Frankfurt National Assembly


The Frankfurt National Assembly was the first freely elected parliament for all German states, including the German-populated areas of the Austrian Empire, elected on 1 May 1848.
The session was held from 18 May 1848 to 30 May 1849 in the Paulskirche at Frankfurt am Main. Its existence was part of the result of the "March Revolution" within the states of the German Confederation.
After long and controversial debates, the assembly produced the so-called Frankfurt Constitution which proclaimed a German Empire based on the principles of parliamentary democracy. This constitution fulfilled the main demands of the liberal and nationalist movements of the Vormärz and provided a foundation of basic rights, both of which stood in opposition to Metternich's system of Restoration. The parliament also proposed a constitutional monarchy headed by a hereditary emperor.
The Prussian king Frederick William IV refused to accept the office of "Emperor of the Germans" when it was offered to him on the grounds that such a constitution and such an offer were an abridgment of the rights of the princes of the individual German states. In the 20th century, however, major elements of the Frankfurt constitution became models for the Weimar Constitution of 1919 and the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany of 1949.

Background

Napoleonic upheavals and German Confederation

In 1806, the Emperor Francis II had relinquished the crown of the Holy Roman Empire and dissolved the Empire. This was the result of the Napoleonic Wars and of direct military pressure from Napoléon Bonaparte.
After the victory of Prussia, the United Kingdom, Imperial Russia, and other states over Napoléon in 1815, the Congress of Vienna created the German Confederation. The Austrian Empire dominated this system of loosely connected, independent states, but the system failed to account for the rising influence of Prussia. After the so-called "Wars of Liberation", many contemporaries had expected a nation-state solution and thus considered the subdivision of Germany as unsatisfactory.
Apart from this nationalist component, calls for civic rights influenced political discourse. The Napoleonic Code Civil had led to the introduction of civic rights in some German states in the early 19th century. Furthermore, some German states had adopted constitutions after the foundation of the German Confederacy. Between 1819 and 1830, the Carlsbad Decrees and other instances of Restoration politics limited such developments. The unrest that resulted from the 1830 French July Revolution led to a temporary reversal of that trend, but after the demonstration for civic rights and national unity at the 1832 Hambach Festival, and the abortive attempt at an armed rising in the 1833 Frankfurter Wachensturm, the pressure on representatives of constitutional or democratic ideas was raised through measures such as censorship and bans on public assemblies.

The 1840s

The 1840s began with the Rhine Crisis, a primarily diplomatic scandal caused by the threat from the French prime minister Adolphe Thiers to invade Germany in a dispute between Paris and the four other Great Powers over the Middle East. The threat alarmed the German Confederate Diet, which was made up of representatives of the individual princes, and the only institution representing the whole German Confederation. The Diet voted to extend the Fortresses of the German Confederation at Mainz, Ulm, and Rastatt, while the Kingdom of Bavaria developed the fortress at Germersheim. Patriotic feelings of the public were effectively captured in the poem Die Wacht am Rhein by Max Schneckenburger, and in songs such as "Der Deutsche Rhein" and the "Lied der Deutschen", the national anthem of Germany since 1922.
The mid-1840s saw an increased frequency of internal crises. This was partially the result of large-scale political developments, such as the escalation of the Schleswig-Holstein Question and the erection of the Bundesfestungen. Additionally, a series of bad harvests in parts of Germany, notably the southwest, led to widely spread famine-related unrest in 1845 and 1846. The changes caused by the beginnings of industrialization exacerbated social and economic tensions considerably, especially in Saxony and Silesia.
Meanwhile in the reform-oriented states, such as Baden, the development of a lively scene of Vereine provided an organizational framework for democratic, or popular, opposition. Especially in Southwest Germany, censorship could not effectively suppress the press. At such rallies as the Offenburg Popular Assembly of September 1847, radical democrat was called to overthrow the status quo. At the same time, the bourgeois opposition had increased its networking activities and began coordinating its activities in the individual chamber parliaments more and more confidently. Thus, at the Heppenheim Conference on 10 October 1847, eighteen liberal members from a variety of German states met to discuss common motions for a German nation-state.
In Prussia, King Frederick William IV finally approved the assembly of a United Diet promised by his father in the decree of 22 May 1815. This body was commanded to debate and vote only on taxes and loans. However, as soon as it opened in April 1847, its members began discussions of press freedoms, voting, and human rights, the power to introduce legislation and foreign policy. After eleven weeks, the United Diet rejected a loan request. The King closed the diet in disgust and refused to say when it would be reopened. However, the people's enthusiasm for the United Diet was undeniable, and it was clear that a new political age was dawning. Many of the most eloquent members of the United Diet would play important roles in the future Frankfurt Parliament.
Between 1846 and 1848, broader European developments aggravated this tension. The Peasant Uprising in Galicia in February and March 1846 was a revolt against serfdom, directed against manorial property and social oppression. Rioting Galician peasants killed some 1,000 noblemen and destroyed about 500 manors. Despite its failure, the uprising was seen by some scholars, including Karl Marx, as a "deeply democratic movement that aimed at land reform and other pressing social questions." The uprising was praised by Marx and Friedrich Engels for being "the first in Europe to plant the banner of social revolution", and seen as a precursor to the coming Spring of Nations. At the same time, the suppression of the Free City of Cracow in the midst of the uprising aroused the emotions of nationalists in Germany as much as in Poland.
In Switzerland, the Sonderbund War of November 1847 saw the swift defeat of the conservative Catholic cantons and victory for the radical left-wing in the Protestant cantons. Austrian Chancellor Klemens von Metternich had pondered military intervention and later regretted not doing so, blaming the resulting waves of revolution on the Swiss.
Three months later, revolutionary workers and students in France deposed the Citizen King Louis-Philippe I in the February Revolution; their action resulted in the declaration of the Second Republic. In many European states, the resistance against Restoration policies increased and led to revolutionary unrest. In several parts of the Austrian Empire, namely in Hungary, Bohemia, Romania, and throughout Italy, in particular in Sicily, Rome, and Northern Italy, there were bloody revolts, replete with calls for local or regional autonomy and even for national independence.
Friedrich Daniel Bassermann, a liberal deputy in the second chamber of the parliament of Baden, helped to trigger the final impulse for the election of a pan-German assembly. On 12 February 1848, referring to his own motion in 1844 and a comparable one by Carl Theodor Welcker in 1831, he called for a representation, elected by the people, in the Confederate Diet. Two weeks later, news of the successful revolution in France fanned the flames of the revolutionary mood. The revolution on German soil began in Baden, with the occupation of the Ständehaus at Karlsruhe. This was followed in April by the Heckerzug, the first of three revolutionary risings in the Grand Duchy. Within a few days and weeks, the revolts spread to the other German states.

The March Revolution

The central demands of the German opposition were the granting of basic and civic rights regardless of property requirements, the appointment of liberal governments in the individual states and most importantly the creation of a German nation-state, with a pan-German constitution and a popular assembly. On 5 March 1848, opposition politicians and state deputies met at the Heidelberg Assembly to discuss these issues. They resolved to form a pre-parliament, which was to prepare the elections for a national constitutional assembly. They also elected a "Committee of Seven", which proceeded to invite 500 individuals to Frankfurt.
This development was accompanied and supported since early March by protest rallies and risings in many German states, including Baden, the Kingdom of Bavaria, the Kingdom of Saxony, the Kingdom of Württemberg, Austria and Prussia. Under such pressure, the individual princes recalled the existing conservative governments and replaced them with more liberal committees, the so-called "March Governments". On 10 March 1848, the Bundestag of the German Confederation appointed a "Committee of Seventeen" to prepare a draft constitution; on 20 March, the Bundestag urged the states of the confederation to call elections for a constitutional assembly. After bloody street fights in Prussia, a Prussian National Assembly was also convened, with the task of preparing a constitution for that kingdom.

The Pre-Parliament

The Pre-Parliament was in session at the St. Paul's Church, Frankfurt am Main in Frankfurt from 31 March to 3 April, chaired by Carl Joseph Anton Mittermaier. With the support of the moderate liberals, and against the opposition of the radical democrats, it decided to cooperate with the German Confederate Diet, to form a national constitutional assembly which would write a new constitution. For the transitional period until the actual formation of that assembly, the Vorparlament formed the Committee of Fifty, as a representation to face the German Confederation.
Though the pre-parliament had decided on 13 May 1848 for the opening of the National Assembly, the date was pushed to 18 May so that deputies from Prussia's outer provinces, which had only recently joined the Confederation, could arrive in time. By this calculation, the number of Prussian deputies to parliament was increased.