Frankfurt Parliament - Rump Parliament and Dissolution

Rump Parliament and Dissolution

On April 5, 1849, all Austrian deputies left Frankfurt. On the 14th of May, the Prussian parliamentarians also resigned their mandates. The new elections called for by von Gagern did not take place, further weakening the assembly. In the following week, nearly all conservative and bourgeois-liberal deputies left the parliament. The remaining left-wing forces insisted that 28 states had accepted the Frankfurt Constitution and began the Reichsverfassungskampagne, an all-out call for resistance against the existing governments, escalating the political situation. The supporters of the campaign did not consider themselves revolutionaries. From their perspective, they represented a legitimate national executive power acting against states that had breached the constitution. Nonetheless, only the radical democratic left was willing to use force to support the constitution, notwithstanding their original reservations against it. In view of their failure, the bourgeoisie and the leading liberal politicians of the faction of the Halbe ("half ones") rejected a renewed revolution and withdrew - most of them disappointed - from their hard work in the Frankfurt Parliament.

In the meantime, the Reichsverfassungskampagne had not achieved any success regarding acceptance of the constitution, but had managed to mobilize those elements of the population that were willing to support a revolution. In Saxony, this led to the May Uprising in Dresden, in the Bavarian part of the Rhenish Palatinate to the Pfälzer Aufstand, a rising during which revolutionaries gained the de facto governmental power. On May 14, the Grandduke of Baden, Leopold had to flee the country after a mutiny of the Rastatt garrison. The insurrectionists declared a Baden Republic and formed a revolutionary government headed by the Paulskirche deputy Lorenz Brentano. Together with Baden soldiers that had joined their side, they formed an army under the leadership of the Polish general Mieroslawski. While the Prussian military, under orders from the German Confederation, began to crush the revolutionary troops, the Prussian government prepared the expulsion of the remaining deputies from the Free City of Frankfurt in late May. Further deputies that were not willing to align with radical democratic left resigned their mandates or gave them up when asked to by their home governments. On May 26, the Frankfurt National Assembly had to lower its quorum to a mere hundred due to the enduring low presence of deputies. The remaining deputies decided to escape the Prussian sphere of influence by moving the parliament to Stuttgart in Württemberg on May 31. This had been suggested by the deputy Friedrich Römer, who was also prime minister and minister of justice of the Württemberg government. Essentially, the Frankfurt National Assembly was dissolved at this point. From June 6, 1849 onwards, the remaining 154 deputies met at Stuttgart. This convention was dismissively called the Rumpfparlament ("rump parliament").

Since the provisional government and the regent did not recognise the rump parliament, it declared both as dismissed and proclaimed a new provisional regency led by the deputies Franz Raveaux, Carl Vogt, Heinrich Simon, Friedrich Schüler and August Becher. Following its view of itself as the legitimate German parliament, the rump parliemant called for tax resistance and military resistance against those states that did not accept the Paulskirche Constitution. Since this view also diminished the autonomy of Württemberg, and the Prussian army was successfully crushing the rebellions in the nearby Baden and the Palatinate, Römer and the Württemberg government rapidly distanced themselves from the rump parliament.

On June 17, Römer informed the president of the parliament that the Württemberg government was no longer in a position to tolerate the meetings of the National Assembly that had moved to its territory, nor the activities of the regency elected on the 6th, anywhere in Stuttgart or Württemberg". At this point, the rump parliament had only 99 deputies and did not reach a quorum according to its own rules. On June 18, the Württemberg army occupied the parliamentary chamber before the session started. The deputies reacted by organizing an impromptu protest march which was promptly squashed by the soldiers without bloodshed. Those deputies that were not from Württemberg were expelled.

Subsequent plans to move the parliament (or what was left of it) to Karlsruhe in Baden could not be implemented due to the looming defeat of the Baden revolutionaries, which was completed five weeks later.