Rastatt Fortress: A Federal Fortress of the German Confederation
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History
Rastatt Fortress in Germany was a nineteenth-century stronghold planned and built by the German Confederation as a federal fortress on the Upper Rhine. Construction began in 1842 in the Neo-Prussian system of fortification, a nineteenth-century approach based on detached defensive works and protected artillery positions. The fortress was intended to link the Confederation’s border defences and became a major military centre during the Baden Revolution of 1849.
Planning the Upper Rhine fortress
The German Confederation was an association of German states created in 1815, and its federal fortresses were jointly planned and garrisoned installations rather than possessions of a single state. On 3 November 1815, Austria, Great Britain, Prussia, and Russia designated Mainz, Luxembourg, and Landau as federal fortresses. They also proposed a fourth stronghold on the Upper Rhine, financed with 20 million French francs from war reparations.
Engineers from Baden, Bavaria, Württemberg, and Austria worked on plans between 1819 and 1824. Political disagreements then delayed the project for two decades. Austria favoured enlarging Ulm, while Prussia and the south German states nearer France supported Rastatt. In October 1836, William I of Württemberg proposed fortifying both cities, and Bavaria and Austria accepted this arrangement in 1838 and 1839.
The Rhine Crisis of 1840–1841, a period of heightened tension between the German states and France, encouraged the Confederation to adopt common defensive measures. On 26 March 1841, its Federal Assembly approved the construction of fortresses at both Ulm and Rastatt. Rastatt was designated as a linking and border fortress and as a military station for the VIII Army Corps. Baden received the right to appoint the governor, commandant, and chief of artillery, while Austria was to appoint the chief of engineers.
Construction and early operation
Work began on 15 November 1842, although the foundation stone was not laid until 18 October 1844 because extensive preparation was required. Land was purchased or requisitioned with compensation from 345 private owners as well as from the municipality and the grand-ducal administration. The project initially brought an economic boom to Rastatt. The town later faced losses when public institutions, including the court and district administration, were removed. Disputes followed over the cost of expanding police and medical services for the enlarged military community.
Austrian Lieutenant Colonel Georg Eberle directed construction, and nearly all senior construction personnel came from Austria. About 4,000 people worked on the fortress by 1844. Between 1843 and 1848, the average workforce remained close to 4,000, reaching approximately 6,000 at its peak. Most of the building stone came from a roughly 500-metre-long bunter-sandstone quarry on Eichelberg near Oberweier. A 14.5-kilometre horse-drawn railway carried the stone to Rastatt, with a daily capacity of up to 400 cubic metres. Between 400 and 1,200 people worked at the quarry in a separate barracks camp, including residents of the area and labourers from Württemberg, Austria, South Tyrol, and Italy.
The planned completion date of 1849 was missed because of financial difficulties and the Baden Revolution. Rastatt Fortress entered service in 1848 when Lieutenant General Carl Felix von Lassolaye became its first governor, although construction continued. Work interrupted by the revolution resumed in 1850 and reached a provisional conclusion in 1852. The town defences and station lunettes, detached crescent-shaped works placed in front of a larger fortification, were completed between 1852 and 1854. Two further outworks followed in 1856 after disputes, especially between Prussia and Austria, over expansion and financing.
The fortress was designed to accommodate as many as 30,000 men during wartime. Baden was initially required to provide 2,400 men in peacetime and 7,000 in wartime, while Austria was to provide 100 and 3,500 respectively. On 28 July 1859, the German Confederation granted Prussia a garrisoning right. The peacetime garrison was then fixed at 12,000 men, supplied by Austria with 6,000, Prussia with 4,000, and Baden with 2,000.
Rastatt and the Baden Revolution
The Baden Revolution was the liberal and democratic uprising in the Grand Duchy of Baden during 1848 and 1849. Rastatt Fortress became central to the movement in May 1849, when its garrison mutinied and joined the Rastatt civic militia in submitting to Baden’s democratically elected revolutionary government. Under Prussian leadership, neighbouring states later defeated the revolution by military force.
On 9 May, almost all soldiers and non-commissioned officers attended a meeting on the fortress parade ground. Soldiers from the regular army fraternized with the civic militia, and another meeting followed on 10 May at the Gromer brewery. Artillerymen then marched in formation with drawn sabres and a black-red-gold flag.
The immediate crisis began on the morning of 11 May, when Captain von Renz imprisoned Johann Stark in the Leopold Barracks for making seditious speeches. Soldiers from the 1st and 3rd Baden Infantry Regiments and fortress workers gathered outside and demanded his release. The barracks guard refused to act against them, and Stark was eventually freed after asserting that his company commander had authorized him to leave. A second general alarm at 1 p.m. also received little response. Men of the 3rd Regiment confronted Governor Wilhelm von Cloßmann and other officers, who drove the insubordinate soldiers from the barracks with drawn sabres. Corporal Haas, a leader of the soldiers’ club, prevented an attack on the residence of Colonel Pierron, commander of the regiment.
That evening, soldiers, townspeople, and fortress workers gathered outside the Leopold Barracks to demand the release of Corporal Kehlhofer, who had been imprisoned for insubordination and unauthorized absence. Colonel Hoffmann was struck by a stone, while Pierron escaped on horseback. Governor von Cloßmann tried to disperse the crowd with dragoons, but negotiations failed and stones and roof tiles were thrown. Von Cloßmann was injured, and most of the dragoons refused to obey orders. With von Cloßmann and Hoffmann wounded and Pierron absent, the military leadership collapsed. The small Austrian contingent stayed together and withdrew into the fortress.
During the night of 11–12 May, Gustav Struve and Karl Blind, who had been imprisoned since the Struve rising of September 1848, were transferred from Rastatt to Bruchsal. On 12 May, Baden War Minister Friedrich Hoffmann arrived from Karlsruhe with three squadrons of the 1st Baden Dragoon Regiment under Colonel Heinrich Wilhelm von Hinckeldey and an artillery detachment. Hoffmann accepted the demand that soldier representatives attend the planned people’s assembly at Offenburg, although the Baden Estates Assembly blocked the demand for higher pay.
Rumours of further mutinies and the approach of Prussian troops caused renewed unrest that evening. The rebels won over Hoffmann’s artillerymen and threatened the dragoons with their guns while calling on them to fraternize. The dragoon regiment dissolved, and Hoffmann escaped with part of it and most of the officers. Rebels searched private houses and pursued officers, prompting the Rastatt civic militia to intervene. Joint patrols of militiamen and rebellious troops restored a measure of legal order. On 13 May, elected representatives of Rastatt’s soldiers attended the Offenburg assembly, while a security committee was established in the town. Rastatt and its fortress thereafter shared the fate of Baden’s revolutionary government.
The siege and surrender of 1849
After revolutionary forces were defeated at Waghäusel on 21 June 1849, retreating troops and irregular fighters sought shelter behind Rastatt’s defences. The town became overcrowded and tense. On 24 June, sixteen officials and clerics suspected of supporting the counter-revolution were arrested and held in the fortress as potential hostages. On 27 June, a lynch mob killed two men believed to be spies and reactionaries. Amand Goegg prevented the detained officials and clerics from being used as hostages against the advancing Prussian forces on 28 June.
Around 26 June, General Ludwik Mierosławski, commander of the Baden-Palatinate revolutionary army, gathered the remaining revolutionary forces near Rastatt and hastily established the Murgh line along the lower Murg. The position was intended to stop three improvised army corps of the German Confederation from advancing into southern Baden. Rastatt’s position in the Rhine plain and its gun batteries, which covered the battlefield from the Rhine towards the edges of the Black Forest, gave the fortress particular military importance.
Revolutionary troops fought defensive actions along the Murgh line from 28 to 30 June, but could not withstand the attackers’ superior strength. On 29 and 30 June, intervention forces broke through the line’s right flank and encircled Rastatt through Sandweier and Iffezheim. By the evening of 30 June, about 6,000 revolutionary fighters were trapped inside the fortress.
The Prussian II Army Corps, commanded by Lieutenant General Karl von der Groeben, besieged Rastatt from 30 June to 23 July 1849. After unsuccessful sorties, repeated demands for surrender, and the loss of any prospect of relief, the garrison capitulated on 23 July. The victors imposed severe penalties. Nineteen people, including Major Gustav Tiedemann, were executed by firing squad in the fortress ditches. Tiedemann had been appointed governor of Rastatt by Mierosławski on 29 June. All the revolutionary soldiers in Rastatt were taken prisoner, and nearly nine-tenths of them were Badeners.
Later military history and abandonment
During the German War of 1866, the Federal Assembly decided on 9 June to withdraw the Austrian and Prussian contingents from Rastatt and replace them with troops from Bavaria and smaller German states. Prussia left on 10 June and Austria on 13 June. The garrison was reduced to 4,800 men, comprising 1,800 from Baden, 1,000 each from Saxe-Altenburg and Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, and 500 each from Waldeck and Reuss. Rastatt was placed on a war footing only from 18 July to 1 August. After Baden left the German Confederation, the fortress passed to the Baden War Ministry, and the replacement contingents departed on 4 August. No tension had arisen between the Austrian and Prussian contingents in Rastatt before the war.
The Badenese clergyman and writer Heinrich Hansjakob spent one month imprisoned in the fortress in 1869 and later wrote Auf der Festung. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, Rastatt served as a concentration point for south German contingents and remained under a state of siege from 22 July 1870 to 11 May 1871. After Strasbourg capitulated on 27 September 1870, the fortress held a camp for 10,000 French prisoners until late summer 1871. Lieutenant General Ludwig Waag was governor during this period.
The fortress was abandoned in 1890 after losing its frontier position and military importance. Most of it was sold to the town in 1892 for demolition and use as building material. After Germany’s defeat in the First World War, Article 180 of the Treaty of Versailles required German fortresses east of the Rhine within a 50-kilometre corridor to be demolished. The Inter-Allied Military Control Commission determined which remaining parts of Rastatt Fortress had to be destroyed.
The Rastatt Historical Association now restores, conserves, and makes the surviving structures accessible. Its voluntary work was recognised with the title “Badenese of the Year 2023.” The fortress is also remembered in the third stanza of the Badnerlied, the unofficial anthem of Baden, which presents it as a defence against French incursions. Erich Schlossarek’s 1988 historical novel Auf Gnade und Ungnade deals with the siege of 1849.
Remains
Rastatt Fortress enclosed the town and was arranged in three independently defensible sections: Leopold Fortress, Louis Fortress, and Friedrich Fortress. Together, these three forts formed the central nucleus, which contained 30 works. Other installations stood beyond the inner ring, bringing the fortress to 47 numbered works. The surviving gates, detached lunettes, artillery chambers, sluices, barracks, hospital, magazine, and service buildings preserve parts of this larger defensive arrangement.
Gates and detached defensive works
Kehler and Karlsruhe Gates
The Kehler Gate and Karlsruhe Gate are among the surviving entrances to the former fortress. They belong to the system of town defences and retain the character of controlled passages through the fortified perimeter. Their survival helps define how the fortress enclosed Rastatt and connected the town’s defences with the larger network of detached works.
Station lunettes
Lunettes 34, 35, 37, and 42 survive from the detached works outside the central fortress nucleus. A lunette was a usually crescent-shaped fieldwork positioned in front of a larger fortification. These works formed part of the later expansion completed between 1852 and 1854, extending the defensive system beyond the principal forts.
Leopold Fortress remains
Cavalier 1
Cavalier 1 survives in the former Leopold Fortress. A cavalier was a raised work within or behind a fortification that provided elevated positions for weapons or troops. After the surrender of 1849, Cavalier 1 was used as a prison. It therefore preserves a direct physical connection with the fortress’s role in the suppression and imprisonment of Baden’s revolutionaries.
Passageways and defensive galleries
Approximately 500 metres of passageways in the eastern part of the former Leopold Fortress have been opened for inspection. Nearby are the counterscarp gallery and the gun casemates of Flank 27. A casemate was a vaulted, protected chamber used for artillery, storage, accommodation, or another military purpose. These underground and protected spaces formed part of the fortress’s internal defensive infrastructure.
Barracks, hospital, and magazine
Two Leopold Fortress barracks stand between the fortress hospital and the provision magazine known locally as the “Grain Magazine.” The hospital and magazine represent the medical and supply services required by a large garrison, while the barracks housed troops. Wagon Houses 1 and 2 also survive near Cavalier 1, adding transport and service buildings to the remaining group.
Water defences and town fortifications
Upper and Lower Sluice Gates
The Upper and Lower Sluice Gates survive together with parts of the town fortifications. The gates belonged to the fortress’s water-management and defensive arrangements. Alongside the surviving entrances, lunettes, casemates, barracks, service buildings, hospital, and magazine, they convey the scale and complexity of the system before most of it was demolished.
