1849 in Germany

Incumbents

• King of Bavaria – Maximilian II
• King of Hanover – Ernest Augustus
• King of Prussia – Frederick William IV
• King of Saxony – Frederick Augustus II

  Events

• March – The Frankfurt Parliament completes its drafting of a liberal constitution, and elects Frederick William IV emperor of the new German national state.
• April 2 – The German revolutions of 1848–49 fail, as King Frederick William IV of Prussia refuses to accept the offer of the Frankfurt National Assembly to be crowned as German emperor.
• May 3 -The May Uprising in Dresden, last of the German revolutions of 1848–49, begins. Richard Wagner is among the participants.
• May 9 – The May Uprising in Dresden is suppressed by the Kingdom of Saxony.
• June 1 8-German revolutions of 1848–49: The chamber of the Frankfurt Parliament, since reduced to a rump parliament and moved to Stuttgart, was occupied by the Württemberg army. Repression began, which would force the liberal Forty-Eighters into exile.
• December 3 – German missionaries Johann Ludwig Krapf and Johannes Rebmann become the first Europeans to see Mount Kenya. The Abgeordnetenhaus, the lower house of the parliament of the Kingdom of Bavaria, passes a bill granting German Jews the same legal rights as German Christians. The measure draws a strong reaction from Christians across Bavaria, who sign petitions urging the upper house to prevent the equal rights measure from becoming law.

  Births

• March 19 – Alfred von Tirpitz, German admiral
• April 21 – Oscar Hertwig, German zoologist
• April 25 – Felix Klein, German mathematician
• May 3
• * Bertha Benz, German automotive pioneer
• * Bernhard von Bülow, 8th Chancellor of Germany
• July 22 – Emma Lazarus, American author and activist
• July 24 – August Scherl, German newspaper magnate
• July 29 -Edward Theodore Compton, English-German painter, mountain climber
• September 23 – Hugo von Seeliger, German astronomer
• October 26 – Ferdinand Georg Frobenius, German mathematician
• December 5 – Eduard Seler, Prussian scholar, Mesoamericanist
• December 6 – August von Mackensen, German field marshal

  Deaths

• February 28 – Regina von Siebold, German physician, obstetrician
• March 24 – Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner, German chemist
• May 11 -Otto Nicolai, German composer, conductor
• September 4 – Friedrich Laun, German novelist
• September 6 – Andreas Joseph Hofmann, German philosopher and revolutionary