What was the 1848 Frankfurt assembly?

Answer 1

The Frankfurt Assembly came as a result of the political unrest in Prussia and the German states during 1848. Both liberals and radicals were dissatisfied with the lack of freedom that the government offered them. The assembly in Frankfurt was a gathering of elected representatives from Prussia, Austria, and all the German states to discuss the creation of a unified German nation. Most of the delegates were lawyers, professors, or administrators, and most were also moderate liberals.

The public had hoped that the Frankfurt Assembly could imitate what the French did at the Tennis Court Oath of 1789--draft a constitution for a liberal, but unified, German nation. However, the Frankfurt Assembly had no resources, no power to overthrow, and no legal code. For eleven months, these delegates worked in one public room in an old church, with no place to debate or decide on legislation.

At the assembly, questions about nationality generated a lot of contention. Which Germans would be in the new state? Many delegates argued that all Germans were bound to unification by their language, culture, and geography. They believed that the German nation should include as many Germans as possible. On the other hand, there was a minority who wanted a "Small Germany" that left out all lands of the Habsburg Empire, like German Austria.

After a long debate, the assembly went with the Small German solution and offered the crown of the new nation to Frederick William IV. But Frederick William refused the crown on account of the constitution being too liberal. Here, things started to fall apart. Some delegates fled to the United States, others sacrificed their liberal views for a seemingly more realistic goal of nationhood. In Prussia, the army of revolutionary forces was also dispatched.

Some of the outcomes: political unrest spread across Germany. Moderates were now in fear of how radical this was becoming, since peasants and workers had already forced the king to make some sacrifices in the early spring of 1848. Moderates still wanted national unification and there was still much reform to be done after the Frankfurt Assembly.