Frankfurt Constitution (1849)
프랑크푸르트 헌법 (1849)
Part of Frankfurt National Assembly
The "Constitution of the German Empire" passed by the Frankfurt National Assembly at the end of March 1849 and proclaimed on 28 March. It provided for a Lesser German federal state without Austria under a hereditary emperor, with basic rights enforceable before an imperial court and a House of the People elected by equal manhood suffrage. Twenty-nine states accepted it, but it never came into force because the King of Prussia refused the imperial office and Austria, Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony and Hanover rejected it.
In depth
Sources differ on the final vote: English Wikipedia gives 267 to 263 on 27 March, German Wikipedia a majority of 42 on 28 March. The emperor had only a suspensive veto, and the Reichstag consisted of the House of the People and a House of States appointed half by the state governments and half by the state parliaments. On 28 March the Assembly elected the King of Prussia emperor by 290 votes, with 248 abstentions.
The Imperial Constitution campaign of May 1849, which tried to enforce the constitution from below, was crushed. Its catalogue of basic rights, however, was taken up in the Weimar Constitution and the Basic Law of the Federal Republic.