Support of Prussian Hegemony
In 1848 he was elected a member of the revolutionary Frankfurt parliament, and acted as secretary to the committee for drawing up a proposed constitution. He was a determined supporter of Prussian ascendancy, seeing this as the only feasible route to German unification.
We cannot conceal the fact that the whole German question is a simple alternative between Prussia and Austria. In these states, German life has its positive and negative poles - in the former, all the interests which are national and reformative, in the latter, all that are dynastic and destructive. The German question is not a constitutional question, but a question of power; and the Prussian monarchy is now wholly German, while that of Austria cannot be.
Droysen was one of the first members to retire from the Frankfurt Parliament after King Frederick William IV of Prussia refused the imperial crown in 1849. In the following two years, Droysen continued to support the cause of the duchies, and in 1850, with Carl Samwer, he published a history of the dealings of Denmark with Schleswig and Holstein, Die Herzogthümer Schleswig-Holstein und das Königreich Dänemark seit dem Jahre 1800 (Hamburg, 1850). A translation was published in London in the same year under the title The Policy of Denmark towards the Duchies of Schleswig-Holstein. The work was one of great political importance and contributed to the formation of German public opinion on the rights of the duchies in their struggle with Denmark.
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