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It is not the Confederation of the Rhine that marks the beginnings of early parliamentarism in Germany during the decades preceding the revolution of 1848/49; that phenomenon rather dates from after 1815 and therefore only belongs to the period after the foundation of the German Confederation. The fundamental laws of the Confederation determined that in Germany constitutions should be based on the traditional representative organs of the estates. Thus, most German States representative institutions were established that generally combined elements inherited from the former estates assemblies with more modern parliamentary ones. Only few German States remained without a parliament or restored the ancient representative system of social classes that had functioned until the eighteenth century. It is equally instructive to note that both great German powers of that time, Austria and Prussia, did not have national parliaments until 1848; assemblies of the estates merely existed in individual Austrian crown lands or Prussian provinces. On the contrary, it is in the smaller German States (Württemberg, Bavaria, Baden, and Hessen-Darmstadt were the first among them) that parliaments with political influence and in a modern sense representing the whole people were originally introduced. These states can therefore be considered as pioneers of German parliamentarism.
