Carlsbad Decrees

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

At a special conference of selected ministers and envoys of the major states of the German Confederation held at Carlsbad, Bohemia, from August 6 through 31, 1819, Metternich sought to take advantage of the concern caused by recent revolutionary actions to take steps to suppress liberal and nationalist agitation in the German states. The most dramatic of those events was the assassination of the German literary figure August von Kotzebue by the university student Karl Sand. Metternich planned to use the specter of revolutionary agitation to persuade the assembled representatives of the urgent need for action. In his opening address, Metternich divided the business for discussion into two categories: first, matters of urgent importance needing to be addressed immediately—that is, the revolutionary agitation—and, second, questions affecting the fundamental constitution of the German Confederation. Over the course of the next twenty-three meetings, a unanimous consensus emerged concerning the need to suppress revolutionary activity. However, the assembled representatives of ten of the German states could not agree on the constitutional issues, so the Carlsbad Decrees addressed only the curbing of revolutionary activity. They were submitted to the Bundesversammlung (the Federal Convention) in September 1819 and formally adopted on September 20. The Carlsbad Decrees are divided into three distinct parts: those addressing the universities, those having to do with press censorship, and those concerning the formation of a central investigative commission to uncover revolutionary plots within the German Confederation.

“Provisional Decree Relative to the Measures to Be Taken concerning the Universities”

Section 1 of the first decree directs the sovereign to appoint an “extraordinary commissioner” for each university. The commissioner was to reside at the university, enforce the existing regulations in the strictest fashion, and keep an eye on the faculty. The purpose of this oversight was to ensure that students maintained proper behavior and morals, and the extraordinary commissioners were given powers commensurate with their duties.

Section 2 directs members of the confederation to remove professors and other teachers who could be proved to have corrupted the minds of the youth with teachings that were “hostile to order and public tranquility.” Section 2 further states that a professor or tutor who was removed from one university could not be employed at any other educational institution in the confederation. Section 3 directs that existing laws against secret or unauthorized student associations be rigorously enforced and extended to include the Burschenschaften. The decree instructs confederation members to refuse public employment to individuals who maintained their association with the student associations after the publication of the decree. Section 4 declares that a student dismissed from one university in the confederation was not to be admitted to any other university in the confederation. A student who left one university would not be allowed to enroll in another without an “attestation of his good conduct at the university he has left.”

In summary, the “Measures to Be Taken concerning the Universities” required confederation members to appoint overseers to their universities, restricted the faculty to teaching only what the government deemed inoffensive, outlawed student organizations that were formed to promote liberalism and nationalism, prevented expelled students from enrolling in other universities, and ensured that students who did belong to the Burschenschaften would not be employed by members states of the German Confederation.

“Measures for Preventing the Abuses of the Press”

Section 1 of the second decree requires all daily publications and periodicals of less than twenty pages to obtain the consent of the authorities to be published. Publications not covered by the new regulations remained under the jurisdiction of existing laws. Any German state was permitted to raise a complaint about a publication in any other state; the complaint would initiate proceedings against the author or the editor of the work.

Section 2 authorizes each state to adopt any necessary measures to administer the decree. Section 3 criticizes current laws on publishing in the German states, the implication being that the states should pass better ones. Section 4 holds each of the German states responsible for what was published in that state. The state in which the offending material was published was considered answerable not only to the offended state but also to all members of the German Confederation.

Section 5 exhorts member states to prevent press-related complaints from arising, so as to secure peace and harmony within the confederation. It requires the members of the Confederation to “devote their most serious attention” to the supervision of materials published within their boundaries. Section 6 allows a member state that perceived itself to be injured by writings published in another state and that was unsatisfied by the response of the other state to its complaints to take its case to the Federal Convention, which was to appoint a commission to investigate and rule on the matter. The findings of the commission were to be implemented. If a commission determined that a publication “compromised the dignity of the Germanic body, the safety of any of its members, or the internal peace of Germany,” the Federal Convention was obligated to compel the state in which the offending material had been published to suppress that material. Thus, Section 6 allowed the members of the confederation, through the Federal Convention, to intervene in the internal workings of an individual member state.

Section 7 declares that if authors, editors, and publishers complied with the press restrictions, they would not be punished as individuals if the publication with which they were associated was suppressed by the Federal Convention, but editors were forbidden to publish anything similar for five years. Section 8 gives the members of the Confederation a deadline of six months in which to inform the Federal Convention of the measures they had implemented to carry out the press laws. Section 9 requires every work printed within the borders of the German Confederation to bear the name of its printer or editor. Works that did not were to be confiscated and the offending person or persons punished. Section 10 declares that the decree was to remain in force for five years from its initial publication and that before its expiration the diet was to give its attention to how article 18 of the Federal Constitution (governing the conduct of the press) could be used to limit the press in member states. Section 10 thereby sought to compel the Federal Convention to reconcile the federal constitution with the “Measure for Preventing the Abuses of the Press.”

These measures were only partially successful. Standards were less draconian in the individual German states, and many authors and publishers found loopholes that enabled them to evade censorship. Nevertheless, it has been estimated that only about 25 percent of the books that were approved in Germany were also approved in Austria, suggesting that the censorship restrictions had a dampening effect on political discourse in Austria.

“Decree Relative to the Formation of a Central Commission”

The “Decree Relative to the Formation of a Central Commission, for the Purpose of Ulterior Inquiry respecting Revolutionary Plots, Discovered in Some of the States of the Confederation” creates a commission to investigate revolutionary activities within the German states and their link to liberal and nationalist agitation outside the confederation. Article 1 establishes a seven-person commission to meet in Mainz (“Mentz” in the accompanying document) within fifteen days after the date of the decree; Article 2 charges the commission with seeking out those secret revolutionary associations that wanted to harm the confederation or its individual members. Articles 3 describes how commission members were to be appointed, while Article 4 names the qualifications required of commission members. Article 5 instructs the central commission to oversee all current and future investigations. Article 6 compels the members of the Confederation to cooperate with commission. Article 7 gives the commission authority to examine any individual it deems necessary. Articles 8–10 regulate the proceedings of the commission.

A Prussian state police agency called the Immediate Investigation Commission, based in Berlin, had already begun collecting enormous amounts of information on dissidents and revolutionaries. The commission was headed by the municipal police chief, but it was under the authority of the chief police officer of the ministry of justice, Karl Albert von Kamptz. A law book that von Kamptz had written was one of the books that had been burned at the Wartburg Festival, and perhaps in retaliation he was obsessive about rooting out radicalism. The ministry maintained numerous prisons in and around Berlin, where revolutionaries were held and interrogated, their letters and papers were examined minutely, and reports were compiled. In a footnote, one of the compilers of these reports was E. T. A. Hoffman, one of Austria's foremost poets, who worked as a lawyer for the ministry of justice and who used information from his work in several of his books.