A banquet is a rather pompous form of eating together. There is food, but above all it is representation and demonstration of their mastery, the strictest choreography of ordering, clearing, holding table talks. There are many banquets in the official residence of the Federal President, the next time next week, King Charles III. stops by.
Also on Friday, Frank-Walter Steinmeier invited to a feast at Schloss Bellevue, only this time the word "republican" was preceded. Republican banquets were a subversive practice in Vormärz, large gatherings were forbidden, so people met ostensibly to eat and drink, but in fact to formulate demands that were contrary to the self-image of the ruling castle owners. Receiving under this motto in the former Hohenzollern residence, one day before 18 March 1848 marked the 175th anniversary, Steinmeier's concern includes a culture of remembrance that more explicitly includes the beginnings of democratic history in Germany.
Nothing but a bound woman
120 guests from culture, politics and science, including committed citizens, on each seat a rosette in black, red and gold, symbol of the demand for civil rights. Like a common lady of the table, the women's rights activist Louise Otto looked from a large picture at the edge of the stage, with a skeptical look that seemed to ask whether the revolutionary spirit of the time could be traced in such a state-supporting framework – the bitterness over monarchical arbitrariness, lack of freedom, poverty and the determination to push through reforms and national unity.
It worked pretty well. Katharina Thalbach recited from Louise Otto's "Songs of a German Girl" and hurled out the words "and I am nothing but a bound woman" as angry as Louise Otto must have meant them, also in the direction of her comrades-in-arms: The idea of co-determination was more likely to apply to the men themselves.
The historian Hélène Miard-Delacroix reported breathlessly like a revolutionary who had just galloped in from Paris about the activities in France and made a toast to the common treasure of progress, freedom and democracy that Europe harbors today. Christopher Clark, a historian from Cambridge, declared "this beautiful feast" to be the fruit of the revolution and ended with the hope that the spirit of freedom would return to Russia. There were quite a lot of black-red-gold rosettes on the evening dresses.
In the days before March 18, 1848, before the shootings at Schlossplatz, the urban fighting and the more than 250 dead, the Berlin Tiergarten became a meeting place. The summer residence Bellevue was in sight: strictly guarded for fear of the rebellious people, dark and empty.