Erfurter Union After the collapse of the Frankfurt national
assembly and in face of the signs of the revolution's overthrow,
the Prussian governmen
t, under the influence of the General
Joseph Maria von Radowitz, a confident of King Friedrich Wilhelm
IV, seized the initiative to establish a small German federal
state under the Hohenzollern monarch's leadership. Radowitz, who
drew on the most important elements in the national program of
the hereditary imperial party of the St. Paul's Church led by
Heinrich von Gagern, wanted to bring the great-power interests of
Prussia into line with the national aim of the upper bourgeoisie
in an attempt to
pull the propertied classes into the camp of
reaction and thus to reinforce against threats to Junkers'
domination. His initiated policy, seeing its chance in the
persist revolution in Hungary which complicated Austria's
predicament and in the dependency of the German small- and
medium-sized states on Prussia's support against revolutionary
uprisings, assumed the character of a revolution from above. In
contrast to Bismarck's later approach, Radowitz attempted use
power politics to make changes no
t by hostile techniques but
rather by negotiations and by cooperation with Vienna.
The Prussian policy of fusion began with the Alliance of Three Kings concluded between Prussia, Saxony and Hanover on May 26, 1849. The governments of Saxony and Hanover had entered the alliance with the reservation that they would remain only if all other German states, with the exception of Austria, associated. The draft constitution adopted two days later actually included provisions taken from the St. Paul's Church assembly's Reich constitution. Leadership lay with the Prussian crown. There was an aggravating difference in terms of franchise. Instead of universal and equal franchise the constitution envisioned the three-class system of franchise which was imposed in Prussia on May 30, 1849. The articles of the constitution were to become reality only when revised by an elected Reichstag and then approved by both the parliamentary representation and the participating governments. At a meeting in Gotha on June 25, 1849, under the leadership of Heinrich von Gagern, one hundred fifty former liberal deputies to the German national assembly acceded to the draft of the union. To support it they formed the Gotha Party of small-German constitutionalists. Under Prussian pressure twenty-eight German states, almost all, had recognized the Reich constitution and joined the union by the end of August 1849.
When Austria with tsarist help successfully suppressed t he Hungarian revolution to regain its ability to negotiate, it began to actively resist Prussia's German policies. The Viennese government contemplated restoration of the German Confederation recalling the German Diet, encouraged Saxony and Hanover's endeavors to dissolve the alliance of three kings and, in addition, provided a powerful noble faction in Prussia, the feudal-corporate and anti-national group around the brothers Gerlach the possibility to oppose increasingly successfully union policy .
The elections to the Erfurt parliament of January 1850 found only a slight resonance among the people. Democrats universally boycotted the elections, and over all electoral participation lay below fifty percent. Saxony and Hanover prevented elected and used their reserve clause to secede from the alliance of three kings. The expectations of the Gotha Party, narrowly defeated in the elections, for the Erfurt parliament did not materialize. The constitution was accepted by them, though, and revised in a reactionary sense, but since no agreement was reached with the governments, it never took effect. A congress of the princes of the union held in Berlin in May 1850 expressly decided that the constitution should not be introduced at this juncture. At the Berlin court Radowitz's influence declined as both the Prussian king and his ministers increasingly wished to renounce the policy of a union. Austria's intrigue to restore the old German Diet for the beginning of September 1850 i n Frankfurt am Main further contributed to the union's demise. Electoral Hesse was the next state to leave the Alliance of Three Kings.
In autumn 1850 the conflict between Prussia, which formally held
to the union, and Austria over the question of federal executions
in Holstein and Electoral Hesse almost escalated into a military
conflict. After the Berlin cabinet pulled back from the demands
of the Viennese Government allied with the Russian tsar at the
Warsaw conference of October 28, 1
850, the confrontation worsened
once more when Prussia on November 5, in response to the advance
of the German Confederation troops of into Electoral Hesse,
mobilized its army and prepared it for war. The war for hegemony
in Germany hoped for by liberals did not materialize however;
leaders of the Prussian state associated with the objectives of
the nobles grouped around Gerlach, the
"Kreuzzeitungs-Party", who, like Austria, advocated
the restoration of the German Confederation. To th
e German
people the sudden reversal of policies, rather than a shift of
power within ruling circles in Berlin, then appeared to be a
humbling capitulation to the Viennese Hofburg sealed
by the public humiliation of the punctuation of Olmütz
concluded under tsarist participation on November 29, 1850. All
Germany saw Prussia change course to suddenly declare its
willingness to demobilize its troops, to take part in the
intervention of German Diet in Hesse and Holstein and to renounc
e
any resumption of her union policy. Explicitly abandoning the
Erfurt Union, Prussia for the moment turned its back on German
unity for a policy of reaction of the 1850's.
Rolf Weber "Von Frankfurt nach Olmütz. Zur Genesis und
Politik des gothaischen Liberalismus 1849/50," in
Bourgeoisie und bürgerliche Umwälzung in Deutschland
1789-1871,Helmut Bleiber (ed), Berlin 1977.
Konrad Canis, "Joseph Maria
von Radowitz. Konterrevolution und preussische Unionspolitik,"
in Männer der Revolution
von 1848 Helmut Bleiber (ed.), Berlin 1987, vol. II.
JGC revised this file
(http://www.ohiou.edu/~chastain/dh/erfurtun.htm) on
October 13, 2004.
Please E-mail comments or suggestions to chastain@www.ohiou.edu
© 1997, 2004 James Chastain.
Rolf Weber
Bibliography