Revolutions of 1848 in the Austrian Empire city's coffeehouses, salons, and even stages, but prior to 1848 their demands had not even extended to constitutionalism or freedom of assembly, let alone republicanism. They had merely advocated relaxed censorship, freedom of religion, economic freedoms, and, above all, a more competent administration. They were opposed to outright popular sovereignty and the universal franchise. More to the left was a radicalized, impoverished intelligentsia. Educational opportunities in 1840s Austria had far outstripped employment opportunities for the educated. In 1846 there had been an uprising of Polish nobility in Austrian Galicia, which was only countered when peasants, in turn, rose up against
History of the Catholic Church in Germany of the Teutonic Knights and Knights of Saint John. Monasteries and abbeys lost their means of existence as they had to abandon their lands. The secularization of society became a main theme of European history in the 18th and especially 19th century and was vehemently opposed by the Catholic Church, resulting in a struggle which was later termed “Kulturkampf”. In Germany, this process had its first culmination in the German revolutions of 1848–49 and, after their suppression, gained new momentum with the establishment of liberal governments in various German states in the 1850s and 1860s and in the empire in