The Mainz Jacobin Club, officially the Society of the Friends of Liberty and Equality (German: Gesellschaft der Freunde der Freiheit und Gleichheit) or the Society of Friends of the Republic (German: Gesellschaft der Freunde der Republik) was a German republican collaborationist political club based in Mainz. Inspired by Enlightenment universalism and modeled after the French Jacobin Club, the Mainz Jacobins (German: Die Jakobiner) admired the French Revolution and sought to export its political and intellectual framework to Germany.
The existence of the Mainz Jacobin Club largely coincided with the French occupation of southwestern Germany during the French Revolutionary Wars. The club was established by a group largely composed of professors from the University of Mainz on October 23, 1792, two days after the capture of Mainz by French Revolutionary troops led by Adam Philippe de Custine. Their meetings took place in the academy hall of the Electoral Palace in Mainz, the former residence of the Electoral Archbishop of Mainz. When the French National Convention mandated the formation of sister republics in the occupied territories west of the Rhine on February 24, 1793, the Mainz Jacobins would become the leading force behind the short-lived Rhenish-German Free State (German: Rhenisch-Deutscher Freistaat), more commonly known as the Republic of Mainz (German: Mainzer Republik; French: République de Mayence). At its height, the Mainz Jacobin Club had almost 500 members, the largest of the revolutionary clubs founded during the relatively brief period of French occupation. When the First Coalition recaptured the city on July 22nd, 1793, they immediately abolished the Republic, restored the Archbishop, outlawed the Mainz Jacobin Club, and persecuted its members.
Background
Following France's declaration of war against Austria on April 20th, 1792, the leaders of the First Coalition held a princely congress, hosted by the Archbishop of Mainz at the Favorite Palace from the 19 to the 21 of July, 1792, to determine their response. There, the newly crowned Holy Roman Emperor and Archduke of Austria Francis II, the Prussian King Frederick William II, the host Elector of Mainz Friedrich Karl Joseph von Erthal, and numerous other princes and diplomats agreed to pursue military action. However, this first campaign ended with the retreat of the combined Austrian, Prussian, and French royalist force following the Battle of Valmy on September 20, 1792. The French Revolutionary Army immediately launched a counter-offensive and captured Mainz under General Adam Philippe de Custine on 21 October 1792. There he already found a considerable number of citizens who sympathised with the ideas of the French Revolution. These were mostly professors and students of the University of Mainz as well as officials of the electoral administration.
Possible precursor organisations
Whether institutions that can be interpreted as precursors to the Mainz Jacobin Club already existed during the electoral period remains a matter of controversy among historians. While scholars such as Heinrich Scheel, Walter Grab, Hans Grassl, and Jörg Schweigard clearly affirm this view, Franz Dumont argues against it.
The most likely precursor to the Mainz Jacobin Club was the Mainz Scholarly Reading Society (Mainzer Gelehrte Lesegesellschaft). Founded in 1781–82, its purpose was to make modern literature available at affordable prices and to provide a platform for discussion of current topics. The society’s collection alone included 24 political periodicals, and its membership comprised a large number of enlightened-liberal intellectuals, which led to increasing politicisation. This is further supported by the fact that future leading and radical Jacobins – such as Mathias Metternich, Felix Anton Blau, Anton Joseph Dorsch, and Andreas Joseph Hofmann, all professors at the electoral university – were members of the reading society. When the society split in 1791 over disagreements concerning writings on the French Revolution, Metternich and his colleague Andreas Joseph Hofmann played a leading role in dividing it into an "Aristocratic" and a "Democratic" reading society.
The Mainz branch of the politically active Illuminati movement, banned in 1785, also served as a gathering point for pre-revolutionary activities. Many later Mainz Jacobins, such as the electoral police official and later maire Franz Konrad Macké, had their first contacts with the ideas of the Age of Enlightenment here. After the dissolution of the Mainz Illuminati lodge in February 1786, a secret "Society of Propaganda" was founded as early as May of the same year. Its members were largely recruited from former Mainz Illuminati, and its activities closely resembled those of the Mainz Jacobin Club founded six years later. It is therefore unsurprising that three founding members of the Jacobin Club came from the ranks of the "Propaganda Club" and that the executive and correspondence committee of the Mainz Jacobin Club – with only one exception – consisted of the same active members from the circles of former Illuminati and propagandists.
It is also known that even before 1792, numerous private circles and groups existed in Mainz in which intellectuals – as well as university students who were not admitted to the "Scholarly Reading Society" – discussed Enlightenment and revolutionary ideas to varying degrees of activity.
The Mainz Jacobin Club
Founding
With General Custine’s seizure of power and the consequent incorporation of Mainz (as "Mayence") into the French First Republic, all the necessary conditions for political activity in the spirit of the new rulers of Mainz had been created. The theologian, canon lawyer, and former university professor from Worms, Georg Wilhelm Böhmer,Georg Wilhelm Böhmer: Die Mainzer Clubisten. In: Conversations-Lexikon oder kurzgefasstes Handwörterbuch für die in der gesellschaftlichen Unterhaltung aus den Wissenschaften und Künsten vorkommenden Gegenstände mit beständiger Rücksicht auf die Ereignisse der älteren und neueren Zeit. Band 3: M bis Q. Kunst- und Industrie-Comptoir, Amsterdam 1809, S. 33–36, bei zeno.org. who had by then become Custine’s secretary, had arrived in Mainz with the French troops. Already the next day, on 22 October 1792, he publicly called in the Privilegirte Mainzer Zeitung – of which he had just become editor – for the founding of a "Society of German Friends of Liberty and Equality" modelled on the Paris Jacobin Club:
The call was preceded by a meeting the previous day at the home of Custine’s adjutant-general Stamm, which Böhmer chaired. Even during his campaign, Custine had planned the establishment of revolutionary societies and sought experienced individuals to serve as suitable propagators of revolutionary ideas in these bodies. Böhmer’s activities were explicitly encouraged and supported by Custine, who also arranged payments through Böhmer to those willing to support the French cause.Gottlob Teutsch: Für und Wider die Mainzische Konstitution. Frankfurt am Main 1793, p. 46 Böhmer, in turn, repeatedly invoked General Custine directly in his activities in Mainz and acted officially in his name and on his behalf.Schöne Raritäten zum Zeitvertreib des Mainzer Bürgers beim troknen Brod und am leeren Kruge und für Fremde, die Mainz interessiert. Mainz 1793;
Twenty people, mostly from the milieu of the University of Mainz, appeared on the evening of 23 October 1792 in the academy hall of the Electoral Palace. Böhmer arrived accompanied by the physician Georg von Wedekind and the merchant André Patocki. He opened the constitutive session by excusing General Custine, who was detained by "pressing military affairs", and had propaganda material distributed. Speeches followed by court councillor Kaspar Hartmann – who would develop from an electoral court official into one of the most uncompromising Mainz Jacobins – as well as by professors Georg Wedekind and Mathias Metternich, in which the old regime of the Elector and his aristocrats was primarily attacked. The attendees then signed a joint protocol. In it they welcomed the liberation and support provided by the French, formally declared the establishment of the Society of the Friends of Liberty and Equality, and resolved to request the statutes of the Strasbourg Jacobin Club. The first session of the Mainz Jacobin Club ended with the solemn oath of admission: To live free or die!
The founding members of the Mainz Club included, besides Böhmer, the university professors Mathias Metternich, Georg Wedekind, and Andreas Joseph Hofmann, additional professors and students of the university, as well as merchants such as André Patocki and Georg Häfelin, and military men such as Rudolf Eickemeyer. At the next session the following day, Georg Häfelin was elected the club’s founding president, with Mathias Metternich as his deputy.
Growth and peak
Already at the second meeting on 24 October, which General Custine also attended and addressed, the academy hall was overcrowded. In the ensuing roughly two-week founding phase, membership grew rapidly, reaching a peak of exactly 492 registered members by the end of November 1792.Franz Dumont: Die Mainzer Republik von 1792/93. Studien zur Revolutionierung in Rheinhessen und der Pfalz. 1993, p. 233 During this period the club’s political programme was drawn up in its essentials.
Attempts by conservative and moderate forces to limit the Jacobin Club to a merely passive discussion forum within the ongoing changes were clearly rejected. Most members wished to take an active part in the democratisation process that was now under way. The members’ energetic and self-motivated participation in actions to bring about societal change was demonstrated by the high-profile initiative to erect a liberty tree on the Höfchen and by the creation of a “Red Book of Liberty” and a “Black Book of Slavery”, in which the people of Mainz could voluntarily register and thereby vote for or against the revolutionary ideas of the French.
Jacobins arriving from Alsace, such as Anton Joseph Dorsch – who until 1791 had held the chair of philosophy at the University of Mainz and had been recruited earlier by Custine to support the newly founded Jacobin clubs in the left-Rhenish territories – contributed significantly to intensifying the club’s work. In the early phase they decisively shaped the structure, organisation, and outward propaganda of the Mainz Jacobin Club. The club’s popularity and prestige rose further with the later accession of prominent Mainz personalities. The entry of the popular police commissioner Franz Konrad Macké, who was subsequently elected maire, sent an important signal to the still-underrepresented guild citizens. The accession two days later – after initial reservations and careful consideration of his future political stanceWalter Grab: Eroberung oder Befreiung? 1970, p. 25. – of the scholar and explorer Georg Forster, who was famous far beyond the city and regional borders, attracted attention outside Mainz as well.
In mid-November General Custine appointed leading club members such as Forster and Dorsch to high offices in the newly created civil administration. Dorsch, for example, became president of the “General Administration” and thus the highest civilian representative in the entire French-occupied territory. This increase in authority, executive power, and prestige – and thus Custine’s esteem for the Mainz Jacobins active in the club – together with the peak membership of almost 500 at the end of November, marked the high point of the Mainz Jacobin Club’s influence.