Frankfurt Parliament Election to the German constituent assembly
at Frankfurt am Main took place throughout Germany in l
ate April
and early May 1848. State governments used guidelines proposed
by the Preparliament and formally in the diet on March 30 and
April 7 which called for general adult male suffrage, with the
qualification that the voters must be "independent," a vague term
that aroused much controversy; and the election might be either
direct or indirect. Thus the franchise arrangements could vary
from state to state. Only Wurtemberg, Hesse-Kassel, Schleswig,
Holstein, and three city-states held direct ele
ctions; elsewhere,
voters chose electors, who selected the deputies in conventions,
with the exception of the three tiny Anhalt principalities where
legislatures named the deputies. Voter "independence" was
variously defined: some barred only those individuals on public
relief, other states, like Austria and Bavaria, also excluded
servants, wage-earners and journeymen. Baden simply left the
matter to the local authorities, who acted as they saw fit.
Perhaps as many as twenty percent of the adult
males were denied
suffrage, mostly from the humbler classes. Although the
franchise was not radically democratic, generally a broad
section of the population polled.
Local considerations strongly influenced the short election
campaign. There were as yet no national or even regional
political parties. Local groups did the nominating and
campaigning, and well-known local personalities had an advantage
especially in the contests for elector at the primary stage:
mayors, officials, clergymen
and local businessmen predominated.
In the elections for deputy there was a propensity to choose more
prominent men with wider reputations. Leaders of the former
liberal opposition or even notorious victims of political
prosecution were favored in democratic districts; in conservative
areas preferred men identified with the government, such as
former ministers or upper-level bureaucrats; still other regions
endorsed famous scholars. The eventual winners thus included a
large share of "notables,"
though ninety five percent of the
deputies were elected in their home states, ninety percent even
in their provinces.
The candidates usually had to take a stand on issues. The
most general issue concerned the form of the proposed German
state. Should it be fundamentally democratic, based on the idea
of popular sovereignty, perhaps even a republic? Or would it
reflect the widespread German liberal ideal of shared
sovereignty, of a strong monarch balanced by an elected
legislature. But in man
y places this main dispute between
democrats and moderate liberals was overshadowed by other
concerns. The Austrian deputies were acutely conscious of
national identity and the potential for conflict between the idea
of a German nation-state and the continued existence of their
multi-national Empire. Non-German Austrians were especially
apprehensive: Forty-eight of the Austria's seats were unfilled
because the Slavic populations of Bohemia, Moravia and the
Slovenian districts refused to particip
ate. There were protests
in Italian-speaking areas as well. Another concern was religion.
The Catholic clergy played a prominent role in many of the
elections in Bavaria and in Prussia's western provinces.
Political Pietism had a conservative impact in parts of
Westphalia and Wurtemberg, while dissident factions from both
major confessions were a democratic force in parts of Saxony and
Silesia.
The actual campaign varied with the terrain. Some cities,
like Berlin and Munich, were intense, i
nvolving public rallies
and even door-to-door canvassing. The far more numerous rural
areas were usually quieter. There was violence only in the
southern districts of Baden, where Friedrich Hecker launched a
raid in mid-April in a vain attempt to rekindle the revolutionary
atmosphere. Voter participation was uneven, ranging from less
than forty percent in Schleswig to over seventy five percent in
Wurtemberg.
The elections selected a majority of moderate liberals and a
strong minority of dem
ocrats. Geographically, the left did well
in Saxony, in the southwest region, and in parts of Bohemia,
Moravia, and the Prussian provinces of Silesia and Saxony. The
right found its greatest strength in the Prussian eastern
provinces and in old Bavaria.
Donald Mattheisen
Botzenhart, Manfred. Deutscher Parlamentarismus in der Revolutionszeit 1848-1850. Düsseldorf: Droste, 1977.
Eyck, Frank. The Frankfurt Parliament 1848 -1849. New York: St. Martin's, 1968.
Hamerow, Theodore. "The Elections to the Frankfurt Parliament," Journal of Modern History . 33 (March 1961): 15-32.
Huber, Ernst Rudolf. Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte seit 1789. II. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1960.
Repgen, Konrad. Märzbewegung und Maiwahlen des Revolutionsjahres 1848 im Rheinland. Bonn: Roehrscheid, 1955.
Schilfert, Gerhard. Seig und Niederlage des demokrat ischen Wahlrechts in der deutschen Revolution 1848-49. Berlin: Rütten und Loening, 1952.
Schulte, Wilhelm. Volk und Staat: Westfalen in Vormärz und in der Revolution 1848/49. Münster: Regensberg, 1954.
JGC revised this file (ht tp://www.ohiou.edu/~chastain/dh/frktele.htm) on October 14, 2004.
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© 1997, 2004 James Chastain.