Acceso usuarios
Hans-Christof Kraus
The German Confederation (Deutscher Bund) did not have a parliament during the entire period of its existence (1815�1866). For decades the Bundestag in Frankfurt am Main debated intensively about the introduction of parliamentary representation, but it was never realized, even after the revolution of 1848/49. The main reason for this has to be seen in the fact that after 1815 the largest and most influential German power, the Habsburg Empire, blocked the establishment of a parliament. When the Viennese government accepted the introduction of an indirectly elected assembly of delegates in 1862/63, it was already too late. The German national movement, especially the �German National Association� (Deutscher Nationalverein), called for a directly elected all-German parliament since the end of the revolution. This had not been accepted by the Austrian government, because the foundations of the Habsburg Monarchy as a multi-ethnic state would have come into question. The Prussian government, in turn, only used the call for an all-German, directly elected parliament to advance its own goals.
