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The Revolution in Prussia
In 1848/9 the hopes of the Frankfurt Parliament lay with Prussia and King Frederick William
IV. Frederick William was a strange and complex character, sensitive, cultured and charming,
but moody and unpredictable and so unstable that later in life he was to be declared insane.
A fervent believer in the divine right of kings, he had a mystical idea of kingship and its
privileges and duties […].
However, at the beginning of his reign in 1840 it seemed that he might be a reforming
monarch. But angered by opposition, Frederick William returned to restrictive policies. For
most of the 1840s, he was a friend and ally of Metternich and dedicated to maintaining an
old order in Europe.
Then, in 1847, he swung back to what at first seemed more liberal ideas and called a
meeting of the United Diet in Berlin, which included representatives from all provincial Diets.
Having called the Diet, the King made few concessions to its demands for a written
constitution. This uncertain wavering between the conservative autocrat and the liberal
monarch was a pattern which Frederick William was to repeat many times during 1848/9.
Revolution in Berlin
On 13 March 1848 a demonstration by workers, mostly self-employed craftsmen, took place
in the palace square in Berlin. The demonstrators threw stones at the troops and the troops
replied by opening fire. Deputations of leading citizens called on the King and asked him to
make political concessions. Fighting continued in a confused way during the next two days.
The original demonstrations, begun as a protest about pay and working conditions, quickly
turned into a general, if vague, demand for ‘the maintenance of the rights irrefutably
belonging to the people of the state’.
On 16 March, news of revolution in Vienna and the dismissal of Metternich reached Berlin,
and popular excitement rose even further. Frederick William accepted the idea of a new
German constitution and agreed to recall the United Diet and to end censorship.
On 18 March a large crowd collected outside the royal palace. The King appeared on the
balcony and was loudly cheered. He then ordered the troops to clear the crowds and shots
were fired either in panic or by accident after some jostling had taken place. Students and
workers immediately set up barricades and serious fighting erupted. At least 300 rioters
were killed as troops won control of the city.
The King, who all his life hated bloodshed and, most untypical for a Prussian leader, disliked
the army and all military matters, decided to make a personal appeal for calm. He wrote a
letter ‘To my dear Berliners’ at 3am. Copies were quickly printed and were put up on trees in
the city centre early on the morning on 19 March. It promised that the troops would be
withdrawn of the street barricades were demolished.
Troops were indeed withdrawn, largely due to a misunderstanding, so that the King was left
in his palace guarded only by Berlin citizens who formed a Civic Guard. On 19 March he had
little option but to appear on the balcony and salute the bodies of the dead rioters. Berliners
hoped that Frederick William might become a constitutional monarch and that he might also
support the German national revolution. On 21 March he appeared in the streets of Berlin
with the German colours, black, red and gold, round his arm. He was greeted with
tumultuous applause and declared: ‘I want liberty: I will have unity in Germany’. In the
following days Frederick William granted a series of general reforms, agreeing to the election
of an assembly to draw up a constitution for Prussia, and appointing a liberal ministry.
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Frederick William’s motives
Did Frederick William submit to the revolution from necessity, join it out of convictions, or,
by putting himself at its head, try to take it over? Given his unstable character, he may well
have been carried away by the emotion of the occasion and felt, at least for a short time,
that he was indeed destined to be a popular monarch.
But the King’s apparent liberalism did not last long. As soon as he had escaped from Berlin
and rejoined his loyal army at Potsdam, he expressed very different feelings. He spoke of
humiliation at the way he had been forced to make concessions to the people and made it
clear that he had no wish to be a ‘citizen’ king. However, he took no immediate revenge on
Berlin and allowed decision-making for a time to pass into the hands of the new liberal
ministry.
The liberal ministry and the Prussian Parliament
The liberal ministry was hardly revolutionary. Its members were loyal to the crown and
determined to oppose social revolution. Riots and demonstrations by workers were quickly
brought under control. Meanwhile the ministry, supporting German claims to the Duchies of
Schleswig-Holstein, declared war on Denmark. It also supervised elections to a Prussian
Parliament on the basis of manhood suffrage.
The new Parliament met in May. Although it was dominated by liberals, a third of its
members were radicals and there was no agreement about the nature of the new
constitution. Its main achievement was to abolish the feudal privileges of the Junker class.
Conservative reaction
Determined to defend their interests, Prussian landowners and nobles formed local
associations. In August 1848 the League for the Protection of Landed Property met in Berlin.
This ‘Junker Parliament’, as it was dubbed by the radicals, pledged itself to work for the
abolition of the Prussian Parliament and the dismissal of the liberal ministry. The
conservatives’ main hope was the army. Most army officers were appalled at the triumph of
the liberals.
In Potsdam, Frederick William was surrounded by conservative advisers who urged him to
win back power. The conservatives – Junkers, army officers and government officials – were
not total reactionaries. Most hoped to modernise Prussia but insisted that reform should
come from the King, not from the people. The tide seemed to be flowing in their favour. By
the summer most Prussians seemed to have lost their ardour for revolution and for German
unity. The liberal ministry was increasingly isolated.
In August the King resumed control over foreign policy and concluded an armistice with the
Danes, to the disgust of the Frankfurt Parliament. Riots by workers in Berlin in October
ensured that the middle classes drew closer to the traditional ruling class. Habsburg success
in Vienna in October also encouraged the King to put an end to the Prussian Parliament and
to dismiss the liberal ministries.
In November 1848 Frederick William appointed his uncle Count Brandenburg to head a new
ministry. Almost at once Brandenburg ordered the Prussian Parliament out of Berlin. The
Civic Guard was dissolved and thousands of troops moved into Berlin. Martial law was
proclaimed. All political clubs were closed and all demonstrations forbidden. There was little
resistance to the counter-revolution. The army made short work of industrial unrest in the
Rhineland and Silesia. The Prussian Parliament, still unable to agree on a constitution, was
dissolved by royal decree in December. Frederick William proclaimed a constitution of his
own.
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The Prussian constitution
The Prussian constitution of late 1848 was a strange mixture of liberalism and absolutism:
 It guaranteed the Prussians freedom of religion, of assembly and of association, and
provided for an independent judiciary.
 There was to be a representative assembly, with two houses. The upper house would
be elected by property owners, and the lower one by manhood suffrage.
 Voters were divided into three classes, according to the amount of taxes they paid.
[ Three-Class Voting System, IF] This ensured that the rich had far more electoral
power than the poor.
 In an emergency, the King could suspend civil rights and collect taxes without
reference to Parliament.
 Ministers were to be appointed and dismissed by the King, and were to be
responsible only to him and not to Parliament.
 The King could alter the written constitution at any time it suited him to do so.
 The King retained control of the army.
The constitution thus confirmed the King’s divine right to rule whilst limit his freedom to act.
A genuine parliament, albeit subservient to the crown, had been created – from above.
While Frederick William would not accept that his subjects could limit his power, he was
prepared to limit his own powers.
The new proposals were well received in Prussia, and ministers made no secret of the fact
that they hoped it would be a better model for a united Germany than the Frankfurt
Parliament. They had ambitions to make Prussia the leading state in Germany, and Frederick
William the leading monarch.
(from: Alan Farmer & Andrina Stiles: The Unification of Germany 1815-1919 (Access to History). London
(Hodder Education) 2007, pp.38-42.)