Of the ideas surrounding Vormarz and the Revolution of 1848, I found the question of morality, and how it was perceived and enforced at the time, particularly interesting. Rather than an issue addressed and policed by the government and police (whose concerns ran more along the lines of quelling political unrest than imposing moral codes upon Germans), the enforcement of moral standards was more of a horizontal phenomenon, exemplified by the contemporary German brand of charivaris, Katzenmusik (described by Sperber). Although the victims of Katzenmusik (which could entail anything from screaming outside the offender’s window to physical assault) usually violated sexual codes of conduct, targets also included Catholics, crooked merchants, and others. The active role played by the Germans in enforcing these increasingly outdated moral codes (and the government’s passive endorsement through their failure to protect victims of Katzenmusik) tells of the widespread anxieties regarding the steady evolution of contemporary social norms.
Why, though, were (largely middle class) Germans so uneasy in the face of immorality, when there were seemingly larger and more pressing issues at hand? Shorter suggests briefly in his article that the German (or Bavarian, in the case of Shorter’s article) preoccupation with sexuality may have had roots in a prevalent fear of overpopulation, but then proposes that the perceived moral disintegration of society weakened the authority of the “state, of the village elders, of the master craftsmen, of the family father”. Modern legislation had broken down these traditional sources authority, at least in their ability to enforce morality, so it’s natural that the German middle classes would take up their mantle. So the “apparent” decline in German morality, to middle class contemporaries, signified not only a weakening of the individual and collective German character, but also of a collapsing society. Shorter points to the French Revolution as a possible catalyst for these fears – the middle classes witnessed the “moral standards” of French youth and the power of their government and traditional authorities plummet in tandem.
