ABSTRACT
The two decades following 1830 saw a quickening of the pace of economic and social developments, and a broadening of their effects. The prominent role of the free congregations in political dissent during the 1840s points to the disproportionate significance of confessional identities in German public life. Germans continued to be Protestants and Catholics, religiously orthodox and free-thinking, even when they were dealing with issues that went well beyond those of the old regime culture of confessionalism. The 1840s were a period of declining popular standards of living in central Europe and people from all different political points of view avidly debated the social question, offering remedies for the growing 'pauperization', as contemporaries said, of ever-greater portions of the population. Even without Great Britain and Russia, the 1848 revolution encompassed an enormous area, ranging from the Atlantic to the Ukraine, from the Baltic to the Mediterranean.
