Latest / The History of Germany: Kingdoms, War, and Rebuilding Europe — Fexingo History / The Frankfurt Parliament: Germany's Failed Democratic Moment
Transcript
- Lucas: So last time we left off with the Carlsbad Decrees clamping down on liberal nationalism after the Wartburg Festival. But the desire for unity and constitutional government didn't die—it simmered. And in 1848, it exploded. Luna: 1848—the year of revolutions across Europe. Lucas: Exactly. In March, uprisings broke out in Vienna, Berlin, and many smaller German states. The old order seemed to crumble. And in the midst of this, a group of liberal politicians, academics, and journalists gathered in Frankfurt to do something unprecedented: write a constitution for a unified Germany. Luna: This is the Frankfurt Parliament, right? At the Paulskirche? Lucas: Yes—the Frankfurt Parliament, also called the National Assembly, met in the Paulskirche, a Protestant church that could seat about 2,000 people. It opened on May 18, 1848, with great fanfare. The delegates were mostly educated, middle-class men—lawyers, professors, civil servants. They saw themselves as the voice of the German people. Luna: But they didn't have an army or any real power, did they? Lucas: That was the fatal weakness. They had no coercive force. They depended on the goodwill of the German princes, who were temporarily shaken but not defeated. Still, in those early months, the parliament achieved a remarkable thing: they drafted a catalogue of Basic Rights, the Grundrechte des deutschen Volkes, guaranteeing freedom of speech, press, assembly, and equality before the law. Luna: That sounds incredibly progressive for 1848. Lucas: It was. These rights were influenced by the French Revolution and American Bill of Rights, and they later directly inspired the Weimar Constitution and even our current Basic Law. But the parliament got bogged down in a huge existential question: who should be included in the new Germany? Luna: The großdeutsch versus kleindeutsch debate. Lucas: Right. The 'Greater German' solution wanted to include the German-speaking parts of the Austrian Empire, which would have meant a huge, multi-ethnic state under Habsburg leadership. The 'Lesser German' solution excluded Austria and aimed for a smaller, more homogeneous state dominated by Prussia. The parliament eventually leaned kleindeutsch, but not without fierce arguments. Luna: And Austria wasn't exactly cooperative. Lucas: No. The Austrian government, under Prince Schwarzenberg, opposed any plan that would break up the Habsburg Empire. They even proposed that the entire Habsburg realm—including non-German lands—be part of a new German confederation. That was a non-starter for the liberals. So by early 1849, the parliament had drafted a constitution, and they offered the imperial crown to the Prussian king, Frederick William IV. Luna: And he refused it. Lucas: He famously called it a 'crown from the gutter.' He said he would not accept a crown offered by a parliament, which he saw as a revolutionary body. He would only accept a crown from the princes. That rejection was the death blow. Many delegates left. The remaining ones, now a rump parliament, moved to Stuttgart, but the Württemberg government dispersed them in June 1849. Luna: So the revolution just fizzled out? Lucas: Not without bloodshed. In some states, especially in Baden and Saxony, armed uprisings tried to defend the constitution, but Prussian troops crushed them. Thousands of liberals fled to the United States or Switzerland. The old German Confederation was restored, now under Austrian dominance. The dream of a united, democratic Germany was postponed for another two decades. Luna: But the ideas didn't die. Lucas: No, they didn't. The Frankfurt Parliament's Basic Rights were adopted by many German states, and later, when the Reich was unified in 1871 under Bismarck, it was a kleindeutsch solution—without Austria. And after World War I, the Weimar Constitution explicitly drew on the Paulskirche's legacy. So in a way, the Frankfurt Parliament was a failure that planted seeds for the future. Luna: It's fascinating how often German history seems to be about failed liberal movements that eventually succeed. Lucas: That's a recurring theme. The liberals of 1848 were idealistic but politically inexperienced. They underestimated the power of the old elites. But they also showed that a unified Germany was possible, and they created a template for what that Germany could look like. Without them, later unification might have been even more authoritarian. Luna: So what's next? Bismarck, I assume? Lucas: Right. Next time, we'll see how a conservative Prussian Junker named Otto von Bismarck used war and diplomacy to achieve what the liberals could not: a unified German Empire. But that empire was very different from the one the Paulskirche envisioned. Luna: Looking forward to it.