Realm
State in southwest Germany (1806–1918)
The Grand Duchy of Baden was a German polity on the east bank of the Rhine. It originally existed as a sovereign state from 1806 to 1871 and later as part of the German Empire until 1918.
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Text from the Wikipedia article “Grand Duchy of Baden”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
The Grand Duchy of Baden (German: Großherzogtum Baden) was a German polity on the east bank of the Rhine. It originally existed as a sovereign state from 1806 to 1871 and later as part of the German Empire until 1918.
The duchy's 12th-century origins were as a margraviate that eventually split into two, Baden-Durlach and Baden-Baden, before being reunified in 1771. The territory grew and assumed its ducal status after the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire but suffered a revolution in 1848, whose demands had been formulated in Offenburg the previous year at a meeting now considered the first-ever democratic program in Germany. With the collapse of the German Empire it became part of the Weimar Republic under the name Republic of Baden.
The Grand Duchy of Baden was bordered to the north by the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Grand Duchy of Hesse, to the west by the Rhine, to the south by Switzerland, and to the east mainly by the Kingdom of Württemberg. Its unofficial anthem has been the "Badnerlied", or "Song of the People of Baden", which has four or five traditional verses and many more added: there are collections with up to 591 verses.
Baden came into existence in the 12th century as the Margraviate of Baden and subsequently split into various smaller territories that were unified in 1771. In 1803 Baden was raised to Electoral dignity within the Holy Roman Empire, with ecclesiastical and secular territories added to it during the German mediatisation. Upon the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, Baden became the much-enlarged Grand Duchy of Baden. In 1815 it joined the German Confederation.
The outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars in 1792 saw Baden joining the First Coalition against France. The conflict devastated the margraviate's countryside. Baden was defeated in 1796 with Margrave Charles Frederick being compelled to pay an indemnity and cede his territories on the left bank of the Rhine to France. In 1803, largely owing to the good offices of Tsar Alexander I of Russia, Charles Frederick received the Prince-Bishopric of Constance, part of the Rhenish Palatinate, and other smaller districts, together with the dignity of a prince-elector. Baden then changed sides in 1805 to join France under Napoleon in the War of the Third Coalition. France and its allies won the war, and in the Peace of Pressburg the same year, Baden obtained the Breisgau and other territories in Further Austria at the expense of the Austrian Empire. In 1806, Charles Frederick joined the Confederation of the Rhine, declared himself a sovereign prince and grand duke, and received additional territory.
Baden continued to assist France militarily, and by the Treaty of Schönbrunn in 1809, it was rewarded with accessions of territory at the expense of the Kingdom of Württemberg. Having quadrupled the area of Baden, Charles Frederick died in June 1811, and was succeeded by his grandson Charles, who was married to Stéphanie de Beauharnais (1789–1860) a cousin of French empress Josephine's first husband and adopted daughter of Napoleon.
The Napoleonic Code was adopted in 1810, and remained in force until the adoption of the Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch in 1900.
Charles fought for his father-in-law until after the Battle of Leipzig in 1813, when he joined the Sixth Coalition.
In 1815 Baden became a member of the German Confederation established by the Act of 8 June, annexed to the Final Act of the Congress of Vienna of 9 June. However, in the haste of winding up the Congress, the question of the succession to the grand duchy did not get settled, a matter that would soon become acute.
The treaty of 16 April 1816, by which the territorial disputes between Austria and Bavaria were settled, also supported Bavaria's claim to the Palatine parts of Baden on the east bank of the Rhine and reaffirmed the succession rights of King Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria and his House of Palatinate-Birkenfeld to all of Baden, upon the expected event of the extinction of the House of Zähringen. As a counter to this, in 1817, the Grand Duke Charles issued a pragmatic sanction (Hausgesetz) declaring the counts of Hochberg, the issue of a morganatic marriage between the Grand Duke Charles Frederick and Luise Geyer von Geyersberg (created countess Hochberg), capable of succeeding to the crown. A controversy between Bavaria and Baden ensued, which was only decided in favour of the Hochberg claims by a treaty signed by Baden and the four great powers at Frankfurt on 10 July 1819.
Meanwhile, the dispute had wide-ranging effects. In order to secure popular support for the Hochberg heir, in 1818 Grand Duke Charles granted to the grand duchy, under Article XIII of the Act of Confederation, a liberal constitution, under which two chambers were constituted and their assent declared necessary for legislation and taxation. The outcome was important far beyond the narrow limits of the duchy, as all of Germany watched the constitutional experiments in the southern states.
In Baden, the conditions were not favourable for success. During the revolutionary period, the people had fallen completely under the influence of French ideas, and this was sufficiently illustrated by the temper of the new chambers, which tended to model their activity on the proceedings of the National Convention (1792–1795) in the earlier days of the French Revolution. Additionally, the new Grand Duke Louis I (ruled 1818–1830), who had succeeded in 1818, was unpopular, and the administration was in the hands of hide-bound and inefficient bureaucrats.
The result was a deadlock. Even before the promulgation of the Carlsbad Decrees in October 1819, the grand duke had prorogued the chambers after three months of unproductive debate. The reaction that followed was as severe in Baden as elsewhere in Germany, and culminated in 1823 when, on the refusal of the chambers to vote on the military budget, the grand duke dissolved them and levied the taxes on his own authority. In January 1825, owing to official pressure, only three Liberals were returned to the chamber. A law was passed making the budget presentable only every three years, and the constitution ceased to have any active existence.
In 1830 Grand Duke Louis was succeeded by his half-brother Grand Duke Leopold (ruled 1830–1852), the first of the Höchberg line. The July Revolution (1830) in France did not cause any disturbances in Baden, but the new grand duke showed liberal tendencies from the beginning. The elections of 1830 proceeded without interference, and resulted in the return of a Liberal majority. The next few years saw the introduction, under successive ministries, of liberal reforms in the constitution, in criminal and civil law, and in education. In 1832, the adhesion of Baden to the Prussian Zollverein did much for the material prosperity of the country.
By 1847, radicalism once more began to raise its head in Baden. On 12 September 1847, a popular demonstration held at Offenburg passed resolutions demanding the conversion of the regular army into a national militia, which should take an oath to the constitution, as well as a progressive income tax, and a fair adjustment of the interests of capital and labour.
The news of the revolution of February 1848 in Paris brought agitation to a head. Numerous public meetings were held and the Offenburg programme was adopted. On 4 March 1848, under the influence of popular excitement, the lower chamber accepted this programme almost unanimously. As in other German states, the government bowed to the storm, proclaimed an amnesty and promised reforms. The ministry remodelled itself in a more liberal direction, and sent a new delegate to the federal diet at Frankfurt, empowered to vote for the establishment of a parliament for a united Germany.
Disorder, fomented by republican agitators, continued nonetheless. The efforts of the government to suppress the agitators with the aid of federal troops led to an armed insurrection, which was mastered without much difficulty. The uprising, led by Friedrich Hecker, Gustav Struve and others, was lost at Kandern on 20 April 1848. Freiburg, which they held, fell on 24 April and, on 27 April, a Franco–German legion, which had invaded Baden from Strasbourg, was routed at Dossenbach.
In the beginning of 1849, however, the issue of a new constitution in accordance with the resolutions of the Frankfurt parliament, led to more serious trouble. It did little to satisfy the radicals, angered by the refusal of the second chamber to agree to their proposal for the summoning of a constituent assembly on 10 February, 1849.
The new insurrection that broke out proved a more formidable affair than the first. A military mutiny at Rastatt on 11 May showed that the army sympathised with the revolution, which was proclaimed two days later at Offenburg amid tumultuous scenes. Also, on 13 May a mutiny at Karlsruhe forced Grand Duke Leopold to flee, and the next day his ministers followed. Meanwhile, a committee of the diet under Lorenz Brentano (1813–1891), who represented the more moderate radicals against the republicans, established itself in the capital in an attempt to direct affairs pending the establishment of a provisional government.
This was accomplished on 1 June and, on 10 June, the constituent diet, consisting entirely of the most "advanced" politicians, assembled. It had little chance of doing more than make speeches. The country remained in the hands of an armed mob of civilians and mutinous soldiers. Meanwhile, the Grand Duke of Baden had joined with Bavaria in requesting the armed intervention of Prussia, which Berlin granted on the condition that Baden would join the Alliance of the Three Kings.
From this moment, the revolution in Baden was doomed, and with it the revolution across Germany. The Prussian Army, under Prince William (afterwards William I, German Emperor), invaded Baden in the middle of June 1849. Afraid of a military escalation, Brentano reacted hesitantly – too hesitantly for the more radical Gustav Struve and his followers, who overthrew him and established a Pole, Ludwig Mieroslawski (1814–1878), in his place.
Mieroslawski reduced the insurgents to some semblance of order. On 20 June, 1849, he met the Prussians at Waghausel, and suffered complete defeat. On 25 June, Prince William entered Karlsruhe and, at the end of the month, the members of the provisional government, who had taken refuge at Freiburg, dispersed. The insurgent leaders who were caught, notably the ex-officers, suffered military execution. The army was dispersed among Prussian garrison towns, and Prussian troops occupied Baden for a time. In the months following, no fewer than 80,000 people left Baden for America. Many of these migrants would later participate in the American Civil War as abolitionists and Union soldiers.
Grand Duke Leopold returned on 10 August and at once dissolved the diet. The following elections resulted in a majority favourable to the new ministry, which passed a series of laws of a reactionary tendency with a view to strengthening the government.
Grand Duke Leopold died on 24 April 1852 and was succeeded by his second son, Frederick, as regent, since the eldest, Louis II, Grand Duke of Baden (died 22 January 1858), was incapable of ruling. The internal affairs of Baden during the period that followed have little general interest.
Grand Duke Frederick I (ruled 1856–1907) opposed the war with Prussia from the first, but yielded to popular resentment at the policy of Prussia on the Schleswig-Holstein question. The ministry, as one, resigned. In the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, Austria's contingents, under Prince William, had two sharp engagements with the Prussian Army of the Main. However, on 24 July 1866, two days before the Battle of Werbach, the second chamber petitioned the grand duke to end the war and enter into an offensive and defensive alliance with Prussia.
Baden announced her withdrawal from the German Confederation and, on 17 August 1866, signed a treaty of peace and alliance with Prussia. Bismarck himself resisted the adhesion of Baden to the North German Confederation. He had no wish to give Napoleon III a good excuse for intervention, but the opposition of Baden to the formation of a South German confederation made the union inevitable. The Baden Army took a conspicuous share in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, and it was Grand Duke Frederick of Baden, who, in the historic assembly of the German princes at Versailles, was the first to hail the king of Prussia as German Emperor.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Grand Duchy of Baden”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.