It was a humiliation that no Prussian monarch had ever experienced. On March 19, 1848, a large crowd streamed into the Berlin palace courtyard and laid there the dead who had fallen in the previous day’s barricade battles against the king’s soldiers. Friedrich Wilhelm IV felt compelled to appear in person; but as soon as he was visible, angry voices shouted: “Take off the cap!” And so the ruler of one of Europe’s great powers stood with his bare head in the cold Berlin March air. This historical moment could have marked the beginning of German freedom. And for a few months, just a blink of an eye in history, it looked like this.
Heinrich August Winkler about the Germans and the revolution – culture
