WEBVTT

00:00:11.160 --> 00:00:15.360
The February Revolution of 1848 in Paris

00:00:15.360 --> 00:00:17.840
raised hopes for fundamental political

00:00:17.840 --> 00:00:20.160
and social change.

00:00:20.160 --> 00:00:23.760
Then, in March 1848, revolutionary

00:00:23.760 --> 00:00:26.360
uprisings spread throughout the German lands

00:00:26.360 --> 00:00:28.560
and eventually reached Berlin.

00:00:28.560 --> 00:00:30.840
Events then forced an election

00:00:30.840 --> 00:00:34.080
to the National Assembly, and the parliamentarians,

00:00:34.080 --> 00:00:35.920
who came from all over Germany,

00:00:35.920 --> 00:00:40.040
drew up a constitution in the Paulskirche in Frankfurt.

00:00:40.040 --> 00:00:42.520
They opted for the “Kleindeutsche-solution”,

00:00:42.520 --> 00:00:45.440
meaning, excluding Austria but including Prussia.

00:00:45.440 --> 00:00:48.560
And the keystone for this constitutional work was

00:00:49.200 --> 00:00:52.120
the election of the Prussian king

00:00:52.120 --> 00:00:55.080
within the framework of a constitutional hereditary monarchy.

00:00:55.080 --> 00:00:58.520
The Prussian king was to be elected Emperor of the Germans.

00:00:58.520 --> 00:01:01.880
Therefore, a delegation of deputies

00:01:01.880 --> 00:01:04.560
led by the jurist Eduard Simson

00:01:04.560 --> 00:01:06.640
set out from Frankfurt to Berlin,

00:01:06.640 --> 00:01:07.840
taking the constitution with him

00:01:07.840 --> 00:01:10.760
to crown Frederick William.

00:01:10.760 --> 00:01:12.640
He, however, refused the crown.

00:01:12.640 --> 00:01:15.640
The contrast between parliamentary

00:01:15.640 --> 00:01:18.960
responsibility and divine pardon

00:01:18.960 --> 00:01:20.560
could not be reconciled

00:01:20.560 --> 00:01:22.160
from the point of view of the monarch

00:01:22.160 --> 00:01:25.760
this “window of opportunity”, in which Frederick William IV

00:01:25.760 --> 00:01:28.760
had not yet rejected the constitution and the crown,

00:01:29.200 --> 00:01:32.200
we stage as a space of possibility.

00:01:32.520 --> 00:01:34.680
The trip actually took place.

00:01:34.680 --> 00:01:36.720
We also have a travelogue

00:01:36.720 --> 00:01:38.560
which was -some years later- published in the magazine

00:01:38.560 --> 00:01:40.080
“Gartenlaube” by someone

00:01:40.080 --> 00:01:43.680
who was there, namely the parliamentarian Karl Biedermann.

00:01:43.680 --> 00:01:46.080
In our “possibility room”, we also possess

00:01:46.080 --> 00:01:48.120
a very interesting object,

00:01:48.120 --> 00:01:50.880
namely a Frankfurter Doppelgulden,

00:01:50.880 --> 00:01:54.080
which was already minted on the election

00:01:54.080 --> 00:01:56.920
of Frederick William IV. as German Emperor.

00:01:56.920 --> 00:01:59.680
This object shows quite nicely

00:01:59.680 --> 00:02:03.240
the hopes and imaginations of the contemporaries.

00:02:03.240 --> 00:02:05.640
The city of Frankfurt in a frenzy of joy,

00:02:05.640 --> 00:02:08.360
there would be a German emperor there again.

00:02:08.360 --> 00:02:12.000
And this coin is a material remnant,

00:02:12.000 --> 00:02:14.320
a material sign of what were

00:02:14.320 --> 00:02:16.360
the ideas and dreams of contemporaries.