Latest / The History of Germany: Kingdoms, War, and Rebuilding Europe — Fexingo History
The Burschenschaften: Student Revolutionaries Who Forged German Nationalism
In the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, German university students formed secret societies called Burschenschaften, demanding a unified nation and constitutional freedoms. This episode follows their rise from the Wartburg Festival of 1817, where books were burned and speeches ignited a movement, to the radical student Karl Ludwig Sand's assassination of the playwright August von Kotzebue—a crime that triggered the Carlsbad Decrees, a brutal crackdown by Metternich. We explore the Burschenschaften's ideology, their colors (black, red, and gold) that became Germany's tricolor, and…
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