Question

Why did the frankfurters parliament fail to achieve its goal

Answer 1

The Frankfurt parliament was not experienced enough to handle a revolution as they wasted time on discussions instead of taking action. Their naivety was exposed in their belief that they could convince the princes to merge and co-operate. They also had no organized political parties to hold the deputies together for voting as a block, which lead to the failure. The Frankfurt parliament lacked ‘muscle’ they were unable to collect taxation and had no financial power. The parliament had no way of raising an army or enforcing any laws that were passed. They were stuck in a loose-loose situation, where without a bureaucracy they could not raise any money and without any money they could not raise a bureaucracy.

The support of no army always left the German confederation and Frankfurt parliament in a weak and unstable situation, the only army capable of acting as a national army was the Prussian army. However, the Prussian army only accepted the post on the condition that he would no be made to act in any way contrary to the wishes of the King of Prussia, therefore the German confederation was subservient to the king of a Prussia and this meant they would never gain approval to use the military power against Prussia or other reactionary forces and left them in a situation to could not succeed.

The leaders of the revolution were unpopular and could not agree on basic and major decisions - they could not even decide if they wanted a Germany which included Prussia and Austria, or a Germany simply made up of the German states, a GrossDeutschland or KleinDeutschland. This was simply a lost opportunity and the Austrian military, allowed to do so by the inefficiency and indecisiveness of the Frankfurt Assembly, took control again with his army and marched back into Vienna in October 1848, driving out the city government of democratic and socialist workers, artisans and students within five days. The Frankfurt parliament needed a leader and head of Germany, so in March 1849 they elected the Prussian king Frederick William IV who directly opposed revolution as the Emperor of Germany.  When members of the Frankfurt Parliament travelled to

Berlin to offer him their crown on 3 April 1849, he refused on the grounds that it was not the parliaments to offer.The disunity among the leaders and the lack of leadership which was needed as a basis of a revolution was another reason for the failure of the revolution of 1848.