Die Märzrevolution von 1848 in Wien und das Ende des vormärzlichen Polizeistaates

Abstract

This study is concerned with the analysis of police and censorship responses to the economic, social and political preconditions of 1848 revolution in Vienna. It points out, how the reform of rural and suburban police in terms of establishing new police commissariats had failed to a large degree, depriving police authorities of permanent control of these insecure areas. Typical police measures like strict censorship of books, journals or songs, surveillance of places of tension like reforming Italian states neighboring with Habsburg province Lombardo-Venetia and precise registration of revolutionary elements, combined with competence clashes of Vienna authorities as well as personal failures of police leaders Muth and Sedlnitzky, proved to be more than insufficient in order to prevent the inevitable change of the rigid absolutistic regime in the Habsburg monarchy.