The story of this place
In May 1832, amid the reactionary politics of the German Confederation, some 30,000 people climbed to the ruined Hambach Castle above Neustadt for the Hambacher Fest, a mass demonstration for civil liberty, national unity and popular sovereignty. Marchers carried the black-red-gold tricolour — banned by the authorities — which became the flag of German democracy and, eventually, of the modern republic. Speakers demanded freedom of the press and a united Germany, decades before either existed. The festival alarmed the princes so much that they cracked down with new repressive laws, but the ideals it voiced fed the 1848 revolution and beyond. The restored castle now houses a museum on the long, unfinished struggle for German democracy.