About thirty thousand participants from all ranks…

About thirty thousand participants from all ranks of society, workmen, students and members of parliament, as well as from different nations such as France and Poland, gather at Hambach Castle near Neustadt an der Weinstrasse from May 27 to May 30, 1832.

There are many among the Poles who had fled after the November Uprising from Poland to Germany and further on to France.

The Palatinate, on the west bank of the Rhine, is at this time under the control of Bavaria, and the local population suffers from high taxes and censorship.

The main demands of the meeting, which has been disguised as a nonpolitical county fair (The Hambacher Fest) are liberty, civil rights, and national Unity.

No consensus is reached concerning actions, and students carry out a few uncoordinated violent acts later on.

This will later be criticized as a missed opportunity, e.g., by poet Heinrich Heine.

Although the meeting has no immediate results, it is considered a milestone in German history.

It also confirms the establishment of the combination of black, red, and gold as a symbol of a democratic movement for a united Germany.

These colors, which will later be used by democratic revolutionaries in the Revolutions of 1848 in the German states, will be adopted after 1918 by the Weimar Republic as national colors of Germany, and used in the Flag of Germany.