Prehistoric/Early
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Early
Middle Ages
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Ages Late
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Absolutism
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Era Prussian
Era
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Republic
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Rhine and the island of Nonnenwerth (view from the Drachenfels)
Prussian Era | II. Rhine Province (1815-48)
World
1810
1809-1817,
USA
James Madison
4th President
1817-1825,
USA
James Monroe
5th President
The Congress of Vienna had compensated Prussia for her lost territories. The whole of the Rhineland, Westphalia, and some other territories had fallen to Prussia, so also the Seven Mountains now belonged to the State of Prussia under King Friedrich Wilhelm III (Frederick William III, 1797-1840). At first, there were two Prussian provinces, Lower Rhine and Jülich-Cleves-Berg. In 1824, both were combined into the "Rhine Province" with the capital Koblenz.
After the wars
Since the beginning of the coalition wars against the Revolutionary France in 1792, the country had not found peace any more. Again and again troops had marched through, had fought and requisitioned supplies. Now many soils were ruined, the country was impoverished. Especially life in the country was very hard, the farmers could hardly live from their harvests, there was almost no medical care and infant mortality was very high. In the winter of famine 1816/17, the Prussian government had grain brought from its eastern provinces.
Old Prussia and the Rhineland: two different areas under one crown
At the beginning, old
Prussia in the east and the Rhineland in the west were alien to each other.
Many Rhinelanders, proud of their centuries-old culture, did not know what to
do with the Prussians from east of the Elbe River. The Rhineland was a predominantly Catholic region, whereas Prussia and the Hohenzollern dynasty were
Protestants; this relationship was a
difficult one throughout the 19th century.
The Prussians, for their part, were somewhat suspicious of the Rhinelanders who had been more marked by the Revolutionary and later Napoleonic France than any other people of the Prussian state. Indeed, the French era had brought far-reaching and lasting changes to the Rhineland, and many of them were changes for the better. Now the citizens defended them against the Prussian State in which the reformers were deprived of power or even dismissed. In 1818, King Friedrich Wilhelm gave in: Napoleon's Code Civil remained in force (until 1900 ).
And yet, the Rhineland owes a great deal to the Prussians. They created a better infrastructure, improved administration and health care, and consolidated the school system. Now everyone got an opportunity to go to school, even more, going to school became mandatory. But in many peasants' and workers' families the need was so great that the children also had to work and could not go to school. Only in the 1870ies, when agriculture had recovered and the first laws to protect industry workers were in force, compulsory school attendance could be put through. In 1818, King Friedrich Wilhelm III founded the university in Bonn. The later emperors Friedrich III and Wilhelm II studied here.
In
1806, the Archbishopric
of Cologne, an ecclesiastical state, had beensecularized; the Monastery of Heisterbach
had been dissolved and its demolition ordered. Great damage had been done,
only the choir and parts of the wall still stood. In
1818, the Prussian authorities stopped further demolition – although the
state chancellery did mention that the population showed only little
patriotic interest in saving the monuments.
The night on the Drachenfels
In spite of all oppressive measure, the students of the University of Bonn celebrated the anniversary of the Battle of the Nations at Leipzig, on October 18, 1819, on top of the Drachenfels at the Landsturmdenkmal, the memorial that had been put up there to honor those killed in the Wars of Liberation. The Prussian authorities immediately prohibited each participation in Burschenschaft or other student movements.
In that night, also writer Heinrich Heine, back then a student of Bonn University, celebrated with his fellow students on the Drachenfels. He wrote the poem "The Night on the Drachenfels", which was published in 1827 in "Buch der Lieder" (Book of Songs).
Rhine
romanticism
In the 19th century the Rhineland, and with it the Seven Mountains, became a tourist attraction. Especially young British nobleman discovered the Rhine Valley, Lord Byron was here in 1818 and wrote his poem "The Castled Crag of Drachenfels".
1820
1825,
England
First railway
between Stockton
and
Darlington
1825-1829,
USA
John Quincy Adams
6th President
1829-1837,
USA
Andrew Jackson
7th President
At first, there had been two provinces, Lower Rhine and Jülich-Cleves-Berg. In 1824, both were combined into the "Rhine Province", its capital was Koblenz.
Quarries
Already the Romans had gained trachyte from quarries on the Drachenfels. In the Middle Ages the quarries had continued, for example large parts of the cathedral in Cologne had been built with stones from the Seven Mountains. At the beginning of the 19th century the damages done to the Drachenfels had become alarming. In 1826, part of the walls of the ruin crumbled. Two years later the Prussian authorities ordered all the Drachenfels quarries closed. An embittered fight between the owners of the quarries and citizens and authorities began. It went through all the courts and eventually, King Friedrich Wilhelm himself had to decide. Having examined the matter very carefully, he gave orders to buy the top of the Drachenfels with the quarries, and have them closed forever. In 1829, the Drachenfels was classified as historical monument and thereby put under preservation order.
