Committee of seven

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The Committee of Seven was a stop on the way to the Frankfurt National Assembly . He was elected by the Heidelberg assembly on the proposal of Karl Theodor Welcker .

meaning

The Heidelberg assembly of March 5, 1848, which consisted of 51 leading German liberals and democrats, had called for a nationwide representation of Germany and decided to elect a national assembly. In preparation for this national assembly, the people gathered on the Neckar had elected the Committee of Seven.

The Committee of Seven met in Heidelberg on March 12, 1848. Its members were the Frankfurt lawyers Georg Christoph Binding , Heinrich von Gagern , Adam von Itzstein , Friedrich Römer , the liberal landowner Karl von Stedman , Karl Theodor Welcker and the Palatinate lawyer Friedrich Justus Willich . They prepared the election and the establishment of a national assembly, for which they had to issue the invitations to a pre-parliament . The invitations were sent to all former and current members of the German state parliaments, including Holstein and Schleswig. Special invitations were sent to a certain number of men who, although not members of the state parliament, were outstanding actors in the Vormärz and had a reputation for enjoying the trust of the people. Itzstein, the only democrat on the committee, invited “patriotic friends” from his circle of friends to Frankfurt. B. Johann Jacoby , Robert Blum and Johannes Ronge . The Rhenish landowner Stedmann sent invitations to the pre-parliament to 40 people, to liberals and democrats.

program

The following program was negotiated on March 12, 1848:

I. A federal head with responsible ministers

II. A Senate of the States

III. A house of the people resulting from primary elections on the scale of I to 70,000

IV. Competence of the federal government through the waiver of the individual states on the following points in favor of the central authority:

  1. An army
  2. A representation abroad,
  3. A system of commerce, shipping laws, federal customs , coin, measure, weight, posts, waterways and railways
  4. Unity of civil and criminal law and judicial process. A federal court
  5. Guarantee of national civil liberties

V. The decision to convene the constituent national assembly on the basis of the above is made by the federal authorities reinforced with stewards.

VI. A permanent committee of 15 members, to be elected from the current assembly, is responsible for carrying out the convening of the constituent national assembly. If the meeting has not taken place within four weeks of today, this meeting will meet again on May 3rd and 4th. In the event of urgency, the committee may call the meeting at an earlier date.

literature

  • Frank Eyck: Germany's great hope. The Frankfurt National Assembly 1848/49 . List, Munich 1973, ISBN 3-471-77404-1 .
  • Walter Grab (ed.): The revolution of 1848. A documentation . Nymphenburger, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-485-03082-1 , pp. 47-48.
  • Karl Jürgens: On the history of the German constitution 1848-49 . 2 volumes. Vieweg et al., Braunschweig et al. 1850–1857.
  • Karl Obermann : The elections to the Frankfurt National Assembly in the spring of 1848. The election processes in the states of the German Confederation in the mirror of contemporary sources . Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-326-00142-8 , pp. 13-14.
  • Wilhelm Ribhegge: Parliament as a nation. The Frankfurt National Assembly 1848/49 . Droste, Düsseldorf 1998, ISBN 3-7700-0920-7 , ( Droste-Taschenbücher Geschichte 920).
  • Wolfram Siemann : The German Revolution of 1848/49 . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1985, ISBN 3-518-11266-X , ( Edition Suhrkamp 1266 = NF 266 New Historical Library ).

swell

  • Paul Roth, Heinrich Merck: Negotiations of the German Parliament, Frankfurt 1848 . In: Collection of sources on German public law since 1848 . Vol. I, Erlangen 1850, p. 183 f.

Footnotes

  1. ^ Otto Vossler : The revolution of 1848 in Germany . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1967, p. 66.