1848/49: Frankfurt’s Paulskirche as a Reference Site in German Constitutional History

Löhnig, Martin (2024) 1848/49: Frankfurt’s Paulskirche as a Reference Site in German Constitutional History. In: Fundamental Legal Transformations as a Consequence of the Springtime of Nations (1848). Studies of the Ferenc Mádl Institute, 3 (3). Ferenc Mádl Institute of Comparative Law, Budapest, pp. 91-103. ISBN 9786156356482

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Abstract

The 19th century is – not only in Germany – the century of the positivisation of fundamental rights. It began in the constitutions of the southern German states (until 1820) and ended at the end of this “long” 19th century with the Weimar Constitution of 1919 (Weimarer Reichsverfassung). On this path, the year 1848 marks a very decisive date for the German tradition of fundamental rights. On the one hand, the catalogue of fundamental rights adopted by the Paulskirche Assembly can be understood as a reaction to the limited validity of fundamental rights in early constitutionalism (see I.) by developing fundamental rights as subjective individual rights (see II.). On the other hand, this catalogue of fundamental rights is the reference document against which later German constitutions had to be measured and still have to be measured today (see III.): The Constitution of the German Empire of 1871 (Bismarck Verfassung), which did not contain a catalogue of fundamental rights, as well as the Weimar Constitution of 1919 and the Basic Law of Bonn of 1949 (Bonner Grundgesetz).

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