Frankfurt Parliament (1848-1849): First German National Assembly

The Frankfurt Parliament, officially the German National Assembly, was the first freely elected parliament for all of Germany. It met in St Paul’s Church (the Paulskirche) in Frankfurt am Main from 18 May 1848, during the Revolutions of 1848, and drew up a liberal constitution for a united German empire. Its attempt failed in 1849 when the King of Prussia rejected the crown, but its ideas shaped later German democracy.

Background

After 1815 Germany was not a single state but the German Confederation, a loose league of 39 sovereign states at its founding (fewer by 1848), among them Austria, Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony and many small principalities and free cities. Its only common body was a federal diet in Frankfurt dominated by Austria. Liberals and nationalists wanted a united Germany with a constitution, an elected parliament and guaranteed civil rights.

When revolution broke out in Paris in February 1848, demonstrations spread across the German states. Rulers appointed liberal “March ministries”, and an informal gathering of liberal politicians, the Pre-Parliament (Vorparlament), met in Frankfurt from 31 March to 3 April 1848 and arranged elections to a national assembly.

Elections and members

Elections were held in April and May 1848 across the Confederation, including the German-speaking parts of Austria. Voting rules varied from state to state; most adult men who were “independent” could vote, often indirectly through electors. The Assembly had about 585 seats, and over its lifetime more than 800 men sat in it.

Its members were overwhelmingly middle class and highly educated. Civil servants, judges and lawyers formed the largest groups, and there were many professors and writers, including the philologist Jacob Grimm, the historian Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann and the poet Ludwig Uhland. Only a handful were artisans or peasants, which led critics to call it the “Professors’ Parliament”. Members grouped into factions named after the inns and cafés where they met, from conservatives on the right to democrats and republicans on the left. The largest groups were the moderate liberals of the centre, such as the Casino faction, who wanted a constitutional monarchy, while the democrats of the Donnersberg and Deutscher Hof factions favoured popular sovereignty and some wished for a republic. Women could not vote or stand for election, but they filled the public galleries, and the debates were reported in detail in a rapidly growing press.

The work of the Assembly

The Assembly opened on 18 May 1848 and elected the liberal Heinrich von Gagern as its president. Lacking any government, it created a Provisional Central Power and on 29 June elected Archduke John of Austria, a popular Habsburg prince, as Imperial Regent (Reichsverweser). The central government had ministers but no army or civil service of its own and depended on the cooperation of the states. In June 1848 the Assembly also voted to create a German navy, the Reichsflotte, which was sold off in the early 1850s.

The Schleswig-Holstein crisis revealed its weakness. Prussian troops fought Denmark on behalf of the German national movement, but in August 1848 Prussia signed the Truce of Malmö without consulting Frankfurt. The Assembly first rejected and then accepted the truce, provoking riots in Frankfurt in September 1848 in which two conservative deputies, Prince Felix Lichnowsky and General Hans von Auerswald, were killed. The Assembly had to rely on Prussian and Austrian troops to restore order, a sign that real power still lay with the princes and their armies.

In November 1848 the left-wing deputy Robert Blum, sent to Vienna as a delegate, was executed by Austrian forces after the Vienna uprising was crushed, despite his parliamentary immunity. His death showed how little the princes now respected the Assembly.

Basic Rights and the constitution

The Assembly’s greatest achievement was the Basic Rights of the German People, proclaimed in December 1848. They guaranteed equality before the law, freedom of the press, religion, assembly and movement, the abolition of noble privileges and of the death penalty except in limited cases, and protection from arbitrary arrest.

The hardest question was the shape of the new Germany. The “greater German” (großdeutsch) solution would have included Austria’s German lands, while the “little German” (kleindeutsch) solution excluded Austria and looked to Prussia. In March 1849 Austria issued a constitution for its whole empire as a single state, making a greater German union impossible. After long debates the Assembly also agreed on a hereditary rather than an elected head of state, a compromise that the left accepted in return for universal male suffrage and a suspensive rather than absolute royal veto. On 28 March 1849 the Assembly adopted the Frankfurt Constitution, which created a federal empire with a hereditary emperor and a parliament elected by universal male suffrage, and elected King Frederick William IV of Prussia as Emperor of the Germans.

Rejection and collapse

A deputation from Frankfurt offered the crown to Frederick William IV in Berlin on 3 April 1849. He declined to accept it without the agreement of the princes and formally rejected it later that month. Privately he regarded a crown offered by a revolutionary assembly with contempt and believed only fellow monarchs could grant such a title.

Twenty-eight smaller states accepted the constitution, but Austria, Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony and Hanover refused. Austria and Prussia recalled their deputies, and many moderates left. In May 1849 uprisings in support of the constitution broke out in Saxony, the Palatinate and Baden, but they were crushed by Prussian troops by July. The Assembly lost its majority, and on 30–31 May 1849 the remaining, mostly left-wing deputies voted to move to Stuttgart. This rump parliament was dispersed by Württemberg troops on 18 June 1849.

Legacy

The failure of the Frankfurt Parliament meant that Germany was united not by an elected assembly but by Prussian power under Otto von Bismarck in the unification of Germany of 1871. Historians have long debated whether 1848–1849 marked a lost chance for liberal democracy in Germany, though recent scholars stress how much the revolution changed political life, from parties and newspapers to the habit of elections.

Its legacy remains visible. The black, red and gold colours adopted by the Confederation in 1848 became the flag of the Weimar Republic and of the Federal Republic. The Basic Rights influenced the Weimar Constitution of 1919 and the Basic Law of 1949. St Paul’s Church, destroyed in the Second World War, was rebuilt for the centenary in 1948 and is a national memorial to German democracy.

Timeline

• 1848, 31 March – 3 April: The Pre-Parliament meets in Frankfurt.
• 1848, 18 May: The National Assembly opens in St Paul’s Church.
• 1848, 29 June: Archduke John is elected Imperial Regent.
• 1848, 18 September: Riots in Frankfurt; two deputies are killed.
• 1848, 9 November: Robert Blum is executed in Vienna.
• 1848, 27 December: The Basic Rights of the German People are promulgated.
• 1849, 28 March: The constitution is adopted and Frederick William IV is elected emperor.
• 1849, 3 April: The Prussian king receives the imperial deputation and declines the crown.
• 1849, 30–31 May: The remaining deputies decide to move to Stuttgart.
• 1849, 18 June: The rump parliament is dispersed in Stuttgart.

Why it matters

The Frankfurt Parliament was Germany’s first experiment in national democracy. Although it failed to unite Germany, its debates, its constitution and above all its catalogue of basic rights became a reference point for every later German democracy, and it remains a symbol of the liberal and national hopes of 1848.