DGermany as we know it did not exist in 1848. But that is exactly what was demanded at the beginning of the 19th century: a united Germany, fundamental rights and freedoms, no small states. In 1848 something also happened on an institutional level: in Frankfurt, the preliminary parliament and then the national assembly met in Frankfurt’s Paulskirche. Friedrich Stoltze was someone who was on the outside and yet in the middle of the epicenter. The new special exhibition of the Stoltze Museum in Frankfurt, which moved to the old town in 2019, shows how he perceived and judged the time around 1848, how it shaped him and what hopes he harbored.
Satirist, political intellectual, dialect poet, Frankfurt original – Friedrich Stoltze was many things. Born in 1816 as the son of an innkeeper, he came into contact with the ideas of freedom of his time at an early age. Participation in the Hambach Festival in 1832 or watching the storming of the Hauptwache in 1833 did the rest for further politicization. In 1848 he was there as a spectator when the members of the National Assembly moved into the Paulskirche on May 18th. Stoltze, who had been working as a freelance author since 1845, founded the satirical newspaper “Frankfurter Latern” in 1860, his central work. Repeatedly subjected to censorship and bans during the Bismarckian period, Stoltze criticized Prussian politics in his poems and texts. The “lanterns” should bring light into the darkness and light the way, always following bourgeois and liberal ideals.
Textual evidence is rare
In a new special exhibition, the museum is now interweaving the story of Stoltze with the events around 1848. Visitors can follow a timeline in two rooms, which explains and illustrates important events of the years on display boards and links them to the poet’s literary testimonies. In this way, the failed German revolution can be followed without prior knowledge using Stoltze’s texts and poems. Politically important events become tangible. The permanent exhibition in the lower part of the building and in the stairwell, which deals with Stoltze’s biography, family and intellectual contacts, complements the special exhibition and places the year 1848 in his life’s work.
Caricature from the “Frankfurter Latern”, 13/1873, published by Friedrich Stoltze
:
Image: Stolze Museum
The textual testimonies that Stoltze left behind during the revolutionary upheaval and fall of 1848 and 1849 are rare. During the years Stoltze wrote two works himself: a collection of freedom songs at the end of 1848 and various poems about life as a revolutionary volunteer in the Palatinate in May 1849. That is why the special exhibition also uses texts that Stoltze later wrote for the “Frankfurter Latern”. wrote.
“I feel it in the deepest part of my heart / One day a day will dawn / Where from the Alps to the Sound / A free people will be!” Friedrich Stolze wrote in 1849 in the “Sketches from the Palatinate”. The lines contain two concepts that were central and directly linked for Stoltze: freedom and people. But the initial euphoria during the revolution in the previous year turned into resignation: “One day a day will come”. Stoltze wrote the poem in the spring of 1849. The seven sketches are based on letters he received from his friend Ernst Schalck, who had joined the Palatinate volunteer movement. It is unclear whether Stoltze himself took part. But in this lay the freedom of the German people for him (or again) in the distant future.
Well, God help me!
Things looked different at the end of 1848, when Stoltze published his ten “Freedom Songs”. The lyrics burst with pathos. It’s about patriotism and Germanism, about heroic struggles and the blood shed for them, about liberation and courage, about masculinity and belief in God. When visitors leaf through the exhibited, transcribed pages of the Freedom Songs, they come across lines like: “I don’t envy you, you poor fools, / you crawling before a throne! / I was born a free man / And have never bowed my head.” The struggle, even death, is glorified in the songs, saying it is for the cause, for a united, free and democratic Germany. The songs show vividly the passion with which Stoltze stood up for a revolution.
Centrally placed are lines from Stoltze’s poems and stories from the “Frankfurter Latern”. The poet remembered the initial euphoria in March 1848, but also the dashed hopes with the failure of the National Assembly: “In March there was cheering, in March there was foam! / Everything dreamed of spring and freedom, / […] Famous lighting on – first of April. / And then in October? Well, God help me! / They will allow, that was crushing!”
The Frankfurt Stoltze Museum is small: it has just three rooms and a stairwell. The breadth of content is also limited. It’s about Friedrich Stolze. But not only that, the special exhibition in particular is about much more: about recent German history, about national unification and about freedom rights. About hope and resignation. All the major, epochal themes of the national, democratic and liberal movements of the 19th century are processed and made tangible using Stoltze’s work. This is also the reason why the revolution finally failed: “The year 48 was a stuck uprising and a stuck sitter who got up. If we had bothered them more, they would have given us more.”
#StoltzeMuseum #Frankfurt #shows #revolution #poet