Imperial constitution campaign

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Call of the Central March Association on May 6, 1849
Representation of the dissolution of the rump parliament on June 18, 1849 in Stuttgart: Württemberg dragoons drive the demonstration of the locked out members apart (book illustration from 1893)

The imperial constitution campaign was an initiative launched by radical democratic politicians during the revolution of 1848/49 . It culminated in the civil war - like struggles in some German states, also known as May uprisings . These clashes began in May 1849 and were shaped by regional differences in duration and resistance to the counterrevolution ; sometimes they lasted until July of that year. They mark the final phase of the bourgeois-nation-state March Revolution , which began a good year earlier, in March 1848.

The aim of the Reich constitution campaign was to recognize the Paulskirche constitution drawn up by the first all-German and democratically elected parliament, the Frankfurt National Assembly . The campaign was triggered after the rejection of the Imperial Crown offered to him by the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV. (See also Imperial Deputation ) and the dissolution of the National Assembly. The remaining parliamentarians evaded for a few weeks to Stuttgart , the capital of the Kingdom of Württemberg , to the so-called rump parliament , until this assembly was forcibly dissolved by Württemberg troops. The call for the campaign had been signed by Georg Friedrich Kolb , Heinrich Herrmann Riemann and others.

As a result of this appeal, there were republican-motivated uprisings, for example in the Kingdom of Saxony ( Dresden May uprising ), in the then Bavarian Palatinate ( Palatinate uprising ), in the Prussian provinces of Westphalia ( Iserlohn uprising of 1849 ) and Rhineland ( Prümer Zeughaussturm and Elberfeld uprising in May 1849) and especially in the Grand Duchy of Baden (see Baden Revolution ), where a republic was proclaimed for a short time.

The March Revolution of 1848/1849 in the states of the German Confederation ended with the military suppression of this last rebellion of the revolutionaries by primarily Prussian troops , most recently on July 23, 1849 with the capitulation of the Federal Fortress of Rastatt , the last bastion of the Baden revolutionaries, to Prussian Besiegers.

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