In the Hessian Courier, Büchner manages to arouse without dulling. He presents economic and demographic data, knowledge that the ruling class keeps to itself, in an accessible and exciting way, compares the destitution of poor peasants with the wastefulness of the rich, and explains it in a manner that mobilizes and combats fatalism.
He connects the deep religiosity of the German peasants with their living conditions, and with religious arguments incites action for a new just order in the manner of the theologians of the 16th century who supported the Peasants' War. The text moves and simultaneously stimulates thought, in the manner of great works of art.
For this reason, the Hessian Courier rightfully ranks among the literary works of Georg Büchner, as well as among the important political texts of the period between the two revolutions, of July 1830 and March 1848.
On July 5, the manuscript of the Hessian Courier was secretly transported to Offenbach where it was printed in 700 to 1,000 copies. On July 31, it was circulated as an illegal manifesto with the emblematic slogan "War in the palaces! Peace in the huts!" The slogan was borrowed from the French Revolution: it was brought by the French troops when, in 1792, after the victorious battle of Valmy against the mercenary armies of the German princes, they crossed the Rhine and invaded Belgium and the principalities of western Germany.
The proclamation was mainly circulated by Weidlich and his students, who transported it in botanical boxes, hidden in their clothes or boots. However, the endeavor had been betrayed. Some of the conspirators were already arrested during the transport of the copies from the printing house and a portion of the pamphlets was seized.
Despite Weidlich's changes, the Hessian Courier elicited intense criticism from the liberal bourgeois circles of the Grand Duchy, rather because the pamphlet does not limit itself to the demand for democratic political reforms, but emphatically raises the social question and the question of monarchy. In contrast, the peasants of northern Hesse reacted positively.
from the Afterword by Theodor Paraskevopoulos
