Abstract
The well-known historian, political author and patriot Ernst Moritz Arndt wrote these words in the preface to the second edition of his work On the Celebrations of the Battle of Leipzig, which appeared in the summer of 1815. He expressed his sentiments on the first evening of the ‘National Festival of the Germans’, which was celebrated in hundreds of towns and villages across Germany on 18 and 19 October 1814 to mark the anniversary of the Battle of Leipzig. For Arndt, the experience of the widely visible fires linking the various regions of Germany must indeed have been remarkably moving. After all, the initiative for these ‘joyful bonfires’ (Freudenfeuer), as well as for the national festival as a whole, had come largely from him and a small circle of like-minded friends in Hesse. These included Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, known as the father of the gymnastics movement, who like Arndt worked at this time for the Central Administrative Department of the Allied Powers in Frankfurt am Main, and the Rödelheim Counsellor of Justice Karl Hoffmann. These German-national patriots had met in early May 1814 and made plans for the future. Among the topics of the meeting was the introduction of a ‘Festival of the Battle of Leipzig’, which Arndt had suggested shortly before in his pamphlet Another Word on the French and Us. He intended it to foster the ‘preservation and invigoration of German nature and German thought’, the ‘awakening of German strength and discipline’ and the ‘revival of new and old memories’ of German history.2
It was one of the finest evenings of my life, when, on the 18th of October, I joined several thousand merry people to stand on the Feldberg, the peak of the Taunus, and saw the sky reddened all around for a great distance by more than five hundred fires. … The news that came later, that on that evening flames glowed in the farthest reaches of the fatherland, was sweet as well.1
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
See Michael V. Leggiere, Napoleon and Berlin: The Franco-Prussian War in North Germany, 1813 (Norman, OK, 2002), 256–278;
Digby G. Smith, 1813: Leipzig. Napoleon and the Battle of the Nations (London, 2001);
and Andreas Platthaus, 1813: Die Völkerschlacht und das Ende der Alten Welt (Berlin, 2013). For the civilian experience,
see Karen Hagemann, ‘“Unimaginable Horror and Misery”: The Battle of Leipzig in October 1813 in Civilian Experience and Perception’, in Soldiers, Citizens and Civilians: Experiences and Perceptions of the French Wars, 1790–1820, ed. Alan Forrest et al. (Basingstoke, 2009), 157–178.
See Karen Hagemann, ‘Celebrating War and Nation: The Gender Order of Patriotic Ceremonies and Festivities in the Time of Prussia’s Wars against Napoleon, 1813–1815’, in Gender, War, and Politics: Transatlantic Perspectives, 1775–1820, ed. Hagemann et al. (Basingstoke, 2010), 264–306.
See Manfred Hettling and Paul Nolte (eds), Bürgerliche Feste: Symbolische Formen politischen Handelns im 19. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 1993), 8–36.
Dieter Düding, ‘Das deutsche Nationalfest von 1814: Matrix der deutschen Nationalfeste im 19. Jahrhundert’, in Öffentliche Festkultur: Politische Feste in Deutschland von der Aufklärung bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg, ed. idem et al. (Reinbek, 1988), 67–88, 80.
Karl Heinz Schäfer, Ernst Moritz Arndt als politischer Publizist: Studien zu Publizistik, Pressepolitik und kollektivem Bewußtsein im frühen 19. Jahrhundert (Bonn, 1974), 257.
See Karl Hoffmann (ed.), Des Teutschen Volkes feuriger Dank- und Ehrentempel oder Beschreibung wie das aus zwanzigjähriger französischer Sklaverei durch FürstenEintracht und Volkskraft gerettete Teutsche Volk die Tage der entscheidenden Völker-und Rettungsschlacht bei Leipzig am 18. und 19. October zum erstenmale gefeiert hat, (Offenbach, 1815), 3–13; see also Karen Hagemann, ‘Mannlicher Muth und Teutsche Ehre’: Nation, Militär und Geschlecht zur Zeit der Antinapoleonischen Kriege Preußens (Paderborn, 2002), 273–303.
See Brian E. Vick, The Congress of Vienna: Power and Politics after Napoleon (Cambridge, 2014), 90–95.
Ibid., 454–464 and 729–731. See also Karen Hagemann, ‘“A Valorous Volk Family”: The Nation, the Military, and the Gender Order in Prussia in the Time of the Anti-Napoleonic Wars, 1806–15’, in Gendered Nations: Nationalisms and Gender Order in the Long Nineteenth Century, ed. Ida Blom et al. (Oxford, 2000), 179–205;
and Hagemann, ‘Female Patriots: Women, War and the Nation in the Period of the Prussian-German Anti-Napoleonic Wars’, Gender & History 16/3 (2004): 396–424.
See ibid., Chapter 10; also Klaus Malettke (ed.), 175 Jahre Wartburgfest: 18. Oktober 1817–18: Oktober 1992—Studien zur politischen Bedeutung und zum Zeithintergrund der Wartburgfeier (Heidelberg, 1992).
Renate Hartleb (ed.), Die Zeit der Befreiungskriege und die Leipziger Völkerschlacht in Malerei, Graphik, Plastik, exhibition catalogue (Leipzig, 1988), 36–39.
Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann, ‘Mythos und Geschichte: Leipziger Gedenkfeiern der Völkerschlacht im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert’, in Nation und Emotion: Deutschland und Frankreich im Vergleich 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Etienne François et al. (Göttingen, 1995), 111–132, 117–118.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2016 Karen Hagemann
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hagemann, K. (2016). Celebration, Contestation and Commemoration: The Battle of Leipzig in German Memories of the Anti-Napoleonic Wars. In: Forrest, A., Hagemann, K., Rowe, M. (eds) War, Demobilization and Memory. War, Culture and Society, 1750–1850. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-40649-1_20
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-40649-1_20
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-58038-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-40649-1
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)