The 1848 revolution : Germany

In contrast to the revolution of 1 789, the French revolution of February 1848 found immediate response in Germany. In March there were uprisings in all states, and these forced many concessions from the stunned princes. In May the National Assembly (Nationalversammlung) convened in St. Paul’s Church in Frankfurt am Main. It elected Austrian Archduke Johann Imperial Administrator (Reichsverweser) and set up a Reich Ministry which, however, had no powers or authority. The tune was called in the National Assembly by the Liberal center, which strove for a constitutional monarchy with limited suffrage. The splintering of the National Assembly from Conservatives to Radical Democrats, which already indicated the spectrum of parties to come, made it difficult to draw up a constitution.

But not even the Liberal center could overcome the differences between the protagonists of the “greater Germany” and “smaller Germany” concepts, in other words, a German Reich with or without Austria. After hard bargaining, a democratic constitution was drawn up which attempted to combine old and new ideas and required a government responsible to parliament. But when Austria insisted on bringing into the future Reich its entire realm, encompassing more than a dozen different peoples, the “smaller Germany” concept won the day and the National Assembly proffered Frederick William IV of Prussia the hereditary German imperial crown. The king turned it down, not wanting to owe imperial majesty to a revolution. In May 1849 popular uprisings in Saxony, the Palatinate and Baden aimed at enforcing the constitution “from below” failed. That was the seal on the failure of the whole revolution. Most of the achievements were rescinded, and the constitutions of the individual states were revised along reactionary lines. In 1850 the German Confederation was restored.