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The Prussian Assembly
In Prussia, the old king, Frederick William III, had always been opposed to giving the Prussian people a constitution, as was his successor, Frederick William IV. However, the success of Prussia in the last few decades had been almost entirely due to the skilled group of bureaucrats and administrators serving the government, all of whom were pushing hard for a constitutional monarchy.
In March 1848, rioting began in Berlin. Frederick William IV quickly mobilized the Prussian army to suppress the revolution but surprised everyone by then taking a liberal stance and allowing the election of a Prussian assembly. Mostly consisting of radical revolutionaries, the assembly wanted to unite Prussia with the rest of Germany to create a force that could challenge Russia. It also wanted to grant Polish minorities in eastern Prussia self-government. However, deciding that the experiment in democratic government had gone on long enough, Frederick William IV changed his mind and dissolved the Prussian Assembly.
The Frankfurt Assembly
The 1848 revolutions inspired a similar nationalist movement in Germany proper. In May 1848, a group of German nationalists met at the Frankfurt Assembly. The goals of the assembly included creating a unified Germany that was liberal and constitutionally governed. The Frankfurt assembly argued over various topics, including the question of who should rule a unified Germany. Its members also debated whether Germany should contain only the Bund, or also include parts of Austria or Prussia. The ownership of Schleswig-Holstein, officially the property of Denmark, was another contentious issue. Roughly split between a German and a Danish population, the Frankfurt Assembly wanted to annex Schleswig-Holstein, hoping to call on Prussia for help. However, they also knew that Russia and Great Britain would team up against Prussia if it tried to take over Schleswig-Holstein.
In December of 1848, the Frankfurt Assembly issued the Declaration of the Rights of the German People, based on the Declarations of the Rights of Man in France and the Declaration of Independence in the United States. Following the Nationalist rather than Enlightenment ideal, this declaration ignored the universal rights of all mankind and simply proclaimed the rights of Germans. This sort of selfward-focus was indicative of a larger issue with the Frankfurt Assembly. It consisted of a fairly bland group of liberal German bourgeoisie who considered neither violent revolution nor lower-class discontent. Because this, they alienated the lower classes, even going so far as to try and stop lower-class riots, and were unable to harness their power and support.
The Failures of the 1848 Revolutions
In 1849, the Frankfurt Assembly offered Germany to Frederick William IV. Though he coveted the territory, Frederick William knew that an acceptance would lead to war with Austria and make him into a constitutional monarch, neither of which he desired, and so he turned the offer down. Thus, all the deliberation of the Frankfurt Assembly resulted in nothing. Germany remained fragmented after 1848, and the small rulers of the various small German states came back to power.
In many ways, the Frankfurt Assembly can be seen as indicative of the larger context of 1848. Just as the Frankfurt Assembly was dominated by various minor squabbles, the 1848 revolutions were filled with many nationalist groups, all of whom had different visions of the future of Europe. Further, just as the Frankfurt Assembly disappeared with a whimper, turned down by the man it had selected as ruler of a unified Germany, so too did the revolutions of 1848 generally lead to little change: France was ruled by an Emperor, Austria was more autocratic than ever, and Germany remained a patchwork of minor states.
However, the ideas animating the revolutions did not die with the revolutions themselves. Though the Frankfurt assembly ended in a sort of wounded embarrassment, the desire to unify Germany remained strong, as did nationalism everywhere. The year of revolutions yielded little result, but in the following years the nationalist impulse to unify would take on greater proportions, and the years between 1848 and 1871 could easily be termed an age of unification.
