German court

The title of this article is ambiguous. Further meanings are listed under Deutscher Hof (disambiguation) .

German court was the name of one since the start of the Frankfurt National Assembly on 18th May 1848 existing political group in the Paulskirche Parliament. As with most parliamentary groups in the National Assembly, the name refers to the usual place of assembly for parliamentarians.

The German court was the faction of the left . They wanted to achieve a democratic republic in which universal, equal, direct suffrage prevailed and all nationalities had equal rights.

As part of the March Association from May 1849, when liberal and conservative MPs viewed the National Assembly as a failure and resigned their mandate in view of the radicalization of the imperial constitution campaign , the German court represented the predominant political trend. Their MPs largely took part in the rump parliament and welcomed them revolutionary upheavals in Baden and Saxony , in which they also partly participated.

With Theodor Reh and Wilhelm Loewe , the last two parliamentary presidents were originally members of the parliamentary group, but in 1849 both were already active in more moderate groups. The best-known representatives of the parliamentary group were Robert Blum , Johann Adam von Itzstein , Johann Jacoby , Georg Friedrich Kolb , Franz Raveaux , Friedrich Schüler , Carl Vogt and Franz Jacob Wigard .

The Deutscher Hof faction united many conflicting views and was consequently affected by several splits. In May 1848, the extreme left parted with Lorenz Brentano , Carl Damm , Damian Junghanns , Joseph Ignatz Peter , Gustav Rée , Friedrich Schüler and Maximilian Werner from the German court and formed the Donnersberg faction . In August, the moderate left around Theodor Reh and August Heinrich Simon founded the Westendhall faction , as the course of the German court was too radical for them despite the Donnersberg split. Westendhall was then mocked as “leftist in tails”. The split off of the Westendhall faction led to the liberal casino receiving a majority in the decisive votes on the imperial constitution . Likewise, in October 1848 MPs around Georg Friedrich Kolb, Gabriel Riesser and Wilhelm Loewe split from the parliamentary group, as they particularly rejected Robert Blum’s policy of interference in Austria. These MPs then met in the Nürnberger Hof . In November 1848, the Deutsche Hof reunited with the Donnersberg faction and the more radical parts of the Westendhall faction and henceforth formed the March Association, which was not only a faction but also part of a left-wing association movement.

literature

• Heinrich Best , Wilhelm Weege (ed.): Biographical handbook of the members of the Frankfurt National Assembly 1848/49 , Düsseldorf: Droste 1996 (= handbooks on the history of parliamentarism and political parties , vol. 8), p. 401 f. [List of MPs].
• Manfred Botzenhart : German Parliamentarism in the Revolutionary Period 1848–1850 , Düsseldorf: Droste 1977 (= Handbook of the History of German Parliamentarism ), esp. P. 426 f.