Frankfurt National Assembly

“ After the popular victories of Vienna and Berlin, it was a matter of course that there should be a Representative Assembly for all Germany. This body was consequently elected, and met at Frankfort, by the side of the old Federative Diet. The German National Assembly was expected, by the people, to settle every matter in dispute, and to act as the highest legislative authority for the whole of the German Confederation. ”

“ Their special status is partially maintained, however, by the fact that they are elected by the East Berlin Assembly and not directly by the people.
The regime's control of the People's Chamber extends also to the legislative process, which similarly includes constitutional prerogatives that in practice are not exercised. According to the 1968 constitution, only the People's Chamber can adopt a constitution and laws, and nobody may restrict this right. ”

“ From Germany there is no news of interest. The Emperor of Austria left Vienna, February 25th, for Trieste and Venice, to meet the Grand Prince of Prussia. The Second Chamber of Wurtemberg, in its sitting of the 26th, adopted, by 54 votes to 32, resolutions, declaring that the fundamental rights proclaimed by the National Assembly of Frankfort continue to have legal force in the kingdom, and can only be abolished in the form presented by the Constitution. ”

“ Everywhere the liberals were in the ascendant, and were gaining freedom of the press and constitutional government. The formation of Germany into a federal empire was proposed and adopted, and a National Assembly met at Frankfort on May 18, 1848. It included many of the ablest men of Germany. Its principal work was to organize a union under an irresponsible executive, who was to be surrounded by a responsible ministry. The Archduke John of Austria was selected to fill this new, but brief imperial position, and made a solemn entry into Frankfort on the 11th of July. ”

“ Another consequence is, that not only the Ministries are not homogeneous, which is the necessary consequence of the fact that no party has a majority in the Reichstag, but also they are heterogeneous in a fixed and invariable manner. To constitute a Cabinet there must be observed a triple rule. First, Ministers must be taken from the various political parties that enter the Cabinet; those individuals who are not [180] members of the Reichstag being chosen from among the members of the party represented in the National Assembly. ”

“ On October 31 the Prussian Constituent Assembly gave voice to the general sympathy with the struggling people of Vienna and resolved to request his Majesty's government “to take speedy and energetic steps to induce the German central power in Frankfurt to effectually protect the imperiled liberties of the people in the German districts of Austria, and to restore peace.” The president of the ministry, General von Pfuel, supported this resolution. ”

“ The administration was not exactly democratic, except among the Frisians; even in the times when the people and every individual still took part in the government, we often find traces of the later free monarchy. The Germans had elected leaders in war and a chief appointed for life, who in peace had to manage their affairs with limited authority. All the freemen constituted the national assembly, which deliberated on and decided all general questions, determined on the life or death of a criminal, and selected the presidents for the tribunals of the individual cantons. ”

“ The elections for the National Assembly stirred to their innermost fibres the German people, dreaming of the restoration of their former greatness. May 18th about 320 delegates assembled in the Imperial Hall, in the Römer (the Rathhaus) , at Frankfort. ... Never has a political assembly contained a greater number of intellectual and scholarly men--men of character and capable of self-sacrifice; but it certainly was not the forte of these numerous professors and jurists to conduct practical politics. The moderate party was decidedly in the majority. ”

“ With organization effected, the National Assembly settled down to work. But it was work as all similar German organizations in history had always understood it. All the political immaturity, the tendency to philosophical and abstract reasoning, the ineradicable devotion to the merely academic and the disregard of practical questions that are [pg 249] such prominent characteristics of the people were exhibited just as they had been at the Congress at Frankfort-on-the-Main seventy years earlier. It has been written of that Congress:
"But the Germans had had no experience of free political life. ”

“ The whole of Germany was in a ferment, a strong Republican movement manifested itself, and in almost every one of the many capital cities there was a rising with a demand for a free constitution and parliamentary government, and for the consolidation of German national unity in accordance with the same democratic ideals. The princes had no alternative but to give way, and, as a result, local Constitutions were granted, and a national Parliament was summoned to meet at Frankfurt, to draw up a national German Constitution on democratic lines. ”

“ Berlin was terrorised; the new National Guard was unable to maintain order; men scarcely dared to appear in the streets in the ordinary dress of a gentleman. The city was full of Polish insurgents, many of whom had only just been released from prison. When the National Assembly came together, it became the organ of the extreme Republican party; all the more moderate men and more distinguished had preferred to be elected for that general German Assembly which at the same time was sitting at Frankfort to create a new Constitution for the whole Confederation. ”

“ Reforms, such as the granting of complete liberty of organization, the abolition of ordinances on wages and exceptional laws against agricultural labourers, and the protection of workers and salaried employés against arbitrary discharge, certainly mark interesting progress.
But the Socialists, followed on this point by the National Assembly, held that these reforms were only preparatory in character. True economic democracy can not content itself with the mere recognition of workers’ organizations and collective bargaining. ”

“ He hopes that the Groups in Graz, Innsbruck and Salzburg will attain Assembly status by next Ridván, thus giving the Austrian Community a much firmer foundation and preparing it for the day when it will have its independent National Assembly, a day which is not so very far off after all, and towards which they must work constantly, with ever increasing zeal and dedication. ”

“ Officials, employees, and workers of the national administration shall, at their request, be employed within their home districts, in so far as this is possible, and in so far as may be consistent with the requirements of the service and of their training.
Article 17. Every state must have a republican constitution. The representative body must be elected by universal, equal, direct, and secret suffrage of all German citizens of either sex, according to the principles of proportional representation. The state ministry must have the confidence of the representative body. ”

“ The Left of the Assembly—this élite and pride of revolutionary Germany, as it believed itself to be—was entirely intoxicated with the few paltry successes it obtained by the good-will, or rather the ill-will, of a set of Austrian politicians, acting under the instigation and for the interest of Austrian despotism. Whenever the slightest approximation to their own not very well-defined principles had, in a homœopathically diluted shape, obtained a sort of sanction by the Frankfort Assembly, these Democrats proclaimed that they had saved the country and the people. ”

“ Within three months after the official result of the referendum is determined, a state assembly shall be elected which shall be convened for the establishment of the state ministry and the drafting of the state constitution. The President of the Reich shall issue a writ of election according to the provisions of the national election law and he shall fix the election day. ”

“ No doubt it was good policy in one way to transfer the Constituent Assembly to Weimar. An Assembly whose vitality is that of an elderly politician after a contested election and whose voice is that of a tired lawyer talking in his sleep, could not make itself heard, still less felt, against the violence, and volleyings of modern Berlin. Whether its work will be worth much must depend on how slow things move. They could easily move too fast for the pace of the Assembly. But at least as Dr. Preuss said to me of his Constitution—"it will not get in the way of anything better." ”

“ The Weimar Parliament is so dead that only civil war can galvanise it to action. If reinforced by a Council system, the Weimar Party Government and the Preuss Federal [197] Constitution would perhaps have steam enough to work.
The Councils are as essential to Germany to-day as the Commons were to us a century ago. Indeed, our insistence on the supremacy of the Weimar Assembly as a guarantee for the maintenance of peace, can be paralleled by our insistence a century ago on the maintenance of Upper Houses in the constitutions of the States revolutionised from France. ”

“ They held that to give the people such a right to initiate legislation is to set up a rule of mistrust against the qualified organs of national representation. Once these organs are elected, they bear the responsibility of their decisions in the eyes of the nation, and the latter must give them freedom to act. But to submit representatives to the incessant control on the part of the people is an exaggerated democratization. ”

“ Under the present constitution, the political parties in the Reichstag have no hope of ever securing the reins of power. The Chancellor and his underlings, the Secretaries of State, are functionaries who cannot be removed, so long as it pleases the Emperor to keep them in office. When the popular assembly formally records its lack of confidence in them, the vote is like a harmless shower of rain, from which they can shelter themselves under the cloak of the constitution. ”

“ I have read with interest and horror the stories of events in Paris on May 15 and my opinion is that the work of the deliberative assemblies will produce no good effect. I greatly fear that this will be the consequence at Berlin, while at Frankfort the assembly is a perfect babel. The Prussian newspapers already contain Jacobin outcries against the constitution and I doubt whether the King will be able to carry through the two-Chamber system, especially with the small fragment of hereditary right he is anxious to maintain. Breslau is a horrible centre of communism. ”

“ In order to reconstruct Germany economically one cannot depend on a political parliament. A study of the history of the parliamentary system brings the conviction that if a parliament has proved to be an adequate organ of political legislation, it is nevertheless admittedly incapable of solving the economic and social problems it encounters. The parliamentary system, that is to say, the system that consists of the formation of a government with the parties of the majority, is much more a product of classical liberalism than the creator of new social and economic forms. ”

“ If the statute outlaws all union expenditures for expression of political views, it is a bludgeon ill-designed for curbing the evils said to justify its enactment, without also curbing the rights. If the section does less, the exact thing forbidden is too loosely defined and the consequent cloud cast over the things not proscribed but within the Amendment's bearing is far too great. In this aspect and in view of the criminal sanctions imposed, the section serves as a prior restraint upon the freedoms of expression and of assembly the Amendment was designed to secure. ”

“ Nor do I see, moreover, why we should recoil so prudishly from the idea of popular representation, whether in the Diet, or in any customs, or associative parliament. Surely we can not combat an institution as revolutionary which is legally established in every German State, and which we Conservatives even would not wish to see abolished, even in Prussia. In national matters we have hitherto regarded very moderate concessions as valuable. A thoroughly conservative national representation might be created, and yet receive the gratitude of the liberals. ”

“ The Assembly resolved to give the Reichstag the right to co-operate in executive action and to exercise a control over the administration. In addition the President in America himself nominates his Cabinet without concern as to whether or not his Secretaries have the confidence of the Chamber, to whom they are not responsible. He is invested with a dangerous omnipotence, incompatible with parliamentary régime. The American system therefore, like the French system, must be rejected. ”

“ In the American Congress, in the House of Representatives, we have 212 lawyers, though there are only 135,000 lawyers in our population of 90,000,000. We have in that same assembly 50 business men, representing the 15,000,000 of our people engaged in trade and industry. Perhaps the German Reichstag is as fairly representative as our own House of Representatives, though both assemblies show the babyhood of civilization which still votes for flashing eyes, thumping fists, hollering patriotism, and smooth phrases. ”