Frankfurt Parliament - Long-term Political Effects

Long-term Political Effects

After the National Assembly's dissolution, Prussia chose to support the Unionspolitik ("union policy") designed by the conservative Paulskirche deputy Joseph von Radowitz for a Smaller German Solution under Prussian leadership. This entailed modifying the Frankfurt Parliament's conclusions, with a stronger role for the Prussian hereditary monarch and imposed "from above". The Erbkaiserliche around Gagern supported this policy in the Gotha Post-Parliament and the Erfurt Union Parliament. The 1850 Punctuation of Olmütz forced Prussia to abandon the policy. Nevertheless, the March Revolution led to a major increase of Prussia's political importance. Prussia, by its leading role in suppressing the revolution, had demonstrated its indispensability as main player in German politics and its superiority over small and medium states. On the other hand, the Prussian kingdom was now in a far better strategic position. It had won the gratitude of the family of the Grand Duchy of Baden as a first important ally in southern Germany, and the Smaller German Solution had become popular throughout the nation. This political pass contributed to the adoption of the Smaller German Solution after the Prussian victory in the 1866 Austro-Prussian War, which led to the foundation of the North German Confederation. The Smaller German Solution was implemented after the 1870/71 Franco-Prussian War in the form of Prussian-dominated unification "from above", namely the 1871 proclamation of the German Empire.

Historians have suggested several possible explanations for the German Sonderweg of the 20th century: discreditation of democrats and liberals, their estrangement, and the unfulfilled desire for a nation-state, which had led to separation of the national question from the assertion of civic rights.

The work of the National Assembly and more generally of the March revolution was judged harshly in the immediate aftermath. Authors such as Ludwig Häuser classed the ideas of the radical democratic left as irresponsible and naive foolishness. The bourgeois liberals were also discredited; many of them left politics disappointed and under great hostility from their fellow citizens in the individual states. It is probably partially due to this that Bassrmann committed suicide in 1855. A positive reception of the National Assembly's work only came about in the Weimar Republic and more so after World War II, when both the East German Democratic Republic and the Western Federal Republic of Germany competed for the use of the democratic Paulskirche heritage as specific traditions of the separate states.