Frankfurt Constitution

The Frankfurt Constitution (German: Frankfurter Reichsverfassung, FRV) or Constitution of St. Paul's Church (Paulskirchenverfassung), officially named the Constitution of the German Empire (Verfassung des Deutschen Reiches) of 28 March 1849, was an unsuccessful attempt to create a unified German nation state in the successor states of the Holy Roman Empire organised in the German Confederation. Adopted and proclaimed by the Frankfurt Parliament after the Revolutions of 1848, the constitution contained a charter of fundamental rights and a democratic government in the form of a constitutional monarchy. King Frederick William IV of Prussia was designated head of state as "Emperor of the Germans" (Kaiser der Deutschen), a role he rejected.

The constitution is called by its more common names in order to distinguish it from the Constitution of the German Empire enacted in 1871 and initiated by Otto von Bismarck.

The 1849 Constitution was proclaimed by the Frankfurt Parliament, during its meeting in the Paulskirche church on 27 March 1849, and came in effect on 28 March, when it was published in the Reichs-Gesetz-Blatt 1849, p. 101-147. Thus, a united German Empire, as successor to the German Confederation, had been founded de jure. De facto, however, most Princes on German soil were not willing to give up sovereignty and resisted it, so it did not succeed on land, with the German Confederation being restored a year later. On the other hand, this first and democratic German Empire, with its small Reichsflotte (Imperial Fleet) founded a year earlier, fought the First War of Schleswig at sea with the Battle of Heligoland. The fleet's black-red-gold war ensign was one of the first instances of the official use of the modern republican Flag of Germany.

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