ABSTRACT
The political restoration of the post-Napoleonic period in Germany came to a crashing halt in March 1848 (hence the term Vormärz), a year of widespread revolution in Europe. News of events in France, where the third revolution in sixty years toppled King Louis Philippe, sparked off a year of social unrest in the German Confederation. In the face of peasant and artisan insurrection and liberal and democratic political pressure, rulers in Germany rushed into a series of concessions. A National Parliament was elected in April and met in the Paulskirche in Frankfurt to discuss constitutional reform and national unification. Although no political parties yet existed, it’s individual members gravitated towards three groupings: conservatives (or reactionaries), liberals and democrats. The liberals had neither enough popular support nor political clout to harmonize with the more extreme democrats and combat the reactionaries or to connect with the more everyday needs of the peasants and workers. By April 1849 when King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia felt confident enough to turn down Parliament’s offer of the crown of a united Germany, the revolution was over.
