The Bourgeois Revolution of 1848 @museum.de

M: Reuter's father had appointed Carl Christoph Grischow, Stavenhagen's local pharmacist, as his son's guardian. Which turned out to be a stroke of luck, because Grischow and Fritz Reuter shared the same political convictions. Grischow was a member of the Stavenhagen Reform Association and fought for the same values as young Reuter once had: prosperity, education and freedom for all!

F: Grischow also took him along to a meeting of the Reform Association in Güstrow – and to the Extraordinary state parliament assembly in Schwerin in the spring of 1848. Reuter was proud to be a member of the political avant-garde again. But in Schwerin, he relapsed into alcoholism and was admitted to hospital, from where he tried to abscond. Full of remorse, he wrote to Luise:

M: "Are you angry with me? Oh, then all I will say is 'Forgive me' and I shall repeat that phrase until it elicits a kindly response from the innermost voice of your heart. ... Alas, I fear this was not well done on my part, I fear this is rough and hard towards you; do what you can and as you wish; I shall still love you for ever."

F: In these tumultuous pre-revolutionary years of the Vormärz, Reuter was working on his first novel – though it remained in a drawer and was only published posthumously under the title "Herr von Hakensterz und seine Tagelöhner" – “Mr. von Hakensterz and his day labourers”. Written in High German, it summarised the political discussion taking place during those years:

M: "... but there shall be no legal distinction between the estates, and there must be no judicial preference for wealth and no judicial disadvantage for poverty. Free rein! We shall beat you in the first race, Squire, and we shall outwit you, Moneybags, in the first share bet. Your fear of socialism and your dread of communism enter the fray on our side."

F: The end is well known in Germany. The Bourgeois Revolution of 1848 was crushed, Mecklenburg's newly enacted constitution was repealed and the old system of estates reintroduced. Reuter's ideals had come to grief for the second time.