page_title: Free City of Frankfurt
section_title: Black-red-gold
hierarchical_section_title: Free City of Frankfurt / History / Black-red-gold
caption_attribution_description: Goethe-Denkmal von Ludwig Michael Schwanthaler, nach seiner Restaurierung und Enthüllung (2007) auf dem Goetheplatz in Frankfurt
context_page_description: For almost five centuries, the German city of Frankfurt was a city-state within two major Germanic entities:
  The Holy Roman Empire as the Free Imperial City of Frankfurt
  The German Confederation as the Free City of Frankfurt
  Frankfurt was a major city of the Holy Roman Empire, being the seat of imperial elections since 885 and the city for imperial coronations from 1562 until 1792. Frankfurt was declared an Imperial Free City in 1372, making the city an entity of Imperial immediacy, meaning immediately subordinate to the Holy Roman Emperor and not to a regional ruler or a local nobleman.
  Due to its imperial significance, Frankfurt survived mediatisation in 1803. Following the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, Frankfurt fell to the rule of Napoleon I, who granted the city to Karl Theodor Anton Maria von Dalberg; the city became known as the Principality of Frankfurt. The Catholic cleric Dalberg emancipated Catholics living with the city boundary. In 1810 Dalberg merged Frankfurt with the Principality of Aschaffenburg, the County of Wetzlar, Fulda, and Hanau to form the Grand Duchy of Frankfurt.
context_section_description: Frankfurt was one of the major centres of the revolutionary movement “Vormärz” (lit: “pre-March”). The journalist Ludwig Börne was born in 1786 in a street named “Judengasse” (“Jew Lane”) in the Jewish ghetto of Frankfurt. Ludwig Börne was the author of satirical writings and later became one of the prominent figures of the literary movement “Young Germany”. Because the Federal Assembly and Frankfurt's city authorities feared for their reputation, they tried to ban political unions and to suppress the circulation of liberal publications. They were, however, not successful in their attempts to do this. Spurred on by the July Revolution of 1830, oppositional groups in the city of Frankfurt were ablaze with a revolutionary spirit. But the step from idealistic fervour to decisive action failed completely. Made up mostly of students and Polish officers in exile, a group attempting to start a revolution in Germany, called Frankfurter Wachensturm because of attacks made on police stations (German Wachen), was betrayed on 3 April 1833 to the police and was brutally put down by the city's small army. The incident, while largely ineffective, did, however, have a chilling effect on the bourgeois elite of the city because as a result 2,500 Austrian and Prussian soldiers were stationed in the city, representing a direct challenge to the sovereignty of the city which, in turn, led to royal government diplomats denigrating the Free City as a "liberal cesspit".
  German national consciousness grew throughout the 1840s: The sculptor Ludwig Schwanthaler created a Goethe monument in 1844 and the unveiling ceremony, for example, became a rallying point for nationalists as did a meeting of German Studies scholars in Frankfurt's city hall, which, just before this meeting, had been decorated with images of all 52 emperors of the Holy Roman Empire created by artists such as Philipp Veit, Alfred Rethel and Eduard von Steinle. An umbrella organization of Frankfurt's democratic clubs, the Montagskränzchen (lit: "Monday clubs"), had been meeting since the winter of 1845/46.
  In the early days of March 1848 the revolutionary spirit from France spilled over to Germany. Like everywhere else, the people of Frankfurt called for the rights of freedom of the press and freedom of assembly, constitutional equality for all citizens, amnesty for all those who had been imprisoned because of political activities and the right for every citizen to bear arms. On 3 March 1848, the senate of the city granted all rights except full emancipation of the Jews. The reformists who had met in the Montagskränzchen called for a reform of the city's constitution. All citizens were to elect the members of a constituent assembly for the city. This assembly was then to work out a new constitution to replace the laws which had been made as a mere addition to the old constitution.
  On 9 March 1848 a flag in the colours of black, red and gold was first flown from the roof of the Palais Thurn und Taxis in Frankfurt. On 31 March the so-called “pre-parliament” held a meeting in the Paulskirche, which had been converted from a church to a parliament building in a rush. The walls and windows of the church were decorated with flags in the colours of black, red and gold, the pulpit was covered in a cloth, and the organ was hidden by a big curtain, which featured a painting by Philipp Veit depicting Germania, holding a flag and a sword. The figure was framed on either side with laurel wreaths and patriotic verses. A table for the President was set up where the altar normally stood.
  On 18 May 1848 the parliamentarians of the Frankfurt national assembly, among the first free voted German parliaments, congregated in the Paulskirche in a celebratory fashion. Friedrich Siegmund Jucho, a legal practitioner, was elected as the representative of the free city on 28 April. He was once a reporter for the National Assembly and affiliated with the left-centre  parliamentary group, Westendhall, and later belonged to the so-called Erbkaiserliche, a political group led by Heinrich von Gagern.
  With the incre
caption: Goethe memorial, established in 1844 by Ludwig Michael Schwanthaler
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