(Article, 'Dresden
Uprising (May 1849)', first published in The Cambridge Wagner Encyclopedia, ed. Nicholas
Vazsonyi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013))
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| Prussian and Saxon troops attack the revolutionary barricades in Dresden's Neumarkt (Sächsische Landesbibliothek Abt. Deutsche Fotothek) |
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| Carl Christian Vogel von Vogelstein: Frederick Augustus II of Saxony (r.1836-54) |
One of the
final wave of revolts during the 1848-9 revolutions, parallel to uprisings
in Baden and the Bavarian Palatinate, all quelled by Prussian armed
intervention. Across Europe, the “springtime of peoples” had witnessed liberal,
constitutional victories. Rhetorical liberty, however, proved just that:
initial coalitions – revolutionary socialists such as Wagner and laissez-faire
Rhenish industrialists; pan-Slavists such as Bakunin and völkisch German
nationalists; monarchists and republicans, etc. – proved irreconcilable.
Moreover, the old order proved stronger than either it or its opponents had
believed – and for many bourgeois seemed less threatening. Representatives to
the Frankfurt Vorparlament moved towards national unity,
promulgating a German constitution (March 28) and offering the imperial crown
to Prussia’s Frederick William IV. His refusal (April 3) to “pick up a crown
from the gutter” threw them into disarray. Emboldened, Frederick Augustus II of
Saxony rejected the constitution and dissolved the Saxon parliament (April 30),
elected in January with a democratic majority. Unlike Prussia, Saxony had long
been a constitutional monarchy, and a reform ministry had governed from March
1848 to February 1849. But the king’s appointment of a reactionary movement,
headed by Friedrich von Beust, and rejection of the constitution, ultimately
provoked democratic opponents into a hurried response. On May 3, the town
council organized the Communal Guard into a defense committee. Loyalist troops
opened fire. Early on May 4, king and government escaped to Königstein;
townsmen formed a provisional government.
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| Provisional government |
Even at the time, the
extent of Wagner’s involvement was obscured. Eduard Devrient reports Minna visiting him in desperation
for advice concerning her husband, implicated yet not directly involved (Diary
entry for 17 May 1849). Devrient is clear that she has been deceived. Wagner
would downplay his role further in Mein Leben, yet nevertheless
admits considerable involvement. He had the printer of Röckel’s Volksblätter print
appeals to the Saxon army: “Are you with us against foreign troops?” (My Life, English translation, 394). Wagner probably ordered hand-grenades; he certainly served on the
barricades and acted as look-out, observing street-fighting from the
Kreuzkirche tower, whilst engaging in animated politico-philosophical
discussion. Prussians entered the Neustadt on April 6. “Immediately the troops,
supported by several cannon, opened an attack on … the people’s forces on the
new marketplace” (ML, 397). On April 7, miners from the Erzgebirge singing
the Marseillaise arrived to reinforce the opposition. However,
Prussian and loyalist troops outnumbered the rebels and were gaining ground,
even though barricades meant that every street was hard fought. As the
provisional government began an unsurprisingly abortive attempt to retreat to
the Erzgebirge, to encourage revolt across Germany, Dresden’s streets,
including the opera house were ablaze. In his Introduction to Marx’s The
Class Struggles in France, Engels would bracket Dresden’s barricade heroism
with that of Paris and Vienna, yet also pointed to the inevitable, once
politics gave way to the “purely military standpoint.”
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| May 1849 barricades (Sächsische Zeitung Archive) |
Repression was brutal. Many
leaders, participants, and sympathizers were killed or punished: Bakunin,
Röckel, and even Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient were arraigned. By
chance, and with Liszt’s help, Wagner escaped into Swiss exile, intending in
the Ring, as he explained, to “make clear to the men of the
Revolution the meaning of that Revolution, in its noblest
sense” (Wagner, letter to Uhlig, 12 Nov. 1851).
Eduard Devrient, Aus
seinen Tagebüchern, ed. Rolf Kabel (Weimar: Böhlau, 1964).
Frederick Engels,
“Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany,” in Karl Marx and Frederick
Engels, Selected Works, 3 vols. (Progress: Moscow, 1970), 1:
300-89.
Jonathan Sperber, The
European Revolutions, 1848-1851 (Cambridge UP: Cambridge, 1994).