Middle-Class Nationalists in Central Europe

In the spring of 1848, the news of the successful Revolution in Paris spread across Europe, especially to the expansive Habsburg empire. In this region, which stretched across a vast territory and included many different ethnic groups and formerly independent kingdoms, there had been relatively little change since the previous century. The government was still absolutist, the society was still largely traditional and land-owning, noble lords still controlled most of the wealth and political power.

The only group that really sought change were well-educated professionals, such as journalists, teachers and lawyers, who generally lived in the cities. These people, known as mittelstand (German for "middle-group") were neither landowners nor workers. Politically they were inclined towards liberalism, meaning they wanted an elected government and greater freedom to exchange ideas. But unlike liberals in France, they were politically weak because of censorship and because many of them depended on the government for their jobs. Unlike the British or the French "Democratic Socialists," the mittlestadt take relatively little interest in the problems of the workers, since there were fewer factories in this region and thus fewer workers, and since they did not consider this group to be sufficiently well educated as to be ready to have the vote.