Economic disturbances doubtless
turned the thoughts of the hungry and harassed to the land of plenty
across the sea. But a potent cause of the great migration of the
thirties and forties was the universal social and political discontent
which followed in the wake of the Napoleonic wars. The German people
were still divided into numberless small feudalities whose petty dukes
and princes clung tenaciously to their medieval prerogatives and
tyrannies. The contest against Napoleon had been waged by German
patriots not only to overcome a foreign foe but to break the tyrant at
home. The hope for constitutional government, for a representative
system and a liberal legislation in the German States rose mightily
after Waterloo. But the promises of princes made in days of stress
were soon forgotten, and the Congress of Vienna had established the
semblance of a German federation upon a unity of reactionary rulers,
not upon a constitutional, representative basis.
The reaction against this bitter disappointment was led by the eager
German youth, who, inspired by liberal ideals, now thirsted for
freedom of thought, of speech, and of action. Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, a
German patriot, organized everywhere _Turnvereine_, or gymnastic
clubs, as a tangible form of expressing this demand. Among the
students of the universities liberal patriotic clubs called
_Burschenschaften_ were organized, idealistic in their aims and
impractical in their propaganda, where "every man with his bonnet on
his head, a pot of beer in his hand, a pipe or seegar in his mouth,
and a song upon his lips, never doubting but that he and his
companions are training themselves to be the regenerators of Europe,"
vowed "the liberation of Germany.
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