Editing Carlsbad Decrees (section)

==Background==
The meeting of the state's representatives was called by the Austrian Minister of State [[Klemens Wenzel, Prince von Metternich|Prince Klemens Wenzel von Metternich]] after the liberal [[Burschenschaft]] student [[Karl Ludwig Sand]] had murdered the conservative writer [[August von Kotzebue]] on 23 March 1819, and an attempt had been made by apothecary Karl Löning on the life of [[Nassau (state)|Nassau]] president [[Carl Friedrich Emil von Ibell|Karl von Ibell]] on 1 July 1819.<ref>{{Cite book|author=Carl Schurz|author-link=Carl Schurz|title=Lebenserinnerungen Bis zum Jahre 1850: Selections|others=Edited with notes and vocabulary by Edward Manley|location=Norwood, Massachusetts|publisher=Allyn and Bacon| year=1913| page=211| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WJ1BAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA211}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.alt-idstein.info/html/das_streben_nach_deutscher_ein.html|title=Das Streben nach deutscher Einheit|accessdate=15 August 2011|publisher=alt-idstein.info|language=de|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160305002527/http://www.alt-idstein.info/html/das_streben_nach_deutscher_ein.html|archive-date=5 March 2016|url-status=dead}}</ref> In the course of the [[European Restoration]] Metternich feared [[Liberalism|liberal]] and [[nationalism|national]] tendencies at German universities which might conduct [[revolution]]ary activities threatening the monarchistic order. At this time, the two outrages cited were a welcome pretext to take action.

The Carlsbad Decrees had consequences not only for the rights of the member states but also for the independent academic jurisdiction that had partially been in existence for centuries. An important instrument for the application of the decrees for these and other purposes was the Mainzer Zentraluntersuchungskommission.

An essential attribute of the decrees was that the reactionary German Confederation understood liberal and nationalistic ideas as sedition and persecuted those spreading these ideas as demagogues. This persecution of demagogues, ''Demagogenverfolgung'', was especially vigorous in [[Prussia]].

After the [[Hambach Festival]] in 1832 the persecution was renewed for the last time. Only after the [[Revolutions of 1848 in the German states|March Revolution]] of 1848 were the Carlsbad Decrees abrogated by the [[Federal Convention (German Confederation)|German Bundestag]], on 2 April 1848.