The student gathering alarms the princely governments
Students at the University of Jena planned a festival at Wartburg Castle above Eisenach to mark the 300th anniversary of the Reformation and sent invitations to students from all over Protestant Germany. The date chosen, 18 October 1817 marked the anniversary of the Battle of Leipzig and Germany’s liberation from Napoleonic rule. The hopes held by many Germans for the personal freedom, political participation and national unification promised by this liberation had not materialized, as 1815 had seen a restoration of the status quo ante by the princes. The students now hoped that a celebration of the dual liberation – from the Pope during the Reformation and France during the Wars of Liberation – would send a coded warning to the present-day enemies of liberty and national unity.
On 18 October, some 500 students from 13 universities and several professors from Jena gathered at the castle to hear speeches, sing songs and enjoy a banquet. Afterwards, they processed to a nearby hill, where victory fires had been lit in commemoration of the Battle of Leipzig. The students threw books by reactionary authors into the fire. After the festival, the participants compiled a list of the issues raised and the demands made, which included national unity, popular political participation, representative government, the abolition of class privileges, equality before the law, freedom of speech and the press, and universal conscription. The authorities were outraged. Prussia issued official protests against this “mob of degenerate students and professors” and demanded that the student fraternities be banned or the University of Jena be closed. Overall, however, the princes held back and waited for a more suitable opportunity to act.
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