until 1795, when Mainz came under French control again.
Literature
- T. C. W. Blanning, The French Revolution in Germany. Occupation and Resistance in the Rhineland 1792–1802; Oxford Clarendon Press, 1983
- T. C. W. Blanning, Reform and Revolution in Mainz 1743–1803; Cambridge University Press, London, 1974. ISBN 0521204186
Further Information
Get more info on 'Republic Of Mainz'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://republic_of_mainz.totallyexplained.com">Republic of Mainz Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
