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Students marching to the Wartburg in 1817
The first Wartburg festival (German: Wartburgfest) on 18 October 1817 was an important event in German history that took place at the Wartburg Castle near Eisenach.
After the war of liberation against France and Napoleon, many people were bitter about dreams of German unity shattered after the Congress of Vienna. Democratic reforms were stalled, and governments had cracked down on press freedom and rights of association.
In 1815 the students of Jena founded the youth organization Teutonia in order to encourage German unity at the university. Many of them had participated as voluntary soldiers on the fields against Napoleon, e.g. in the Lützow Free Corps with its black-red-gold colour scheme that was adopted as the Flag of Germany. The German students demonstrated for a national state and a liberal Constitution and condemned reactionary forces in the newly recreated German states.
1817: The Thing at the Wartburg
What no one could forget were the bells. Joyously ringing their welcome to the young men who had come from afar, the bells of Eisenach would be forever etched in their memories. [6] Having gathered just outside the red-tiled buildings of this medieval German town, the young men lit torches and began their solemn procession up to the castle, yellow and red autumn leaves blanketing their path. Some of the young men referred to this congregation at the Wartburg castle as a Thing -- what the ancient Germans called their annual tribal gatherings. Some of the young men were in ancient German dress, but most wore the Trachten, or traditional folk dress, of their native regions. They were urged to do so by the event's organizers, one of whom was Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, the famous "Turnvater Jahn," best remembered for founding gymnastics societies (Turnvereinen). There was no Germany in 1817, only several dozen principalities united by language, culture, and their common history of being recently overrun by Napoleon's armies. Jahn's gymnastics societies were designed to kindle the sparks of German nationalism in a defeated, fragmented, and often sleepy population. (Many of the foreign travelers through these lands in the nineteenth century described the Germans as rather indifferent, dreamy folk, all too glad to share their bread, wurst, and beer -- not as seething tribes of warriors.)
Many of the young men marching with torches to the Wartburg castle that day were members of these proud gymnastics societies. The rest belonged to student fraternities, some of them secret known as Burschenschaften. Most were from the university in Jena. These student fraternities had only just come into being, but they would play an important role in German cultural life in the nineteenth century. [7] Some of them were also affiliated with an older secret society, the Freemasons, for whom the rose and the cross were blended into a meaningful occult symbol. Some of the participants at the Wartburg festival wore cloth bands around their torsos in the colors that comprise the flag of today's Germany -- black, red, and gold.
It was no coincidence that these rituals of nascent German national fervor played out in the shadow of the mighty Wartburg fortress on an October night. It was here that Martin Luther gave Jesus a German accent. Luther's translation of the New Testament into German catalyzed nationalist sentiment and revolutionized the German world of letters. Heinrich Heine captures so many of the contradictions in the German soul in his often quoted description of Luther as "not merely the greatest but also the most German man in our history, so that in his character all the virtues and failings of the Germans were united in the most magnificent way." Luther was "the tongue as well as the sword of his age ... a cold scholastic word-cobbler and an inspired, God-drunk prophet who, when he had worked himself almost to death over his laborious and dogmatic distinctions, in the evening reached for his flute and, gazing at the stars, melted in melody and reverence." [8] For many of the young men, the commanding walls of the Wartburg fortress rose above them like the brooding, corpulent specter of Martin Luther himself.
In October of 1517 a defiant Martin Luther hammered his theses of protestation to a church door. October also was celebrated as the anniversary of the defeat of Napoleon at Leipzig in 1813. The feeling of being German swelled whenever these victories of the Volk were recounted.
"Feelings" of being German were all that one could have, for "Germany" was a word for an ideal, not a reality. German-speaking peoples lived in a loose confederation of dozens of autonomous states of varying sizes and significance bound only by a weakly ruled political entity called the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. They shared no common currency or legal system, and travel and commerce between many of them was a gauntlet of complex taxes, customs fees, and unanticipated local restrictions on personal freedoms.
At the foot of the Wartburg, the men built a huge, blazing bonfire and other pillars of fire that could be seen by the people of Eisenach. Encircling the central fire, with an excitement driven by a sense of the sacred and the dangerous, the men sang the traditional hymn "Eine Feste Burg" ("A Mighty Fortress Is Our God"). One of the leaders then offered a few inspirational remarks about justice and invoked the important symbol of the German forest of oaks. The mighty oak was sacred to the ancient Teutons and indeed was the "cross" upon which Wotan (Odin) underwent his revelatory self-sacrifice. Nostalgic references to it recur throughout more than a century of German spiritual longing.
More songs were sung and a patriotic sermon was delivered. Then, before a final hymn to end the formal segment of their ritual, the young men joined hands around the fire and took a collective oath of allegiance to one another and to their group (Bund). They also pledged to preserve the purity of the Volk. Before the Wartburgfest concluded, for the first time in recorded German history "un-German books" were denounced and burned in the great central fire.
Karl Gustav Jung -- the grandfather of Carl Gustav Jung -- considered his participation in the Wartburgfest one of the purest and most meaningful experiences of his life. He was twenty-three. He carefully preserved his black, red, and gold wrap from his days of student activism, and it became one of his grandson's most cherished possessions.
-- The Aryan Christ: The Secret Life of Carl Jung, by Richard Noll
On the occasion of the three-hundredth anniversary of Martin Luther's nailing of his theses and the fourth anniversary of the bloody Battle of Nations at Leipzig, the student groups organized a festival at the Wartburg. This castle had been a refuge for Martin Luther. As he translated the bible there and thus set a standard for the German language, it became a symbol of German nationalism.
Accordingly, it must and dare not be considered a trifling matter but a most serious one to seek counsel against this and to save our souls from the Jews, that is, from the devil and from eternal death. My advice, as I said earlier, is:
First, that their synagogues be burned down, and that all who are able toss in sulphur and pitch; it would be good if someone could also throw in some hellfire. That would demonstrate to God our serious resolve and be evidence to all the world that it was in ignorance that we tolerated such houses, in which the Jews have reviled God, our dear Creator and Father, and his Son most shamefully up till now, but that we have now given them their due reward.
Second, that all their books their prayer books, their Talmudic writings, also the entire Bible, be taken from them, not leaving them one leaf, and that these be preserved for those who may be converted. For they use all of these books to blaspheme the Son of God, that is, God the Father himself, Creator of heaven and earth, as was said above; and they will never use them differently.
Third, that they be forbidden on pain of death to praise God, to give thanks, to pray, and to teach publicly among us and in our country. They may do this in their own country or wherever they can without our being obliged to hear it or know it. The reason for this prohibition is that their praise, thanks, prayer, and doctrine are sheer blasphemy, cursing, and idolatry, because their heart and mouth call God the Father *Hebel Vorik* as they call his Son, our Lord Jesus, this. For as they name and honor the Son, thus they also name and honor the Father. It does not help them to use many fine words and to make much ado about the name of God. For we read, "You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain" [Exod. 20:7]. Just as little did it avail their ancestors at the time of the kings of Israel that they bore God's name, yet called him Baal.
Fourth, that they be forbidden to utter the name of God within our hearing. For we cannot with a good conscience listen to this or tolerate it, because their blasphemous and accursed mouth and heart call God's Son *Hebel Vorik,* and thus also call his Father that. He cannot and will not interpret this otherwise, just as we Christians too cannot interpret it otherwise, we who believe that however the Son is named and honored thus also the Father is named and honored. Therefore we must not consider the mouth of the Jews as worthy of uttering the name of God within our hearing. He who hears this name-from a Jew must inform the authorities, or else throw sow dung at him when he sees him and chase him away. And may no one be merciful and kind in this regard, for God's honor and the salvation of us all, including that of the Jews, are at stake!
-- On the Jews and Their Lies, by Martin Luther
A key event was a book-burning of reactionary literary works, and symbols of Napoleon like a corporal's cane. This act was used in 1933 as a justification for the Nazi book burnings.
The event itself was also used as a justification for further suppression of liberal forces, like the Carlsbad Decrees of 1819.
In 1832, the Hambacher Fest was held in similar manner. A second festival at the Wartburg was held during the Revolutions of 1848 in the German states.
Some works burned during the book burning
• Jean Pierre Frédéric Ancillon: Ueber Souverainitaet etc.
• F. v. Cölln: Vertraute Briefe. Freymüthige Blätter
• August Friedrich Wilhelm Crome: Deutschlands Crisis und Rettung im April und May 1813.
• Dabelow: Der 13e Artikel der deutschen Bundesacte
• Karl Ludwig von Haller: Restauration der Staatswissenschaft
• August von Kotzebue: Geschichte des deutschen Reichs
• Ludwig Theobul Kosegarten: Rede gesprochen am Napoleonstage 1800, Geschichte meines fünfzigsten Lebensjahres, and Vaterländische Lieder
• Carl Albert Christoph Heinrich von Kamptz: Codex der Gensd'armerie
• W. Reinhard: Die Bundesacte über Ob, Wann und Wie? deutscher Landstände
• Schmalz: Berichtigung einer Stelle in der Bredow-Venturinischen Chronik; und die beyden darauf
• Saul Ascher: Germanomanie
• Zacharias Werner: Martin Luther oder die Weihe der Kraft, Die Söhne des Thals
• K. v. Wangenheim: Die Idee der Staatsverfassung
• The Napoleonic Code
• Justus Friedrich Wilhelm Zachariae: Über den Code Napoleon
• Carl Leberecht Immermann: Ein Wort zur Beherzigung, 1814, (gegen die Burschenschaft zu Halle)