ABSTRACT
After the 1848 French Revolution, King Louis-Philippe's abdication, and France's being proclaimed a republic, revolutions raged across Europe; student actors and actions played a significant role in many of them. Particularly significant to the history of student resistance were the rev-- olutions occurring in the German states. Students, for instance, joined demonstrating workers in Berlin, calling on King Friedrich Wilhelm IV to establish a parliament and freedom of speech; the protest quickly turned into a general riot in which workers and students constructed barricades and manned them against advancing Prussian troops. In overrunning the barricades, the troops killed hundreds of protesters. Although many students gave their lives in street battles, students also contributed to the uprising by spreading revolutionary ideas and enlist-- ing participants; they printed flyers and traveled throughout the city convincing workers to join the revolution. More workers were actually more politically radical than were the majority of university students at the time, although a small number of students were so extreme that they alienated even the most zealous of workers, thus jeopardizing the groups' collaborations.1
