Europe - Germany / Federal Republic of Germany 1982 - 50 Pfennig

For the Xth Ordinary General Assembly of the CEPT in Brussels, the theme »Historical Events« was selected for 1982. On May 27, 1832, around 30,000 people from all parts of Germany responded to a call to participate in a political rally on the Hambach Castle near Neustadt in the Palatinate. It became the most powerful manifestation of freedom and unity in the pre-March period before the 1848 Revolution. Two years earlier, the July Revolution in Paris overthrown the reactionary kingship and replaced it with a bourgeois government. A revolutionary wave then seized Europe: in Belgium and Poland, in Ireland and Italy, but also in a number of states of the German Confederation, uprisings and popular uprisings occurred. In the Bavarian Palatinate since 1816, events in neighboring France intensified the bourgeois opposition movement, which was directed against tax pressure and customs barriers and against the tightened press censorship. The liberal democratic movement under the leadership of journalists Siebenpfeiffer and Wirth also demanded unity and freedom for the whole of Germany. As the press was suppressed, popular assemblies became a forum for political discussion. The Hambach Festival of 1832 was the largest gathering. Not only delegations from Germany appeared under the new black-red-golden national colors and demanded political changes, but delegations from France and Poland came and emphasized another demand: that of a "confederated republican Europe". The governments then immediately tried to suppress the young liberal movement. The Frankfurt Bundestag banned political associations and people's assemblies, badges and flags. Thirteen speakers, who had met with political demands at the festival, had to answer in court. Nevertheless, the spirit of Hambach remained alive: the demands for a united and free Germany, for the granting of personal liberties, for the unity of Europe, have lost nothing of their significance since the political feast in the Palatinate. (Text: Ministry of Culture Rhineland-Palatinate, Mainz)