Latest / The History of Germany: Kingdoms, War, and Rebuilding Europe — Fexingo History / The Göttingen Seven: German Professors Who Defied a King
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked about the Hambach Festival and the Wartburg Festival—moments when students and politicians demanded German unity and freedom. But there's another story from the 1830s that's less about crowds and more about a small group of professors who stood up to a king and paid a heavy price. Luna: The Göttingen Seven? I've heard that name but I don't know the details. Lucas: Exactly. In 1837, seven professors at the University of Göttingen—including the Brothers Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm—signed a letter of protest against the new king of Hanover, Ernst August. He had just abolished the state constitution that had been in place since 1833. Luna: Wait, why would a king abolish a constitution? Wasn't that the whole point of the Congress of Vienna—to restore monarchies? Lucas: Well, Ernst August was a younger son of King George III of Britain, and he'd become king of Hanover in 1837 when his older brother William IV died without legitimate children. Hanover and Britain had been in personal union since 1714, but under Salic law, Hanover couldn't pass to Queen Victoria. So Ernst August, who was quite conservative, became king. Lucas: He took one look at the relatively liberal constitution of 1833—which had been agreed to by his predecessor—and decided it gave too much power to the parliament. So he simply annulled it and imposed his own, much more authoritarian version. Luna: And the professors just... protested? In writing? Lucas: They drafted a formal protest, signed by seven of them. It wasn't a call to revolution—it was a legal argument that the king had no right to unilaterally abolish the constitution. They were appealing to the German Confederation, the Deutscher Bund, to intervene. Lucas: The signatories were Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann, a historian who had actually helped draft the 1833 constitution; the Brothers Grimm, who were philologists and folklorists; the jurist Wilhelm Eduard Albrecht; the historian Georg Gottfried Gervinus; the theologian Heinrich Ewald; and the physicist Wilhelm Weber. Luna: So they were covering law, history, science—a real cross-section of the university. Lucas: Exactly. And the king's response was swift. He fired all seven of them. Three who were non-Hanoverian citizens—Dahlmann, Gervinus, and Jacob Grimm—were given three days to leave the kingdom. The others, who were subjects of Hanover, were dismissed and banished from the university. Luna: Three days? That's brutal. Lucas: It was. But the reaction across Germany was enormous. Pamphlets and newspapers celebrated them as martyrs for constitutional rights. Students at other universities held rallies. Money was raised to support them. Jacob Grimm ended up in Leipzig, Wilhelm in Berlin. Dahlmann and Gervinus went to Jena. Lucas: The irony is that the king's heavy-handedness made the Göttingen Seven far more famous than they ever would have been otherwise. Dahlmann and Gervinus later became key figures in the Frankfurt Parliament of 1848. Luna: And the Brothers Grimm—they were already famous for their fairy tales, but this solidified their reputation as champions of liberal values, didn't it? Lucas: Absolutely. Jacob Grimm even gave a speech at the University of Leipzig defending his actions. He argued that a professor's duty isn't just to teach, but to uphold the truth—including political truth. Lucas: Now, this episode is part of a larger tension in the Vormärz period, the years before the March 1848 revolutions. The German Confederation under Metternich had the Carlsbad Decrees, which suppressed liberal and nationalist ideas. But here you had professors—supposedly apolitical academics—asserting that constitutional law mattered more than royal whim. Luna: It's interesting that they used legal arguments, not revolutionary rhetoric. Lucas: Right. They weren't calling for the overthrow of the monarchy. They were saying the king had broken his own oath to uphold the constitution. That's a very German, very legalistic form of resistance. But it resonated precisely because it was about the rule of law. Lucas: Let me read a bit from their protest. They wrote: 'We find ourselves compelled, by our duty to the truth and to the law, to declare that the king's decree of November 1, 1837, is illegal and unconstitutional.' That's the core of it. Luna: It sounds so measured, but it cost them everything. Lucas: It did. And it's a reminder that academic freedom, which we take for granted today, was fought for in concrete ways. The University of Göttingen itself was a prestigious institution—it had been the home of the mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss, who was a colleague of Weber's. Gauss actually stayed out of the protest, which is interesting. Luna: Did he comment on it at all? Lucas: He remained silent publicly, but privately he thought the professors were foolish to challenge the king. Gauss was apolitical to a fault. But the seven became symbols precisely because they risked something. Lucas: In the long run, their stand fed into the growing liberal movement that exploded in 1848. Dahlmann and Gervinus were elected to the Frankfurt Parliament. The Grimm brothers continued to work on their German dictionary, but their political legacy was cemented. Luna: And the king? Ernst August—did he face any consequences? Lucas: Not really. He remained king until his death in 1851. But his reputation suffered. And his son, George V, eventually lost the throne to Prussia in 1866 after the Austro-Prussian War. So in a way, the Hanoverian monarchy didn't last. Lucas: The Göttingen Seven are still remembered today. There's a monument to them in Göttingen, and the university honors their stand for academic freedom. It's a story that connects the dots between the early nationalist festivals of the 1810s and the revolutions of 1848. Luna: It's amazing how seven people with pens could shake a kingdom. Lucas: It really is. And it's a reminder that sometimes the most powerful weapon is a letter of protest signed in the name of principle. Lucas: You know, we try to keep this show free of ads, because we think history should be accessible to everyone who wants to learn. If you value that approach, you can support us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It helps us keep doing deep dives into stories like this one. Luna: Yeah, it's a small way to ensure we can keep exploring these corners of German history without interruptions. Lucas: Exactly. So, back to the Göttingen Seven—one final note: after their dismissal, the university's reputation actually grew, because so many liberal-minded students wanted to study where such defiance had happened. So in a strange way, the king's punishment backfired. Luna: That's almost poetic. Lucas: It is. And it's a lesson that authoritarian crackdowns often create the very resistance they aim to crush.