ABSTRACT
On April 11, 1822 List learned that he had been sentenced to ten months' imprisonment in a fortress - a sentence which permanently disqualified him from holding public office. He regarded this as "equivalent to the death penalty",203 and two days later he left Stuttgart - in his own words - "like a thief in the night". 204 Having no passport he did not enter France by the ferry at Kehl but hired a boat at Auenheim to cross the Rhine. His attempt to slip into the country unnoticed failed since he was spotted by customs officials and warned that this was no way to cross the frontier. But he was allowed to proceed to Strasbourg. Here he felt at home in a former free city of the Holy Roman Empire where German was still spoken and where the cost of living was lower than in Stuttgart. Here he could hope to earn a living as a journalist, while continuing to protest his innocence and to denounce the Wiirttemberg authorities for the injustice of his trial and sentence. He had now joined the ranks of the numerous exiles who - under the shadow of the Carlsbad decrees - were victims of Metternich's unrelenting witch hunt directed against German democrats. Austria and Prussia cooperated to put pressure on the German states to make a concerted effort to root out all liberal movements.
