Kunze Proclamation

Kunze Proclamation is a proclamation by Reiner Kunze, the Regional commander of Alwald Island, made on the first day of his assumption of office, Passer 28 Year 19, and on the occasion of the burning of several castles, until then owned by aristocratic families, by a mob led by members of the Hrebsist Club, in the first days after the liberation of the island. The proclamation condemns the burning and announces severe punishment for the perpetrators.

Background

Alwald Island, located at the entrance to Schwenz Bay, came under the control of the Republic of Guntreland only in the last month of the Nineteenth Year of the Republic of Guntreland. Immediately after the liberation of the island, which received the status of a Region of the Republic, the local citizen Reiner Kunze sent to Hermann Henscher, the Chairman of the Public Command Committee of the Republic, a Catalog of Injustices, i.e. a Black List in which he wrote down all the injustices and violence committed with impunity by the nobles and the king's men against the rest of the population over the years under the royalist administration. Impressed by this Catalog and Kunze's long service to justice, Hermann Henscher caused the Committee to immediately elect Kunze as Regional Commander of Alwald. A proponent of aesthetics and architecture, Kunze decided to deal with, in his opinion, the shameful and irrational expression of hatred towards aristocrats through the destruction of their, now confiscated, property. Kunze's proclamation depicts and expands the conflict between Henscherist vision, which prioritizes aesthetics and utility, and vision of popular justice, which includes the unbridled destruction of luxury property that evoked bad associations in the people with its former, aristocratic, owners.

Text of the Proclamation

In the Name of the Republic of Guntreland, Free, Natural, and Founded upon Virtue

It is hereby declared that the magnificent and historic event of the Liberation of Alwald bore a blemish which placed upon the immaculate countenance of Republican Virtue the mask of barbarity. Four castles upon the soil of our island were put to flame: of these, two were reduced to their very foundations, while two others suffered grievous damage. Other noble houses sustained lesser wounds. These lamentable acts occurred immediately upon the establishment of our forces’ just dominion over the island, perpetrated by a multitude of citizens, misled by reckless or malicious agitators.

By the ruin of these castles, our tyrannical foes across the world shall dare present the Republicans to their peoples not as the liberators of Humanity but as destroyers of fair and solemn edifices — proud towers with spired roofs, and chambers richly adorned.

Republicans, who are not merely men stirred by passions but Citizens governed by Reason, must ever remember that their true foes are not stones and ramparts but men of corrupt spirit and wicked purpose; and that the same structures which stand for vice when devoted to vice, may stand for virtue when placed in the service of Virtue — just as the bayonet is vile in royalist hands, yet most noble in the hands of the Republic. Is it not a greater triumph over royalism that their castles should henceforth serve the manifold needs of Republican Citizens — for the care of the sick, the instruction of youth, the administration of the people’s affairs, the sheltering of those whose homes the war has claimed — thus transforming fortresses of royalism into bastions of Republicanism, than that they be laid waste in barbarous flames?

We summon all Citizens to find this answer within their own Reason, and those who find it not we remind of the letter of the law, which is written Reason itself — of the decrees of the National Assembly and the statutes which bind those who lay waste to the towns and villages of the Republic and violate its sacred ordinances.

Alwaldstadt, the 28th day of Paser, Year Nineteen
Honor the Constitution, Citizens!

Rainer Kunze
Regional Commander