page_title: Frankfurt Parliament
section_title: The Pre-Parliament
hierarchical_section_title: Frankfurt Parliament / Background / The Pre-Parliament
caption_attribution_description: Gedenktafel Nationalversammlung - Frankfurt Paulskirche
context_page_description: The Frankfurt Parliament was the first freely elected parliament for all of Germany, including the German-populated areas of Austria-Hungary, elected on 1 May 1848.
  The session was held from 18 May 1848 to 31 May 1849, in the Paulskirche at Frankfurt am Main. Its existence was both part of and 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 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.
context_section_description: The Pre-Parliament (Vorparlament) was in session at the St. Paul's Church, Frankfurt am Main (Paulskirche) 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 (Bundestag), 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 (Fünfzigerausschuss), as a representation to face the German Confederation.
caption: Memorial plaque on the Paulskirche, Frankfurt
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