Frankfurt Constitution

The Frankfurt Constitution was a constitution for a unified Germany drafted by the Frankfurt National Assembly during the revolutions of 1848 and 1849 and formally adopted on 28 March 1849. It proposed a constitutional monarchy under a hereditary emperor with only a suspensive veto, a bicameral parliament made up of an elected Volkshaus and a Staatenhaus appointed by the state governments, and an extensive list of basic rights covering freedom of the press, assembly, religion and movement. Twenty eight smaller German states recognized the constitution, but Prussia and the other major powers refused it, and King Frederick William IV of Prussia rejected both the document and the imperial crown it offered him rather than accept a crown from an elected assembly; without the support of the larger states the constitution was never put into effect. Even though it never took force, it went on to influence the North German Constitution of 1867, the Weimar Constitution of 1919 and the West German Basic Law of 1949, and historians generally regard it as one of the most progressive constitutional documents of its time. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/