Imperial Deputation

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The lawyer Eduard Simson , here in 1849, was also President of Parliament in 1870 and chairman of the Imperial Deputation.

The term Kaiserdeputation is used in 19th century German history for two different groups of members of parliament. A deputation here is a delegation, a group elected by parliament to bring demands or an offer. Both times the aim was to propose the title of "Kaiser" to a Prussian king . On both occasions the President of Parliament Eduard Simson was the chairman of the deputation.

In April 1849, 32 members of the Frankfurt National Assembly traveled to Berlin to meet the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV . Shortly beforehand, the National Assembly had passed a constitution and elected the king hereditary head of the empire with the title " Kaiser der Deutschen ". Although 28 German governments had endorsed the constitution and the election, Friedrich Wilhelm rejected it that same month.

In December 1870 a deputation from the North German Reichstag traveled to the headquarters near Paris. They asked King Wilhelm of Prussia to accept the title of " German Emperor ". This title had been decided on before the departure of the Reichstag and Bundesrat, and this time a positive declaration from the other princes was also available.

Imperial Deputation 1849

The Kaiserdeputation from 1849 in a contemporary wood engraving

As a result of the March Revolution of 1848, there were elections in the member states of the German Confederation for the first all-German National Assembly. It should transform the loose confederation into a liberal, democratic federal state and give it a constitution. On March 30, 1849, the parliament appointed the members of the deputation, which was received by Friedrich Wilhelm IV on April 3 in Berlin . The king expressed concerns about assuming the imperial dignity and pointed out that the approval of the other German princes was important to him. On April 28, 1849, he finally rejected the imperial crown. This led to the imperial constitution campaign , which escalated into a civil war-like conflict. The king had the revolution suppressed by force and illegally decreed that the Prussian members of the National Assembly had to resign from their mandate. The March Revolution had thus failed.

The emperor's deputation in 1870 was addressed to Friedrich Wilhelm's younger brother and successor, King Wilhelm I of Prussia , who was at the headquarters of the allied German states in Versailles during the final phase of the Franco-Prussian War . She asked him, who was already the holder of the Federal Presidium , to also accept the title of German Emperor . This had already been decided by the Reichstag and the Bundesrat . Wilhelm accepted the dignity of Emperor on December 18th, but resisted the title of "German Emperor" until the official proclamation on January 18th, 1871.

Frankfurt National Assembly

prehistory

As a result of the March Revolution in the German states, the National Assembly met on May 18, 1848 in Frankfurt am Main , which set up a provisional Reich government and drafted the constitution for a German nation-state .

The National Assembly voted on October 27, 1848 for a so-called Greater German solution , including the German states of Austria , after the Austrian Prime Minister Schwarzenberg had declared the indivisibility of the multi-ethnic state and empire of Austria. A month later, however, it was clear that the National Assembly could only achieve state unity as a small German solution with Prussia as the strongest power.

German imperial dignity as hereditary monarchy

The offer of imperial dignity to Friedrich Wilhelm IV. Was then the logical consequence of the Frankfurt Imperial Constitution drawn up by the National Assembly in lengthy negotiations and passed on March 28, 1849 . As a result of the vote on March 27, this provided for a hereditary monarchy after the same solution had been rejected during the first reading of the draft constitution. The main reason for the change in mood was that all other proposals for an electoral monarchy were even less practical and could not find broad support either.

The so-called hereditary imperial family around Heinrich von Gagern won the vote on March 27 with a majority of 267 against 263 votes. They were supported by the actually reluctant left-wing Westendhall faction around Heinrich Simon . Four votes came from the German-Austrian MPs, who belonged to the left political spectrum, who wanted to vote against the restorative policy of the Austrian government.

Election of the Prussian king

On March 28, the Prussian king was elected hereditary head with 290 votes, against 248 abstentions and opposition, mainly from left, southern German and German-Austrian MPs. Although Prussian politics and Friedrich Wilhelm IV were not very popular with the majority of the members of parliament, many hereditary imperialists were also aware that Friedrich Wilhelm inwardly rejected the Frankfurt National Assembly despite his statement "From now on Prussia will open up in Germany". However, on January 23, 1849, under pressure from the Prussian government, Friedrich Wilhelm informed the individual German states that Prussia would accept the ideas of the Hereditary Imperial. In contrast to Bavaria , Württemberg , Saxony and Hanover, for example, Prussia also approved the draft constitution in a statement after the first reading.

The officials of the provisional central authority had also tried in various discussions to reach an alliance with the Prussian government, in particular by building a common front against the radical left and arguing that the monarchy could only survive if it shared with the moderate liberals Do thing and accept a constitutional-parliamentary monarchy. Talks by Bassermann as envoy of the central authority with Friedrich Wilhelm IV. In November 1848 went in this direction . However, it remained unclear how Friedrich Wilhelm would ultimately react.

Rejection of the imperial dignity

The romantically inclined and politically fickle Friedrich Wilhelm IV was, however, by no means prepared - regardless of the political implications of German unification - to fundamentally deviate from the principle of divine grace and to accept this offer. For him it was already too far a defeat that after the barricade uprising and the subsequent unrest in 1848 he had to announce a Prussian constitution and convene a Prussian national assembly and thus had to expect constitutional-parliamentary restrictions on his power to govern.

For basic considerations alone, the dignity of the emperor from the hands of a democratic parliament had nothing to do with the dignity of the German king and emperor , but was for him an “imaginary ring of dirt and Latvians ”. As early as December 23, 1848 he wrote to his advisor Joseph von Radowitz :

Caricature about the rejection of the imperial crown by Friedrich Wilhelm IV., Colored lithograph after a drawing by Isidor Popper

“Every German nobleman who has a cross or a line in his coat of arms is a hundred times too good to accept such a diadem forged from the filth and Latvians of the revolution, breach of faith and high treason. The old, legitimate crown of the German nation, dormant since 1806, the diadem by the grace of God, which makes whoever wears it the highest government in Germany, to whom one owes obedience for the sake of conscience, one can accept that if one has it in oneself Feels the strength to do so and the innate duties allow it. But nobody awards the crown except Emperor Franz Joseph, me and our kind and woe to him! who tries without us and woe to him! who accepts it [...]. "

In addition, given the military strength of Prussia, the strategy of disavowing the liberals without compromise and then defeating the left, strengthened, was for Friedrich Wilhelm and the political right.

On April 3, 1849, Friedrich Wilhelm, who had already been informed by telegram, received the deputation in Berlin, consisting of 32 members, which had arrived on April 2 . Contrary to the illusory hope of the delegates from the beginning, he rejected the imperial crown because, as he expressed in his address, he could not accept it without “the free consent of the crowned heads, the princes and the free cities of Germany”.

Shortly afterwards he wrote to Ernst August von Hannover and told him what he had replied to two members of parliament, "old Arndt" and "Herr von Beckerath", to whose urgent letters:

“[…] I explained to them that there was absolutely no question of an actual answer to this deputation. One only accepts that and only rejects what can be offered. The Paulskirche, however, has no crown to offer and consequently I cannot refuse or accept any. This so-called crown is not in itself a crown, but a dog collar with which they want to chain me to the revolution of 48. "

In his report of the events to his London ambassador Bunsen , the king wrote:

“I'll deal with my peers; But in parting the truth: only soldiers can help against democrats. "

And:

“I do not want the prince's approval of the election or the crown. […] The crown that a Hohenzoller might take, if circumstances could make it possible , is not one that an assembly, if instituted with princely approval, but shot in the revolutionary seed (dans le genre de la couronne des pavés de Louis-Philippe,), but one who bears the stamp of God, who makes him to whom it is placed after the holy unction "by the grace of God", because and how they more than thirty-four princes become kings of the Germans by God's grace made and always added to the last of the old series. The crown worn by the Ottonians, the Hohenstaufen, and the Habsburgs can of course wear a Hohenzoller; she honors him profusely with a thousand-year splendor. But those whom you - unfortunately think, profusely dishonored with their filthy odor of the revolution of 1848, the silliest, stupidest, worst - even if, thank God, not the worst of this century. Such an imaginary hoop, baked from dirt and Latvians, should be given to a legitimate king by the grace of God, and now even the King of Prussia, who has the blessing, if not the oldest, but the noblest crown that no one has stolen , to wear?"

28 German governments adopted the imperial constitution and asked the king to do the same. On April 28, however, the Prussian envoy in Frankfurt, Camphausen , delivered a letter to the provisional central authority with the final rejection. The reasoning goes above all into the question of the attitude of the other German princes, whose consent to have to recognize the Prussian king as emperor in the future was actually not to be expected without contradiction. In addition, the king complained that the National Assembly would not accept any changes to the imperial constitution, although the imperial constitution should be agreed with the governments.

Consequences and effects

With the rejection of the imperial crown, the phase began in which Friedrich Wilhelm violently suppressed the March Revolution. He illegally claimed that the Prussian members of the Frankfurt National Assembly would have to resign. He took military action against the Reich constitution campaign . Prussian revolutionaries were persecuted and imprisoned.

In the spring of 1849, Friedrich Wilhelm tried to found a German Empire himself. He wanted to involve the non-Prussian princes more closely. This project, later called the Erfurt Union , also failed because of the Prussian king: after the Erfurt Union Parliament had adopted the draft constitution, he lost interest: the constitution was still too liberal for him. He did not set up any Union organs and finally dropped the Union in the autumn crisis of 1850 .

Members of the Imperial Deputation

The emperor's deputation consisted of a. from Eduard Simson (Chairman), Ernst Moritz Arndt , Marquard Adolph Barth , Friedrich Daniel Bassermann , Christoph Bauer , Hermann von Beckerath , Georg Beseler , Carl Biedermann , Moriz Adolph Briegleb , Adolph Cnyrim , Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann , Albert August Wilhelm Deetz , Friedrich Federer , Gottlieb Wilhelm Freudentheil , Heinrich von Gagern , Wilhelm Krafft , Wilhelm Loewe , Ernst Merck , Friedrich von Raumer , Theodor Reh , Gabriel Riesser , Maximilian Heinrich Rüder , Gustav Rümelin , Adolph Schoder , Alexander von Soiron , Gustav Adolf Harald Stenzel , Friedrich Carl Stieber , Heinrich Zachariä , Friedrich Zell .

Imperial Deputation 1870

In December 1870 a parliamentary deputation under Eduard Simson made its way to the Prussian king. At that time there was already the North German Confederation and the North German Reichstag in Berlin, and King Wilhelm was already the holder of the Presidium of the Bund . When the deputation left, the imperial letter of the princes and the decision of the Reichstag and Bundesrat (December 9/10) that the holder of the Federal Presidium should bear the title of German Emperor were already available .

On December 18, Wilhelm accepted the imperial title in principle, and on January 1, 1871, the constitution of the German Confederation came into force, which provided for the title of German Emperor for the Presidium. The official imperial proclamation was not due to take place until January 18, the 170th anniversary of Frederick I's coronation as the first King of Prussia. Until the end, however, Wilhelm resisted the title stipulated by the constitution because he considered it artificial. He would also have preferred the form Kaiser von Deutschland . In the opinion of Federal Chancellor Otto von Bismarck , however, this was not only inconsistent with the constitution, but also incompatible with the self-esteem of the other princes. To get around the problem with the proclamation, Grand Duke Friedrich von Baden , the highest ranking of the federal princes present, cheered Kaiser Wilhelm.

See also

Remarks

  1. ↑ This is the so-called bastard cross, or bastard thread , a sign that the bearer of the coat of arms of a family offshoot arises out of wedlock, usually the son of the feudal lord and a mistress.
  2. ^ Günter Wollstein : Failure of a dream. In: Information on Civic Education, Issue 265, Federal Agency for Civic Education , accessed June 16, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Hans Jessen (Ed.): The German Revolution 1848/49 in eyewitness reports . Düsseldorf 1968, p. 310 f.
  4. ^ Wolfram Siemann : The German Revolution of 1848/49. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1985, ISBN 3-518-11266-X , p. 203 (New Historical Library, Volume 266).
  5. ↑ German: "in the manner of the crown from the street of a Louis-Philippe ".
  6. ↑ Leopold von Ranke : From Friedrich Wilhelm IV's correspondence with Bunsen . In: ders .: Complete Works , Volume 50. Leipzig 1887, p. 493 f.

literature

  • Wolfram Siemann: The German Revolution of 1848/49. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1985, ISBN 3-518-11266-X (New Historical Library, Volume 266).
  • Karl Biedermann: From the most recent days (1) . In: The Gazebo . Issue 36, 1863, pp. 569–574 ( full text [ Wikisource ] - on the Frankfurt Imperial Deputation of 1849).

Web links