Barricades

Only a week after the overthrow of the French monarch, the revolution had reached the Rhineland. During a meeting of the parish council in Cologne on 3rd March, riots broke out in front of the town hall. Andreas Gottschalk, a doctor of the poor, submitted a first petition to the council. In it he demanded legislation by the people and freedom of speech and the press. In September 1848 there was renewed unrest in Cologne, in the course of which barricades were erected, although there was no fighting. However, it should not be forgotten that Cologne had a strong military garrison then.

Town Secretary Fuchs reported on the sequence of events:
"The barricades were built on the instruction of outsiders…, gymnasts from Frankfurt and others who came here especially for the purpose. In order to defend the barricade at Wallrafplatz, armed persons had been posted in the neighbouring houses and it was only due to the great restraint of the military that no fighting broke out and nobody was killed as a result of this instigation."

(Zitiert aus: Illner, Eberhard: Barrikaden ohne Kampf. Köln im September 1848, in: Dascher, Ottfried und Everhard Kleinertz [Hrsg.], Petitionen und Barrikaden. Rheinische Revolutionen 1848/49, S. 313)

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