Het 'Limburger Volkslied'

Een Sittards strijdlied uit het revolutiejaar 1848

Samenvatting

The Limburg Anthem, an 1848 resistance song from Sittard, was a final attempt to liberate Limburg from the pinching Dutch ‘annexation’. The melody of this originally Polish resistance song was widely known and the text was a call for the struggle for ‘freedom’ and ‘fatherland’.

After a couple of failed attempts to undo the Belgian separation (1839), Limburg tried it again in 1848 through the German Confederation of which Limburg became a member in 1839. In the Frankfurt parliament the members of the Confederation gathered in 1848 to further the unification of a German state. The initial enthusiasm faded away due to a lack of results.

The Limburg Anthem did not have longevity. Zealous military police confiscated nearly the complete edition and the author Jozef Crijns ran away. The county governor Van Meeuwen feared civil unrest and asked advise to the Minister of Justice Donker Curtius. The Minister prohibited arresting the songwriter and decided not to prosecute similar ‘jour- nalistic offenses’. The minister thus prejudged the 1848 Constitution where the freedom of press was clearly formulated. The Limburg Anthem was a marginal phenomenon but might have played a catalytical role in the political formulating of the freedom of press.