Police

The objective of the Congress of Vienna was to restore the former balance of power. This tendency was reinforced by the Karlsbad Resolutions of 1819. They aimed to suppress any liberal, democratic or national endeavours. The press and academic teaching were censored. The Prussian government behaved in a conservative and reactionary manner. In the tolerant Rhineland this led to continual conflicts. The mistrust shown by the Prussian state in Berlin for the liberal body of thought in the western provinces led to a police state whose citizens were under surveillance.

Jacob Venedey complained of being spied on by the police:
"So in the Prussian Rhineland the Prussian police and their agents provocateurs – thank heavens there's no German word for this race of men – create a chimera, then a crime through their own sorry work, in order to destroy a couple of men in the Prussian Rhineland who they believed thought differently from what the government and police kindly permitted."
(Venedey, Jacob: Preussen und Preußenthum, Mannheim 1839, S. VII)

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