Imperial constitution campaign
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.
See also
Web links
- The German Reich constitution campaign by Friedrich Engels , written in 1849/50, full text, links to the individual chapters on mlwerke.de