Thus it will be seen that South Germany
still kept the lead in the movement for German unity; and the president
of the committee was that Izstein, of Baden, who had been known to
Germany chiefly by his ill-timed expulsion from Berlin. But, though this
distribution of power augured ill for the relations between the leaders
of the German movement and the King of Prussia, the meeting at
Heidelberg was not prepared to adopt the complete programme of the Baden
leaders, nor to commit itself to that Republican movement which would
probably have repelled the North German Liberals.
The chief leader of the more moderate party in the meeting was Heinrich
von Gagern, the representative of Hesse-Darmstadt.
Gagern was the son of a former minister of the Grand Duke of Nassau, who
had left that State to take service in Austria, and who had acted with
the Archduke John in planning a popular rising in the Tyrol in 1813.
Heinrich had been trained at a military school in Munich. He had
steadily opposed the policy of Metternich, had done his best to induce
the universities to co-operate in a common German movement, and had
tried to secure internal liberties for Hesse-Darmstadt, while he had
urged his countrymen to look for the model of a free constitution rather
to England and Hungary than to France.
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