Question: What President of the German Confederation signed the April Laws as a reaction to the Revolution of 1848?
Context: The German Confederation (German: "Deutscher Bund" ) was an association of 39 German states in Central Europe, created by the Congress of Vienna in 1815 to coordinate the economies of separate German-speaking countries and to replace the former Holy Roman Empire, which the French Emperor Napoleon I ended in 1805.  Most historians have judged the Confederation to have been weak and ineffective, as well as an obstacle to the creation of a German nation-state.  It collapsed due to the rivalry between the Kingdom of Prussia and the Austrian Empire, warfare in the several European revolutions of 1848, and the 1848-1849 German revolution, and the inability of the multiple members to compromise. In German history, a Reichsexekution (sometimes "Reich execution" in English) was an imperial or federal intervention against a member state, using military force if necessary.  The instrument of the "Reichsexekution" was constitutionally available to the central governments of the Holy Roman Empire (800–1806), the German Empire of 1848–49, the German Empire of 1871–1918, the Weimar Republic (1918–33) and Nazi Germany (1933–45).  Under the German Confederation (1815–66) and the North German Confederation (1867–71), the same right belonged to the confederal government and is called Bundesexekution. The Provisorische Zentralgewalt (] , "provisional central power") was the provisional government of the Frankfurt Parliament (1848–49).  Since this all-German national assembly had not been initiated by the German Confederation, it was lacking not only major constitutional bodies, such as a head of state and a government, but also legal legitimation.  A modification of the "Bundesakte", the constitution of the German Confederation, could have brought about such legitimation, but as it would have required the unanimous support of all 38 signatory states this was practically impossible.  Partially for this reason, influential European powers such as France and Russia declined to recognize the Parliament.  The delegates on the left wanted to solve this situation by creating a revolutionary parliamentary government, but, on 24 June 1848, the majority (450 – 100) voted for a compromise, the so-called Provisional Central Power. Ferdinand I (19 April 1793 – 29 June 1875) was Emperor of Austria, President of the German Confederation, King of Hungary (as Ferdinand V), and many others (see grand title of the Emperor of Austria) from the death of his father (Francis I, Emperor of Austria) on 2 March 1835, until his abdication after the Revolutions of 1848. The German revolutions of 1848–49 (German: "Deutsche Revolution 1848/1849" ), the opening phase of which was also called the March Revolution (German: "Märzrevolution" ), were initially part of the Revolutions of 1848 that broke out in many European countries.  They were a series of loosely coordinated protests and rebellions in the states of the German Confederation, including the Austrian Empire.  The revolutions, which stressed pan-Germanism, demonstrated popular discontent with the traditional, largely autocratic political structure of the thirty-nine independent states of the Confederation that inherited the German territory of the former Holy Roman Empire. The April Laws, also called March Laws, were a collection of laws legislated by Lajos Kossuth with the aim of modernizing the Kingdom of Hungary into a nation state.  The imperative program included Hungarian control of its popular national guard, national budget and Hungarian foreign policy, as well as the removal of serfdom.  They were passed by the Hungarian Diet in March 1848 in Pozsony (now Bratislava, Slovakia) (German: Pressburg) and signed by Ferdinand V at the Primate's Palace in the same city on 11 April 1848, as a reaction to the Revolution of 1848.  When the revolution was crushed by the help of Russian intervention in 1849, Austria did not pass the laws, and Hungary did not retain full external autonomy until the Compromise of 1867 which would later influence Hungary's position in World War I. The Constitution of the German Confederation (German: "Verfassung des Deutschen Bundes", or "Novemberverfassung") was the constitution of the German federal state at the beginning of the year 1871.  It was enacted on January 1, 1871.  This is a slightly changed version of the Constitution of the North German confederation; it is not to be confused with the constitutional laws of the German Confederation of 1815. Charles Augustus Zollinger (December 9, 1838 in Wiesbaden, German Confederation - December 27, 1893) was an American Civil War hero on the Union side, and later served six terms as Mayor of Fort Wayne, Indiana.  As a Colonel in the US Army, he led troops into battle at Murfreesboro, Shiloh, Franklin and Nashville.  Born in Wiesbaden in the German Confederation to German parents of Swiss heritage, he emigrated along with his family in 1848, arriving in New York before settling in Sandusky, Ohio and soon after moving to Marion, near Fort Wayne, Indiana. Vormärz (] ; English: "pre-March") was a period in the history of Germany preceding the 1848 March Revolution in the states of the German Confederation.  The beginning of the period is less well-defined: some place the starting point directly after the fall of Napoleon and the establishment of the German Confederation in 1815; others, typically those emphasizing the Vormärz as a period of political uprising, place the beginning at the French July Revolution of 1830. The Principality of Transylvania, from 1765 Grand Principality of Transylvania, was an Austrian crownland and realm of the Hungarian Crown ruled by the Habsburg and Habsburg-Lorraine monarchs of the Habsburg Monarchy (later Austrian Empire).  During the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, the Hungarian government proclaimed union with Transylvania in the April Laws of 1848 (after the Transylvanian Diet's confirmation on 30 May and the king's approval on 10 June that Transylvania again become an integral part of Hungary, an initiative rejected by the Romanians and Saxons who formed the majority population of Transylvania).  After the failure of the revolution, the March Constitution of Austria decreed that the Principality of Transylvania be a separate crown land entirely independent of Hungary.  In 1867, as a result of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise, the principality was reunited with Hungary proper.
Answer: Ferdinand I