The Hambach Festival: Germany's First Democratic Flag

The History of Germany: Kingdoms, War, and Rebuilding Europe — Fexingo History · Jul 9, 2026 · 7m · transcript

In 1832, a crowd of 30,000 gathered at Hambach Castle in the Palatinate to demand national unity, civil liberties, and a free press. This episode tells the story of the Hambach Festival, a pivotal moment in the Vormärz era when ordinary Germans — students, workers, journalists — raised the black-red-gold flag and dared to imagine a republic. We meet the festival's key organizers, like Philipp Jakob Siebenpfeiffer and Johann Georg August Wirth, whose radical newspaper Der Deutsche Tribüne cost them their freedom. We explore how the festival was crushed by the German Confederation, and how…