Frankfurt Parliament

The first elected all-German parliament, it met in Frankfurt from 1848 to 1849 to draft a constitution and pursue German unification.

German Question: The nineteenth-century debate over whether and how German-speaking states should unite. Delegates had to choose between a Germany including Austria and a smaller Prussian-led state.
March Revolution: The wave of revolutions that swept the German states in March 1848. Revolutionary pressure forced rulers to permit elections for a national assembly.
Heinrich von Gagern: A liberal German politician who served as president of the Frankfurt Parliament and later led its provisional government. He guided the assembly through its decisive constitutional debates.
Erfurt Union: A Prussian-led project for a German union that emerged after the Frankfurt Parliament’s failure. It pursued a narrower unification through princely agreement rather than the parliament’s authority.
Greater German solution: A plan for German unification that included the Habsburg lands inhabited by Germans. It represented the parliament’s proposed inclusive answer to the national-border question.
Revolutions of 1848: A series of political revolutions across Europe demanding constitutional government and national self-determination. The parliament was the German revolution’s central representative institution.
Friedrich Daniel Bassermann: A Baden liberal politician whose 1844 call for a German national representation helped spur the unification movement. His early proposal anticipated the national parliament’s central purpose.
German Empire: The German nation-state proclaimed in 1871 under the Prussian king and chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Its creation achieved unification through war and state power, not Frankfurt’s parliamentary settlement.
Lesser German solution: A plan for German unification under Prussian leadership without the Austrian Habsburg Empire. It became the parliament’s final choice after the inclusive alternative proved impracticable.
Heppenheim Conference: An 1847 meeting of German liberal politicians that coordinated demands for national unity and parliamentary representation. Its participants helped prepare the liberal program that shaped the assembly’s beginnings.

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