page_title: Unification of Germany
section_title: German revolutions of 1848 and the Frankfurt Parliament
hierarchical_section_title: Unification of Germany / First efforts at unification / German revolutions of 1848 and the Frankfurt Parliament
caption_attribution_description: English: In this lithograph, a procession of delegates to the pre-parliament moves toward St. Paul’s Church (Frankfurt) on March 30, 1848 through a phalanx of students, and other supporters. The pre-parliament was a 500-member legislative body that determined the framework of subsequent political proceedings on the national level.
context_page_description: The Unification of Germany into the German Empire, a Prussia-dominated state with federal features, was officially proclaimed on 18 January 1871 in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles in France. The new state replaced the German Confederation, a loose association of sovereign states, and the highly decentralized Holy Roman Empire. Princes of the German states, excluding Austria-Hungary and its House of Habsburg-Lorraine, gathered at the ceremony to proclaim William I of Prussia and the House of Hohenzollern as German Emperor, following the French capitulation in the Franco-Prussian War.
  A confederated realm of German princedoms had been in existence for over a thousand years, dating to the Treaty of Verdun in 843. However, there was no German national identity in development as late as 1800, mainly due to the autonomous nature of the princely states; most inhabitants of Holy Roman Empire territories, outside of those ruled by the emperor directly, identified themselves mainly with their prince, and not with the emperor or the German realm as a whole.
context_section_description: The widespread—mainly German—revolutions of 1848–49 sought unification of Germany under a single constitution. The revolutionaries pressured various state governments, particularly those in the Rhineland, for a parliamentary assembly that would have the responsibility to draft a constitution. Ultimately, many of the left-wing revolutionaries hoped this constitution would establish universal male suffrage, a permanent national parliament, and a unified Germany, possibly under the leadership of the Prussian king. This seemed to be the most logical course since Prussia was the strongest of the German states, as well as the largest in geographic size. Generally, center-right revolutionaries sought some kind of expanded suffrage within their states and potentially, a form of loose unification. Their pressure resulted in a variety of elections, based on different voting qualifications, such as the Prussian three-class franchise, which granted to some electoral groups—chiefly the wealthier, landed ones—greater representative power.
  On 27 March 1849, the Frankfurt Parliament passed the Paulskirchenverfassung (Constitution of St. Paul's Church) and offered the title of Kaiser (Emperor) to the Prussian king Frederick William IV the next month. He refused for a variety of reasons. Publicly, he replied that he could not accept a crown without the consent of the actual states, by which he meant the princes. Privately, he feared opposition from the other German princes and military intervention from Austria or Russia. He also held a fundamental distaste for the idea of accepting a crown from a popularly elected parliament: he would not accept a crown of "clay". Despite franchise requirements that often perpetuated many of the problems of sovereignty and political participation liberals sought to overcome, the Frankfurt Parliament did manage to draft a constitution and reach an agreement on the kleindeutsch solution. While the liberals failed to achieve the unification they sought, they did manage to gain a partial victory by working with the German princes on many constitutional issues and collaborating with them on reforms.
caption: Pre-parliament delegates processing into Paul's Church in Frankfurt, where they laid the groundwork for electing a National Parliament[47]
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